"See, see!" the girl said. Then she hopped down onto the deck and spread her wings, and said, "Go sea!" After that the two started pulling apart. (This will not be the way it really was, but as close as I can come.)

The bird was in front, and it started getting smaller till it looked like it had on our boat and back on Lizard. When it got smaller you could see the girl behind it. Then she stood up, a skinny girl with an angry face and straight black hair. She said, "No here. No god. Go sea," and some other things. It scared the bird and it flew away, circling up above the boat.

"Scylla here possessed Oreb," Father told me. "It took me nearly a year to realize what had happened because she exercised no influence-or almost none-once she had brought him back. When I returned to Blue, he went away at once to search for a Window for her, or anything that might function as one. They found none, and she brought him back, earning my gratitude-though she already had it. I grew up in her Sacred City of Viron, after all."

Scylla snapped, "Gyoll? It is? Nessus? It is? Where is?"

Father nodded. "Ask the man at the wheel. He'll tell you, surely."

"Plain man!"

"Exactly," Father said, "and plain men know such things. They must."

The hawk-nosed man muttered, "I don't care where it is." Then he threw back his head and shouted, "I want to stay!" at the dark sky.

"You may not, Juganu," Father told him, "and in fact we're going back right now, all of us." He took my arm and Juganu's, and told Juganu to take Babbie's and me to take Scylla's. She tried to hit me and I caught her wrist. Then we fell, not up or down but to one side, faster and faster, rolling over.

I woke up on deck with Babbie licking my face. I thought at first he had hurt me because it stung, but what really happened was that I had fallen and hit it. I got in my sea anchor then and put out sail.

When Father came up out of the cabin, I said I saw now that we just fell down like that wherever we happened to be, and if he had told me he would have saved me a pretty good bruise.

"I would not," he said. "You would have disobeyed me in any case."

I had a lot of questions, and I knew he was angry, so I thought I would volunteer to cook and made a fire in the sandbox. It was too early, but he knew I did not like to cook (he had done all the cooking) and I wanted to show I would try to help without being told. While I got the fire going, I was planning what I thought we ought to have, keeping in mind what I could cook and get right and make taste good, because I knew I was not as good at it as he was. I knew what we had, and we had not done any fishing, so I decided potatoes, bacon, and onions; and when the fire was going pretty well I went below to fetch them.

Juganu was sitting on my bunk with his head in his hands. I told him to get off and stay out of my way.

He said, "Now that you know, you hate me."

I said, "I knew all along, and I don't." The first part was a lie, because I had not known he was an inhumu until we got him on the boat and Father told me. But it is what I said.

"That place…"

"It's where we real people come from." I thumped my chest. "I guess that's why you're one of us there, and Babbie too."

I had not thought it would bother him, but it did. He said it was what he was in his heart, that the blond man on the deck of the big boat was the real Juganu, the man he was in dreams.

I asked, "Do you really dream you're a human man like me?"

"Yes!"

"I don't believe you." I pushed him out of the way so I could open up the little cupboard where we kept most of the food. I got out potatoes, enough for father and me with some left over for Babbie, and a slab of bacon, onions, lard, and stuff.

I turned around and Juganu said, "Sometimes I do. Sometimes I really do." He followed me up on deck.

Father said I had brought too much, but I explained I had wanted to give some to Babbie and the bird, and Babbie would eat a lot. That was the first time I really thought about the bird and the girl; I was not even sure that they had come back with us. Then the bird flew down out of the rigging somewhere and perched on his shoulder. I looked around for the girl because I thought she would want to eat, too.

"We will not have to feed Scylla," he told me, "though she is surely here. Will you speak with us, Scylla?"

He had turned his head so as to look at his bird, and it said, "Bird talk?"

"Certainly, if you wish to."

"Good bird!"

"She is possessing Oreb, you see. She is in his mind-what there is of it. More accurately, there is an image of her there which she herself placed there; that image was the Scylla we saw on the Red Sun Whorl. You won't have forgotten what your mother and I told you concerning Scylla and Echidna-how they tried to destroy Great Pas, and the vengeance he took. Are you going to boil those potatoes you're peeling?"

I said I had not planned to.

"Do it. Fill a pan with seawater and bring it to a boil. Drop them in for ten minutes before you fry them. They're old-the new crop's not in yet-and that will help." In all the time I knew him, he never looked less like our real father or sounded more like him.

Juganu began to explain the same things to Father that he had to me; but Father cut him off, saying he already knew.

I said, "My sister was an inhuma, Juganu. Her name was Jahlee, and she and Father did that a lot."

He said, "She was a young woman there, you see. Quite an attractive young woman."

Then Juganu thanked Father for taking him there. "It was the high point of my life," he said. He looked just like a little old man with gray skin and no teeth; and I wondered how old he really was, because the blond man with the big hook nose had not looked as old as Father.

Father said, "You mustn't think that it will never happen again. Would you like to go back tonight?"

I used to watch Sinew play tricks on Mother, and Hide and I played some good ones too, but I had never seen anyone look that surprised. "Will you? Oh, Rajan! Rajan, I-I…"

Father put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll go after Hoof and I eat."

"No sea!" the bird objected.

"No, the boat will not have reached the sea yet; but it will be well for me to get a better feel for its speed. It is sailing with the current, of course, so it should make good time."

After that we were all quiet, thinking, except that he told me to use a little celery salt instead of the yellow sea-salt I brought with the pepper. "But only a little. And you should be starting your bacon, and browning the onions. Cut up the onions now. Cubes, not rings."

Then he said, "I should explain to you both why we cannot go to the sea directly, as I did to Scylla several days ago. In order to go to a place we must have with us someone who has been there, or at least been in the area. I don't know why that is so, but that is how it seems to be. I can go to Green-as I have at times-because I have been there in the flesh. I can go to the Red Sun Whorl, too, as we did a few minutes ago, because Jahlee and I went there in the company of Duko Rigoglio of Soldo. He had been a Sleeper on the Whorl, and so had been there in the flesh. I cannot take us to the sea there, because I have never been on it. Scylla has, to be sure; but ultimately Scylla is not among us."

His bird croaked. But it was only bird noise, not a word.

"There is another factor. When we go, we often seem to arrive in a place resembling the one we left. That was why I lured you onto this boat, Juganu. I had promised Scylla that I would take her to the sea of her native whorl if I could. Once I walked along a road that runs beside Gyoll and looked at the boats plying its water, so I hoped that if we left Blue from a boat we would arrive aboard a boat there. So it proved. That it was going downstream was sheer good fortune. Slice your potatoes. Be careful, though. They'll still be hot."