He gasped. Emboldened, I bent low to look closer at this that I had, incredibly, captured. What I had taken for skin wrinkled and folded with his movements. I forced myself to feel. It was covering, like a cap we put on in the bitterest weather, though this was woven so fine that warp and woof were lost within it, and was fitted to his limbs.

  I drew the iron blade. Its living heaviness became my own will. “You shall have no shade from the sun,” I threatened. Carefully, I slashed. His true skin shone bone-pallid under the moon. When I tugged at the fabric to get it clear of the rope, it ripped. I peeled him from the shoulders to hips and left his belly naked to the sky.

  What I then saw struck me with such astonishment that I dropped the blade and sprang back. “But you are female!” I cried. What evil had I been about to wreak?

  His mouth twisted upward. A wild barking noised broke from him. “I male,” he choked.

  I mastered myself again and looked harder. Indeed that which sprouted between his thighs did not much resemble the female organ. Were the Night Folk wholly deformed?

  It came to me how unwise he had been. Had he let me believe him female, I might well have released him. The Charioteers kill everyone, but the Wold People respect the Life Power.

  Or would I have set him free? He was not of my people, and their need was great. I did not know, and it did not matter. He was male; and he was not clever, regardless of what he knew. He was mine, unless and until his vengeful rescuers arrived.

  He keened words in his own language, if that was what they were, and strained against his bonds. I stood by. Dawn was still far away. Patience was my single strength. I must be the rock that outlasts the night wind.

  But it was just a short while before he calmed. His uncanny gaze met mine. I compelled myself not to look away. “Sun kill me,” he said. “Sun, fire, burn. I dead.”

  “Unless you help my people, they are dead,” I answered.

  “Not know how.”

  “There are those among you who do.” I must believe that. “Take me to them.”

  Silence brimmed the well of moonlight that was the clearing. My spirit was cold. At last he said, “I take you.”

  The cold became a rushing tide. “Will you swear to that?” I asked. “By the honor of your ancestors, will you bring me unharmed to the home of your folk and will they hear me out?”

  He bobbed his head up and down. “I take you. I take you.”

  That was no oath. Maybe the Night Folk could not swear any. Maybe, immortal, they lacked ancestors. Well, if he intended treachery, my hope was lost anyway. “We will go,” I said. Stooping, I undid the knot.

  Meanwhile I commanded, “Hold still.” He obeyed. I kept my blade lying ready to stab while I drew the lasso off him and used it to tie his hands behind his back. He rose, and for a little while we stared again at each other.

  “I…Sten,” he said. “Sten Granstad.”—as nearly as I can make the sounds.

  Did he offer me his name for a hostage, as I had offered mine? My throat shut tight. It was a moment before I could repeat, “Ak’hai’i” and his gesture.

  His mouth curved, though he did not bark. “Come, Ak’hai’i,” he said quite softly, and turned about.

  I did not risk breaking the spell by fetching my gear from the canebrake. if ever I started back home, it would be easy to chip out a hand ax, and that would be enough for the journey.

  We walked west down the broad trail. He had me lead the ehin by the cords. My other hand held the enchanted rope that leashed him. As time and distance passed, my grip eased. He had made no trial of escape, nor done anything else to alarm me. He gave no sign of wrath at my binding him and spoiling his garment. Rather, he went by my side almost as a comrade might.

  Of course, we were bound for his kindred, and once among them I would become the captive. What I had gained was, at most, the right to speak with them; and my gain could well prove to be no more than death, and helpless homelessness forever afterward.

  Only our footfalls and the ehin’s hoofbeats spoke while we followed that moonlit path. The shadows shifted, shortened; dew began to glitter on boulders and fallen trees; coolness deepened toward chill; stars trekked across heaven. My thoughts were few and dreamlike. I had gone beyond myself as well as beyond my world.

  We passed more stands of witch-plants, and once a shelter. It was of wood, timbers shaped to a fineness no sharpstone adze could achieve. This form was square-sided, altogether foreign. And yet that was ordinary naoi wood.

  My dream broke apart like dawnmists when suddenly hoofs trampled ahead of us. Sten’s ehin whistled. We halted. I stood stiff awaiting my fate.

  It happened the boughs here were thin above us. The moon hovered enormous behind their lattice. Its light poured over the trail. Around a bend, out of the speckled shadows, another mount came into that hueless brilliance, and upon it another of the Night Folk. Behind paced two beasts of unknown kind. Four-footed, they stood about as high as my hip. Thick hair covered them from long muzzle to short tail. When they sensed me and growled, fangs gleamed.

  The rider stopped, stared, reached for something. “Nadia!” Sten called. The rider drew a hollow cane of iron from a sheath and pointed it. Sten spoke fast in a lilting language that no throat among us could ever form, unless partly and brokenly. The rider replied. I stood awaiting my fate.

  Sten turned to me. “Nadia Zaleski,” he said, and made a gesture with his head. I cannot speak it any better than that, but I knew it was a name. He barked and added. “She female.”

  In truth? I stared. She too had covered her body, but I could find some differences. Her mane was black, longer than his. Apart from the thin lines of hair the Night Folk have above their eyes in place of tendrils, none grew on her face. Her form was smaller, slighter, rounder, with twin swellings at the chest. Had they not told me, I would have taken her for the male, him for the female. But they did give me this knowledge into my hands, and therewith a brightening of hope.

  I stepped behind Sten and loosed his arms. “Is she your Watermother?” I asked unsteadily. “If so, I will beg of her.”

  Nadia spoke from her seat. Although she could not make words of ours sound right, they flowed much more readily, in a voices more high and sweet, than his. “We have no Watermother,” she said. “You have wandered far from your world, Ak’hai’i.”

  “But surely you have traveled into ours, mighty lady,” I had courage to reply.

  She moved her head up and down. The mane rippled about her shoulders. “I have that. What is your home, Ak’hai’i?” When I told her, she murmured, “It is long since I was in Oaua. You cannot have been born. But I met with its Watermother—secretly seeking her out, lest fear of me make her people dread her too—and we spoke of many things. She was Kiluo.”

  I shuddered. “Kiluo is in her tomb. Riao now deals for us with the Unseen.” Bracing myself: “But why should this be strange? You never grow old, you Night Folk.”

  A sounds like a breeze through darkness blew from her mouth. Did I hear sorrow? “We do not grow old as fast as you, Ak’hai’i.”

  At that, somehow, the hope within me turned from fire to ice. I had trapped and tricked Sten. I had made him guide me here, because else I would have made the sun burn him alive. Now Nadia said they also must someday die. “Have you no power to save us?” I howled.

  They talked together.

  “I will go,” I said dully. “Forgive my people that I troubled you. They knew naught of it.”

  Nadia raised her hand. “Wait,” she called. I turned back. The blood knocked in my head. “You have dared what none before you ever did, Ak’hai’i,” she said low. “We would help you because of that, if we can. I make no promise. And I fear the price to you must be heavy whether you win or lose. Are you willing?”

  “I am, I am,” I sang.

  A moment she sat quiet. Her teeth gnawed her mouth. “Can we bring ourselves to this?” she wondered.

  “I think we must, whatever it costs us,” replied Sten, likewise in my language.

  She commanded her ehin to go west. “Follow,” she said.

  He mounted his. I came behind. The hunting beasts loped at my tail.

  Of what happened thereafter I can say very little. We lack the words. We lack the eyes and the thoughts. Do you understand? A thing may be so strange that you cannot see it. You do not know how to look. It is like a mist where colors go swirling, now bright, now dim, never the same. Sometimes the mist rolls aside somewhere, and for a breath a shape stands forth, but it is like an icicle or a lightning bolt; and what you hear is like voices in a dream that seem to have meaning until you awaken and cannot imagine what the meaning was.

  We three had fared a ways when Sten gaped and stretched and mumbled something. Nadia spoke back to him before she explained to me—how kindly they both had become!—“He is weary.”

  By that time my surprise could only be dull, but she observed it. Her mouth curved as she said with a ghost-wind of breath, “We grow weary and must sleep the same as you. Sten has been traveling on his rounds since sundown.”

  “Was it a hard journey?” I asked, wondering what dangers he might have encountered.

  She barked a tiny bit. “Not until he met you. He was just seeing if all was well with our fields. But it has been a long wakefulness for him.” She was quiet a spell. The hoofs of the ehins thudded, the leather of the seats upon them creaked. “In the place where we should be, the days and the nights are but half as long as here.”

  “Why do you not stop and rest?” I blurted.

  “We must be sure to return before dawn,”

  “Is it true the Night Folk cannot endure daylight?”

  Her head moved up and down. “Your sun burns too cruelly bright for us.”

  Bewilderment silenced me.

  I was tired myself when we ended our journey. But what I found there took from me every sense of mortality. I was like the spirit of one unentombed, bodiless awareness in a world no longer mine. This world, though, had never been mine; I had not even a memory of it.

  The stronghold of the Night Folk stands on high ground above the sea. Forest is at its back and trees grow around three sides of it. The fourth looks down into a bay that was then a broken path of light under the sinking moon. Mightily rear those walls, stone and timber, beneath a roof that is also of cloven wood. The windows are filled with clear ice that never melts, and dawn-soft yellow light glows through it. Nearby are the worksteads. Of them I can say naught, except that I saw flames flicker and heard iron ring upon iron, with undergroundish noises as of whirring and tramping. I was brought to the house.

  Forth they came to meet us, the tall Night Folk, and more from the woods and the worksteads, carrying lights in their hands that I thought at first, seeing them at a distance, were stars descended upon earth. By this and the shining windows I saw how garb upon the Night Falk was colored, fire-red, sunseeker-orange, springleaf-yellow, gem-green and sea-green, heaven-blue and sea-blue, blood-violet, the white of snow and the black of oracular pools. Their speech caroled and surged about me. I believed some were angry and would have stricken me dead with the iron things they bore, but maybe I was mistaken. Sure it is that the will of Nadia and Sten prevailed; and who had better right to spare my life than Sten? The first brightening was above the Forest when they led me within.

  And there—I cannot say what was there. I am not forbidden, but I am not able. No mortal would be. I may speak of soaring rooms and rainbow hues and music that bore me on its tide, but how shall I conjure this up out of the passage grave that is my memory? That I can never share the miracle has set me apart forever.

  They gave me a place to be myself. They brought me food I could eat, and pure water. They heard me out, questioned, listened, talked one with another, went off and left me alone, came back and questioned further. Sometimes they named names I remembered, Wold People, though all whom I had ever heard of or known as a child were dead. Indeed the Night Folk had gone among us.

  “Mostly we sought to learn about you, to understand you,” Nadia said once. “Certain things that happened were bad. I suppose that is inescapable, when races are altogether unlike. We cherished hopes—but they came to naught, and now we seldom leave the Forest.”

  Day broke. The dwellers drew into their great house of many rooms. They closed wooden slabs over the windows. When any of them must venture out, he went muffled and shaded, with pieces of black ice masking his eyes.

  “This is not our world, you see,” Nadia told me.

  “Whence came your forebears?” I whispered.

  “It was far away, beneath a gentler sun,” she said. “They fell from the sky long ago, long ago…as you reckon lifetimes. Since then we have made what we could out of what we have.”

  In my puzzlement I could not ask further.

  The day wore on. About noon, I met with one who seemed almost a Watermother, though male. The hair on his head was white. “Did the Charioteers learn their arts from you?” I made bold to question him; for I had seen ehins drawing wheels.

  “They did not,” he avowed. “We knew no more about them than that there are herders on the eastern plains. Nor did we know, until you bore us the tidings, that any have moved this far west.”

  “They ravage and slay,” I said. “In the name of whatever friendship ever was between the Night Folk and the Wold People, help us. Else we perish.”

  “What would you have us do?”

  “You can tell better than I. Give us iron weapons and chariots of our own, and school us in their use?”

  “The invaders are too many for you, I fear. That is an enormous country which bred them. Also, would you gladly become what they are?”

  “Then go against them yourselves,” I urged. “Ride to their camps in the dark, strike them with the lightning that the stories say you can wield, drive them back from us.”

  “Nor can we do that,” he said, gentle and merciless. “They have their own right to life. Drought holds the plains, and will not let go for generations to come.”

  My anguish lashed at him: “How can you know this?”

  His straightness sagged a little. “We do know. We always did. Your heavy sun and your huge moon pull so hard upon this world of yours that its spinning changes swiftly…as the stars reckon lifetimes.”

  Thus he said. The words echo in me like words from a Hallows’ Eve dream, never to be understood, never to be forgotten. In my later years, I have thought that maybe he meant the skewing of the heavenly pathways.

  I crouched down in that dim room full of gleaming things, tail raised as if for battle, and screamed, “But have we no right to live?”

  He turned and went from me. His garb billowed with his haste. Did he flee? I sought the room that was mine, lay there with eyes shut, and tried to call Hroai and our children to my spirit. They could not come. I had wandered too far, into a land too other.

  The sun trudged west.

  Sten entered my refuge, which had become my cage. The times we talked had given him a better command of earthly language. His voice wavered. “We may have discovered what we can do for you,” he said.

  You may think this is the end of my story. The rest you have heard, since first you could listen, until it is woven into flesh and bone. I say to you, it was not the end. Through the rest of my life grew a slow understanding, for whose fullness I strove last night when I stood on the clifftop and the ghost boat sailed by. Today I would give you what understanding I do have, if I am able, for you may have need of it after I have gone home to my Hroai in our dolmen.

  You know how I went in another host board, on the tide that followed the sunken sun, with two of the Night Folk. Nadia and Sten, they were. The wind filled the sails and we bounded over long, murmurous waves, across which the moonlight flowed in rivers. Smells of salt and the deeps filled my tendrils. Great creatures broached and wings skimmed low, but we fared unharmed across the waste, and at dawn we raised the easternmost of these islands.

  I went about it during the day, while Sten and Nadia sheltered in a tent on the strand. “It is good country,” I told them. “The soil is rich and the springs are fresh.”

  “We are glad,” Nadia answered. “We knew simply that it was here.”

  “But it is lonely,” I said.

  “That is well,” Sten replied. “None will dispute your settlement. None will pursue you.”

  He spoke truth. I could not bring myself to say it was barely half a truth. Where were the tombs? How could we remain one with our ancestors if we forsook Motherland.

  At darkfall we three set homeward. Winds were ill-humored and morning found us still at sea. The Night Folk stretched the larger sail across the hull and huddled. For me that might have been an empty day, rocking on an endless gleam of waters. Instead it became a time of magic; for we talked freely together, we three. I came to learn a little, little about the Night Folk. Sten said they knew how to make a thing that would drive a boat without sails or paddles, but had never found time to build it, they being few in a foreign world—

  Well this is not what I mean by understanding. It is merely words. Water and words may pass between the worlds without carrying death; water, however, quenches, while words raise a thirst that can never be slaked.

  We landed early in the dark and found that the Night Folk in their stronghold had the canoe ready. Often have I had to make clear why this was what they made for me, instead of a boat like their own. I will tell you again. To make a ghost boat and to handle it are craft, wizardry, beyond us people. We might have learned how, but it would have taken more time than we had. For us the Night Folk devised the simple dugout with paddles and square mat sail that you know. In the next few days, in the house and darks in the open, they taught me well how to make more and how to bring them over the sea to the islands.

  And then they sent me back. I returned with my hands empty but my spirit full. I prophesied and I taught—the help of Watermother Riao and the strength of Hroai upbore me—and those months were bitter, for who would willingly leave Motherland? We did at last, we Wold People, thorp by thorp, with our homes aflame behind us; and here we are, and this is your home and you are happy in it.