NETFEED/NEWS: California's "Multi-Marriages" Now Law

(visual: two women, one man, all wearing tuxedos, entering Glide Memorial Church)

VO: Protestors howled outside as the first of California's newly legalized multi-partner marriages took place at a church in San Francisco. The man and two women said it was "a great day for people who don't have traditional two-person relationships."

(visual: Reverend Pilker at church rostrum)

Not everyone agrees. The Reverend Daniel Pilker, leader of the fundamentalist group Kingdom Now, called the new law "indisputable evidence that California is hell's back door. . . ."

 

Paul stepped through and out. The golden light faded and he was in emptiness again.

The mist stretched away in every direction, as heavy and empty as before, but there was nothing else. There was no Finch or Mullet either, which was a great relief, but Paul had been hoping that he would find something more on the other side of the gateway. He wasn't quite sure what "home" meant, but in the back of his mind he had been hoping to find exactly that.

He sank to his knees, then lowered himself until he lay stretched on the hard and featureless earth. The mists swirled around him. He closed his eyes, exhausted, without hope or ideas, and for a while gave himself to the dark.

The next thing he was aware of was a quiet whispering, a thin papery sound that grew out of the silence. A warm breeze stroked his hair. Paul opened his eyes, then sat up, full of wonder. A forest had sprung into being around him.

For a long time he was content just to sit and stare. It had been so long since he had seen anything but blasted fields of mud that the sight of unbroken trees, of thickly tangled branches still bearing their leaves, soothed his spirit like a drink of water to a thirsty man. What did it matter that most of the leaves were yellow or brown, that many had already fallen to the earth and lay ankle-deep around him? Just the return of color seemed a gift beyond any price.

He stood. His legs were so stiff that they might have been things discarded by someone else that necessity compelled him to use. He took a great breath of air and smelled everything, damp earth, the scent of drying grass, even the faintest tang of smoke. The scents of the living world coursed through him so powerfully and so richly that it awakened hunger inside him; he suddenly wondered when he had last eaten. Bully beef and biscuit, those were familiar words, but he could not remember what the things they named were. In any case, it had been long ago and far away.

The warm air still surrounded him, but he felt a moment of inner chill. Where had he been? He had a memory of a dark, terrifying place, but what he had been doing there or how he had left had slipped from his mind.

The very lack of things to remember meant that their absence did not worry him long. Sun was filtering down through the leaves, making spots that swam like golden fish as the wind moved the trees. Wherever he had been, he was in a living place now, a place with light and clean air, a carpet of dry leaves, and even—he tilted his head—the distant sound of a bird. If he could not remember his last meal, well, that was all the more reason to find himself another. He would walk.

He looked down. His feet were shod in heavy leather shoes, which at least felt familiar and correct, but nothing else in his attire seemed quite right. He wore heavy wool stockings and pants that ended not far below his knee, as well as a thick shirt and waistcoat, also of wool. The fabric seemed strangely rough beneath his fingers.

The forest stretched away in all directions, revealing nothing that looked like a road or even a trail. He pondered for a moment, trying to remember which direction he had been traveling when he stopped, but that, too, was gone, evaporated as completely as the bleak mist, which was now the only thing that he remembered with certainty had existed before the forest. Granted an open choice, he noted the stretching shadows and turned to put the sun at his back. At least he would be sure of seeing his way clearly.

 

He had been hearing the intermittent birdsong for a long time before he finally saw its author. He was kneeling, freeing his stocking from a bramble bush, when something brilliant glided through a column of sunshine just ahead of him, a flash of green both darker and shinier than the moss crawling on the tree trunks and stones. He straightened, looking for it, but it had vanished into the shadows between trees; all that remained was a trill of piping music, just loud enough to claim a single echo for its own.

With a stiff tug he pulled himself out of the bramble bush and hastened in the direction the bird had gone. Since he had no path, he thought he might as well follow something pretty as plod on with no better destination in mind. He had been walking for what seemed hours and had seen no sign of change in the endless forest.

The bird never came close enough for him to see it completely clearly, but neither did it disappear from sight. It flitted from tree to tree, always just a few dozen paces ahead. On the few occasions where the branch it chose for a resting place was in sunlight, he could see its emerald feathers shining—an almost impossible glow, as though it blazed with some inner light. There were hints of other colors, too, a dusky purple like an evening sky, a hint of darker color along the crest. Its song also seemed somehow less than ordinary, although he could remember no other bird's song for comparison. In fact, he could remember very little about any other birds, but he knew that this was one, that its song was both soothing and alluring, and that was enough to know.

Afternoon wore on and the sun passed out from behind the gaps in the treetops, sliding toward the hidden horizon. He had long ago stopped worrying about what direction it shone, so caught up had he become in his pursuit of the green bird. It was only when the forest began to darken that he realized he was lost in a trackless wood with night coming on.

He stopped, and the bird alighted on a branch not three steps from him. It cocked its head—there was a dark crest—and gave voice to a melodic trill that, though swift and bright, had something in it of a question and something in it even less definable, but which made him suddenly mournful for his lost memory, for his directionlessness, for his solitude. Then, with a flip of its tail that revealed the midnight-purple brushing underneath, the bird spread its wings and spiraled up into the air to disappear among the twilight shadows. A last thread of song floated down to him, sweetly sad, diminishing to nothing.

He sat down on a log and put his head in his hands, overcome with the weight of something he could not define. He was still sitting that way when a voice made him jump.

"Here, none of that. These are good solid oaks, not weeping willows."

The stranger was not dressed much differently than he, all in rough browns and greens, but he wore a broad strip of white cloth tied around one arm like a bandage or a token. His eyes were a strangely feline shade of tawny yellow. He held a bow in one hand and a skin bag in the other; a quiver of arrows stood up behind his shoulder.

Since the newcomer had made no hostile moves, he felt it safe to ask him who he was. The stranger laughed at the question. "The wrong thing to be asking here. Who are you, then, if you're so clever?"

He opened his mouth, but found he could not remember. "I . . . I don't know."

"Of course not That's the way of this place. I came in after . . . I'm not certain, you know, I think it was a deer. And now I won't remember my name until I'm on my way back out again. Queer, this forest" He extended the skin bag. "Are you thirsty?"

The liquid was sour but refreshing. When he had handed it back to the stranger, he felt better. The conversation might be confusing, but at least it was a conversation. "Where are you going? Do you know that? I'm lost."

"Not surprised. As to where I'm going, it's out. Not a good place to be after dark, these woods. But I seem to remember something just outside the forest that feels like a good destination. Perhaps it will be the kind of place you're looking for." The stranger beckoned. "In any case, come along. We'll see if we can't do you some good."

He quickly rose to his feet, afraid that the invitation might be rescinded if he took too long. The stranger was already pushing through a tangle of young trees which had made a hedge around the wreckage of their toppled older relative.

They traveled for a while in silence as late afternoon twilight gradually deepened into evening. Fortunately, the stranger held down his pace—he seemed like the sort who could have traveled much faster if he chose—and remained, even in the dying light, a dark shape only a few steps ahead.

At first he thought it was the night air, that the colder sharpness was bringing a different kind of sound to his ear, a different kind of scent to his nostrils. Then he realized that instead it was a different kind of thought that was suddenly drifting through his mind.

"I was . . . somewhere else." The sound of his own voice was strange after the long time without speaking. "A war, I think. I ran away."

His companion grunted. "A war."

"Yes. It's coming back to me—some of it, anyway."

"We're getting near the edge of the forest, that's the reason. So you ran away, did you?"

"But . . . but not for the normal reasons. At least I don't think so." He fell silent. Something very important was swimming up from the depths of his mind and he was suddenly frightened he might grab at it too clumsily and lose it to darkness once more. "I was in a war, and I ran away. I came through . . . a door. Or something else. A mirror. An empty place."

"Mirrors." The other was moving a little more quickly now. "Dangerous things."

"And . . . and. . . ." He curled his fists, as though memory could be tightened like a muscle. "And . . . my name is Paul." He laughed in relief. "Paul."

The stranger looked back over his shoulder. "Funny sort of name. What does it mean?"

"Mean? It doesn't mean anything. It's what I'm called."

"It's an odd place you come from, then." The stranger fell silent for a moment, though his legs still carried him forward in long steps that had Paul hurrying to keep up. "I'm Woodling." he said at last. "Sometimes Jack-of-the-Woods, or Jack Woodling. That's my name because I do tramp all the woods near and far—even this one, though I don't like it much. It's a fearful thing for a man to lose his name. Although perhaps not so much so when the name doesn't mean aught."

"It's still a fearful thing." Paul was straggling with the new ideas that were suddenly skittering through his head like beetles. "And where am I? What place is this?"

"The Nameless Wood, of course. What else would it be called?"

"But where is it? In what country?"

Jack Woodling laughed. "In the king's land, I suppose. The old king's land, that is, although I trust you've got the sense not to call it that among strangers. You may tell Her Ladyship I said so, though, if you meet her." His smile blazed briefly in the shadows. "You must be from somewhere far away indeed, that you concern yourself with such schoolmasterish things as the names of places." He paused and pointed. "There it is, then, as I hoped it would be."

They had stopped on a high place at the edge of a narrow valley. The trees fell away down the gradually sloping hillside; for the first time Paul could see some distance in front of him. At the bottom of the valley, nestled between the hills, a cluster of lights gleamed.

"What is it?"

"An inn, and a good place." Jack Woodling clapped him on the shoulder. "You will have no trouble finding your way from here."

"But aren't you going?"

"Not me, not tonight. I've things to do and elsewhere to sleep. But you will find what you need there, I think."

Paul stared at the man's face, trying to make out the expression through the night-shadows. Did he mean more than he said? "If we are going to split up, then I want to thank you. You probably saved my life."

Jack Woodling laughed again. "Don't put such a burden on me, good sir. Where I go, I must travel light. Fare you well." He turned and moved back up the hillside. Within moments Paul could hear nothing but the leaves rustling in the wind.

 

The sign swaying in the wind over the front door named the inn "The King's Dream." It was crude, as though it had been put up hurriedly to replace some earlier insignia. The small figure painted below the name had his chin on his chest and his crown tipped low over his eyes. Paul stood for a moment just outside the circle of lantern glow puddled in front of the door, feeling the great trackless weight of the forest breathing like a dark beast at his back, then stepped forward into the light.

Perhaps a dozen people were ranged about the low-ceilinged room. Three of them were soldiers in surcoats as bloody-red as the joint that turned on a spit over the fireplace. The young boy tending the spit, so covered with soot that the whites of his eyes were startling, gave Paul a furtive look when he came in, then quickly turned away with an expression that might have been relief. The soldiers looked at Paul, too, and one of them inched a little way down the bench they shared, toward the place where their pikes leaned against the whitewashed clay wall. The rest of the denizens, dressed in rough peasant clothes, paid him the attention any stranger would receive, staring as he made his way to the landlord's counter.

The woman who waited for him there was old, and her white hair, disarranged by heat and sweat, looked something like the fleece of a sheep kept out on a bad night, but the forearms bared by rolled sleeves looked strong and her hands were pink, callused, and capable. She leaned on the counter in obvious weariness, but her gaze was shrewd.

"We've no beds left." She wore an odd smirk on her face which Paul could not immediately understand. "These fine soldiers have just taken the last of them."

One of the red-smocked men belched. His companions laughed.

"I'd like a meal and something to drink." A dim memory of how these things worked wriggled into Paul's thoughts. He suddenly realized he had nothing in his pockets but air, and no purse or wallet "I have no money, I'm afraid. Perhaps I could do some work for you."

The woman leaned forward, inspecting him closely. "Where are you from?"

"A long way away. The other side of . . . of the Nameless Forest"

She seemed about to ask something else, but one of the soldiers shouted for more beer. Her lips thinned in annoyance—and, Paul thought, something more.

"Stay here," she told him, then went to deal with the soldiers. Paul looked around the room. The hearth urchin was staring at him again with an intensity that seemed closer to calculation than curiosity, but Paul was tired and hungry and did not much trust his own overstrained perceptions.

"Let's talk about work you might do," the woman said when she returned. "Follow me back here, where it's less noisy."

She led him down a narrow stairway to a cellar room that was clearly her own. The walls were lined with shelves, and they and every other surface were crammed with spools and skeins, jars and boxes and baskets. Except for the small pallet bed in the corner and a three-legged stool, the room looked more like a shop than a bedroom. The landlady sank onto the stool, fluffing her rough woolen skirt, and kicked off her shoes.

"I'm that tired," she said, "I couldn't stay on my feet a moment longer. I hope you don't mind standing—I've only the one stool."

Paul shook his head. His attention had been captured by a small, thick-paned window. Through the distorted glass, he could see water moving and glinting in the moonlight outside. The inn evidently backed on a river.

"Now then," the old woman's voice was suddenly sharp, "who sent you here? You're not one of us."

Paul turned around, startled. The landlady had a knitting needle gripped in her fist, and while she showed no immediate sign of getting up from the stool and coming after him with it, neither did she look particularly friendly.

"Woodling, his name was. Jack Woodling. I met him in the forest."

"Tell me what he looks like."

Paul did his best to describe what had been, after all, a rather nondescript man seen largely in twilight and later in darkness. It was only when he remembered the white cloth tied around his savior's arm that the woman relaxed.

"You've seen him, sure enough. Had he any message for me?"

He could not think of anything at first. "Do you know who 'Her Ladyship' would be?"

The woman smiled sadly. "No one but me."

"He said something about it being the old king's woods, though I shouldn't say that to anyone except Her Ladyship."

She chuckled and tossed the knitting needle into a basket with several dozen others. "That's my Jack. My paladin. And why did he send you to me? Where is this place you're from, beyond the Nameless Woods?"

Paul stared at her. There was something more than ordinary weariness in her features. Her face seemed almost like something that had been soft once, but had been frozen into harsh creases by some terrible winter. "I don't know. I . . . there's something wrong with me. I was in a war, that's all I remember. I ran away."

She nodded her head as if to the sound of an old familiar tune. "Jack would have seen that, all right. No wonder he took a shine to you." She sighed. "But I told you rightly enough earlier. I've no bed. The blasted robin redbreasts have taken the last of them, and with not so much as a copper to pay me for my trouble."

Paul frowned. "They can do that?"

Her laugh was rueful. "They can do that and more. This is not my land any more, but hers. Even here, in my pitiful burrow, she sends her strutting fellows to mock me. She will not harm me—what use having won without the only person who can appreciate it?—but she will make me as miserable as she can."

"Who is she? I don't understand anything you're saying."

The old woman stood up, puffing out breath as she did so. "You're better off if you don't. And you're also better off not staying in this country long. It isn't very friendly to travelers any more." She picked her way through the sea of bric-a-brac, leading him back to the door. "I'd put you up here on my own floor, but that would only make those roundheads upstairs wonder why I'd taken interest in a stranger. You can sleep in the stable. I'll say you're going to do some hauling for me tomorrow, so you won't attract attention. I can at least give you food and drink, for Jack's sake. But you're not to mention to anyone that you met him, and certainly not what he said."

"Thank you. You're very kind,"

She snorted, making her slow way up the stairs. "Falling to a low estate can do that—you see so much more of the world than you did before. You become very aware of how thin the line is, of how little safety exists."

She led him back up to the noisy common room where they were greeted by rude questions from the soldiers and the watchful eyes of the hearth boy.

 

A caged bird, a tall tree, a house with many rooms, a loud voice shouting, bellowing, crashing down on him like thunder. . . .

Paul came up from the dream like a drowning man, surfacing to the smell of damp hay and the noises of fretful horses. He sat up, trying to shake off the disorientation of sleep. The stable door was partway open, a shadow showing lightless against the slice of starry night.

"Who's there?" He fumbled for a weapon, an urging of some sunken memory, but came up with nothing but a handful of straw.

"Quiet." The whisperer was as nervous as Paul's stable mates. "It's only me, Gally." The shadow came closer. Paul could see that it was someone quite small. "The pot boy."

"What do you want?"

"Not to rob you, governor." He sounded aggrieved. "I'd of come in quieter than that, were the case. I come to warn you."

Paul could see the boy's eyes now, gleaming like mother-of-pearl. "Warn me?"

"Those soldiers. They've been drinking too much, and now they're talking of coming for you. I don't know why."

"The bastards." Paul climbed to his feet. "Did the lady send you?"

"Naw. Locked herself in her room for the night, she has. I heard 'em talking." He straightened up now as Paul moved toward the door. "Where you going to go?"

"I don't know. Back to the forest, I suppose." He cursed quietly. At least he had no possessions to slow his flight.

"Come on with me, then. I'll take you to a place. King's men won't follow you there—not after dark."

Paul paused, one hand on the door. There was indeed a soft clatter coming from the front of the inn across the courtyard, a noise very much like drunken men trying to move stealthily. "Why?" he whispered.

"Help you? Why not?" The boy grabbed his arm. "None of us much like them redbreasts. We don't like their mistress neither. Follow me."

Not waiting for Paul to reply, the boy slipped out the door and moved rapidly but quietly along the wall. Paul pulled the door closed and hurried after him.

Gally led him around the back of the stable, then stopped and touched a hand to Paul's arm in warning before leading him down a narrow stone stairway. The only light came from the half moon. Paul nearly stepped off the stairs into the river before Gally took his arm again.

"Boat," the boy whispered, and guided Paul into a gently rocking shadow. When he was seated in the boat's damp bottom, his rescuer carefully lifted up a pole that had been lying on the tiny dock and pushed the little craft out onto the dark river.

From above them came the sudden gleam of an unhooded lantern and a clatter as the stable door was flung open. Paul held his breath until the noise of the soldiers' drunken disappointment faded behind them.

The trees on the near bank slid silently past. "Won't you get into trouble?" Paul asked. "Won't they blame you when they see you've gone?"

"The lady'll speak up for me." The boy leaned forward as if looking for some landmark in what to Paul was impenetrable night. " 'Sides, they were so knobknocked with drink, they didn't know where I'd got to anyway. I can just say I went to sleep in the washing hamper to get away from their noise."

"Well, I'm grateful. Where are you taking me?"

"To my place. Well, it's not just mine. We all live there."

Paul settled back. Now that his sudden rousing and narrow escape were behind him, he was almost enjoying the quiet of the night, the feeling of gliding along beneath another, larger river of sky. There was peace here, and companionship of a sort. "And who are 'we all'?" he asked at last.

"Oh, my mates," Gally answered with a hint of pride. "The Oysterhouse Boys. We're the White King's men, every one of us."

 

They tied up the boat at a wide pier that jutted far into the river. The place where the pier touched the shore and the narrow stairs leading upward were lit by a single lantern which swayed gently in the quickening wind.

Paul looked up to the shadowy bulk on the headlands. "You live there?"

"Do now. It was empty for a while." Agile as a squirrel, Gally scrambled out of the boat and onto the pier. He reached down and pulled up a sack that Paul had not noticed. After he had set it down, he reached back a helping hand. "All the boats stopped here once on a time—men singing, bringing in the nets. . . ."

Paul followed him up the hillside. The stairwell had been cut into the solid rock and the steps were narrow and slippery with night dew; Paul found he could only climb safely by turning sideways, putting the length of his foot along each step. He looked down. The lantern was burning far below. The boat had drifted under the pier.

"Don't be so slow," Gally whispered. "We've got to get you inside. Few folk come down around here, but if her soldiers are a-hunting for you, we don't want no one seeing you."

Paul leaned in toward the hill, steadying himself against the steps above him, and made his way up as quickly as he could. Despite being burdened with a sack, the boy kept bouncing back down to urge him on. At last they reached the top. There was no lantern here, and Paul could see nothing of the building except a deeper darkness spread wide against the stars. Gally clutched his sleeve and led him forward. After a while Paul felt boards creaking beneath his feet Gally stopped and knocked on what was unmistakably a door. A few moments later an apparition appeared at the height of Paul's knees, a gleaming, sideways rectangular face.

"Who's there?" The voice was almost a squeak.

"Gally. I've brought company."

"Can't let you in without the password."

"Password?" Gally hissed his disgust. "There wasn't no password when I left this morning. Open it up."

"But how do I know it's you?" The face, which Paul could now see was peering through a slot in the door, scowled in a laughable attempt at officiousness.

"Are you mad? Let us in, Pointer, or I'll reach through and knuckle your pate. You'll recognize that, right enough."

The slot clapped closed, then a moment later the door opened; a faint, fishy scent wafted out. Gally picked up his sack again and slid through. Paul followed him.

Pointer, a small pale boy, took a few steps backward, staring at the new arrival. "Who's he?"

"He's with me. He's going to spend the night here. What's this diddle about a password?"

"That was Miyagi's idea. Some strange folk been coming around today."

"And how was I supposed to know the password when I wasn't here?" Gally reached out and rubbed savagely at Pointer's unkempt hair, then pushed him ahead of them down the dark hallway. They followed the small boy into a wide, high-ceilinged room as large as a church hall. It was lit by only a few candles, so there were more dark places than light ones, but as far as Paul could see it was empty but for the clinging odor of dampness and river mud.

"All's well," Pointer sang out "It's Gally. He's brought someone with him."

Dark shapes emerged from the shadows, first two or three, then many, like the fairy-folk appearing from their woodland hiding places. Within moments some three dozen children had crowded around Paul and his guide, staring solemnly, many wiping eyes still puffy from sleep. None was older than Gally; most were a great deal younger. There were a few girls, but the greatest number were boys, and all of them were dirty and starveling-thin.

"Miyagi! Why is there a password, and don't you think you might have told me?"

A small, round boy stepped forward. "It weren't meant to keep you out, Gally. There were some folk nosing around today we hadn't seen before. I made the little'uns keep quiet, and I told 'em all not to let anyone in who didn't say 'custard.' "

Several of the smaller children repeated the word, the excitement of a secret—or possibly a dim memory of the thing itself—clear in the hushed thrill of their voices.

"Right," said Gally. "Well, I'm here now, and this is my friend. . . ." He frowned, rubbing the soot on his forehead. "What's your name, governor?"

Paul told him.

". . . Right, my friend Paul, and he's for the White King, too, so there's nothing to be afraid of. You lot over there, get more wood on the fire—it's cold as a brass monkey in here. Milady sent some cheese and bread." He dropped his sack on the floor, "You'll never learn all the names. Miyagi and Pointer you met. Chesapeake's over there, falling back asleep already, the lazy lummox. That's Blue—she's Pointer's sister—and that's my brother, Bay." The last-named, a skinny, snub-nosed child with curling red hair, pulled a horrible face. Gally aimed a mock-kick in his direction.

Paul watched the Oysterhouse Boys—and Girls—scatter in various directions, as Gally, a natural general, set them each tasks. When they were alone again, Paul turned to his guide and asked quietly: "What did you mean, I'm for the White King? I don't know anything about this—I'm a stranger here."

"That's as may be," said Gally, grinning. "But since you ran away from the Red Lady's soldiers, I don't think you'll be wearing her token, will you?"

Paul shook his head. "I don't know anything about that. I came to this town, this country. A man found me in the woods and sent me to the inn—fellow with strange eyes, named Jack. But I don't know anything about Kings or Queens."

"Jack sent you? Then you must have more to say than you're letting on. Did you fight with him in the war?"

Paul shook his head again, helplessly. "I fought . . . I fought in a war. But it wasn't here. I don't remember any more." He slumped down onto the wooden floor and put his back against the wall. The excitement had worn off and he was exhausted. He had only managed a few hours' sleep before Gally had woken him.

"Well, never you mind, governor. We'll sort you out"

 

Gally handed out the bread and cheese, but Paul had eaten earlier, and although he was hungry again, he did not want to reduce the children's small portions any further. They looked so small and poorly nourished that he found it painful to watch them eat. Even so, they were remarkably well-behaved urchins, each waiting his or her turn for a mouthful of crust.

Afterward, with the fire blazing and the room warm at last, Paul was ready to go back to sleep, but the children were too excited by the night's events to return to bed.

"A song!" cried someone, and others took up the cry: "Yes, a song! Have the man sing a song."

Paul shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't remember any. I wish I did."

"No need to worry," Gally said. "Blue, you sing one. She's got the best voice, even though she's not the loudest," he explained.

The little girl stood up. Her dark hair hung in tangled knots around her shoulders, confined only by a band of soiled white cloth around her forehead. She frowned and sucked her finger. "What song?"

"The one about where we come from." Gally seated himself cross-legged beside Paul like a desert prince commanding entertainment for a foreign dignitary.

Blue nodded thoughtfully, took her finger from her mouth, and began to sing in a high, sweet, and slightly wavering voice.

"The ocean dark, the ocean wide

And we crossed from the other side

The ocean dark, the ocean deep

Between us and the Land of Sleep

"Away, away, away, sing O

They called for us, but we had gone

Away, away, away, sing O

Across the sea we had to go. . . ."

Huddled with this small tribe, listening to Blue's voice float up like the sparks from the fire, Paul suddenly felt his own loneliness surrounding him like a cloud. Perhaps he could stay in this place. He could be a kind of father, make sure these children did not hunger, did not need to fear the world outside their old house.

"The night was cold, the night was long

And we had no light but our song

The night was black, the night was deep

Between us and the Land of Sleep. . . ."

There was a sadness in it that Paul could feel, some note of mourning that sounded beneath the melody. It was as though he listened to the keening of a baby bird which had fallen from its nest, calling across the hopeless distance to the warmth and safety it had forever lost.

"We crossed the sea, we crossed the night

And now we search the world for light

For light to love us, light to keep

The memories of the Land of Sleep.

"Away, away, away, sing O

They called for us, but we had gone

Away, away, away, sing O

Across the sea we had to go. . . ."

The song went on, and Paul's eyes began to sag closed. He fell asleep to the sound of Blue's small voice chiming against the night.

 

A bird was beating its wings against a windowpane, wingtips pattering against the glass in frantic repetition. Trapped! It was trapped! The tiny body, shimmering with green and purple, beat helplessly against the pane, rustling and thumping like a failing heart. Somebody must set it free, Paul knew, or it would die. The colors, the beautiful colors, would turn to ashy gray and then vanish, taking a piece of sun out of the world forever. . . .

He woke up with a start. Gally was kneeling over him.

"Quiet," the boy whispered. "There's someone outside. Might be the soldiers."

As Paul sat up the knocking came again, a dry sound that murmured through the vast Oysterhouse.

Perhaps, Paul thought, still tangled in the rags of his dream, it's not soldiers at all. Maybe it's only a dying bird.

"Get up there." Gally pointed to a rickety staircase leading up to one of the galleries. "Hide. We won't tell them you're here, whoever it is."

Paul mounted the squeaking stairs, which swayed alarmingly. Clearly it had been a long time since anyone so heavy had climbed them. The furtive knocking sounded again.

Gally watched until Paul had reached the shadowy upper reaches, then took a smoldering stick from the fire and crept toward the doorway. A thin blue light seeped in through the wide fanlight over his head. Dawn was approaching.

"Who's out there?"

There was a pause, as though whoever knocked had not truly expected an answer. The voice, when it came, was smooth and almost childishly sweet, but it raised the hairs on the back of Paul's neck.

"Just honest men. We are looking for a friend of ours."

"We don't know you." Gally was fighting to keep his voice steady. "Stands to reason there's no one here calls themself your friend."

"Ah. Ah, but perhaps you've seen him, this friend of ours?"

"Who are you, knocking on doors at such an hour?"

"Just travelers. Have you seen our friend? He was a soldier once, but he has been wounded. He's not right in the head, not right at all. It would be cruel to hide him from us—we are his friends and could help him." The voice was full of kind reason, but something else moved behind the words, something greedy. A blind fear gripped Paul. He wanted to scream at whatever stood outside to go away and leave him in peace. He put his knuckle between his teeth instead and bit down hard.

"We've seen nobody, we're hiding nobody." Gally tried to make his voice deep and scornful, with only middling success. "This is our place now. We are working men who must have our sleep, so be off before we set our dogs on you."

There was a murmuring sound from behind the door, a grumble of quiet conversation. The door creaked in its frame, then creaked again, as though someone had for a moment set a heavy weight against it. Struggling against his terror, Paul began to creep around the upper gallery toward the door so he could be close enough to help Gally if trouble began.

"Very well," the voice said at last "We are truly sorry if we have disturbed you. We will go now. Sadly, we must seek our friend in another town if he is not here." There was another creak and the latch rattled in its socket. The invisible stranger continued calmly, as though the rattling were something quite unconnected. "If you should happen to meet such a man, a soldier, perhaps a trifle confused or strange, tell him to ask after us in the King's Dream, or in other inns along the river. Joiner and Tusk, those are our names. We so badly want to help our friend."

Heavy boots scraped on the doorstep, then there was a long silence. Gally reached up to open the door, but Paul leaned over the railing and signaled him not to touch it. Instead, he moved to where the gallery rail stood closest to the fanlight above the door, and leaned out.

Two shapes stood on the doorstep, both bundled in dark cloaks. One was larger, but otherwise they were little more than lumps of shadow in the gray before morning. Paul felt his heart speed even faster. He gestured frantically at Gally not to move. By the thin light, he could see some of the children were awake and peering out of various sleeping places around the Oysterhouse, their eyes wide with fear.

The smaller of the two shapes cocked its head to one side as though listening. Paul did not know why, but he was desperate that these people, whoever they were, should not find him. He thought his heart must be pounding as loud as a kettledrum. An image came bubbling up through his panicked thoughts, a picture of an empty place, a vast expanse of nothingness in which only he existed—he and two things that hunted him. . . .

The smaller figure leaned close to the larger as though whispering, then they both turned and made their way down the path and vanished in the fog that was drifting up from the river.

 

"Two of them, eh? Are those the strange folk you said you saw?"

Miyagi nodded vigorously. Gally screwed up his forehead in an awesome display of concentration. "I can't say as I've ever heard of such before." he said at last. "But there's plenty of strange folk coming through these days." He grinned at Paul. "No offense. But if they're not soldiers, they're spies or something like. They'll be coming back, I reckon."

Paul thought the boy was probably right. "Then there's only one thing to do. I'll go, then they'll follow after me." He said it briskly, but the idea of having to move on so soon made him ache. He had been foolish to imagine that he might find peace so easily. He could remember very little, but he knew it had been a long time since he had been somewhere he could call his home. "What's the best way out of this town? As a matter of fact, what's beyond this town? I have no idea."

"It's not so easy to travel through the Squared," said Gally. "Things have changed since we came here. And if you just set out, chances are you'll walk right into the Red Lady's soldiers, and then it'll be the dungeons for you, or something worse." He shook his head gravely and sucked his lip, pondering. "No, we'll need to ask someone who knows about things. I reckon we should take you to Bishop Humphrey."

"Who's that?"

"Take him to Old Dumpy?" Little Miyagi seemed amused. "That great bag of wind?"

"He knows things. He'll know where the governor here should go." Gally turned to Paul, as though asking him to settle an argument. "The bishop's a smart man. Knows the names of everything, even things you didn't think had names. What do you say?"

"If we can trust him."

Gally nodded. "He's a bag of wind, it's true, but he's an important man, so the redbreasts leave him alone." He clapped his hands for attention. The children gathered around him. "I'm taking my friend to see the bishop. While I'm gone, I don't want you lot going out, and I certainly don't want you letting no one in. The password idea's a good one—don't open the door to anyone, even me, 'less they say the word 'custard.' Got it? 'Custard.' Miyagi, you're in charge. And Bay, wipe that grin off your fazoot. Try not to be an eejit just this once, will you?"

 

Gally led him out the back door, which opened onto the headlands and a pine forest that grew almost to the very walls of the Oysterhouse. The boy checked carefully, then waved for Paul to follow him into the trees. Within moments they were tramping through a wood so dense that they could no longer see the large building just a few dozen yards behind them.

The morning fog was still thick and lay close to the ground. The woods were unnaturally silent; except for the sound of his own feet crunching across the carpet of fallen needles—the boy made almost no noise at all—Paul could hear nothing. No wind rattled the branches. No birds saluted the climbing sun. As they made their way beneath the trees with the mist swirling about their ankles, Paul could almost imagine that he was walking across clouds, hiking through the sky. The idea cast a shadow of memory, but whatever it was would not allow itself to be grasped and examined.

They had walked for what seemed at least an hour, the slope slanting downward more often than not, when Gally, who was several paces ahead, waved Paul to a halt The boy silenced any questions by lifting his small hand, then lightfooted his way back to Paul's side.

"Crossroads lies just ahead," he whispered. "But I thought I heard something."

They made their way down the hillside until the land flattened and they could see a cleared place between the trees with a strip of reddish dirt road at its center. Gally led them alongside it with great caution, as though they paced the length of a sleeping snake. Abruptly, he sank to his knees, then reached up to pull Paul down, too.

They had reached the place where a second dusty road cut across the path of the first. Two signposts that Paul could not read pointed away in the same direction down the crossroad. Gally crawled forward until he could watch the spot from behind a bush, not fifty paces from the intersection.

They waited in silence so long that Paul was just about to stand up and stretch when he heard a noise. It was faint at first, faint and regular as a heartbeat, but it slowly grew louder. Footsteps.

Two shapes appeared out of the misty trees, coming toward them from the direction the two signs were pointing. The pair walked in an unhurried way, their cloaks dragging in the dew-sodden dust of the road. One of them was very large and moved with an odd shuffle, but both were familiar from the front porch the night before. Paul felt his gorge rise. For a moment he feared he would not be able to breathe.

The figures reached the center of the crossroad and paused for a moment in some silent communion before continuing in the direction from which Paul and Gally had come.

The mist eddied around their feet. They wore shapeless hats as well as the sagging cloaks, but still Paul could see the glint of spectacles on the smaller. The larger had a peculiar grayish cast to his skin, and appeared to be holding something in his mouth, for the jutting shapes that bulged his upper lip and pressed against his jaw were surely far too large to be teeth.

Paul clutched hard at the mat of needles, digging furrows in the ground with his fingers. He felt light-headed, almost feverish, but he knew that death was hunting for him on that road—no, something worse than death, something far more empty, grim, and limitless than death.

As if they sensed his thoughts, the two figures suddenly stopped in the center of the road, directly opposite the hiding place. Paul's pulse, already painfully fast, now rattled in his temples. The smaller figure bent down and craned its head forward, as though it had somehow become a different kind of creature, something more likely to go on four legs than two. It pivoted its head slowly; Paul saw the lenses spark, spark, spark as they caught light through the shadowing trees. The moment seemed to stretch endlessly.

The larger figure dropped a flat grayish hand onto its companion's shoulder and rumbled something—in his panic, Paul could only hear words that sounded like "sealing wax"—then set off down the road, waddling so slowly its legs might have been tied together at the ankles. A moment later the smaller straightened up and followed, shoulders up and head thrust forward in a sullen slouch.

Paul did not release the breath burning in his chest until the two shapes had vanished into the mist, and even then he lay unmoving for some time. Gally did not seem in a hurry to rise either.

"Going back to town, they are," the boy said quietly. "That's as well. Plenty to keep them busy there. All the same, I think we'll stay off the road." He scrambled to his feet. Paul got up and staggered after him, feeling as though he had almost fallen from some high place.

A short time later Gally cut across the road and led them down a smaller side road which wound through the trees and up a small rise. At the top of the hill, rising from a copse of birch trees, stood a very small castle whose central keep jutted like a pointed hat. The drawbridge was down, the front door—no larger than the door on an ordinary house—stood open.

They found the bishop sitting in the front room, surrounded by shelves of books and curios, reading a thin volume in the light that streamed in through the entrance. He fit his wide chair so snugly it was hard to imagine that he ever left it. He was huge and bald, with a protuberant lower lip and a mouth so wide that Paul felt sure he must have a greater than ordinary number of bones in his jaw. He looked up as their footfalls sounded against the polished stone floor.

"Hmmm. In the middle of my poetry hour, my all-too-brief moment for restful contemplation. Still and all." He folded the book closed and let it slide down to the place where the hemisphere of his belly met his small legs—there was nothing flat enough in the area to be called a lap. "Ah. The scullion lad, I see. Gally, is it not? Tender of the cookfire. What brings you here, pot urchin? Has one of your spitted carcasses suddenly called out for shriving? The fiery pit has a way of engendering such second thoughts. Harrum, harrum." It took a moment before Paul realized that the hollow, drumlike sound was actually a laugh.

"I've come asking your help, Bishop Humphrey, true enough." Gally grabbed Paul's sleeve and tugged him forward. "This gentleman needed some advice, and I told him, 'Ask Bishop Humphrey. He's the cleverest man in these parts.' And here we are."

"Indeed." The bishop turned his tiny eyes to Paul, then after an instant's shrewd examination, let them slide away again. He never kept his gaze on anything for very long, which gave his conversation an air of distracted irritation. "A stranger, eh? A recent immigrant to our humble shire? Or perhaps you are a visitor of a more transient nature? Passing through, as it were? A peregrine?"

Paul hesitated. Despite Gally's assurances, he was not entirely comfortable with Humphrey. There was something distant about the man, as though something glassy and brittle stood between him and the outside world. "I am a stranger," he finally admitted, "I'm trying to leave town, but I seem to be caught in some trouble between the red and white factions—some red soldiers tried to harm me, though I did nothing to them. And there are other men looking for me as well, people I don't want to meet. . . ."

". . . So we need to reckon out the best way for him to get out of the Squared," Gally finished for him.

"The squared?" Paul was confused, but the bishop seemed to understand.

"Ah, yes. Well, what sort of moves do you make?" He squinted for a moment, then lifted to his eye the monocle which had been dangling on its ribbon down the expanse of his belly. In the bishop's pudgy fingers it seemed a mere chip of glass. "It's hard to tell, since you are an outsider like Gally and his tatterdemalions. Hmmmm. You have something of the kern about you, yet something of the horseman as well. You might be another thing entirely, of course, but such speculation as to locomotion would be fruitless for me—like asking a fish whether it would prefer to travel by coach or by velocipede, if you see what I mean. Harrum, harrum."

Paul was lost, but he had been warned that the bishop was prone to talk. He put on an attentive look.

"Bring that over here, boy—the large one." Humphrey gestured. Gally sprang to do his bidding, tottering back with a leather-bound book almost as big as he was. With Paul's help, they opened it across the arms of the bishop's chair. Paul was expecting a map, but to his astonishment the open pages contained nothing but a grid of alternating colored squares, each one full of strange notations and small diagrams.

"Now then, let me see. . . ." The bishop traced his way across the grid with a broad forefinger. "The most obvious course would seem to be for you to hasten here, catty-cornered to us. But then, I have always favored bold diagonals, at least since my investiture. Harrum. However, there have been reports of an unpleasantly savage beast in that vicinity, so perhaps that should not be your primary choice. But you are rather hemmed in at the moment. The queen has a castle not far from here, and I take it you would prefer not to meet with her minions, hmmm?" He turned a shrewd look on Paul, who shook his head. "I thought not. And the lady herself visits this area here with some frequency. She moves very swiftly, so you would do well not to arrange any long journeys through her favorite territory, even should she prove to be temporarily absent"

The bishop leaned back, making his sturdy chair squeak. He gestured for Gally to take the book away, which the boy groaningly did.

"I must cogitate," the fat man said, and let suety eyelids descend. He was silent for so long that Paul began to think he might have fallen asleep, and took the opportunity to look around the room. Besides the bishop's large collection of handsomely bound books there were also all manner of curious things lining the walls, bottles full of dried plants, bones, and even complete skeletons of unfamiliar creatures, bits of twinkling gemstone. All alone on one shelf stood a huge jar containing living insects, some that looked like crusts of bread, others that resembled nothing so much as puddings. As he watched the strange creatures climbing over each other in the stoppered jar, Paul felt a pang of hunger which was followed a moment later by a surge of nausea. He was hungry, but not that hungry.

"While there is a great deal to be said for the order which Her Scarlet Majesty has brought to us during this extended period of check," the bishop said abruptly, making Paul jump, "there is also something to be said for the more laissez-faire attitudes of her predecessor. Therefore, while I myself have excellent relations with our ruler—as I also did with the previous administration—I can understand that you may not be so fortunate." Humphrey stopped and took a deep draught of air, as though struck breathless by his own admirable rhetoric. "If you wish to avoid the attentions of our vermilion monarch, I suggest you must take the first alternative I proposed. You can then pass through that square and find yourself directly at the border of our land. The terrible beast said to inhabit the area is doubtless a phantasy of the peasantry, who are famously prone to enliven their dull and rusticated routine with such tales. I will draw you a map. You can be there before sunset. Carpe diem, young man." He spread his hands contentedly on the arms of his wide chair. "Boldness is all."

While Gally scurried to find the bishop's pen and paper, Paul seized the chance for information. He had been traveling in fog, figuratively and literally, too much of late. "What is the name of this place?"

"Why, it is sometimes referred to as the Eight Squared, at least in the oldest and most learned of tomes. But those of us who have always lived here do not often find cause to refer to it, since we are in the midst of it! Rather like a bird, do you see, when asked to define the sky. . . ."

Paul hurried to ask him another question. "And you were once on good terms with . . . the White King?"

"Queen. None of us has ever met the somnolent seigneurs of our humble territory—they are rather absentee landlords. No, it is the ladies, bless them both, who have traditionally kept the order within the Eight Squared while their husbands stayed close to home."

"Ah. Well, if you were on good terms with the White Queen, but the Red Queen now rules the land, how do you manage to be her friend as well?"

The bishop looked a trifle annoyed. "Respect, young man. In a single word, that is it. Her Scarlet Majesty relies on my judgment—and I am consulted on things secular as well as superworldly, I might add—and thus I am possessed of a rather unique status."

Paul was not satisfied. "But if the Red Queen finds you've helped me, despite the fact that her soldiers might have been looking for me, won't she be annoyed? And if the White Queen ever gains back her power, won't she be furious with you for being so close with her enemy?"

Now Humphrey seemed truly put out. His sparse eyebrows moved together and tilted sharply downward over the bridge of his nose. "Young man, it does not become you to speak of things beyond your expertise, whatever may be the current fashion. However, in the interest of beginning an education which you obviously sorely need, I will explain something." He cleared his throat just as Gally reappeared bearing a plume and a large sheet of foolscap.

"I found them, Bishop."

"Yes, that's fine, boy. Now hush." The bishop briefly fixed his small eyes on Paul before allowing them to roam once more. "I am a respected man, and I dare not, for the good of the land, throw my not inconsiderable weight behind either one faction or the other. For factions are impermanent, even ephemeral, while the rock upon which my bishopric is founded is made of the sniff of eternity. So, if I may create an analogy, my position is that of someone who sits upon a wall. Such a perch might seem dangerous to one who, without my experience and natural sense of balance, gazes up at me from below, in fact, to such a one, a man such as I might seem in imminent peril of a great . . . downfalling. Ah, but the view from up here, from inside here," he tapped his hairless head, "is quite different, I assure you. I am, as it were, made in the perfect shape for wall-sitting. My Master has designed me, as it were, to balance permanently between two unacceptable alternatives."

"I see," said Paul, who could think of nothing else to say.

The bishop appeared to be in a much better mood after explaining. He rapidly sketched a map, which he handed over with a flourish. Paul thanked him, then he and Gally left the tiny castle and thumped back across the drawbridge.

"Leave the door open," Bishop Humphrey called after them. "It is too nice a day to miss, and after all, I need fear no one!"

Looking down as they thumped across the drawbridge, Paul saw that the moat was very shallow. A man could walk across it and barely get his ankles wet.

"I told you he'd have the answer you needed," Gally said cheerfully.

"Yes," said Paul, "I can see he's the kind of fellow who has answers to things."

 

It took most of the afternoon to walk back. By the time they reached the Oysterhouse, the sun had vanished behind the forest. Paul was looking forward to a chance to sit down and rest his legs.

The door swung inward on Gally's first knock.

"Curse those addlepates," the boy said. "Larking about and they don't remember a thing I've told them. Miyagi! Chesapeake!"

There was no answer but echoes. As Paul followed the boy down the hallway, the sound of their footsteps as stark as drumbeats, he felt a tightening around his heart. There was a strange smell in the air, a sea-smell, salty and unpleasantly, sweetly sour. The house was very, very quiet.

It was silent in the main room as well, but this time no one was hiding. The children lay scattered across the floor, some struck down and left to lie in strange postures like frozen dancers, others piled carelessly together in the corners, things that had been used and cast away. They had not merely been killed, but violated in some way that Paul could not completely understand. They had been opened up, shucked, and emptied. The sawdust on the floor had clumped in sodden red balls and still had not sopped up all the red, which gleamed, sticky-shiny in the failing light.

Gally fell to his knees, moaning, his eyes so wide with horror that Paul feared they might burst from his skull. Paul wanted to pull him away, but found he could not move.

Written on the wall above one of the largest piles, arching above the pale, spattered arms and legs and blind, wide-mouthed faces, smeared across the boards in sloppy scarlet letters, was the word "CUSTARD."