Diamond paused, unsure what to say next.

His mother made a low sound, anger mixed with anguish, and then he knew.

Turning to Haddi, he said, “I dream about my parents. My real parents, and I’ve never told you, no. But sometimes they come to me while I’m sleeping, and they talk to me or they don’t say anything. They’re just there.”

“You never told me,” she said, dismayed.

Diamond agreed with a nod, nothing more.

“In one dream,” he began. Then he paused, pretending to think even though he found the next words waiting. “In my favorite dream,” he said, “I would crawl inside the chamber where there were little drawers and my knife, except there was a secret doorway that I hadn’t ever noticed before. Everyone has secret doors in their dreams, and maybe that’s why I thought nothing was remarkable. But that door was gray. And not just any gray, but it was this color and it had exactly this feel.” He kneeled suddenly, both hands against the ball. “It looks orange now, I know. But in sunlight, this was the same magical gray as that gray door, and one night my father was waiting behind it.”

Diamond let silence have its moment.

“He was a strong man,” he said. “His body was like mine, the long legs and short arms and the same kind of nose and mouth, and he spoke to me. He said that this was the best place me for now, that I was safe here. He warned that everything was stranger than I realized. And not only did I have to come find him and find my mother, but I had to bring all of them with me.”

Again, silence.

“ ‘All of them,’ ” Seldom repeated. “You mean your brother and sister too?”

Diamond said nothing.

“And the Eight,” Prima guessed, bristling at that possibility.

But Diamond didn’t want to talk about lessons buried inside dreams or one nameless gray orb. And he didn’t want to talk anymore about his old room or locked drawers and how the Creation had to be one secret room inside something quite a bit larger. He had a goal, a destination, and he was as eager as anyone to discover what it might be.

Once again, the boy looked at Karlan.

Karlan shifted his grip on the rifle, as if making his hands comfortable. With rare caution, he asked, “So what’s the monster’s big plan now?”

“I’m going to turn the sun back on,” Diamond said.

No one made sound.

And he turned in a circle again, slowly. Every face was important. Mother was worn out and doubtful. The Master was wishing that he could believe, but he couldn’t. The two Archons were standing beside each other, each watching the orange stomach floor. Seldom did believe, which made him the only one, while Elata was offering a thin smile, not quite nodding but plainly glad that Diamond had taken her advice and was trying to weave a fictional tale, no matter how gloriously silly and pathetic it seemed to be.

Karlan waited for the gaze.

Again, both hands needed to shift against the weapon.

“I want you to throw me into the air again,” Diamond told him.

That won a big laugh, and Karlan asked, “Is that so?”

“Yes,” Diamond said with enthusiasm. “And I’ll hold tight to this ball and plunge to the bottom of the world, and I’ll make the world live again. Or I won’t. But that’s what I’m going to try.”

Each person took a small step backwards.

But then the orange light became white, the walls of the dead stomach vanishing in the glare, and from some new mouth, a close and strong mouth, Quest said, “No, that’s crazy talk. I have to be the one to take you down there.”

Which was the moment when Diamond realized to whom he had been talking all along.

Doctors had drawn maps of his body, but when King was still a living secret, isolated inside the palace, he insisted on naming each of his organs and bones and even the spikes and individual plates of armor. The project demanded a language of its own, each word built from sounds that felt comfortable inside his ffaffar and his woooloo, and once finished, he rarely thought in those terms. But for a long while, maybe always, that one day was the best day of his life.

Now those remarkable organs were healing.

He was sitting in the open, alone. Generators were thrumming in the distance, but critical wires had been severed or circuits were disabled and the entire abattoir had given up the fight against night. Sitting in darkness, King realized that he was more durable than this building, but perhaps not the tree. That was the first bright thought sparking in his mind: the giant bloodwood was ancient by any fashion, and as tough as he was, and he was just a frail sack full of smaller sacks that didn’t know their true names.

The darkness was imperfect. Quest blushed when the necks ate and when the main body shuddered, shimmers of color hinting that energy was being ripped free from one great meal. Also glowing were the coronas that had crawled through the shredded doorway, still living, still making weak threads of light, their bodies plainly struggling to survive just the next moments.

When he felt strong enough to stand, King remained sitting, touching his new chest and belly, measuring how much bulk had been lost before he climbed up onto his feet and was disappointed.

Then his sister made one astonishing sound, wet and massive, prolonged yet impatient—amorphous flesh rising high, ready for invisible hands to give it some final, perfect shape.

The new, somewhat shorter King stood easily enough.

The butcher floor was bloodied but otherwise empty. Every dead soldier had been ingested, and there was no reason to feel uncomfortable about the dead becoming meals. But other soldiers had gasped while the necks swallowed them whole, and King considered what to say to his sister later, if there was any such thing as later.

He took one short step and two long steps toward his sister, and then he paused.

The necks were being absorbed, and a long groan rose from that tall body. A titanic new shape was forming from the rank and raw.

Did Quest name her organs as she worked?

That was a question worth asking, if he ever had the chance.

King turned and strode toward the obliterated doorway. Twisted steel plates squealed with the wind. Corona blood flowed like water and stank of metal and felt slick underfoot. The abattoir’s enormous landing had been wrenched free, unless it had collapsed under too much wreckage. Dark empty air was everywhere. The neighboring bloodwoods seemed remote, illuminated by clinging, half-dead coronas and countless little fires that would never do more than consume buildings and walkways. Bloodwoods didn’t like to burn. But looking out into the black air, gazing hard at the Middle-of-the-Middle, what impressed the boy was the feeble, smoky nature of each fire.

For the first time, an organ that wasn’t any human lung pulled in a long breath, and King realized that the air was markedly thinner than usual, and it was too chilly, oxygen present but not nearly enough.

The atmosphere was draining from the world.

Sounds were draining away, thin and too slow. He listened. A thousand humans were begging in the dark, beseeching the Creators to make a new day, and ten thousand more voices were passionately cursing the Fates. Other humans said nothing, but he heard the noise they made as they fell, clothes flapping and dropsuits flapping. Despair or madness or maybe just stupid mistakes caused people to tumble free from this tree. Those ten carefully named ears heard individual bodies knifing through the thin air, and King wished he was deaf, and in the next breath, he wished that he could hear every sound inside this big room of a world.

A piece of steel cable offered itself as a handhold, and planting one foot, King dangled into the open air. No demon floor glimmered below. The corona realm was missing, and beyond was an emptiness that didn’t require any sun. But the dark air was perfectly empty. Past the sharp tips of the trees were ships—tree-walker airships and papio wings that had survived the coronas. It took time and some thought to realize what had happened: desperate hands had overloaded these machines with extra ballast, or the papio had pushed their aircraft into endless dives. There wasn’t enough air up here, but maybe there was below. Maybe that’s what this cluttered fleet was chasing. Unless this wasn’t a survival strategy. Maybe it was as simple as before they died, these people wanted to see what lurked below.