18

The bed was of spun glass, soft and springy in a way that feathers never could be under Cashel's weight. He luxuriated for a moment in its caress, even though he knew he ought to be getting up. 

At last he opened his eyes. The sun was a vast ruby dome on the western horizon. The clouds piling at intervals across the summer sky were streaked purple, maroon, and—in flecks at the highest levels—gold. Where the city's crystal towers rose through the forest, they reflected all the colors of the rainbow. 

Cashel sat up and stretched. He ached about every place a man could: a good feeling, a badge of honest work. Mellie walked onto the broad covered balcony where the bed lay, carrying a cup so clear that it looked as though the green liquor foamed in a blanket of air. 

"How long did I sleep?" Cashel asked. He stood, careful but not shaky. His muscles weren't damaged but they needed to be coaxed into their duty. 

"A long time," the sprite said cheerfully. It didn't surprise Cashel that she was a full-sized woman—not as tall as Sharina but more fully curved than Sharina would ever be. "Here, drink this and you'll feel better." 

"I feel fine," Cashel grumbled, though he wasn't sure if that was true. He didn't feel bad, exactly, but he wasn't ready to do anything harder than walking across the room either. 

He drank the liquor in small sips, keeping the glass to his lips all the time, never gulping, never hastening. The bubbles tickled the back of his nose. The liquor itself was cool in his mouth and throat but spread through his body as pleasurable warmth. 

Cashel looked down at his chest. The tears Derg had clawed in his skin were already half-healed. Only a few patches of scab remained. 

"How long?" he repeated in amazement. "Mellie, you should have waked me up!" 

Birds wheeled through the high heavens in a complex dance. The sun was almost wholly below the horizon by now, but occasionally a wing sparkled as it cut a beam of light. 

Mellie giggled and put her arm around Cashel's waist. Her muscles were as hard and flat as his own. 

"You needed to sleep, Cashel," she said. "I told you, Derg is very strong." 

He remembered the fight the way you always remember a fight: bits and pieces, a collection of shattered moments rather than a seamless whole. Fangs snapping a hairsbreadth from his throat, the sight of the stocky red body dripping with ground water as it rose after an impact that should have been crushingly final... 

"He was that," Cashel said. "I hope I never meet anybody stronger." 

He touched his forehead. The cuts Derg's canines had made when he butted the demon were still tender, though they too had healed. 

"Let's watch the moons rise," Mellie said. She took the empty glass from Cashel's hand and set it on a table with legs like sapphire wires. They walked together, his arm over hers, to the bridge of glass arching off their balcony. 

The air was charged and vibrant, though the only scents were those of the forest below: here a flower's perfume, there a whiff of fruit ripening; over all, the green power of life. Quick motions vibrated the canopy. Some of them must be birds roosting, but others were nocturnal animals coming out with the returning shadows, hopping along runways hundreds of feet in the air. 

The bridge was six feet wide and had railings so delicate that they were only visible as the sheen of light bending through their structure. The slope was barely noticeable underfoot, but at zenith its rise completely hid the tower a quarter mile away at the other end. The surface had a pleasant, springy solidity, like a thickly sodded meadow. 

Cashel had control of his muscles again if not his full strength. He lifted his arms overhead and flexed them, laughing in joy to be alive. 

Mellie hugged him. "Yes," she said, again responding to words he hadn't spoken. "Now you're only as strong as any two other people, Cashel!" 

She giggled. Cashel put his right hand under her thighs and lifted her into a chair of his arm and shoulder. He walked on, carrying the sprite like a tuft of thistledown. Creatures hooted and whistled musically in the trees below. 

They reached the center of the span. Fairy lights gleamed in towers across the darkened forest. 

The moons were rising, the lesser one above, and separated by only a degree of angle the greater moon as well. They were full, beaming silver light through a pastel haze of gold. 

Cashel hugged Mellie to him with both arms; and hugging her, he awoke. 

"Oh!" Cashel cried. He lay in the jungle clearing where he'd fought Derg. His head was pillowed on a bundle of springy branches. Mellie sat beside him with a concerned expression; the demon squatted on the other side. They were both full-sized. Cashel twisted upright, knowing that Derg had him at a hopeless disadvantage now.

Instead of attacking, the demon knelt and touched his forehead to the ground. "Master," he growled.

"Here, Cashel," Mellie said. She tossed a nut the size of a fist to Derg. "Drink this and you'll feel better."

The demon set the stem of the nut between his long jaws and topped it neatly. He spat out the end as he handed the open nut to Cashel.

"I'm all right," Cashel muttered. He didn't know when he'd ever ached in so many places at the same time. He sipped from the nut, expecting coconut milk and finding instead an effervescent green liquid. The drink warmed and loosened his muscles like a steambath as it spread through his body.

Cashel looked at the dog-faced demon. "You and me are all right, then?" he said. In the borough a fight was mostly over when one of the pair yielded, but there were times the loser didn't want to leave it at that.

Derg bowed again. "You are my master until I grant your wish, human," he said. He grinned, a ferocious expression on a visage with jaws so long. "After that I will look for an enemy who is not so strong."

Cashel laughed and clasped hands with the demon. "I guess I'll do that too," he said.

He stood up, letting his muscles unknot slowly. He looked down at his chest. Mellie—Mellie or Derg—had smeared brown sap with an astringent odor over the claw marks. He wrinkled his forehead, feeling the constriction of another daub of sap on the fang cuts.

"I had the strangest dream, Mellie," he said. "I was somebody else."

Derg plucked a purple flower dangling from an air plant on a branch high above. When the demon stood, his long torso made him about Cashel's height.

"The breath of these flowers gives dreams," he said. His growling voice, like the expressions of his inhuman face, took a little getting used to.

The flower didn't seem to Cashel to have any particular smell, but he didn't hesitate to believe Derg. He could identify a ewe by her bleat at a distance so great that nobody else in the borough could tell the sound from the breeze sighing. A nose as long as the demon's should be able to smell things Cashel couldn't.

"What did you think about the dream, Cashel?" the sprite asked. If anybody but Mellie had spoken, Cashel would have thought there was tension in her voice.

He shrugged. "It was fine," he said. "It was just funny, though—dreaming that I was somebody I wasn't."

"The person in the dream," Mellie said. "He couldn't have been you?"

"Oh, no," said Cashel. He laughed, feeling embarrassed and wishing he hadn't brought it up. "No, that was somebody else entirely."

The sprite gave a quick backflip onto her hands, then bounced upright again. Those were the first acrobatics Cashel had seen her perform since they entered this green jungle.

"We'll have to go some ways for Derg to grant your wish," she said. "Shall we start now?"

"Huh?" Cashel said. "Sure, I guess. I'll need to take it slow till I loosen up a little, is all."

"This way, then!" Mellie said brightly, striding off between a pair of man-

high fern fronds.

Cashel thought he saw a tear wink on Mellie's cheek. It must have been a trick of the light.