But Teal wasn’t listening. “What did you mean, ‘no human’?”

Allel smiled at Teal. “Nobody here pays much attention to mummy-cows, you know. They’re taken for granted… just walking meat and milk dispensers, a source of muscle power… but they were a real novelty to me when I arrived. And I’ve spent a lot of my time listening to their songs.”

“But mummy-cows are so simple.”

“Maybe. But they’re almost as old as mankind. No? And they’ve remembered some things we seem to have forgotten.”

Teal grabbed his grandmother’s arm, forgetting his pain. “Do they say where the door is? Tell me.”

“Not quite. Take it easy, now. But… there is a song about a place, somewhere to the north of this world. A place called the Eight Rooms.

“Seven of those rooms are strange enough, the song says. And when you’ve found your way through them to the Eighth—”

“What? What’s in the Eighth?”

Allel’s grooved face was neutral.

Teal found his mouth gaping. “I’ve got to go there,” he said. “That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it? I have to find these Eight Rooms.” He pushed back the blanket.

Allel’s thin hands fluttered against Teal’s shoulders. “Now, not so fast. You’re not going anywhere for a while—”

“Or ever.”

Allel jumped. The new voice was flat and harsh; a massive figure swathed in quilted leather stood over Teal’s bunk.

“Damen.” Teal subsided back with a sinking heart. “How long have you been in here? How much did you hear?”

“Enough. I’m surprised you didn’t notice me coming in; I nearly blew the damn lamps out.” Damen’s bearded face was full of stern concern. “Grandmother, you should be ashamed, pumping his head full of this rubbish. Brother, I’m telling you now you’re not leaving this village again. Not ever; not while I’m alive — not unless you get yourself exiled, anyway…

“Damn it, man, Erwal’s a good woman.” His voice grew soft with unconscious envy. “Yes, a good woman. And she’s bearing your kid. You can’t go chasing sunbeams anymore.”

Allel wiped off her stone knife and began picking at her fingernails.

Damen squeezed his brother’s shoulder with his great mat of a hand. “You just work at getting healthy.” He stood straight and walked to the teepee flap. “I’m sorry to be so tough, little brother,” he said awkwardly, “but it’s for your own good.” He pulled the flap closed behind him.

Allel cackled sardonically. “Now, where have I heard that before? People always mean so well… but we go nowhere, while the ice closes all around us.”

Teal lay back and stared at the darkness beyond the teepee’s chimney flue. “So that’s it. Damen will never let me out of here.” A despair as complete as the world’s roof settled over him. “It’s over, then.”

“Not necessarily.” Allel’s voice was muffled.

Teal turned — and then began struggling off the pallet. “Grandmother, what have you done?”

The stone knife lay on the mat, streaked with blood. A great gash opened Allel’s face from temple to throat. The old woman swayed slightly, blood pooling around her neck. “Take the knife,” she said hoarsely. “I’ll say it was you.”

“But…”

“In my mother’s day, they’d have killed you for this, you know? But now, as times have grown harsher, we’ve had to work out laws to control each other. So they’ll be civilized… They’ll exile you. Just like Damen said. You can go where you want.”

“But—”

“No buts. I’ll make sure Erwal is cared for.” She slumped forward. “Take the knife,” she whispered. “Do it.”

Involuntarily, she cried out. Blood looped over her mouth.

Outside the teepee there were running footsteps, lamps, shouts. Teal struggled across the mat and put his arm around the thin shoulders…

…and grasped the knife.

They let him recover from his balloon fall. They gave him a suit of quilted leather, containers for water, flints, a coil of rope… they didn’t want to think they were sending him to his death.

Although, of course, that was exactly what they were doing.

On his last night Erwal came to his guarded teepee. She pressed a bundle wrapped in skin into his hands — and then spat in his face, and hurried away.

Teal was twenty years old. He felt something soft dying inside him.

Inside the skin was his grandmother’s knife, cleaned of blood. Teal tucked it into his belt and tried to sleep.

At dawn, most of the village turned out to watch him leave. Teal stared at the slack faces, the children with limbs like twigs, and beyond them the huddle of shabby little teepees, the piles of lichen, a half-butchered mummy-cow carcass. Once, he thought, we could build worlds. We even built this boxworld. Now: now, look at us.

There was no sign of Damen, or Erwal, or Allel.

Teal turned away, pulling his hood closed against the cold.

His feet were already aching by the time he passed the bridge anchor. There’d been no will to rebuild the world-bridge, and the rope lay crumpled amid the frost.

He felt as if he were walking through a great ill-lit room. Dead heather crumbled beneath his feet, gray in the ruddy gloom. Home, above him, was a mirrored roof as bleak as the ground beneath him.

Wind sprawled across the flat landscape. He walked until his legs were numb with fatigue.

When night fell he huddled beneath a shriveled cow-tree and sucked sour milk from its bark nipples. Then he buried himself in a rough bed of leaves, clutching the stone knife to his chest and determining to think of nothing until dawn.

There was a rustle under the wind. A warm breath, not unpleasantly scented—

He snapped awake and scrambled backwards out of his nest. In the starless gloom a huge shape hovered uncertainly.

He held out the knife with both hands. “Who is it?”

The voice was ill-formed, soft, and infinitely reassuring. “It iss me… Orange. I am so-ssorry to wake you…”

Teal let out a deep breath and lowered the knife. He found himself laughing softly, his eyes wet. How absurd.

Orange moved closer to the cow-tree, and Teal snuggled into her warm coat.

After that he slept for most of the night.

In the morning he breakfasted from the food teats clustered over Orange’s lower body. There were milk and water nipples, and meat buds that could be snapped off, without discomfort to Orange.

They set off just after dawn, with Teal munching on a still warm bud. Orange wore a saddle-shaped pannier into which Teal loaded his meager possessions.

The morning was chill but comparatively bright, and Home was a shining carpet overhead. Teal felt his spirits lifting a little.

“Orange… why did you follow me?”

“Your gra-grandmother told me where you were going. So I decided to follow.”

“Yes, but why?”

“To… help.”

He smiled and wrapped a hand in the coarse hair behind her ear. “Well, I’m glad you’re here.”

That evening Orange used her articulated trunk to gather handfuls of moss. She packed his aching feet with it and then licked it off. “My… saliva has healing pro-properties,” she said.

Teal lay back against her fur. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you…”

The reddening world folded away, and he slept.

They came to an abandoned City.

Teal walked through arches, into low cylindrical buildings. The walls were as smooth as skin and knife-thin, showing no signs of age. But the interiors were unlit and musty.

They walked on despondently.

“Did grandmother tell you what I’m trying to find?”

“Yess. The… Eight Roomss.”

“The trouble is I’ve no idea how to get there… or even how we’ll recognize it when we find it. We’re walking at random.”

Orange hissed, “From the ss-stories I have heard, you will… know it wh-when you ssee it…”

Teal looked at her carefully. Was there a trace of amusement in that clumsy voice?