"A round ball of white light, as big as a head, floating at about a man's height, gently as a milkweed seed. It floated to a stop above the cat's head, and then there was a gust of wind and the Light drifted till it hung over Little St. Roy's head. Now, like all his cord, Little St. Roy could see things that no one else saw, and he looked at these signs and waited for what was to happen, which he guessed: and as he sat unmoving, a person followed the globe of light: a tail, lean woman, beak-nosed, her gray hair cut off short.

"'Oh,' she said when she saw Little St. Roy. 'I'm here.'

"'Yes,' said Roy, for he knew now who she was: that she was she whom he had waited for. 'At last.'

"Her huge cat had sunk slowly to the floor and placed his head on his paws, and she went and sat with him, gathering her cloak around her. 'Well,' she said, 'now you must take me within, and call together everyone who should hear what I've come to tell.'

"'Please,' Roy said. 'In a minute I could take you deep within, and I know everyone who should hear your message, who first, who last; but…' Well, the woman waited. The great moon now lit the room and eclipsed her Light. St. Roy spoke at last: 'It's been a long time since the League's meeting, since we learned that someone, or some news would come. It was I who learned that, and told Little Belaire about it, and waited for this day. And what I ask now is just for all that. I would like to know first what the news is. Now, before the others.'

"The woman looked at him a long time, and then laughed gently. 'It was always the story,' she said, 'that the Long League was much feared here, and its news ignored. Has it changed?'

"St. Roy smiled too. 'There are old things,' he said, 'and there are new things. I think the Long League must be changed now too.'

"No,' she said. 'No. There is no new thing with the League any longer. That's what I've come to tell you, as others have gone to tell all the old enemies of the League - everywhere we made enemies in the old, old days-to all of them women have gone to tell them: the League is done. It's all done now. For a long time our strength has withered, as any great strength must and should; and nothing has come up to challenge its strength and make it grow again. The world is different now. What it matters that we all came together to say this I don't know; but perhaps that last acknowledgment is the greatest success. Anyway. That's what I've come for. Just to tell you. The Long League of great memory is dead. My name is Olive, and I've come with this news, and if you'll have me, to stay and help.'

"Then the only noise in the room was the cat's and the moon's."

Painted Red took the claws of her spectacles from behind her ears and wiped them carefully. "What secrets she brought to Roy that Whisper cord inherits, I can't say," she said. "I know this though about Whisper cord: that for them a secret isn't something they won't tell. For them, a secret is something that can't be told."

Seventh Facet

There's a time in some years, after the first frosts, when the sun gets hot again, and summer returns for a time. Winter is coming; you know that from the way the mornings smell, the way the leaves, half-turned to color, are dry and poised to drop. But summer goes on, a small false summer, all the more precious for being small and false. In Little Belaire, we called this time - for some reason nobody now knows - engine summer.

Maybe because summer seemed endless; but in that season of that year it seemed Once a Day and I could never be parted either, any more than Buckle cord could untangle sun from a crystal, no matter what unhappiness we might cause each other, no matter even if we wanted to be parted. When we weren't together we were looking for each other. It isn't strange that you think love, which is so much like a season, will never end; because sometimes you think a season will never end - no matter that you tell yourself you know it will.

In engine summer we went with an old breadman of Bones cord named In a Corner to gather in St. Bea's-bread. He allowed us to come as a favor to Once a Day's Mbaba, whom he had known long; a favor, because we were too young to be much help. We slept with him in his room near the outside, waking when dawn light came through his translucent walls of yellow. A misty engine summer morning, which would turn dry and hot and fine. Once a Day, shivering and yawning at once, stood pressed to me for warmth as we waited in the white dawn for everyone to gather, many carrying long poles with big hooks at their tips. After some head-counting and consultation, we moved away into the woods, following the stream up into the misty, sun-shot forest.

We would reach the stand of bread-trees at sundown, In a Corner thought, at the time when they were largest. "At night when it's cool, they grow smaller," he said. "Like morning glories; except that instead of closing up, they shrink. That's only one of the funny things about them."

"What are the other funny things?" Once a Day asked.

"You'll see," said In a Corner. "This afternoon, tonight. Tomorrow. You'll see all the funny things."

There was no path to follow to the stand; the other breadmen had spread out so that only occasionally did we see one or two moving beside us through the woods. Many besides the speakers smoke St. Bea's-bread, but it remains our secret where it lives, and we were careful not to stamp a path to that place. When we had harvested it and prepared it, then others would come to Belaire to trade for it; which was fun and I guess to everyone's advantage.

We came out of the forest late in the afternoon, came out from under big sighing pines into a wide field of silvery grass stirred by wind. The other breadmen were stretched out in a long line to our right and left, sometimes hidden up to their shoulders, making dark furrows in the grass. There was a high wave in the ground, and on top of it some of the breadmen already stood, waving and shouting to us. "From the top you can see them," In a Corner said; "you hurry on." And we did, racing to the top of the ridge where tall concrete posts stood at intervals like guardians.

"Look," Once a Day said, standing by a concrete post, "oh, look."

Down in a little river valley, sun struck the water, bright as silver. And struck, too, the stand of St. Bea's-bread, which lived there and (I think) nowhere else in this world.

Did you ever blow soap bubbles? When you blow softly, and the soap is sticky, you can grow a great pile of bubbles, large and small, from the cup of the pipe. Well: imagine a pile of bubbles as large as a tree, the big bubbles on the bottom as large as yourself, the small ones at the top smaller than your head, than your hand, trailing off in an undulating tip; a great irregular pile of spheres, seeming as insubstantial as bubbles, but the weight of them great enough to press down the bottom bubbles into elliptical sacks. And imagine them not clear and glassy like soap bubbles, but translucent, the upper sunside of them a pale rose color, the undersides shading into bluegreen at the bottom. And then imagine as many of these piles of bubbles as fir trees in a grove, all leaning gently, bulging and bouncing as in a solemn dance, the ground around them stained colors by the afternoon sun striking through their translucence. That's what Little Belaire lives on.

We ran down to where they stood, across great fractured plazas of concrete, past ruined roofless buildings laid out angelwise in neat squares with the neat lines of weed-split roads between them, and into the stand itself. "They really are bubbles," Once a Day said, laughing, amazed. "Nothing. Nothing at all." They were membranes, dry and scored into cells like a snake's skin, and inside, nothing but air. The odor as we stood among them was spicy and dusty and sweet.