Other mechanics laughed. Nissim shook his head, smiling but not smiling. “Come on,” he told the children.

Seldom laughed and jumped. “I wasn’t fooled.”

“You were,” Elata said.

“I wasn’t.”

Diamond stared at the fake limb. He wasn’t smiling or upset, just curious. He stared until its owner took offense, stepping forward to tell him, “You are a funny looking critter.”

The boy nodded.

“What’s so interesting here?” the man asked.

Diamond tugged on the finger that was bitten off this morning. Then because he was curious, he asked, “Will it grow back?”

“Will what grow back?”

Diamond touched his own bicep.

“That’s a damn stupid question,” the man decided. Then a big grin filled his face, and he started swinging the fake arm over Diamond’s head: once, and again, hard enough to make the air whistle, and then a third time, vainly trying to make that odd little boy flinch.

TEN

The fletch wore the name Happenstance, and painted above its name was a young woman dressed in feathers and gauze and nothing else. Diamond stared at the woman while Nissim spoke to the pilot. Official papers would need study, but that wouldn’t be enough. The pilot insisted on knowing the real story. Crossing his arms, he waited for any excuse to refuse these unwelcome orders. Nissim put on a smile and pointed at Diamond, and with the first mention of the father’s name, the pilot uncrossed his arms, blinking quickly. Nissim continued talking. Then the pilot waved him off and ran to Diamond, kneeling low, shoving his vast nose close to the boy’s face.

With an astonished, well-meaning voice, he said, “You should be dead. You should be yesterday’s rain. And do you know why you’re not lost forever?”

Diamond shook his head.

“Thank me,” the pilot said. “The day you were born, I sacrificed not one but two royal jazzings. Which nobody else did, and I did that because I think that much of your good father. Do you understand me?”

Diamond nodded, understanding nothing.

“And look at you now. Always the runt, but I can tell you’re a sturdy runt, which isn’t a bad way to be. That’s what I was when I was a half-done.”

The pilot was smaller than most men, and despite thousands of days of life, he still seemed boyish. Up he jumped, and clapping his hands, he shouted to his crew, “Time to fly. File the route to Bright River.”

His men seemed rather less enthusiastic. But they moved when prodded, and since they knew what to do, the result was inevitable. The ship’s two bladders were topped off with gaseous hydrogen, alcohol was poured into the main fuel tank, and the engines were adjusted to match the midday level of oxygen. Before long, Diamond and the others were sitting inside a little cabin tucked inside the ship’s belly. Everything about the Happenstance was lightweight and sleek. The chairs were stiff rubber frames and little else. The walls were fabric, windows taut sheets of transparent rubber. But the engines sounded massive, igniting with purposeful roars that shook everything and everyone. Seldom squealed his approval. Elata tugged at Diamond’s arm and leaned close, shouting, “I’ve never ridden in a fletch before.” The pilot walked around the outside of the ship, studying the propellers and fabric and the roaring racket. Then he came through the cabin, taking the trouble to yell a few words to the Master.

“We’ve got a leak in the right bladder. Somewhere. We can’t find it, but there’s stink mixed in the gas, and if something smells foul, you come get me.”

“Maybe you should make a sacrifice to fix it,” said Nissim.

But the pilot wouldn’t play along. “Sacrifices don’t work with machinery,” he shouted. “Only with people, and then, only if you’re lucky.”

The Happenstance’s belly dragged against the slick hanger floor before passing through the nearest open doorway, and then it began to fall, gaining speed as the engines roared even louder.

“I feel lighter now,” said Diamond.

Elata sat beside him. “That’s because we’re falling,” she said, explaining nothing. Seldom giggled as the world moved fast around them. Nissim sat in front of Elata, and he turned to watch Diamond. It was as if he had never looked at the boy before. He was ready to say something or ask some fresh important question. But conversation was impossible. The engines were louder than ever, the air seemingly tearing apart as the fletch finally earned enough lift above its wings, beginning its quick muscular climb over the green canopy.

Giant trees slid past, each adorned with walkways and homes and tiny, tiny people who sometimes looked at the noisy aircraft but mostly ignored it, marching through their own magnificent day. Species changed—different bark and different trunks hanging from the sky—but it was easy to believe that this incredible forest had no end. In no time at all, the fletch had carried Diamond farther than he had wandered during his entire life. That obvious idea startled him, and he laughed, just a little bit. But more surprising was his reaction: he didn’t look for his parents now, ready to share his astonishment. They weren’t here, not even in the corner of his eyes, and for the first time today he found himself wondering what would happen if he never saw them again.

Guilt grabbed hold. His mother and father were a little bit dead to him, and he had already adjusted to that hard fact. Bending forward, he shut his eyes, fighting that one simple idea. He could be an orphan, but accepting that possibility seemed treacherous. Wrong. Palms to his eyes, he concentrated on his breathing and his heart, and after a long while a big hand that he knew came down on his head, tousling his curly hair.

Nissim shouted his name and pulled back the hand, saying, “We’ve crossed. We’re in the wilderness. Do you want to see?”

Diamond sat up, wiping at the eyes once more. Sunlight was bright and close and a little less green. The dense old canopy had been replaced by smaller branches that were above as well as below, and the trees were smaller and far more numerous, and even when he searched hard he couldn’t find any trace of homes or human beings. This was a very different forest. The fletch was slowing, changing course every few moments to avoid limbs. One giant leatherwing insisted on flying beside them, flapping hard and then tucking its wings, slipping between twin trees before returning to tease the fletch with its grace and fearlessness.

The engines ran slower and slower. Nothing was quiet, but it was easier to talk, and that was what Nissim wanted. Leaning across his seat, he waited for Diamond to meet his eyes. “Once in my life, I was a teacher,” he began. “Maybe somebody mentioned that to you. There were days when I held a high post at the Grand University in the District of Districts. But there was trouble, and I lost my post and my credentials and my home. I ended up living in the Corona District, needing work. My father was a butcher so I already knew the trade. And that’s how I earned my post at the local school.”

His voice wanted to sound steady but wasn’t. His face was self-conscious and indignant, big eyes staring into the distance, and the Master needed a few moments to shape his next words.

“What I just told you is what students and their parents hear about me,” he continued. “It’s a simple story. There aren’t any details, and more than most stories, it happens to be true. I was a professor. There was a kind of scandal. And now I cut up animal parts every day, without complaint. I’ve worked in that school for three thousand and eleven days. Of course people have to look at me and wonder. Rumors aren’t usually kind to a former Master. But I didn’t do anything horrible. I don’t wear manacles or prison tattoos, and the authorities don’t seem especially worried that I’m close to children. So how awful was my crime? It couldn’t have been too terrible. At least that’s what charitable parents like to say to one another when they think that they’re out of earshot.