Nonetheless, for now, these tim-timkwi, those called by infant mankind “Timmys,” remained in the courtyard while Flowing Green kept her eyes on the tower window, which until some days ago had been almost closed but now was quite widely ajar.
“Tim saw his light again tonight,” the green-haired one said. “Tim saw it, when tim-tim were come inside.”
“Yes,” the speaker was answered by another who stood beside tim. “He comes every night.”
“This is the one Corojum spoke of,” said Flowing Green.
An older voice spoke from shadows. “Who knows what is to come? Not even Corojumi, dance weavers; Bofusdiaga, sun singer; Joggiwagga, moon watchers, setters up of stones.”
Silence. Then the whisper from another, “Niasa is restless and She is awakening. We cannot settle Her.”
“I have seen what I have seen in the dreaming time,” sang Flowing Green in a long, sustained flow of notes, a minor strain as plaintive as a nightbird.
“And who is tim to dream?” asked another, almost angrily. “Who is tim to say T, T, as though tim were a mankind? Is this one standing here a many-times-rejoined one? Is tim Bofusdiaga? Is tim Kaorugi Itself! Who is Flowing Green to know of dreaming?”
“I am who I am,” said Flowing Green. “I was made to watch these mankinds. I have the juice of one of them within me. I was created for this purpose. I have watched, I have learned. When I have been remade, what I had learned was not taken from me. I say this Mouche is the needful one.”
“Already lost are the gemmed gardens under Mistmount,” sang the old voice from the corner shadows. “Fallen are the stone skies of Great Gaman and all the living stars that shone within them. If we do not find the dance, all will be lost.”
“Tim-tim still have some of it,” mused Flowing Green.
“In fragments,” said the voice from the corner, with only a hint of resentment. “What tim-tim have is thin, too thin, like gauze, like mist, like the wandering sound of little winds, unsure and unsettled. The power of it has leaked away. And now the gathering approaches, the Joggiwagga are setting up the stones, the tide comes with the moons; Niasa turns in sleep and She dreams restless dreams. The world trembles. Already the waking has begun.”
The corner tim spoke the truth. Even mankind had heard the word being called in the wilderness and had seen the pillars erected on the shores. Mankind did not know it was the Great Eiger who called or Joggiwagga who read the moon shadows. Mankind spoke of volcanoes and earthquakes, but mankind knew it was happening. Destruction threatened. Not at this moment, no. Nor tomorrow. But soon.
“I say once more, this one who watches us is the key,” said Flowing Green in a firm voice that said tim did not care whether they believed or not. “A Corojum spoke to me saying: This one, Mouchidi, is not jong. He may not go gau when the waters close over him. These were the words of the Corojum, and when I had heard the words of the Corojum, I dreamed of myself in the Fauxi-dizalonz, and this Mouchidi, he was with me.”
Only shamed silence greeted this. Such a thing was an abomination. Bofusdiaga had tried it with the jong long ago, and it had been a disaster. Surely Bofusdiaga would not allow it again! The tim-timkwi began to murmur, but the voice from the corner came again, admonishing.
“Bofusdiaga made strangely this one called Flowing Green, this one who says, ‘I,’ like mankind. Perhaps Flowing Green is a new thing in an old form.”
“Or perhaps Flowing Green is timself gau, bent, a monster,” said another-tim.
“Tim-tim will know soon enough,” murmured the corner voice ironically.
There was a wave of bitter laughter, a sound that overflowed the one little house to run among the other little houses in a freshet of real mirth as tim-tim repeated what tim had said. “Soon enough, too soon, enough.”
“Tim-tim will know,” said Flowing Green in her dreaming voice. “And I will know. And I will remember my dreaming and the words of the Corojum and this watcher from the wall.”