“Everything! My room. My paints. All the nice places you put on my window scene.”
“Do you miss those things?”
He leaned back against her with a little squirm of pleasure and comfort. “I like it here. Window scenes are nice, but you can’t touch them. You can’t be in them. I like real fish. But you want to go back and I want to be with you.”
There were tears in my throat. Stars fragmented in my sight. I blinked my eyes clear.
She asked, “How do the other Leelies feel?”
“Most of us don’t remember. I’m the only one who really remembers. You know.”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
His little voice was matter-of-fact as he said, “It depends on how big a piece we got made from or maybe which piece we got made from. I got made from Leely head. That’s why I remember. The other ones, they were made from Leely legs or Leely blood or Leely guts. They’ve got good brains, but they don’t remember some old things like I do.”
He turned to hug her, then went on. “I remember lots of things, Lutha Lutha Tallstaff sister mother love. I remember Trompe. I remember when we met Saluez of the shadow, and how we got here. I remember Behemoth.”
She took a deep breath. “You’d probably be fine here, all you Leelies, whether I was here or not.”
His face clouded. I had never seen him wear that expression before, though it was one common to other children. The look of a child fearing loneliness. The look of a child afraid.
He put his hands to her face, whispering, “I’d be lonesome. I need somebody to talk to. I want to be with you.”
After a time she rose and walked back to the camp, Leely riding on her shoulders, his arms wrapped around her head. Snark and the ex-king were standing outside the dormitory, waiting for us. Lutha took no notice of them. She went on by, as though she would go on walking forever, the child smiling and kicking his heels, his tiny hands clasped around her brow.
The journey from Perdur Alas to Dinadh was not a long one. It brought me, Saluez, almost full circle in my journey. I arrived as outlanders do, through Simidi-ala.
So much had changed.
So little had changed.
Poracious asked the people at the port about the Kachis. The people at the port furrowed their brows and asked in return: What about the Kachis? Had something changed about the Kachis?
What about Tahs-uppi? Poracious asked.
It had been successful, they told her. Additional days had been drawn from the omphalos and time ran once more in its accustomed course. I heard all this, though the people of Simidi-ala were talking to Poracious, not to me. I was veiled and silent before them. They did not even see me.
“What are you going to do?” Poracious asked me when we were alone once more.
“I’m going to make my way to the nearest hive,” I told her. “Where I will talk with the sisterhood.”
“And what good will that do?” she asked.
I grimaced behind my veil. “Perhaps none. Perhaps a good deal. A few years will tell. What are you going to do?”
“I will do as Snark and Jiacare have said I must. Return to the Alliance and become a preacher. A prophet. A doom crier.”
“What good will that do?” I mocked.
She shrugged. “Perhaps none. Perhaps a great deal. I may be of some help on Prime. If things are going to change, it will have to start there. I will do what I can.”
“Did you learn what happened to Chur Durwen?”
“He made his way here, to Simidi-ala, and from here went back to Collis.” She smiled a strange, harsh smile. “Have you heard of the recent occurrence on Asenagi?”
I raised an eyebrow and waited.
“Asenagi has had a visit from the Gracious One. It—he has spoken to their tribal leaders. They have been promised immortality … ”
I took a deep breath. “In return for?”
“In return for mounting a holy war against nonbelievers, which they readily agreed to do.”