You dive, in water? Don’t distract me now! Please—

Ginny, embarrassed, wanted to withdraw, but could not—like a loose tooth hanging by a painful nerve, neither in the jaw nor out, she was buffeted by Tiadba’s emotions—yet knew that Tiadba’s upper mind was still only vaguely aware that something was different. In essence, Ginny was being counseled—rebuffed—by her host’s housekeepers, the organizers and tenders of a body’s everyday needs.

And when she was gone, Ginny knew that these same tenders would sweep away the short shallow irritation of her presence…As her own tenders and housekeepers did when their roles were reversed and

she played host. So strange! Such a thing to know!

If only she could keep from forgetting, she could bring back these experiences, think them over while she was awake, fit them into all the other puzzle pieces—and perhaps complete a picture. So little of it made sense.

The bright suits—dull red, pastel yellow, ethereal green, nine different hues—fully occupied Tiadba’s awareness, as if she could see nothing else. She had been told of these marvels at the base camp, but only recently—only just before the march across the dust plain in the gray cavern. These were the devices that would help keep them alive in the Chaos, beyond the border of the real…and as such, they were outside the experience of any of the ancient breeds in the Tiers. How wonderful, to learn of them; and how disturbing to be told why they were necessary!

Tiadba had long since realized that their plans and hopes for adventure had been more than naive. The Chaos was not sanctuary, not freedom—it was endless peril. Even the Tall Ones seemed to forgo speaking of it unless it was strictly necessary.

What they had experienced before arriving in the flood channel—the sorrow, compounded by the shock of displacement and the grief—was only a hint of what lay outside the Kalpa. Yes, they were going—finally they were going on a march—but at what risk, at what cost? And who could be trusted, after all these things not told of, never explained?

Go away now! I have to focus…

The last thing Ginny could hold onto, like a slippery rope, before the housekeepers swept her up and broke her loose—

Tiadba’s hope: Wewill meet again. You know that, don’t you?

Out of sequence. Everything jumbling, dreams and life contorted.

Where is he? Is he still alive? You know! Tell me!

But Ginny did not know.

Why haven’t we heard from him?

Ginny fell off the cot and hit the floor in a tangle of blanket and sheets. Sweat soaked her nightgown. Desperately she tried to hold onto what she had seen and heard, but the vision melted like a sliver of ice under the intense heat of waking.

She let out a tight shriek of frustration.

Minimus leaped up from the floor and rubbed against her feet, then sat and watched her untangle and rearrange the bedclothes.

Whatever she had seen, wherever she had been, in any rational sequence, might have come before the…the what? The lapses that left her with such an awful sense of terror and oppression. The bad, endless times to come.

CHAPTER 22

University District, Seattle

What are they dreaming? How long until they can’t sleep at all?

Daniel closely watched the morning commuters in their cars—when he could see them. In this world, so many hid behind tinted windows, as if shy or afraid. Faces fixed straight ahead, eyes flicking, avoiding his gaze, some reading his sign and smiling—waving—others shouting words of abuse—good people, smart, but they didn’t stop and give him money; a very few, and these he felt the most sorry for, rolling down their windows and offering spare change or a few dollars—and the rest don’t see him, will not see him, oops, now the traffic is moving, it’s too late—would’ve offered something, sure do feel sorry for you poor folks down on your luck…

And how long until they were alldown on their luck? Fortunes run out, world-strands gummed together and gathered like dried tendons from a corpse, waiting to be trimmed…short stalks in a dead bouquet. For a moment the road was empty, the corners quiet—he could hear the wind blowing through the thin brush and young alders crouched back from the side of the road. Rain had fallen fitfully all day. It soaked through his coat—soaked his moth-eaten thrift-store Pendleton and woolen long johns, his socks squished in his shoes—never wear costly shoes, make sure you smirch your coat and outer garments with dirt after you clean them, rub the dirt into your hands and your fingers—a little diluted mud dripping as you take their few coins and fewer bills…

To keep eating, Daniel Patrick Iremonk played along, for now.

A small Volkswagen drove up—yellow, familiar, they had had Volkswagens like this in his world, before the darkening and the cinder-grit dusting, before his precipitate flight. Behind the wheel hunched a plump young man with cherry cheeks, pushed-up nose, and short, thick black hair. The young man wore a gray suit coat, sleeves too short, over a pink striped shirt—a salesman, Daniel guessed. Not much money in the bank, lots of debt, but he kept his car clean and his clothes pressed. Daniel held up his sign.

Bad Times Got ME

A little Cash for food?

God Bless You!!!

Daniel could freeze the light on red for five or six minutes at a time—drawing out the stop until the drivers got nervous, until they rolled down their windows and offered a payment of cash to get moving, get this show back on the road, my God that’s a long light!

Cars were backed up all the way to the freeway.

On the opposite corner, Florinda—the lean brown woman—stood like a bundle of twigs, holding her own misspelled message on its dog-eared square of brown cardboard. She rarely looked at the drivers—a bad corner, traffic always moving.

Florinda was in her late forties, face draped by long strands of felted hair, a chain smoker whose habit got her stuck in less desirable locations—she just had to pause every fifteen minutes for a puff, and inevitably she lost her best spots to more aggressive panhandlers.

The light hung on endless red. Frustrating, time-eating, finger-drumming crimson. The salesman glanced resentfully at Daniel. He was a mouth-breather, Daniel observed—jaw slightly agape, lower lip flaccid. Daniel could not see his eyes—they were shaded from the slanting light breaking over Wallingford.

The salesman finally leaned forward and scowled, then rolled down the window, shoulder jerking with the effort. “If I give you money, will you let me through?” he called.

“Sure,” Daniel said, stooping. He needed to see the man’s eyes.

The head dropped lower as the man reached into his pocket, plump fingers pushing under the seat belt’s hard, square buckle.

Daniel could only hold the light a few more seconds. Too long and the traffic engineers in the city figured something was wrong—sent repairmen and sometimes cops. He’d had to abandon this corner twice because he held a red too long—messing too obviously with all these small fortunes, tiny fates.

“Here,” the driver said, holding out four crumpled dollar bills. “Billy Goat Gruff. Just don’t ask any questions, and don’t eat me.”

Daniel stuffed the bills in his deepest coat pocket. Their eyes met, the driver’s underslung, blue, direct—Daniel’s steady, wide, washed-out.

A little spark hit him in the base of the spine.

“Bad dreams,” the driver confessed. “You?”

Daniel nodded, then swung out his arm, and the light changed.

The prelude before the flood.

He could feel that hideous tide already lapping up on the fresh beaches of this world. The first sign—refugees like himself, crippled storm petrels, crawling onto the shore, gasping, wings broken, desperate.