We waded through the layer of powder, lifting our feet high and holding kerchiefs over our faces. We emerged into darkness. The Gardener said we were in the cellars of Bray, and only the light from the farther gate illuminated our way. Iron grilles were fastened, but the weapon Mar-agern carried broke the locks. The next way-gate took us to a steel room. We walked on a steel floor that rumbled to our footsteps, through the opposite gate and out behind a tangle of vines opening into a forest. Down the slope was a snug little house with smoke coming from its chimney.
“Home,” said Margaret, her voice breaking. “Gloriana, Bamber Joy, it’s home.”
We Margarets Walk
I, Margaret, led the way down the hill, the others in a straggling line behind me. As we approached the house, I saw shattered fragments of my door piled to one side of the porch and a blanket hung where my door should have been. I shivered. The apple tree at the corner of the house was bare. Winter had come while I was away.
Gloriana pushed the blanket aside and called into the house. “It’s me, Gloriana.”
A glad outcry from inside startled us all. “Gloriana, is Bamber Joy with you?”
Bamber Joy cried, “Mother!” and thrust past Gloriana.
When Gloriana and I entered, we found the boy on his knees beside the couch, his head pressed to the woman’s breast. Gloriana shifted from foot to foot nearby as the woman reached a hand toward her.
“Gloriana,” she cried. “Oh, sweet, dear girl-child! Oh, poor thing, you haven’t any idea who I am, do you? And you both look so much like Joziré, and so tall!” She turned to me, tears covering her face. “Are you the one of us who cared for them?”
“I’m Margaret,” I faltered, momentarily witless with surprise. “I…I thought Gloriana was my granddaughter…adopted, that is…Bamber Joy, well, he was left with Abe Johnson…” My voice trailed off, and I simply stared. So Wilvia was Gloriana’s mother. Which meant that I myself was Gloriana’s mother?
“I had to leave them both,” she said, tears still flowing down her face. “The Gentherans thought the children would be safer if separated, from one another and from me. The Thongal were paid by the Quaatar to wipe out the royal house, so they had to be hidden…”
“Then you’re Wilvia,” said Gloriana. “And you’re my real mother? Which means Bamber Joy is my brother, and my grandmother was my real mother, sort of. And her daughter was my foster mother, sort of…” She turned to me. “Grandma, I thought it couldn’t get any more confusing!” She stopped, seeing Gretamara for the first time. “Another Margaret?” she croaked. “That’s all seven of you, isn’t it?”
The new one introduced herself, and I saw Gloriana put on the concentrated expression she wore when she was determined to get something right. She was memorizing them, us. I did as she did, looking at each of us in turn. Gretamara was twentyish, very gentle-looking; Mar-agern and M’urgi looked to be in their early or mid thirties, both brown from the sun and very muscular.
Wilvia couldn’t be mistaken for anyone else, not with that diadem, a little older yet. Naumi was about that same age, with wide shoulders and a strong jaw, and a deeply curved mouth. Then Ongamar, smaller and thinner than the others, appearing only slightly younger than I was myself. Some forty years’ apparent difference between oldest and youngest (though one really shouldn’t count Gretamara), and one of us male…
A shadow on the glass caught my eye. Through the window I saw Ferni standing in deep shadow on the porch, unseen by the others and wearing an expression I could not read. His eyes kept going from Wilvia to M’urgi and back again, like an avid cat watching two birds, unable to decide between them.
I turned to the Gardener, and demanded, “How did you do it? You are the one who did it, aren’t you?”
She patted me on the shoulder. “The Gentherans did it, Margaret. As to how? Well, I can hypothesize: Say they picked a woman who had twins in the family. Twins in both families, as a matter of fact, father and mother. Suppose they encouraged the original fertilized egg to split, making two, and then again making four, and then again, making eight…”
“But there are only seven of her!” Gloriana said.
“One died,” I said. “My mother had twins, on Mars. I was one. The other died. What, was she supposed to be a spare?”
The Gardener shook her head at me, and I flushed. “And, I suppose you’re saying the other six were taken away, somewhere.”
Falija said, “Where they could have grown up just as you did, Grandma, in mirror worlds that reflected everything in your world, each of them thinking she was Margaret, until one was nine, until three more were twelve, until the last three were twenty-two.”
“How?” demanded Gloriana.
Gretamara answered. “It may have been in the same way I grew up, Gloriana. In a place that exists but is not real. In a world that may be observed and interacted with, but is not actual. A virtual world, as Earthians would call it, that ended for each of us when we entered a real one. In the end, there were seven real worlds: I was on Chottem; Naumi was on Thairy; Ongamar was on Cantardene; Mar-agern was on Fajnard; M’urgi was on B’yurngrad; and Margaret was on Tercis.”
“And Wilvia?” Gloriana asked.
“Here and there,” Wilvia herself said. “B’yurngrad first, then Fajnard, then other places, and finally, I was in Hell.”
“That is one of the ways it could have happened,” the Gardener said. “The how is less important than the why. It was done to save your people.”
“Because we owe them a debt,” said Falija very solemnly. “From long, long ago. Because humans don’t have racial memories, and they need them very badly. And there’s only
