Time went by as we rushed and clattered.
“Now they’re catching up to us,” cried Mirabel.
“Look up there ahead,” growled Maniacal. “What do you see across the road?”
“Oooh,” she said. “Gizzardile. Oooh, Manny, that’s the biggest one I ever saw!”
“Hold on tight,” shouted Maniacal. “Go, gnar, go…”
Our speed increased, the rattling turned into a chattering hum, the vehicle behind us sped up as well as we flew down the ruts. I had tunneled up next to Bamber Joy, and we both saw the cylindrical something or other, like a mighty tree trunk, down across the road. No forest anywhere near, and the buggy was flying toward it, was going to hit it at full speed…
“Fly, gnar, fly,” yelled Maniacal, and the buggy flew, or at least it leapt, following the trajectory of the three animals that took off as one in a long arc across the gizzardile, landing beyond it with a great swaying and crashing as though the wagon were falling apart.
Bamber and I quickly looked behind us. The pursuing vehicle was closing on the gizzardile, which suddenly and quite quickly, considering its bulk, reared its forward end and turned it to face the noisy machine. The fin that had lain along the creature’s back rose into a huge fan, numerous legs stretched out on either side, and before the vehicle could stop, turn, or maneuver in any way, the gizzardile chunked its huge, lumpy lower part directly into its path, and when the machine struck, collapsed its higher parts on top with a great shriek of rending metal.
“Whoa, gnar,” said Maniacal.
“They were after me,” Falija remarked. “That must be what I dreamed about, but they didn’t catch us after all!”
Maniacal was out of the wagon, unhitching the Gnar.
“Don’t we still need them?” Bamber asked.
“When good creatures do a great good thing,” said Maniacal, “we don’t ask them to spend their strength doin’ more when our own strength will suffice. So Pa Howkel has always told me. They jumped their weight, and ours, and the wagon’s over that critter. That’s a story for tellin’ at the Haymeet, many a year from now…”
“Nobody’ll believe it,” remarked Mirabel.
“Not if you tell it, but they know I’m no tale maker. See yonder? Just above those trees? That’s where we’re going, and these good creatures can find their way home by theirselves while that gizzardile is occupied. Since gizzardiles eat most everything including rocks, it’ll be a while.”
“We won’t make it before night,” I said.
“No,” said Mirabel, “but there’s a little cave up there, above the lake, where Pa’s camped out many a time. We can get there by full dark, and there’s both late and early moons.” He pointed high above us, where a half-moon was in bud, to the west, where a crescent sailed like a little boat toward the horizon, while far to the east an almost full moon blossomed over the hills.
“How’ll you get your wagon back?” I asked. I had been thinking to myself that for a wagon that looked as rattletrap as this one did, it had held up extremely well: more to it, perhaps, than met the eye—just as with Pa Howkel.
Mirabel said offhandedly, “Pa’ll bring an umox team to get the wagon when the gnar get home without it.”
And with that, we shouldered our packs and made for the line of forest, which was now no great distance ahead. Behind the forest lay the mountains, slowly thrusting up to cover the last of the sunset yellow sky while rosy clouds gathered like bridesmaids, and a diamond star pulsed against the high blue, like a signal light someone had lit in a window.
“What star is that?” asked Bamber Joy.
Maniacal looked up at it, cocking his head. “That’s the summer star. That’s the star that shines on Thairy.”
I Am M’urgi, with Fernwold on B’yurngrad
The inn was very much as Ferni had described it. The rooms were very simple, paneled in smooth, aromatic wood. In our suite, I luxuriated in a hot, foamy bath that smelled of flowers and found myself becoming somewhat resentful toward the Siblinghood.
“They never mentioned this place. They never told me I was entitled to a vacation. They never suggested I might need a rest. I’m still digging soot out of the creases in my skin!”
“I can’t see any,” remarked Ferni from the other end of the tub. “Not anywhere. I’m looking very closely.”
I flushed and submerged. When I came up again, I grinned at him. “Behave yourself, or I’ll do a chant on you.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“What is what?”
“I’ve never understood that shaman business. The chants, what you did with the girl at the oasthall. What they call night flying. All that.”
I twisted my wet hair into a knot atop my head and let the water lap at my chin. “You really want to know?”
“I don’t suppose I can know, but I’d like to understand.”
I sat up a little. “All right. The first lesson the shaman taught me was belief. Before I could do anything I had to believe that here, around us, is an insubstantial entity that senses everything. It wraps around stars, it surrounds worlds, moons, comets, all the trash and dust that’s out in space, encompasses all races of creatures no matter how small, is everywhere. It pushes things together to separate one thing from another; it forms boundaries. The shaman calls that entity Kuzh. We’d say ‘the Holder.’”
“The Keeper?” murmured Ferni in a strange voice.
“The Keeper? Yes, that would convey the same meaning. The shaman taught me to believe by showing me that the existence of the…‘Keeper’ was the only explanation for what she could do. Once I’d really perceived what she could do, once I’d tried to think of anything else that
