She woke shortly after dawn. The morning air was cold and dry, though the sun was beginning to warm the chill away. Something brushed against the boards near her head, there were other furtive rustles and slithers; she lay stiff and frightened until she identified the noises: tikin, ti-besh, mikimiki and others, small furry nibblers pattering about the business of finding food. As she rolled out of the quilt she saw a flash of pale green, a jiji darting under the skimsled, tail thrashing, skinny hairless legs working frantically. A moment later it backed out with a thimble-sized t’ki pup in its mouth. Holding the pup down with its slim, six-fingered forepaws, ignoring Amaiki with the casual indifference she remembered with affection from the jejin in her childhood home, it proceeded to swallow the pup, then grunted itself in a comfortable sprawl on the end of the sleep-pad, a film descending over its golden eyes as it began digesting its breakfast. Chuckling, her loneliness temporarily assuaged, she tugged an end of the quilt from under the jiji, laughed aloud at its squealing protest; she rolled and strapped the quilt, packed the scattered tools away, turned the cock on one of the water cans to draw water for her morning tea. Jejin had lived on Conoch’hi farms from the time Hyaroll stopped the clans’ wandering, moving unhindered through the houses and barns, the cotes and sheds, shaping nests in haystacks and cornbins, eating insect eggs and larvae, chasing snakes away, keeping down the population of various sorts of nibblers. Amaiki hummed contentedly as she checked the monitors on the batteries. Left the dome midafternoon, quit traveling two hours after sundown. She was surprised to see how little of the power she’d used, pleased too. Still humming, she moved the sled aside and pulled the door open. Bright cloudless sky. I might as well stay here awhile, she told herself and felt an immediate relief. The thought of plunging into that unknown ahead turned her stomach sour; she liked things to stay the way she knew them; strangeness intimidated her. It was pleasant to have a viable excuse for clinging to familiar things and places. She eased the sled outside and unfolded the collector films.

  After breakfast, she checked the monitors, sighed when she saw the charging almost complete. There was still a hint of chill in the air, so she tied on her cloak, then went wandering about the stead. A barn built of wood and fieldstone, several corrals, a stripped kitchen garden where even the weedgrass was dry and dead. She lifted the well cap, dropped a pebble down; it rattled against the sides of the hole and stopped with a dull thud. Not even mud left. The house was locked up, but the shutters had been pulled off and the windows were smashed; what she could see of the inside was a mess. The wolves had been here, cleaned out anything worth taking, spoiled the rest. In the whole long span of the Conoch’hi life weave, the only thing that came close to this sort of destruction was the hints and fragments of stories before the coming of the undying, stories about raids by shevorate galaphorze, hairy tribes living around Lake Serzhair. Maybe, after these thousands of years of peace and safety, they were raiding again. No stink of galaphorze about, but this place had been empty for a long time, and scent didn’t linger in air as dry as this. Might have been Conoch’hi gone wild. It happened. She didn’t like to think about that. Everything she knew was breaking apart.

  She went back to the shed, her enjoyment of the morning gone. Instead of the comforting familiarity she’d felt before, there was nightmare, an edge of ugliness to everything about her. She eased an annoyed jiji off the sleep-pad, rolled it into a tight cylinder and tied it to the sled; she folded up the collector and guided it back into its slot, checked the packs and cubbies, the water cans, made sure the taps were covered. From the look of things the water would have to last her until she reached the river. She took a last look around, saw the marks of her sandals in the dust. The wind was beginning to rise, coming out of the southwest with that low keening-howl she knew too well, the zimral that leached the soul and maddened the brain; that hot persistent wind would blow away those tracks before night fell, she knew that, but leaving them behind, there for anyone to see who came in time, was like leaving bits of herself lying about. She found a long-stemmed weed and went about the stead brushing away old footmarks and new; when she reached the sled she stepped up on it, brushed out the last mark, broke the weed into small bits and cast them away. She pulled her cloak around her, laced the front together, drew the hood up and snapped the dust veil in place, then started the sled and left the farm without looking back.

  All that long day she saw no one, though she passed more abandoned steads, more empty villages. Overhead a few raptors rode the zimral, but any tedo or other large animals left in the uplands were hiding from the wind and the sun. After all the millennia the Conoch’hi had lived here and turned the soil and left, their bones to make it richer, the uplands were going back to wilderness, dusty, dry and secret. She passed orchards where dead leaves rattled before the zimral and dead limbs creaked a dirge for the dying of the land. She passed vineyards where dead vines were a calligraphy of despair. The uplands had come to life on the rains Hyaroll brought to them, stayed alive because he continued to bring them, year on year, steady as the ticking of a clock, year on year without fail, the centuries piling up, one, two, three, ten, fifty, one hundred centuries of winter rains coming without fail; what wonder no one thought to study the natural seasons of the land or build reservoirs against the time when the rains might fail to come. Who could remember what the natural seasons were? Not even the life weave went back that far. We planted what we wanted and forced the land to shape itself to our needs. What had been would always be. As long as the undying lived in the dome there would be peace and plenty. Sometimes we railed against the hardness of his hand when he took our sons, our daughters and most of all our naidisa, but no one dreamed of doing without him. We were pampered pets, Hyaroll’s jejin, charming in our way and useful, and like the jejin on that farm, we are left to make our own lives when he nears the end of his. At least the jejin have instinct to guide them. What do we have? The land takes back its original face. So fast it takes it back. And we fly away from it as fast, hunting for another master to make all right again. It was a bitter lesson she read that day in the writing of dead vines and the rattle of dead leaves.

  Two hours before sundown she came across another abandoned steading. She stopped the sled and checked the monitors. Down by two-thirds. She looked around. Clouds low on the horizon ahead, just a few ravelings but more than she’d seen since she left the dome. The grass was sun-dried and parched but not dead yet, and the orchard stretching away behind the house had a faint flush of green to it; the tree limbs bent with a lively spring before the push of the zimral; more than guess or elapsed time, these things told her she was nearing the edge of the high plateau. Graft tool ready in her hand, senses as alert as she could force them, she sent the sled humming down the driveway toward the house.

  She felt the emptiness of the place before she came to a stop. Heavy shutters were closed over the windows in front, three rows of them; the house was asleep, it wouldn’t wake till the line families came back. She started the sled around to the back, easing it along at a creep. No sign of a breakin; the wolves never left such neatness behind them. That made her nervous; they hadn’t come here yet—was tonight the night they hit? There were several barns and a silo. Well built and well maintained. The Conoch’hi who held this land worked hard and were proud of their home and loved their land. She looked about and mourned with them the need to leave what generations of their line had built. It hurt because she was cone and sister to all Conoch’hi and because it reminded her all too sharply of the home her meld and line had left to wind and sun and filthy wolves who’d break and mess what they could not use. She looked about, wondering what shelter would be best. Not the house. Silo? No; if they rode kedoa—which seemed likely, not many sleds or trucks left up here—they’d be looking for any bits of grain left. Sheds? No. They’d try every door looking for what they could find. A shed was too confining, and even if she could latch it somehow from the inside, the fact that it was closed against them would make them all the more eager to get inside. She took the sled over to the largest of the barns; it had double doors on the upper story, a heavy beam jutting out from the roofpeak and a hayfork swinging from a pulley screwed into that beam. She stepped off the sled, hesitated, then unfolded the film. Be safest to go to ground immediately, but the batteries needed charging, and for that the sled had to be out in the sunlight. She looked around. Trees and a pair of small neat sheds between the barn and the house; it wasn’t exactly hidden, but someone would have to get within a few meters of it before he saw it. She pushed up the hook on the smallest of the barn’s doors and went inside, leaving the door open so she’d have light enough to see what the inside was like.

  More light came in through airholes high up the sides of the loft. The side where she walked was paved with heavy stone flags, worn down by centuries of tedo hooves. Milking barn? Probably not; more likely shelter during winter storms. The air had a dry musty smell, old hay and worms in the wood; dust motes danced in the light beams streaming down from high above. She pushed apart one of the stanchions, stepped into the old stone manger, stepped over the lip onto ancient flooring that creaked and groaned under her sandal soles. The center of the barn was a huge empty space with a thin scatter of rotting straw spread out over the floorboards. As she’d hoped, the loft floor came about two thirds of the way to the front of the barn, then stopped. She could jump the sled into the loft and leave no sign anyone was about. If the loft floor was strong enough to hold the weight. She walked under it and scowled up into the dim twilight; the floorbeams looked strong enough to hold a flier. She came back from under the floor, went quickly up the ladder and swung out onto the planks. Stamping and hopping about, suddenly more cheerful because of the sheer silliness of what she was doing, she started dancing with the sunbeams, kicking up swirls of strawdust, until she slipped and landed on her coccyx with a thud that jarred her brain. “Motherlost planks are hard enough,” she said. Groaning and rubbing at her tailbone, she got to her feet and managed to reach the barn floor without falling, though the tumble she’d taken had shaken her more than she liked to admit. “What now? Take a look around, I suppose, then fix some supper. It’s a cold meal for you tonight, Ammi-sim, no hot tea to chase away the sorrows of the soul.”

  She stopped by the sled and checked the monitors. The line had crept up a little, how much was hard to tell, but there was still a long way to go before the batteries were topped off. She did a few loosening-up exercises, but they didn’t help much; she was bone-sore and getting sorer by the minute. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Motherlife, I’d love to soak in a hot tub for hours and hours and hours. Maybe I can fiddle some sort of hot compress with the portastove. Maybe all this is useless pother, no looter coming, no danger closing in on me. Can’t take the chance, Ammi-sim, you know that. The least they’d do would be take away the sled. With it you’re reasonably sure to make Shim Shupat, without it who knows ….

  There was an elaborate garden behind the house; generations of love had gone into its shaping. A small stream had run through it, falling down a miniature mountain vista to murmur in meandering calm through a series of pools where waterflowers had grown. Fed from the well, water had been pumped into a mossy wooden tank; a small weir could be opened to let a constant stream run down the tiny exquisite vista to the stream and the pools and finally around to the troughs where the tedo herds had drunk. No water now, of course; the waterflowers were gone, other flowerbeds had been dug up and replaced by mossy rocks in a desperate attempt to hold on to some semblance of garden; most of the shrubbery had been cut back or removed, a few ancient trees remained, their leaves a withered green, small and dying. They held out as long as they could. How much they must have loved this place. She was suddenly happy she hadn’t seen her home again. I have good memories, she thought, better memories than any of my line can have; I am blessed. Her own life-strip was packed away in the sled, but she knotted the thought into her mind for working later into the weave.

  In that gray light that comes when most of dawn’s colors have faded, she woke from a chaotic, terrifying nightmare, filled with jagged flashes of fire and dark, with blood and mangled flesh, with screams and crashes, with shouts and curses, opened her eyes into that cold grayness, unsure whether she was awake or still dreaming, listened to sounds that seemed to belong to that nightmare: high, hooting squeals from kedoa, shouted curses and whinnying laughter, thudding scuffles of split hooves, shriek and squeal of tortured wood, dull thumps, crash of breaking glass. As the sounds clarified and she oriented herself, she began to understand what she was hearing. The looters had come.

  She drew her legs up, pulled the quilt more tightly about her. Sour fluid flooded her mouth; she swallowed several times, drew her tongue across dry lips as she sat listening to the sounds the wolf pack made as they swarmed over the stead. Even worse than the fear that paralyzed her was the sick understanding that these ravaging beasts were Conoch’hi, unmelded manai. Motherlost females like me. Oh-ah, how? How? What happened to them that they could do such things? The big doors rolled open suddenly; she shuddered and clutched at the graft tool, sat without moving, almost without breathing.

  “Mother-cursed leeches, they licked the place clean.” A hoarse wild voice that brought her rudimentary crest erect and flooded her with an equally wild hate that appalled her when she realized what was happening. As fast as the land, she thought, we go back to what we were. Ah-weh, ah mother of us all, help me.

  “What about the loft, Napann? Want me to take a look?” A lighter, easier voice, not so troubling, but the words brought Amaiki onto her knees, the graft tool lifted and ready.

  “No, anything worthwhile was in the house. This place is too open—look at it, not even fresh straw left.” Footsteps going away. “Some good stuff in the cellar, we’ll feast today …” The voice faded with the steps, though the mana kept on talking.

  Amaiki sank back on her heels. After a minute she pulled the quilt up around her, clutched it tight to her, but the shivering that shook her, jammed her teeth together, blurred her sight, it wouldn’t go away. The air warmed about her, grew brighter as the sun rose higher, but the chill still lingered in her bones. A simple thing. Just follow her meld to the coast. Getting out of the dome would be the hard part, the rest … with a little caution and the proper preparation, how hard could it be? Wild manai … how soon before they begin raiding for naidisa and tokon? Everything she knew and cherished was falling apart around her, even what she knew of herself. Rotting, she thought, dead and rotting. Mother-of-all, what will happen to us? She sat without moving for a timeless time—until her stomach growled and reminded her to eat. Throughout that interminable day she heard the wolf pack moving about. They tore a shed down and set it on fire to roast something. The sickly stench of half-burned meat drifted into the barn; she would not think about what it might be. As the sun sank lower and lower, she began to wonder if they meant to settle in for several days. She couldn’t survive that; already her bladder had proved a problem. She’d pushed a pile of straw ends into one of the back corners of the loft and voided on it, but her urine was thick from two days of keeping her water intake to a minimum. The smell of it was strong and lingering; anyone with half a nose coming into the barn would know someone was there. If they ever settled down and went to sleep … no no no, they’d have sentries out, they’d chase her down, the sled wasn’t fast enough to outrun even a runty kedoa. Go away, she thought, go away, this is too close to the lowland, it’s not safe to sleep here, go go go. She loathed being afraid, being filthy and stinking; her sense of her own worth shredded away as the hours passed until she despised herself as much as she did those beasts outside, but most of all she was terrified by that fierce animal part of herself that was drawn to them. It was not only fear she felt that time the mana Napann spoke. Go away, leave me alone, let me get on unhindered, go.

  The interminable day finally ended. She voided her bladder once more and was sick with the stench of herself and terrified someone would come into the barn and smell it. The wolf pack rioted about some more, making noises that sounded as if they were celebrating the moonrise, then grew quiet as the night deepened. In the long silence that followed, Amaiki wrestled with herself, finding in that silence and the night’s shadowed darkness the strength to face her needs and fears, her new and unwelcome knowledge of herself. This is what I am, she thought into the darkness, these possibilities are truly within me; in the years of my life so far I have not had to find out so much about myself as I have discovered this single day. Tonight (and probably only tonight) I have a choice of paths. I can forget what I have seen within me and confine myself to that Amaiki who was gentle and loving, with—all right, admit it—a sometimes acid tongue, and a true gift for shaping and growing the green world. I can be that woman but not limited to her; I can put out other possibilities as a plant puts out sports, living with the good in me and using the bad to energize me. I can join this pack, run free and wild beneath the moons, answering to no one but my pack sisters, sloughing all those responsibilities that tug and twist at me and will not let me alone.