The sisters gave up their woollens, rummaging in boxes for lightweight summer tunics and trousers. They had left their places empty in the Choir at Gerenhodh along with their ritual robes and the guidance of the Council. Still, from time to time Leona would come upon a small group of them gathered together, heads bent toward one another as they sang softly into the twilight.
‘Have you knowledge of them, there?’ she would ask. Always came a look of quiet sadness in return. She need not have asked, for the weight of Zales was within her like the weight of Murgin, rousing the gryphon to irritated disquiet.
On the tenth day the fat boy, Bombaraba, sought her out as she ate a solitary meal at the top of a grassy swell above the camp.
‘Please, ma’am,’ his anxious voice reached her in her abstraction. ‘There is a funny thing, and we think you should know….’
Leona looked down at him, suddenly alerted, seeing him as she had seen no person since Fabla, long ago, and Jaer. He stood there, plump and pink, perspiring faintly across his high bulbous forehead, lank hair clinging to his scalp, lips pursed in concern. ‘Please, the children are making pets of them.’
‘What children, Bomba? Your mates?’
‘Ma’am, no. No, the little children.’ His eyes held the terrifying wisdom of which only ten years is capable. ‘The little ones.’
‘And what are they making pets of?’
‘Things. Things I don’t know the names of. Like – well, like deer that fly. Like little horses, only with horns. Like different things …’
‘Oh.’ She let the monosyllable hang between them encouragingly. He came forward to tug her by one hand.
‘I can show you. Some of them are out in the grass now, with the babies.’
She went with him, resting a hand on his head as though he had been Mimo or Werem, letting him take confidence from that touch. They went stealthily toward a tumult of gentle laughter, peered through grass stems to see a dozen of the youngest children frolicking with little animals, perhaps not animals, creatures she hesitated to name. They ad names. She knew them all. When she moved into the clearing, they did not flee, only settled around her in wild grace and feral joy, nuzzling her hands and fluttering around her shoulders. Presently she turned, wide-eyed, to find Bombaroba searching her face for an explanation.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘They are only babies, both, baby people and baby others. How long …?’
‘Since we came to the grasslands,’ he said. ‘They found us right away.’
‘Do others know? The Sisters? The scouts?’
‘I don’t know,’ the boy mumbled. ‘The Sisters could see them if they wanted to. If they sang. Maybe not without singing. I don’t know.’
‘Nor do I. Well, no harm to the children. No threat. We will wait and see. Can you do that?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He nodded soberly. ‘If there is no danger to the little ones, I don’t mind.’
‘Will they play with you? With the older children?’
‘They talk to us sometimes. It isn’t easy to understand them.’ At that, he looked so woeful and distressed that she drew him to her without thinking about it, stroked his head and shoulders, leaned to put her cheek against his brow.
‘There. Don’t worry about it. We live in a time like dreaming, Bomba. The edges of our lives flutter and change as we watch them. Listen to the dream. Tell me what it tells you.’
On the thirty-sixth day of travel they came upon a vast meadow watered by two great rivers, one from the south, one from the east flowing red as blood to join the waters of the other and flush it pink as sunset.
‘The River of H^nar,’ said the old scout. ‘Once in many hundred years she flows so, as though the earth bled from some great wound away there in the east. Not many may see the river bleed twice in his life, and most never see it once.’
‘Then it is truly the time of Hanar,’ said Leona.
‘Aye, Lady. Tomorrow we will dip linen in it for keepsakes of this time, for it stains all it touches. The one they called the Woman of Hanar, she came to the Sisterhoods in robes dyed crimson, so they say. It is a wonder, is it not?’
‘Among other wonders.’
Bombaroba tagged Leona like her shadow, becoming as the days passed a kind of errand boy, a second set of hands to curry Mimo and Werem, a second set of eyes to look upon the sunset from solitary spaces above the camp, ears to listen while she mused in the dusk and dawn. He was full of questions about the world, questions she could answer. He repaid her in kind, answering questions about the strange train of creatures which grew in boldness with each sunrise, moving as they moved, seen now by Sisters and scouts alike.
‘The little ones say the baby creatures are protecting us, Lady. When the herdsmen come too near, the creatures turn them aside. The creatures show themselves to the dogs, and the dogs run away after them. There are some people on our trail, too, from the north, and the creatures delay them.’
‘Enchantment,’ she mused. ‘We are enchanted.’
‘Maybe. That is a nice word, I think. Why are we enchanted, do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’ She laughed. ‘Do you ever feel, Bomba, that you are an–invention? Not a – person, but something created by something else?’
The child was puzzled only for a moment. ‘But we are all created by the Powers, Lady. They have made us to arise …’
‘ “Out of the nature of Earthsoul, inspirited by Air, animated by Fire, nurtured by the Waters….” Yes. So we are told, Bomba. So we are said to arise, we and all living things. But not….’
Again he puzzled. ‘You mean, to … be in this place, but not to have … planned it. As though
