Fang, the Gnome

by Michael G. Coney

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

There was a time when the Earth had three moons, and when the seductive sorceress Avalona could alter futures and bend "happentracks" with her spells. Indeed, in this vast chaotic universe called the Greataway, with its many imaginable futures, anything is possible. Especially when Nyneve, Avalona's bewitching human disciple, conjures up the complete legend of Camelot and when the roguish gnome Fang, slayer of the dread daggertooth, stumbles into the human happentrack, causing human and gnome worlds to overlap. For then the moons begin to disappear one by one, and Fang, Nyneve, and all their comrades find themselves caught in a happentrack from which there is no escape, a happentrack in which the legend of Arthur might prove their only salvation...

Release date: April 29, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 345

Sample

The forest was silent. The sun was low, slanting among the treetops. The spring air was cool. A wolf appeared on the far side of the pool.

It looked around and sneezed suddenly, doglike, shaking its head. Other wolves arrived, scrabbling up the boulders and gathering at the edge of the pool. One of them stared at the sky and gave out a howl of desolation.

Another looked straight at Nyneve. It was old and its muzzle was gray. It trotted stiff-legged around the pool and stopped beneath her tree, looking up. Its eyesight was poor, and it wasn’t sure what it had seen. Nyneve kept very still while the wolf looked up at her and fitted memories to images. Nyneve blinked, and the wolf’s eyes lit up. It jumped at the tree trunk, snarling and scratching. The others came running.

“Go away!” shouted Nyneve, clawing a piece of bark loose and throwing it. “Go home, you brutes! Go home right now, or I’ll set Morble on you!”

They didn’t understand. They snapped and leaped, and filled the glade with the sound of their hunger. Nyneve watched them in growing annoyance. This was an embarrassing situation. She hoped there were no villagers around.

“I’ve warned you!” she said. Then she whistled: a low sound that carried among the trees.

A breath of wind rustled the leaves, and the wolves quieted. Suddenly they were uncertain. They turned this way and that, looking unhappily at one another and at the forest. One of them cocked its leg against Nyneve’s oak and another whined, tail tucked between its legs. The wind blew again, cool and gentle, bringing with it the scent of something unimaginable. Somewhere deep in the brush there was a snapping of twigs. A wolf yelped nervously. The pack was facing the wind now, muzzles high.

“He’s coming,” said Nyneve.

At once they turned about and fled downwind, splashing through the fringes of the pool. For a moment Nyneve watched the bushes shake with their passing, then they were gone and the forest was quiet again. She laughed and slid to the ground, brushing the dirt from her loose white dress. She knelt at the pool and rubbed her hands together underwater, then splashed her face. While she had her skirt up high, drying her face on it, a voice spoke.

“Well now, if that isn’t a fine pair of legs.”

She dropped the hem with a squeak of alarm; flushing. A brawny man watched her, leaning against the oak and scratching himself, smiling slyly.

“Just you shut up, Ned Palomides!”

“Oh, so it’s you, Nyneve. Upon my word, you’ve grown up. Quite the little lady, you are. Still tomboy enough to climb trees, though.” He nodded at the bits of bark and lichen clinging to her dress.

“The wolves were after me.”

“Oh.” Spurious sympathy on his face, he stepped forward. “You should have called for help.” He began to brush at her dress.

She stepped back. “Leave me alone!”

“Oh, ho! Too proud for us villagers now, are you? Too much of a lady?”

“No.” She regarded him calmly. “Just a little bit older, that’s all.”

“And getting ideas above your station. Perhaps you should come back to the village, Nyneve. Now you’re living with that crafty old couple, you’ve changed. You’re not the same girl. …” Curiosity got the better of him. “What do they do, anyway?”

“Do?”

“The old folks. Do they fish? Do they farm? Do they cut wood, or scratch the ground for silver? People say not. One thing I do know: they must be hellish old. My grandmother used to speak of them, and even she used to call them the old folks.”

“They’re old,” agreed Nyneve.

“How old?”

“How would I know?”

“Yes, but it’s interesting, isn’t it?” He moved a step closer. “Suppose they’re—say—two hundred years old. How do they do it? What’s their secret? Is it something the) eat—some herb?” His hand closed on her arm.

“Well, I don’t know.” She tried to pull away. “I’m getting older. You said that yourself.”

“And so you are.” He glanced at her body appreciatively. “But it’s them we’re talking about—the old couple. You must find out about them. You must keep an eye on them, casual-like.”

The notion of keeping a casual eye on her foster-mother caused Nyneve to break out in goose pimples. “Forget the idea, Ned,” she said. “It’s their secret, and I think they want to keep it that way.”

“Mister Palomides to you,” he said absently, his gaze traveling over her glossy black hair, her dark eyes and full lips—her new Cornish beauty. “You must be the prettiest girl in all of Mara Zion,” he murmured.

“I must go.” She jerked her arm, but he held fast.

“Not just yet, my beauty. Let’s talk for a while.”

“Let me go, or …”

“Or what?”

“Or it’ll be the worse for you!”

He laughed, drawing her close.

She pursed her lips and whistled, just before his kiss cut her off. His breath smelled of old mackerel.

“There now,” he said after a moment, grinning down at her. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Then he heard the gigantic crashing in the undergrowth, and looked up. His eyes widened as he stared over her shoulder, and Nyneve felt him tremble. He let her go and stepped back, still staring. “Witchcraft …” he muttered. “You little witch. You’re witches, all three of you! Baron Menheniot should have you burned at the stake!”

Then the stink wafted across the glade and the sound of breathing came loudly. Ned Palomides turned, bawling with fear, and fled, leaving Nyneve alone as Morble emerged from the bushes. For a while the young girl regarded the creature. “Easy, Morble, easy,” she said. “He’s gone, now.”

She looked into the forest where Ned Palomides could be glimpsed, leaping and plunging in desperate retreat.

“No, Ned,” she murmured. “Not witchcraft. Not sorcery or magic. You caught sight of a world you don’t understand, that’s all.” She sighed. “I wish I understood it myself. Maybe one day I will.”

Calling the monstrous creature to heel, she set off in the direction of the cottage where her foster-parents, Merlin and Avalona, lived.

She found Merlin in the garden that surrounded the ancient cottage. He’d been hacking at the carcass of some unidentifiable animal, preparing it for the pot by the light of a guttering lamp.

Nyneve eyed his unkempt, bloodstained figure in some distaste. “You ought to clean yourself up a bit,” she said.

“What!” He came shuffling toward her, wiping his hands on skinny shanks. “You come wandering in at all hours and have the nerve to call me dirty?”

“What’s that thing you’re cutting up?”

“That’s our supper, my girl.”

She gulped, staring at the thing. “Well, you can count me out. That’s the strangest-looking creature I’ve ever seen. Where did it come from?”

“Morble dropped it here,” admitted the ancient, reluctantly.

“Morble dropped it? Because he couldn’t stomach it himself, I suppose. Look at the ears on it! You and Avalona will eat anything, you know that?”

“Food is fuel for the body, that’s all.”

“That’s no reason why it shouldn’t taste good. And that thing’s got scales on it. You won’t catch me eating anything with scales. I’m going to have a word with Avalona about this.”

“No.” Merlin grasped her arm as she was making for the front door. “Don’t go in yet. She’s in a … a funny mood.”

She stared at him. He looked away, wispy hair floating around his head in the night breeze; thin-faced, bearded and ineffectual. Yet healthy. Nyneve had to admit that. Although Merlin had lived a very long time, he was wiry and his cheeks had a ruddy glow in the lamplight. But now he was seriously concerned about something. She pried his fingers from her arm and entered the cottage with caution.

At first she could not see Avalona. The tiny room was dark and the fire had burned low. The lamps were unlit. The chairs beside the big stone fireplace were empty—and then she saw the witch sitting at the table, bolt upright, with her eyes closed.

“Avalona …?”

The old woman blinked and shook her head, eyes still unfocused, as though she’d been in a trance. “No …” she murmured. “There’s only one way out, and even then the odds are not good. Otherwise, it’s the end.” Then she became aware of Nyneve and fixed an empty stare on her.

“You’re late.”

“What do you mean, the end?” Nyneve felt a thrill of dread at the words. Avalona always meant what she said. “The end of what?”

“The end of everything.”

“When? Now?” Nyneve glanced nervously over her shoulder. The moons had risen as usual, all three high in the sky. Merlin was stamping about sucking his finger, having cut himself with the cleaver. Everything looked normal enough.

“Not in your lifetime.”

“That’s a relief, anyway. Does it affect the village at all?”

“Nyneve, you are now sixteen years old. The time has come for you to consider matters other than those driven by human emotions. I adopted you for a purpose. From now on, you will be my handmaiden.”

“Your what?” Only great ladies in ballads had handmaidens. Nyneve had never thought of Avalona, always dressed in the same black robe and living in this tiny cottage, as a great lady.

“You will be my handmaiden, my servant and my representative. I will teach you something of my knowledge, something of the universe. Enough for your purposes, anyway. Great and terrible events are in the ifalong, and they have caught me unawares. I would start a child now, but my gestation period is too long and action must be taken immediately. You will serve my purpose.”

“The ifalong?” The word was unfamiliar.

Avalona regarded Nyneve silently for a while. Then she said, “You must start thinking in new terms, Nyneve. To understand the ifalong you must understand happentracks.”

“Happentracks?”

“Have you ever wondered at the way Morble can hide himself, despite his size and unusual appearance?”

“He’s certainly very good at it. And yet he’s there when you need him,” she added, thinking of Ned Palomides.

“Morble is our protector and our watchdog. He needs to be big and strong, but he mustn’t call attention to himself. So most of the time he lives on an adjacent happentrack, and only steps into our own happentrack when he’s needed. A happentrack is a slightly different frame of existence running parallel to our own. New happentracks are constantly branching off our stream of Time, each one developing into a different alternative possibility. The total of all those future happentracks is called the ifalong.”

“So the ifalong is the future.”

“No, Nyneve. It is all possible futures. And today is the first time I’ve looked into the ifalong for a hundred and twenty-six years and thirty-eight days. Foretelling the ifalong is a tedious and exhausting process, because I must evaluate an almost infinite number of branching happentracks.” She sighed, rubbing her eyes, and it seemed to Nyneve that she looked much older, and strangely vulnerable. “And in the distant ifalong, on a large number of happentracks, I saw the destruction of Starquin at the hands of humans.”

“I’m sorry, Avalona, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. Starquin?”

“Starquin is everything that matters. He is my father, and father to all the Dedos on other worlds. He travels the greataway, which is all the dimensions of time and space.”

“You mean he’s God?”

“There is no God.”

“Oh,” said Nyneve, disappointed. “I’d always hoped there might be a God. Why isn’t Starquin God?”

“Mainly because he can’t be everywhere at once. Nobody can, which is why your idea of God is nonsense. Starquin travels on psetic lines between Rocks that he set up on many worlds. Dedos guard those Rocks and help Starquin on his travels.”

“What else does he do?”

Avalona’s cold eyes dwelt on her. “Explain.”

“Well, is he kind and good, and helping people, and all that stuff? I mean, he’s got do do more than just travel.”

“He is. Accept it. You can’t understand.”

“And you said humans would kill him? Why?”

“They would not know their stupid acts would result in the death of the Five-in-One. But they will kill him, just as surely as they kill one another.”

“I’m sorry,” said Nyneve on behalf of the human race.

“There is a chance. There is just one circumstance we could set in motion during our present time, that may well multiply down the happentracks of the ifalong and preserve the entity of Starquin. It will require that we devote our lives to it, and that includes you, Nyneve.” Avalona regarded her speculatively. “You are a very beautiful girl. I expect the men of the village find you attractive.”

“Very attractive, I’d say,” observed Merlin, leering.

“You’d find Morble attractive if he were female,” said the witch dispassionately. She addressed Nyneve again. “A beautiful young girl carries a lot of influence with men. She attracts attention and they listen to what she says. They are very alert to her likes and dislikes, and they try to please her. More than that, they will try to become the kind of man she wishes them to be. In short, Nyneve, a beautiful girl can twist men around her little finger.”

“Perhaps, but …”

“But what?”

“I’m not that beautiful.”

“Come here.” Avalona stood, and when Nyneve went to her she took the girl’s head in her hands and held it for some moments, while the forest outside became deathly quiet. Then she let go and sat down, and Nyneve walked slowly back to her chair.

Merlin gasped.

Nyneve looked at them calmly. Her head was held a little higher, her perfect skin glowed, and there was a confidence about her that had not been there before, a new serenity.

“Now you know you’re beautiful,” said Avalona. “That makes the difference.”

“Yes, I know,” said Nyneve, smiling.

“You will remember it for as long as you live. You will be that kind of woman, and now you have other powers, too, as you will soon discover. No other kind is suitable to be my handmaiden, and no other kind would be suitable for the work ahead of you.”

“What sort of work?”

“The creation of a new world. A world that will become so vivid in the minds of humans that it will influence their lives and color their judgments in the manner I require. A small world, but one that will endure longer than any human world. A world that will be remembered at the end of time, by creatures that are no longer human.”

Nyneve was silent for a moment. Then she said, “And I can help? Me?”

“You will be the instrument of change, Nyneve.”

“Oh.” Nyneve sought something sensible to say, but failed. “Oh,” she exclaimed again, awed.

“You will not be required to do anything beyond your new powers, and after a while those powers will seem quite natural to you. This is a suitable time to begin,” she said after a quick glance through nearby happentracks. “Bring your chair closer—and you, Merlin.”

They arranged their chairs in a triangle, knees almost touching. “Don’t be frightened,” Avalona continued. “Look on this as a game—a game of pretending. But always remember- that one day in the ifalong, your day will save the entity of Starquin from dissolution. On an acceptable number of happentracks, that is.”

The cottage was still as a well, and the moons lent a diffused glow through the window. Nyneve felt her heart beating steadily and her skin prickled with awareness. She felt one with the forest, one with the cottage, and one with the ancient people sitting opposite her. Merlin’s eyes were shut and his thin, blue-veined hands rested on his knees; only his jaw moved slightly, champing on toothless gums as though half-remembering some morsel. Avalona watched Nyneve with eyes as cold as the greataway.

An image leaped into Nyneve’s mind, so clear that it was like a view on a sunny day. She saw herself standing among the trees. Every detail was there, quite unlike the muzzy outlines of her usual daydreams. She smiled. The image smiled, too.

Then the image began to walk.

Nyneve started.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Avalona. “I made it do that. Look, here I am, and here’s Merlin.”

Two more images joined the Nyneve-image, walking beside her.

“We can all control one another,” said Avalona. “We can build whatever people and circumstances we wish, in one another’s minds. And more important, we can put them into other people’s minds, too.”

“Are you seeing the same as me?” Nyneve asked Merlin.

In answer, the Merlin-image took the Nyneve-image’s hand.

Nyneve snatched her image’s hand away.

The scene began to quaver.

“You see?” said the witch. “We need to practice, to attune ourselves to one another. And when we’re ready, we’re going to build a new world.”

The world they built was bright and simple, the characters few and colorful. The places were places they knew or had heard of or, where necessary, invented. Lady Igraine lived with her duke at Tintagel because Nyneve remembered a traveler telling her of such a place. It was on the north coast and it had a castle.

Lady Igraine was beautiful. But not so beautiful as I am, thought Nyneve, who had created the Igraine-image.

King Uther Pendragon, ruler of all England, was Merlin’s invention. He was tall, fierce and extremely hairy, and he wore armor. As Nyneve watched the play of characters, it seemed to her that King Uther never undressed. He strode endlessly through castle halls and rode endlessly through leafy forests, fighting battles and winning them all, permanently armored, like a turtle. In time he came across Nyneve’s people, the Duke and Lady Igraine. Opposing forces clashed.

Avalona sat still, saying nothing. Her contribution to the scenario was more subtle.

The battle raged for a long time. Incredible feats of valor were performed. The bravery of the men was unearthly, the wounds frightful. Women, dressed in long diaphanous robes, urged them on and comforted the wounded. Merlin and Nyneve were like children, inventing, inventing.

This is how life ought to be, thought Nyneve, enchanted. This is more exciting than dull old Mara Zion with its cloddish villagers. This is real! And the next night, they played the game again. …

A few days later she was walking through the forest near the village, gathering blackberries and mulling over the latest installment of the game. Codes of honor were being formulated, and Merlin, unable to resist the temptation, had appeared several times as himself.

Last night’s game had been marred by a quarrel between Merlin and Avalona. Merlin’s self-image had appeared before King Uther and got a little carried away. He had indulged in a bout of prophesying, running through the future and predicting all manner of honor and glory.

Avalona, who normally kept quiet during the game, had suddenly spoken.

“Merlin, I’ve told you before not to try to guide the ifalong by revealing future events. That’s not the way a world is built. Let it happen naturally. You must curb this tendency to show off your knowledge.”

“I have a reputation as a sorcerer to maintain!” Merlin was annoyed.

“Just perform a few miracles if you must. Leave the ifalong alone. You’re behaving like a human child.”

Nyneve, chuckling to herself as the remembered Merlin’s resultant tantrum, failed to observe Ned Palomides riding toward her on a heavy draft horse.

“Ah-ha! The pretty little Nyneve!”

“Oh, it’s you, Ned,” she said resignedly.

“You don’t seem very pleased to see me.” Ned carried a crude, heavy sword slung ostentatiously around his waist. He rested his hand on it somewhat self-consciously.

“Expecting marauding Irishmen?”

Her sarcasm nettled him. “Something bigger than that. I’m after that dragon we saw the other day.” He swung to the ground, breathing heavily.

“Just don’t come any closer, Ned.”

By now he’d rationalized the odd happening at their previous meeting. “And what can you do about it? There’s no dragon for miles around this time—I’ve been searching the forest since dawn. We can’t have a brute like that loose, terrifying our women. I think I’ve run him off.”

“Terrifying our women?”

“I was startled last time, that’s all. If I’d had my sword it would have been a different story, believe me.” He grabbed her wrist, pulling her close. His other hand reached round her, fondling her buttocks. Rancid breath enveloped her face and coarse hairs scratched her skin.

“Let her go!”

The shout came from behind Ned. He swung around with a grunt of frustration. “By the Lord Jesus, am I fated? Oh, it’s you, Tristan. Bugger off, will you? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“I said let her go.” Tristan was tall and slim, not so heavily built as Ned, but with an air of quiet strength. “We’re getting tired of you interfering with girls, Ned. You’re giving Mara Zion a bad name.”

Ned released Nyneve and drew his sword. Holding it in both hands, he swept it in a low arc at Tristan’s legs. “Get out of here, Tristan! This blade has frightened a dragon off already today. I’m giving you fair warning!”

Tristan jumped back and eyed the sword uncertainly. “All right,” he said. “Just watch what you do with that thing, will you? Someone could get hurt.” He turned away.

“Stop right there!” shouted Nyneve furiously. “Tristan, aren’t you going to protect me from this lout?”

“He has a sword.”

“Well, fight him! Dodge his swing and jump in, and knock him senseless with your fist!”

“Do I look like a fool?”

“I’m a woman, Tristan, you coward.” She drew herself up proudly. “Protect me!”

Now they were both looking at her in astonishment. “Why?” asked Tristan.

“There are places,” said Nyneve icily, “where women are respected, and where men will fight one another to the death for the honor of a lady.”

The two men had relaxed and were exchanging amused glances. “What places are those?” asked Ned.

“Well … Camelot, for one.”

“Never heard of it. Try another.”

“Tintagel.”

“Tintagel is a hotbed of sin, so they tell me. Ladies have no honor there.”

She looked at these two uncouth examples of real life, and compared them unfavorably with her imaginary world. Ned’s nose was running and Tristan was scratching his left armpit. She walked away from them and picked up her basket. With her head high, she turned to let them have a parting shot.

“I would never give myself to any man who would not die for my honor,” she said.

To her surprise, their amusement had changed to grudging admiration. Hesitantly, Tristan said, “I’ll walk you home Nyneve, if I may. There are wolves around.”

Ned said, “I’ll ride behind you. I can give you a lift back Tristan.”

Spring was calling to Nyneve from every new leaf in the forest. Anxious to get out of the house, she was hurrying through her breakfast when Avalona said, “Wait.”

“Why?” Nyneve gazed longingly out of the window. She’d arranged to meet Tristan at the beach, and they were going to climb around the cliffs to the Mudstone Bay, and perhaps cuddle a little. They weren’t in love, or anything like that. They were genuinely good friends. During her childhood, Tristan had been like a tolerant elder brother to her, and things hadn’t changed very much since. And a cuddle, Nyneve told herself, never hurt anyone.

“Don’t question your foster mother,” mumbled Merlin, who was washing up the breakfast plates at the earthen sink.

“When I need your support, Merlin,” said Avalona in her dead tones, “I’ll ask for it. And I don’t see that happening in the next few millennia.”

“Happentracks are infinite!” croaked the old wizard triumphantly. “It must happen sometime!”

“There is a nearby happentrack,” said Avalona to Nyneve, “that is within your new powers to visit. This you will do, today. I foresee this other happentrack being of great importance to our work in the ifalong, and it is best that you familiarize yourself with it.”

“Perhaps you ought to tell me something about it, first,’ said Nyneve, her stomach a knot of apprehension. “Then aren’t any … monsters there, are there?”

“Your notion of a monster is different from mine, Nyneve However, Morble lives there.”

“Oh, that happentrack.”

“Precisely. Morble will protect you, should the need arise However, I don’t think it will. In fact, you will find much on that happentrack to please you.”

Nyneve shot her foster-mother a glance of the deepest suspicion, but the witch seemed to have lapsed into one of her trances, staring fixedly before her. Nyneve transferred her gaze to Merlin, who grinned weakly.

“There are little people there,” he explained.

“You mean, like fairies?” she asked, incredulous.

“Not by my understanding of the word. They call them selves gnomes.”

“Gnomes? Oh, come on, Merlin. Gnomes are like piskies. They’re things people see when they’ve drunk too much You can lose a lot of credibility if you see gnomes very often. I’ve never seen them, I’m happy to say.”

“I’ve seen them.”

She bit back a quick reply. He was serious. Rheumy eyes stared at her with apparent candor. “And what about all the other things the minstrels sing about—do they live on tha happentrack too?”

“Other things?”

“Oh, like unicorns and … what were those things Ned said he saw up on the moor one foggy evening? Moondogs he called them. The ugliest creatures he’d ever clapped eyes on, he said. He’d been drinking at the time, of course.”

Merlin nodded wisely. “A few beers can open the mind’s shutters and let visions in from other worlds.”

“You’re serious?”

“Why do you think people only see piskies after a drop or two?”

“I’d never really thought about it that way,” admitted Nyneve.

Avalona emerged from her silence and rose from the table. “Come,” she said briskly. “It is time.”

She always seems to know when it’s time, reflected Nyneve as she accompanied the witch along a forest path in the direction of the village. What would it matter if we’d left ten minutes later, so I could have finished my hot drink? Would a million happentracks have diverged by then, making us different people? Would a bough from the oak have fallen through the roof and nailed me to the floor?

Nyneve had the uncomfortable feeling that Avalona already knew exactly what was going to happen to her in this different world. But it was a waste of time asking. Avalona wouldn’t tell. “We must not prejudice the ifalong,” she would say icily, and Nyneve would feel rebuked.

“You are coming with me on this other happentrack, aren’t you?” she asked.

“I am not.”

“But … But I might get lost”

“You will not.” Avalona halted at a clearing. “Now,” she said. Here the early sun sparkled from a million dewdrops on the short grass and a grazing deer, startled, fled with nimble bounds.

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Nyneve. In the center of the clearing, pushing pale-capped through the grass, was an almost perfect circle of mushrooms. “This is ridiculous. This is a fairy ring! Old people say the piskies dance in these places. I don’t believe all that stuff.”

“Perhaps the old people weren’t so far wrong.”

“Is this really the place? You’re not joking?”

“I never joke. The fungi grow in a circle because happentracks coincide here, like joined bubbles. The interaction between the two atmospheres fixes nitrogen in the soil at the arc of coincidence. This type of mushroom will only grow in a nitrogen-rich medium.”

“To me it’s still a fairy ring.”

“As you will,” said Avalona indifferently. “Now you must prepare yourself.”

“How?”

“First of all, stand still, like this. Stop fidgeting around. Now put your fists together in front of your chest, elbows out.” Avalona demonstrated. “Push just a little, tense your shoulders and your legs. … Now, relax everything. Think of nothing. Forget you are human. Concentrate your being to one single spark of intelligence, burning like a candle in space, which,” added Avalona with her obsession for accuracy, “is scientifically impossible, but you wouldn’t know that. Become one with the greataway.”

“Why?”

“Because that is the way. There is no other.”

“No, I mean, why won’t a candle burn in space?”

Avalona came as close to impatience as it was possible for a Dedo to get. “It was a poor analogy. Imagine yourself as a small bright spot in a vast nothingness, with the capacity for thought, but not thinking. Do it now. We’ll talk about candles tonight.”

Reluctantly Nyneve let go of the interesting candle question and composed herself as Avalona had directed. At first the shrill twittering of a nearby bird interrupted her concentration, but soon the sound faded, and she discovered something new within herself, a core of serenity in which she could immerse herself like a warm bath. She didn’t need to close her eyes. She lay calmly within her own consciousness and waited; and after a while the noises of the forest returned.

But Avalona was gone.

Nyneve stared. No, Avalona was not quite gone. A faint shadow remained, an Avalona-shaped wraith like smoke against the sun-dappled brightness. And as she watched, it turned and faded away.

Now Nyneve was alone, and the forest was subtly different. The mushrooms still thrust through the grass in t