Danivon’s mouth dropped open. “So there they are,” he said. “I didn’t really believe in them.”
“Arbai,” came a treble voice from above him, where a gylph fluttered awkwardly, lurching on unsteady wings as it screamed in surprise, “Fringe! We thought you were dead!”
“What the … who …” croaked Danivon.
“It’s Nela,” advised Fringe in the kindly-but-impersonal voice that set Danivon’s teeth on edge. “And that’s Bertran in the fur with the webbed feet. I forgot to tell you about them. At the same time I was being put together again, Bertran and Nela were being changed.”
The winged being fell with its arms about Fringe’s neck. Fringe stepped back, and Nela’s arms fell away.
“Fringe?” she asked doubtfully.
“What happened to the three of you?” grated Danivon. He had not asked Fringe what had happened to her; he’d been afraid to know. He had not even looked at her closely since she found him first at the riverside, but now, confronted by these other monstrous changes, he had to look, had to ask.
“Something fixed them when it fixed me,” Fringe said offhandedly. “Rebuilt them and me.”
“The Hobbs Land Gods,” said gylph Nela in a wondering voice. “It seems they’ve been here all the time.”
Danivon felt his heart stop, felt a bloody and violent pressure in his skull, a bursting red geyser, a terror so inbred he couldn’t speak, come from nowhere, about to eat him!
“Ahhhhn,” he shrieked.
“No,” said Fringe in a surprised but fearless voice. “I will not accept that! I will not allow myself to be possessed.”
“It’s all right,” said Jory, to Danivon and Fringe both. “Calm down.”
Danivon didn’t hear her. He was away from the flier, running in panic through the trees beside the river, he didn’t know where except to get away. He fled through the grove and deep into a bed of reeds where he crouched, blood hammering in his ears. Where had he come to? What disaster?
“Why did you do that?” asked a voice from above. “Why did you run off?”
He looked up to see Nela teetering above him once more, on barely manageable wings.
“That was silly,” she gasped.
“Possesseds,” he hissed at her. “Not human anymore. Take us over.”
She half landed, half fell beside him. A snuffly bustling approached through the reeds and erupted at his side, spilling the furred creature between them.
“Why did you run away, Danivon?” asked Bertran.
Danivon put his hands over his eyes and shuddered, still moaning wordlessly.
“He’s scared of us,” said Nela in a sad, remote voice. “Really scared. The way Turtledove used to be scared. Of nothing. He used to scare himself, invent monsters, make up horrors.”
“Danivon,” said Bertran pleadingly. “Danivon. Look at us.”
He looked at them and saw monsters. Horrible, nonhuman monsters with feathers and claws. He howled and hid his face once more, lost in nightmare.
Bertran patted his knee with one webbed hand. “Danivon. You were going to take us apart and rebuild us, weren’t you? So? Something else took us apart, is all, and all we can figure out is it knew we’d always dreamed of being … different from what we were … so it gave us different shapes…. That’s all. We’re the same. Inside, we’re the same.” His tone betrayed him. He did not believe he would ever be the same. “Jory says it will put us back, if we like….”
Danivon trembled, gulped for air, fought for air, couldn’t breathe. “It got Fringe,” he gasped. “It got Fringe. She isn’t Fringe anymore.”
“Isn’t she?” asked Nela. “Really? She did seem odd….”
“Cold,” he howled. “She’s all cold! When she heard Zasper was dead, she didn’t even cry!”
“But she probably wanted to be like that!” cried Nela. “Fringe wanted something else, Danivon. All her human feelings kept getting in the way. She wanted to be fearless and immune to pain, without all those muddles and pangs. Poor Fringe, she used to hurt all the time. So now maybe she doesn’t.”
“She didn’t want to be like that!” he cried.
“But …” said Nela.
“Maybe she really didn’t,” said Bertran. “We didn’t really want to be like this, Nela.”
“But …”
Danivon didn’t hear, couldn’t move. He went on cowering, unable to think, unable to accept. The twins murmured to each other in subdued voices, then went away. After a time Jory and Asner came tunneling through the rattling stems, complaining in cracked voices, to hunker down beside him with many groans and gasps. They talked more to each other than to him.
“Of course, what’s here in noplace isn’t the Hobbs Land Gods,” said Jory, patting Danivon on the knee and peering into his eyes.
“No,” Asner agreed. “Not really.”
“Similar, but not identical,” she said. “Because the Hobbs Land Gods had mostly humans to work with, whereas this device is both controlled by the Arbai and dominated by their thoughts and sensitivities. Only if it were freed from their control could it become like the Hobbs Land Gods.”
“True,” said Asner, squeezing Danivon’s shoulder. “Which is no doubt why it affected the twins as it did. And Fringe. If it had enough experience with humans, it would have repaired them differently.”
Danivon merely shuddered, scarcely hearing, while some remote part of himself stood aloof and amazed at this craven animal, this cowering creature he had become. He had not believed himself capable of this. Where had this terror come from? Of course he had always been taught the worst things in the universe were the Hobbs Land Gods, but still….
The two old people went on chatting, of this, of that, of old times, of recent events. After a considerable time, Danivon found his fists unclenched and his jaw relaxed. It was like being under running water, like listening to rain. The remote, judgmental part of himself went away somewhere. The old voices went on and on, unhurried and untroubled, like little fingers, untying all his knots. The tension dissolved. All the fear dissipated. He wondered, rather vaguely, if he was now possessed, but he didn’t protest when Asner and Jory took his arms
