The days passed as they searched, and summer ended and the trees began to turn, brushing color across the mountains. The sanctuary in those weeks turned into a bustling, noisy place, with people streaming out for the cities, and others streaming in. One morning, she saw Mistress Dendra, a watcher now, lead a ragged, bewildered group down into the valley. Nell gave a shout. Wista was among them — Wista, found in the woods, filthy, scratched, hungry, but free of the mist now, and back to herself. On another day, Susan saw Omet standing by the tall corn, talking to Liyla, and she almost passed them by, they were so different. Liyla now was the same mild-faced girl she’d seen for an instant when they’d met — narrow jawed, light haired. She’d recovered from the battle sufficiently to be negotiating with Omet, who’d organized the sleepers’ children as guides between city and valley.
“I know shortcuts,” Liyla was saying. “Give me maybe two ven, and I’ll take twice as many as those others.”
Susan recognized Omet more by her voice than her face. She was still dark haired and dark eyed, but the rough hollows of her cheeks had filled and smoothed, and now she was a tall, serious girl with a square face and black brows that arched over bright, intelligent eyes.
She sighed. “I told you, they don’t use that currency here. And we’re not doing this for a fee. You’ll get food and lodging, like the rest. No more . . .”
Susan laughed to herself. Things changed, and things stayed the same. She wished she could figure out what made the one or the other. Maybe that was the key to opening the window.
She returned to the inner garden and found Laysia standing beside the strange little museum room. Something about it made Susan feel at home there, as if her family were all gathered around her. Laysia said it was because they belonged here, in Ganbihar.
“You’re part of this place,” Laysla said to the children as they returned to the books in the inner library. “No matter where you began. Perhaps you were meant to stay here.”
Susan worried that she might be right. She did feel tied to this place. But she was tied to home, too, and she couldn’t believe they’d never go back. There were people waiting for them on the other side.
Jean and Kate sat playing four stones on the floor of the center hall, where the stained glass cast squares of color. The outer door opened, and the Master Watcher came in, Max at his side, bringing oil for the lamps.
Nell, who had been peering into a book, looked up.
“It’s all riddles.” She sighed. “And poetry. I like poems, but really, it would have been nice if one of these visions gave someone a straight answer once or twice.”
“No luck, then, I guess,” Susan said.
“Nothing about windows, doors, or even buildings at all,” Nell said.
The Master Watcher came in and set the oil on the table. Laysia began filling the lamps. Susan thought the two of them ought to have enough awkward silence between them to fill the Grand Canyon, but to her surprise, there didn’t seem to be much of that.
“The books of mystery are not a construction manual,” the man said astringently, and Nell made a face into her book. The Master Watcher still looked half outraged at the sight of them in the heart of the sanctuary, but Max had assured her that he was getting used to it.
“We need to figure out how the window opened the first time,” Max said. “I’ve been wondering that since the beginning.”
“Isn’t it enough to know that you were needed, and a way was made?” the Master Watcher asked him. “Do you always have to know how?”
“Yes,” Max said simply. “I do.”
Laysia stood back from the lamps and watched them flare up. The page Susan had opened brightened. For the hundredth time, she repeated the words aloud. Was there something she had not seen there?
“‘Out of the longest night, into the age of wolves . . .’”
Max’s head came up. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Say that again.”
She did.
He tugged at a piece of hair that had lately grown into his eyes. “I never thought of that before. The longest night. That wasn’t here. It was summer here. How did whoever wrote that know what it was like back home?”
It was true. The vision had described more than the window. Whoever had written it had seen the other side.
“Perhaps opening a window between two worlds requires more than a window,” Laysia said. “Perhaps you need to be able to see through the glass as well.”
“But we can do that!” Nell protested. “We know what home is like!”
“And yet you can’t open the window,” Laysia said. She pulled a thick old book from the shelf and set it softly on the table. “So what don’t we know?”
They all bent to the books then, all but Susan. She sat thinking about it awhile. Kate had abandoned the game in the hall and come to see what they had found. She wandered in beside Susan, looked curiously at the book she had open, and then, unconsciously, began to hum to herself.
Nell shot her an annoyed look. “We’re trying to read here!” she said, and Kate stopped abruptly.
It was so like home that Susan felt something flare inside her. They did need to see through the glass, as Laysia and Nell said. But what were they looking at, exactly?
She glanced over at Max, who sat pulling at his rumpled hair.
“When you think of home,” she said suddenly to him, “what is it?”
He looked up, startled, then shrugged.
