“Well, Gibbekotkin, and where did you pop from?”
“Here and there,” said Falija. “Is there room in the wagon for passengers?”
“Depends on who’s asking,” said the nigh umox.
“And where they’re coming from,” said the off umox.
“And where they’re going,” said the largest raider.
“Falija is asking,” she said, “for her friends, who are coming from danger and going toward refuge, so far as is possible.”
“Who’s after you?” asked the nigh umox suspiciously.
“Don’t know,” she said. “Just know they are. Human-type men…”
“Who sound like robots,” Glory offered.
“Lurking and lying,” said Bamber.
“Up to no good,” I supplied.
“The unmentionable’s creatures,” said the largest raider, nodding vigorously. “We’ve seen ’em here and there in their great, smelly wagons. Very good description. Climb up on the driver’s seat, you two ladies. Gibbekotkin in lap, brother in back. My name’s Howkel, by the by.”
Glory and I climbed onto the seat, and Falija settled across both laps while Bamber Joy squeezed himself among the raiders. When the wagon started to move, I thought Bamber probably had the best of it, because the hay was soft but the seat certainly wasn’t.
The banks of green moss on either side of the road were so clean they looked freshly vacuumed. The only fallen leaves in evidence were brightly colored, unbroken, and set out in artistic arrangements. Now and then the wagon passed a little pile of twigs and branches set by the trail, as though waiting to be picked up by something.
“Have you any new stories?” one of the girl hayraiders asked. “We usually tell stories on long rides.”
“I have one you might like to hear,” said Falija. “It’s about a villager who talked to a fish.”
“Oh, tell it please,” said the Hayfolk.
And as we rolled along, Falija told a strange tale about a fish who helped a man out of his difficulties by directing him to the Keeper of all information. It was interesting, but rather complicated. I’m afraid I dozed a little, waking up just as Falija said, “And so, since that day, whenever the man has a difficulty, he has walked seven roads at once, for only in that way can he find the Keeper again…”
I said to Falija. “If that whole thing was in your memory, Falija, maybe it’s important.”
“Some stories are very important,” said Howkel. “Specially in the summer grasslands of Fajnard.”
“This is Fajnard?” I cried. “Fajnard is under the rule of the Frossians. This isn’t a good place to be!”
Howkel snorted. “The Frossians think they run the world, but they actually only occupy about a tenth of it, around the lowland cities. They’re used to rampaging onto a world, digging up the ore, cutting down the trees, moving on. They have a chant, ‘Move in, dig up, cut down, move on.’ No ore here. Trees are poisonous to ’em. The wealth here’s in grass after it’s fed to umoxen to make wool, but that’s slow work, year after year. Frossians aren’t used to patience. They’re already getting itchy and neglectful. Pretty soon they’ll decide they’d rather be somewhere else. While there’s Frossians here, hayfolk have nothing to do with them! We stay far from the cities, up here in the highlands.”
“Wind coming,” said the off umox.
They stopped the wagon, all the hayfolk got off and went into the woods. The long-haired umoxen lay down and tied their ears under their chins with the four stubby fingers in the middle of their hooves. When the fingers were folded up, the hoof part hit the ground, but when they wanted to, the umoxen could use those fingers almost like hands.
Very shortly we heard the wind, and we all lay down as well. It came louder and closer, then it came down the trail, a whirlwind that went past us like a train going full speed, and when it was gone, so were all the little twig piles along the road.
So the moss beds had been vacuumed.
“What kind of world is this again?” Glory asked Falija, who was grooming her whiskers back into shape.
“A natural world,” she said. “One where certain creatures are embodiments.”
“Embodiments do vacuuming?” Glory asked.
“The embodiment of order might, or the embodiment of beauty.”
“Is this where your people live?”
She shook her head. “Some of them, yes, but I don’t know what direction they might be in. I do have an anticipatory feeling, though. As though enlightenment may be around the next corner.”
Glory sneaked a look at me. I was chewing my lip.
“You know, Grandma,” Glory said, “you might as well tell us now. There’s something bothering you.”
I shook my head, then looked at Falija, then looked up at the sky. Maybe I was asking God for a sign.
“She will,” said Falija. “But not now, not with all these hayfolk about.”
The hayfolk came out of the woods as the umoxen untied their ears and got to their feet, making harrumph, harrumph sounds. “Where are you headed?” Falija asked the nigh umox.
“The Howkel Farm. Just outside the woods. Dallydance is just down the road, if you’re looking for a town.”
“Are there humans there?” Glory asked the umox.
“Like you? No. A few of the ordinary sort, though. Like her,” and he pointed at me with one leg.
Glory tried to sort that out. “She’s my grandmother. We’re the same kind of people.”
“Humph,” said the off umox. “Tell that to the gizzardile. You don’t even smell alike.”
“That’s enough of that,” said Falija in a commanding tone. “We don’t discuss how people smell, and umoxen aren’t the best judge of odors, anyhow.”
It was true they had a decidedly barnyard smell, which all of us present were more or less used to, but the umoxen took it as an insult.
“Oh, isn’t it a commanding Gibbekotkin! Doesn’t it have qualities
