Questioner and her associates drew closer to observe the eventual emergence of two undistinguished and indistinguishable young men who gagged and gasped upon the shore, but gave off no detectable odor. The pond glittered, made a strangled noise, and spat a mouthful of clothing onto the shore beside them.
Questioner approached the two, prodding Bane with one foot. “How are you, boy? Are you all in one piece?”
“I’m all right,” said Bane. He gagged, rolled over, then crawled toward his sodden trousers. “I’m hungry. We haven’t had a decent meal since we left … wherever it was. Where was it, Dyre?”
“House Genevois,” said Dyre, trying to find the sleeves in his wet shirt. “Haven’t had anything good to eat since then.”
“And what are you doing here?” asked Questioner.
“Damfino,” said Bane, staring about himself in wonder. “Hey, lookit all the Timmys with no clothes on!”
“Do you young men by any chance remember Marool Mantelby?” asked Calvy in an innocent voice.
“Or someone called Ashes?” asked Madame.
Bane and Dyre looked at one another, mystified, then back at the group. “Sorry, don’t think we’ve met anybody like that.”
Madame shrugged. D’Jevier shook her head. Onsofruct narrowed her nostrils and stared through slitted eyes. They were Bane and Dyre, truly, but they weren’t the same young men.
“Blue-bodying?” D’Jevier asked Onsofruct.
“I see no point in it,” said Onsofruct, turning to Calvy and Simon. “Do you?”
The two men shook their heads, then stopped, fixing their gaze toward the chasm. “Look,” breathed Calvy, pointing down the almost invisible scar where the trench had been.
Laboring toward them over the lip of the chasm came four trudging figures. Ellin and Bao and Ornery and Mouche. Not exactly Mouche. Mouche with a billow of emerald hair that moved like seagrass. Mouche, smiling quietly. Mouche-timmy. Mouche-Flowing Green.
None of them spoke. The four approached, plodding wearily, yet with glowing faces.
“Now we are having time!” Bao called to Questioner. “Yes? Time for tunneling out the Quaggi egg? For lifting Quaggima?”
Mouche stopped where he was, leaning against the rock as if exhausted, but the other three came on to meet the group advancing toward them.
“Were you seeing dance, Questioner?” asked Bao with a wide grin. “We are being damn sexy.”
“I’m afraid not,” she replied. “No one up here did. We heard climactic music, we saw whirlwinds and surf.”
“It was all very dramatic,” said Calvy. “But not at all sexually explicit.”
“Good.” Ellin sighed. “At the time, I thought it was very beautiful, but I wouldn’t have wanted it to be … observed, or even recorded. Besides, in stories it’s nicer when they leave a good deal to the imagination.”
“Tell me,” Madame whispered to her. “What actually happened?”
Ellin and Bao struggled to find words, glancing at one another. Finally, Ornery said, “The way I remember it is that first we sort of dissolved and then we sort of aggregated, and the thing we aggregated into was put together with all of Ellin’s romantic notions and Bao’s womanly beings and all the satisfactions I’d ever had, plus everything Kaorugi knew about the Quaggima, plus everything Mouche had learned about lovemaking, and then that being dived over the cliff, and we made love to the Quaggima. That kept it distracted while all the pulling and tugging was going on, and afterward, it went to sleep. That’s all.”
“And I’d have been embarrassed, really, except it wasn’t me, or Mouche, or any of us,” murmured Ellin. “It was something else entirely.”
“What happened with Mouche?” asked Madame.
Ellin nodded. “That was a little surprising. When it was all finished, Kaorugi separated us out again, but not Mouche and Flowing Green. Flowing Green was always sort of part of him, so Kaorugi—or maybe Bofusdiaga, I’m not quite sure—left them together.”
“How very strange,” said Questioner.
Bao shrugged. “Being frank, Questioner, it is not seeming that strange to me. After all this doing and dancing and being, I am regarding gender things in a new light. Both are being much more capacious than I was ever thinking!”
“We owe you a debt of gratitude,” said Questioner, meaning it sincerely.
Ellin shook herself and spoke again. “That’s true. But you needn’t owe us, Questioner. When we’ve had time to consider it, we may ask you a favor.”