“Who is it?” whispered one of the Siblings.
Gardener shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen her before, but whoever she is, she’s alive.”
One of the strong Sibling warriors, Sister Ella May Judson, stepped forward to throw her cape across the person before lifting her in her arms. Together they went through the last gate, back to Tercis.
“Will you stay here, Gardener?” Ella May asked. “I was born in this place, and there is a house nearby you can use.”
The Gardener said, “We’ve already been to the house, Ella May, and people are waiting for us there. Carry her for me if you will.”
Ella May murmured, “It is Margaret’s house, my Grandmother’s house. I will stay with you, Gardener. You will need someone to fetch and carry, and I know Rueful.”
“That would be a kindness. Thank you, Ella May.” She turned to the other Siblings. “The rest of you may return to your own places, with my thanks.”
Ella May carried the woman’s body down through the woods, and from below them, someone called, “They’re coming.”
Bamber Joy and Gloriana were awaiting them on the porch, as was Ferni, sitting on the step, staring at Ella May and her burden, his face wet with tears.
Gloriana cried, “Is that you, Ella May! Who’s that you’re carrying?”
The Gardener replied, “Gloriana, we don’t know.”
Ella May laid the quiet body on the couch.
Bamber looked at the face somberly. “Not our mother, Glory. Not Grandma, either.”
“I think…I think it does look a little like Queen Wilvia,” Glory said. “And a little like Grandma, too. From those pictures we have of her, when she was a lot younger.”
Ferni had come in from outside. Now he spoke in a lost, weary voice. “Is there something of M’urgi there. Something of Naumi?”
“Both, I think,” said Glory. “Did the Keeper put her back together?” She turned to the Gardener. “Is that what happened? You never mentioned that!”
“No,” the Gardener confessed, with a low, self-mocking laugh. “With all our thought, all our planning, we never thought of that. We recited the old stories, over and over, ‘Seven makes one, seven makes one,’ each time thinking of the road, never considering the walkers.”
She knelt by the couch, searching the face before her for Gretamara. This woman was older than Gretamara, though much younger than Margaret. She had lines of pain in her face, as Ongamar had had, though not as deep. Her hands were hard and strong, as Mar-agern’s had been. The mouth…Naumi’s mouth, and M’urgi’s. The skin was not as dark as Mar-agern’s, but darker than Gretamara’s. The hair was longer than Mar-agern’s, shorter than Wilvia’s, but she had Wilvia’s eyes…which had just opened.
“You’re awake,” cried Glory.
The woman turned her head. “Gloriana,” she whispered. “And Bamber Joy. My…our children.”
“Gretamara,” said the Gardener.
“Gardener,” she said.
“Grandma,” said Ella May, with certainty.
“Why…Ella May. How strong and well you look, my dear.”
“Naumi?” said Ferni. “Naumi?”
“Oh, damn, Ferni. Yes, I’m here!”
“M’urgi? Wilvia?” he whispered.
But her eyelids had closed, and she slept.
“Well,” said the Gardener, rising to her feet. “I wonder if Keeper did anything besides reuniting Margaret.”
“Oh,” cried Glory. “You don’t know. Well then, you must not be…”
“Not be what, child?”
“Human,” said Bamber Joy. “You must not be human, or you would know!”
“Just tell me what it is I should know!”
Bamber Joy said, “Just a few moments ago. Something happened. We all know things now. Things we never really knew before.”
“It worked!” the Gardener said, marveling. “It really worked? I hadn’t stopped to consult my source.” She closed her eyes, after a moment opening them once more to beam at them.
Gloriana smiled at her, a bit tremulously. “It really did, Gardener. And we’re all just the way Falija was when she got her mother-mind. We’re all itchy and uncomfortable, because our heads are too full, and it’s like trying to find our way around a strange house that has too many rooms with too many doors in it.”
Ferni said, “Forgive me, Gardener, but is it true? You’re not human?”
“Oh, Fernwold, of course not!” she said with some acerbity. “I am not human, and my colleagues are not human. We wonder at ourselves, coalesced, as we are, out of human hope and need and pain. We see, we speak, we are seen, we are heard, yet every thought, sight, word has been created for us by others. We have no creativity; we have no imagination; and yet we seem both creative and imaginative because we have such a vast grab bag of ideas and dreams to draw from. Each thought, plan, idea, notion is like a piece in an enormous jigsaw puzzle. At the end of time, they will all fit together to make a picture of mankind we have no conception of…” She stood up.
“In the meantime, we seem to have power, if it is only the power to take an idea from one mind and plant it in another, as a bird takes a fruit from a far, lone tree and lets fall a seed in quite another place. Old gods sometimes do that in their retirement. They become galactic social workers, self-appointed do-gooders.”
Falija said from the doorway, “But that’s only a lesser part of the truth, Gardener, because you can do things the other gods can’t do. They can’t move a material thing, but you can and do. You’re Pthas, aren’t you?”
Gardener looked up, for a moment seeming larger and older than she had ever looked before. “Why, how very perceptive of you, Gibbekotkin! Yes. I am Pthas. As is Weathereye, and Lady Badness, and a few more. The boon we asked of the Keeper just before most of us left this galaxy to go on to another, was that some of us be allowed to stay on, to take a new form and help others who need help. We had long contended against vile races, vile ideas, and we thought our experience would
