“I see the world and the moon,” said Jan, “dancing around a pain-bright sun, with other worlds and moons of amber, mauve, and lichen-green, both larger and smaller, some nearer and some farther away.”

“And now?”

They pulled back rapidly. The sun grew very small, a yellow glint among the other, whiter stars. The gulf between the pricks of light was black as nothing. The burning stars floated like firefish in the void.

“I see the sun, small as a star among other stars, some blue-white, some rosy, some red-yellow.”

“Your sun is a star,” the presence told him. “And?”

They moved back now in a headlong rush.

“I see,” said Jan, softly, “the stars in a great swirl, slowly turning like some vast, spiral flower; and in the distance, I see more starflowers, some blue, some red—many of them, and all turning.”

“So,” the presence told him, “now you have seen more than any living creature from your world has ever seen.”

Jan gazed at the fiery pinwheels arrayed around him, all leisurely spinning. He watched what seemed a long time, saying nothing, until at last he felt himself beginning to descend. The swirls of stars below grew greater, brighter, enveloping him. He struggled, uselessly.

“But,” he cried out, “is there not more?”

The presence was still beside him, had never left him. “Infinitely more, Aljan,” she told him. “And you shall see it all, one day. But now our time is short.”

Jan cast a long, longing glance after the bright, turning swirls, contracting to the size of stars among the other stars. They were nearing his own sun now, with its own little dance of worlds. The closeness of their passing beside the yellow star made Jan’s blood sizzle. He and his guide hovered above the swirling, blue-white planet, its moon overlying it like a disc upon a disc.

“Why have you shown me this thing?” he asked.

“What have I shown you?” countered his guide.

“You….” He faltered. “You have shown me the great dance, the Cycle—the one the Renegade spoke of, the one beyond even our own moon and sun. You have shown me the stars’ dance.”

“Aye,” the presence said. “ And what is my Dance?”

“It is motion,” Jan told her, “energy, turning.”

“It is rest and stillness also,” she replied.

“Is it life, then?” Jan answered. “All things that live.”

“Life, aye,” the presence nodded. “And….”

“And?” Jan murmured.

“The wyverns also are part of my Cycle, and murderous gryphons and wheeling kites. Fire which can destroy and the Serpent-cloud which flings all things to dust.”

“Death, too,” ventured Jan, “is in the Dance.”

A little silence then.

“Why have you brought me here?” Jan started. “No one of my people ever has had such a vision as this.”

“Ah, so you see this for a vision.” The presence smiled; he felt her smile. “Well, you are a dreamer, well used to dreams.”

He denied it with his thoughts. “I never dream.”

The presence laughed. “Jah-lila took away the waking memory of your dreams. This day you have won them back again.”

Jan shook himself. “Tell me why….”

Again the presence’s quiet laugh. “So importunate! But is this not what you have always wanted, to apprehend the workings of the Dance? You have looked for it only half knowing, and found it only in little bits: in the roiling of stormclouds and the workings of fire, in the fluting of pans dancing under the moon—in the depths of danger in a gryphon’s eye. In the rolling vastness of grasslands that call out, ‘What lies beyond me? Come see!’ “

Her voice had grown so familiar now, as though she knew him to the marrow of the bone. He had not known even a god could read his inmost heart.

“What are you, then?”

“I am Mystery,” she told him, “that goads intelligent beings to understanding. I am Curiosity. I am Solution. I am what is, demanding to be known. Those things that you have always been asking, I have answered now, a little.”

“No!” cried Jan. “You have given me only questions, a thousand more.”

“Good,” the presence laughed. “Spend your energies seeking their answers, not on colts’ games and trickstering.” Jan flinched a little beneath her bluntness. “Understand things, Aljan,” his guide told him, “by learning to think as they do: enter in. Study the world and see how it works—make it work your own ends, if you can.”

“But what are my ends to be?” Jan burst out.

A long silence. At last she said, “I leave that to you.”

“Then why was I alone chosen to see these things?”

“Many have I given this vision to, Jan,” she said. “Though none till now have I let return.”

“But I will return.”

He felt her nod of affirmation and fell silent then. He could think of nothing. He understood nothing.

“Come now,” his guide replied, a little mocking. “You cannot be so dumbstruck as all that. Have I not whispered all your life that you were born to see great things?”

Jan felt his mind constrict. “Great things,” he murmured. “Will I…will I see the coming of the Firebringer?”

“You have already,” his guide returned. “The Firebringer is among you now.”

“Is it…?” Jan stumbled to a stop. He hardly dared say it. “Will my father be the one?”

The presence seemed to turn away a little then. “Perhaps,” she said, indifferently. “Who knows?”

“You do!” cried Jan.

The goddess laughed. “Aye. I do that. But that is not yet yours to know.”

“My people need a Firebringer,” Jan insisted. “To rout the wyrms. The Vale is growing too close for us, and the gryphon said….”

“I know what the gryphon said.”

A sudden urgency burned in Jan. “Her people hate us. They are planning to fly against us and drive us from the Vale….”

“Have you told your father that?” the presence interrupted.

Jan shook his head, startled. The gryphon had charmed him—he realized that now—telling him while he gazed into her eye as in a dream. He had not remembered until this moment.

The goddess said, “But if you won back the Hallow Hills before that time, the gryphons could have your Vale and welcome; there would be no need to war.” It was as if she had spoken his own thoughts back at him. “Is that what you were beginning to say?”

“My father is a great warrior,” Jan answered her. “He could rout the wyverns from the Hallow Hills. But the legend says he must have fire. The wyverns’ dens would go up in a blaze if….”

“There are many kinds of fire, Aljan.”

Jan hardly heard. “But my father knows nothing at all of fire. I am the only unicorn who knows—but I know nothing, hardly anything!”

“Then you’d best make a study of it, hadn’t you?” the presence remarked. “You’ve only a few years’ time before the gryphons fly. List, now,” his guide said suddenly. “The time grows very short. Ask me what question you will, and I will answer.”

“I…” started Jan. He could feel the vision’s end looming, and burst out with the first question that came to him. “Why do the gryphons hate us?”

“You already know the beginning of that.”

“Why do the pans speak so differently from us, then?” He struggled. Time slipped from him. His body burned.

“Again,” the goddess told him, “you may find that for yourself. Hist, be quick.”

“Then, then…” stammered Jan. He racked his thoughts for some riddle worthy of a god. “Why must we bind ourselves to the Circle of Warriors?”

“Who tells you you must? Not I. I do not make kings, or Rings of Law. Those things are yours to make, or to unmake, just as you choose.”

“Why does my mother tell me to follow my own heart, not Korr’s?”

“Ask her,” the goddess said.

“Who is the Red Mare the Renegades spoke of?”

“Ask her.”

Jan felt himself beginning to fall. He struggled desperately to remain aloft. “But why does your voice sound so familiar to me? I have never met you before in dreams.”

“Whom do I sound like?” the presence demanded, bearing him up for a moment more.