“And the … the Arbai Device?”
“Is already withdrawing from the wall. Little by little. A few days, perhaps, before it too is gone.”
Danivon darted a glance from Fringe to Curvis, finding no response from either of them. Curvis seemed absent, as though he were lost in some other time and place, while Fringe had the firm exalted look of a heroic statue graven to memorialize some great triumph—or some terrible martyrdom. So far as she was concerned, it seemed to make no difference which.
There seemed to be nothing more to say. Even Danivon was silenced.
When evening came, Fringe found Jory on the terrace, petting a cat. Danivon and the twins sat upon the wall nearby, Danivon staring at the forest but Bertran and Nela watching Jory as though her action were rare and wonderful, and indeed, her hands wove a spell of contentment above the purring animal.
“Why do you do that?” asked Fringe wonderingly.
“Because one can, if one wishes, distill all the happiness of a lifetime into one soft, furry body and a stroking hand,” said Jory. “When one is very old, one can.”
“Ah,” said Fringe, unconvinced, her brow furrowed.
“You’re troubled,” said Jory, including them all.
“I wasn’t until this afternoon,” she replied thoughtfully. “Truly, Jory. I thought we would die, yes, but dying is what Enforcers often do. There was no point in being troubled. But then, this afternoon I began to worry over it….”
“Thank God for that,” said Jory.
“I was more comfortable before,” said Fringe plaintively, sitting down beside the old woman. “I suppose because I wasn’t me …”
“No.”
“… or not all of me, at any rate. So, I should probably say ‘Thank God’ also.” Her tone was plaintive, as though she was not sure she meant it. “Though, since I’m going to die, I might as well have been comfortable about it.”
“You’re getting your self back,” said Jory, laying one hand on Fringe’s head. “You’re beginning to become yourself, so you’re troubled, as Fringe would be.” She sighed, stroking Fringe’s hair. “I’m glad you are becoming the Fringe I picked out … as a daughter. As an heir. To whom … I would leave what has been mine. I’d hate to have lost you.”
Fringe looked at her wonderingly, thinking it an odd concern to have at such a time. There would be nothing left to inherit.
“Let me tell you all a story,” Jory said, settling herself back in the chair and pulling the cat close against her. “Once upon a time, there was a turtle….”
Nela made a sound, halfway between a snort of laughter and a sob.
“Perhaps you’ve heard this tale before?” Jory asked. “Never mind. You can hear it again, Nela, and you, Bertran. This story is for all of us.
“Once upon a time, there was a turtle who lived in a pond: gray reeds and gray mud and gray moonlight falling, which was what turtles see who cannot see color. Not for him the glory of the sunset or the wonder of the dawn. Not for him the flash of a hummingbird’s throat or a butterfly’s wings. For him the liquid sounds of water moving, the slosh and murmur of the stream, the wind in the trees; for him the difference between shadow and darkness. He was content, as turtles are content, to be deliberate in his habits and slow in his pace, to eat leaves and the ends of worms and suchlike fodder, and to think long slow thoughts on a log with his fellows, where he knew the sunlight was warm though he did not know it was yellow.
“But a time came on an autumn evening, gray leaf and gray thorn and gray mist rising, when he sat overlong on the log after the sun was well down, and the swallows came to drink and hunt on the surface of the pond, dipping and dancing above the ripples, swerving and swooping with consummate grace, so that the turtle saw them as silver and black and beautiful, and all at once, with an urgency he had never known before, he longed for wings.
“‘Oh, I wish I could see them more clearly,’ he murmured to the bullfrog on the bank. ‘That I might learn to fly.’
“‘ If you would see them clearly, you must go to the secret sanctuary of the birds,’ said the bullfrog in a careless voice, as though he did not take the matter seriously.
“And when the turtle asked where that was, the bullfrog pointed westward, to the towering mountains, and told the turtle the sanctuary was there, among the crags and abysses, where the birds held their secret convocations and granted wings to certain petitioners. And this made the turtle think how wonderful it would be to go there and come back to tell the bullfrog all about it.
“And on the next night, he asked again where the birds went when they left the pond, and the owl pointed westward with its talon, telling him of towering peaks and break-back chasms in a calm and dismissive voice. And again he thought of making the journey and returning, and of the wonder the bullfrog would feel, and the owl, to hear of it when he came back.
“On the third night, he asked yet again, and this time it was the bat who answered, squeaking as it darted hither and yon, telling of immeasurable heights and bottomless canyons. ‘No one dares go there,’ the bat squeaked, and the turtle told himself that he dared even if no one else could.
“So, for three nights the turtle had watched, each night his longing growing. And at midnight on the third night, when the bat had spoken and the swallows had departed, the turtle went after them without telling anyone good-bye, slowly dragging himself toward the great mountains to the west.
“He went by long ways and rough ways and hard ways always, first across the desert, where he would have died of thirst had not a desert tortoise showed him
