For that's what it was. Once a Day ran across the floor to me, skipping away from friends who reached out hands to her, and came to take me in amid it all.

All along the long, long sides of that place were bins and chests and cases, angel-made; some were waist-high to me and made of glossy white plastic, others were tall, with hinged doors of glass and made all, all of angel silver - there were so many of these there that the dull glow of them seemed to lower the heat in the place and make it cool. Some of the open low bins had mirrors above them, slanted in such a way as to make what was inside seem twice as much as it really was - only the angels would have thought of that.

Once a Day ran from one of these cases to another, showing me things kept in them which she had told me about while we walked - "and here's this that I told you about and here's that that I told you about," and her eyes were wide and bright and she was light and I loved her intensely. She took me by the hand to see the huge pictures fixed all along the sides above the bins; though they were so large I couldn't have missed them, she felt I must be shown, and stood pointing them out. The colors of them seemed as bright as the day the angels made them: one was carrots, beets, and beans; another had eggs and white bottles; one was a cow, with a smile like a man's, which was ridiculous. As she stood solemnly pointing to the cow, she saw someone, and said softly, "Zher."

It was a name. A boy, pale blond and with a pink tint of sunburn on his shoulders and nose, sat in a circle of people, mostly older, who seemed to keep a distance from him, though they smiled at him, and occasionally one reached out to stroke his arm or touch him. Once a Day went over to them. The boy Zher looked up at her, who was known to him, and at me, who was a stranger, and his look was the same. Once a Day went through the circle and knelt before the boy; he looked at her, his eyes searching her but seeming to look for nothing. She touched his face and hands, and kissed his cheek, and without a word came back and sat with me.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Zher," she said. "Just this year come of age, and got his first letter from Dr. Boots today."

"What's that?"

"It's a letter. And it's from Dr. Boots."

"Why is he naked?"

"Because he wants to be."

Zher smiled a little, and then more; a laugh seemed to be within him, and those around him smiled too, and looked at each other and at him, and he did laugh, and they laughed with him. Somewhere someone dropped something with a clang, and the cats' ears all rose, and Zher's head snapped around with eyes wide.

"Have you had this letter from Dr. Boots?" I asked.

"Yes. Every May month since I was his age; the first, the summer after I came; and just before I went out to the camp, and met you, this year."

"Was it like that for you when you got your letter?"

"Yes. Just the same. I felt that way."

"Were you silent? Do you have to be?"

"You don't have to be. You just are, especially after the first. You don't have anything to say. It's all done. It's all like it will be. Talking, after that, is just - just for fun. Just something to do."

"When you talk to me - is it like that?"

She brushed her black hair with her hand and said nothing, and I didn't dare talk more about it. Evening was falling in the room; the blue daytime shimmer turning dusty gold.

"Doesn't he look beautiful?" she said.

"Yes."

"Beautiful."

"Yes."

As the sun set, the singing began, low and quiet, touched off by the purring of some cat, Brom or Zhinsinura's tiger, and taken up by one group of them, and then by another, a low sweet chuckle and drone and growl, each voice finding room in the medley to purr; and, as night came on, left off, voice by voice, Once a Day's high sad sound nearly the last, until they were all silent. And the Lights were let out.

Perhaps the angels knew a way to make the cool globes dark in the day; the List just keeps them in black bags, and lets them out at night. There were many there, but still in that great place there were pockets and vague places of darkness. No one around Zher moved to bring a Light near him, and in the gloom I could see his fair body glowing as though a lamp were lit within him.

THE THIRD CRYSTAL: A Letter

from Dr. Boots

First Facet

… and wait till I've inserted it.

What? Shall I begin again?

No. It's all right. Here is the second crystal: see how tiny: yet it's all there. Blink and Budding and Blooming, all that part.

How many more? The sun is setting. Look: the clouds below us are all pink and yellow.

The third is the last, usually.

Angel… tell me this now…

No. Not yet. Tell me: what happened next day, at Service City?

Well, that night we slept; she took me up the wide flight of stairs that led to the big platform which covered the back part of the place - the mezzanine, they called it (the List knew such words, words that rang like ancient coins flung down angelstone - mezzanine). There, rooms had been made with curtains and low walls, and it reminded me a little of home. Once a Day found us an empty nook piled with pillows, and we lay together there, she talking all the while as though to pull me into her List's arms by strength of stories, until she was yawning too much to talk. She was so happy to be there, and so glad I was with her to see it, that it made me ache with some unnamable feeling - oh, Dr. Boots, you make them - no, you let them make themselves - so happy, so seldom!

Dr. Boots's List can do a thing that I never could, that Once a Day had learned in her years with them: they sleep like cats. They cat nap. Once a Day would sleep for a time, and be up for as long, and sleep some more and be up again. All through that night I felt her get up and go and come back to watch me, impatient for me to get done my long sleep; but I was in the middle of thick dreams, the dreams a sleeper in a strange house has, and couldn't wake. When I did, it was with a cry that woke me from some adventure; I lay staring, trying to remember where I was. I stumbled out through the curtains and found myself on the very edge of the mezzanine, looking out over the vast hall lit by a clear morning turned faintly blue by way-wall. Once a Day stood by it, bent over with her hands on her knees, by a little muscled brown man who sat holding up a ball of clear blue glass, turning it so the light shot through it; he bit on a tiny wooden pipe from which rose a fine white smoke.

When I reached them, stumbling past groups that fell silent when I smiled at them, I saw that on the brown man's wrist was the bracelet of blue stones which Once a Day had given to him on the day of the trading at Little Belaire. His name was Houd, but when he said it it was as soft and long and unspeakable as a cat's sigh. Others gathered around us, and I was made much of; they stared as frankly as cats at my pigtail and my spectacles and marveled at my ignorance of Dr. Boots and the List; and I couldn't understand much of their talk, though I knew the words. Outside in the morning, Brom the black and white cat walked across the wide stone, and Once a Day and the others turned to watch me do what I had to do, being new to waywall: I tried to walk out there. It doesn't work that way; I could get close to it (always from it a hot breath blew, smelling of metal somehow) but - it doesn't work that way. I looked around at them, and they were all smiling the same smile.

"It doesn't work that way," Houd said around his pipe, and Once a Day came and pulled me away. "It's only one way," she said laughing. "Don't you see? Only one way."