as if it had always been pain masquerading as enjoyment and now he was on the
other side of that line. He came up the steps, grabbed the latch with all his
strength, expecting a locked door.
It gave way and let him in. A fat woman stood in the hall, mouth agape. He never
focused on her, only lifted his eyes toward the stairs and the next floor and
went that way, knowing where he was going because there was at the moment only
one focus in all creation. He grabbed the bannister and started up, blind in the
shaft of sunlight that flooded in there through a high small window, and feeling
the pounding of his blood as if he breathed awareness in with every breath, like
the dust that danced in the light.
“Ischade!” he cried. It was a wounded sound. “Ischade!”
The woods were held in a terrible stillness. Janni stopped, having worked
himself to the edge again, that margin where the sunlight and the meadow began.
But the sun was surely sinking. It was sinking rapidly, and the breeze had
stopped.
He looked down at the stream which always guided him and it was still. The water
had stopped running at all, and stood invisible except for the sky-reflection
and the light-reflection on its surface, which showed the maze of interlocked
and breathless branches overhead.
A leaf fell and another and another, disturbing that surface, breaking up the
mirror in which he and the sky were true. It began to be a shower of leaves,
falling everywhere in the forest.
“Niko!” he cried. He abandoned hope of attack. He tried to wake the sleeper,