She opened her eyes to find !Xabbu leaning over her, his face gleaming with sweat, his chest expanding and contracting as though he had just run a marathon. Nevertheless, he seemed full of energy. "Oh my God, I'm sorry. I thought you were. . . ." She rubbed her eyes. "Are you okay?"

"I am fine, Sam. I have done much thinking. It was good to dance, to . . . to be me again."

She let him help her up. Her feet felt cold and prickly; it took her a moment to stamp life back into them. "Did it help you think of anything?"

He smiled. "You are like Renie in this way, too. My dance is not like a . . . what is the name? Vending machine. Put in a card, out comes an answer. But I realized why I was troubled and the answer to that may help us." He laughed—he seemed lighter than he had in days, almost buoyant. "So we will see, Sam. Now come."

"What did you mean?" she asked as they walked back across the wet grass. It felt so real under her feet that it was hard to believe it might soon dissolve back into silvery nothingness, but the distant hills were frighteningly faint, a landscape carved in crystal. Without thinking, she hurried her steps. "When you said it was good to be you again?"

"Always I try to understand this place, to think like the people who built it, to think like Renie and you others do. But that is not really the way I think best. And it is strange for me—like wearing clothing that does not fit well. I cannot change an entire lifetime in a matter of weeks. Sometimes I must . . . go back. Go back to my old ways."

Sam nodded slowly. I think I know what you mean. I feel sometimes like I don't know who I am—who the real me is." Spurred by his quizzical look, she went on. "I mean, since I've been a girl again—you know, wearing this body—I don't talk the same, I don't even think the same, sort of. I start acting like . . . like a girl!"

His smile was gentle. "Is that bad?"

"Not always, no. But when I was just Fredericks, Orlando's shadow, another boy . . . I don't know. It was easier, somehow. I tried more things, I talked different." She laughed. "I swore more."

"Ah. And you have put your finger on it, Sam. That was one of the things that was troubling me."

Surprised, she tripped over a hummock and took a second to regain her footing. "You're troubled because I'm not swearing?"

"No. But wait—we are almost there. Soon you will see what I have been thinking."

Jongleur and Azador were sitting across the fire from each other, sullen and sleepy-eyed. The older man gave them a cold look as they approached. "So, after all your talk about necessity and danger, you find time to take a romantic walk? Very sweet!"

Sam felt her face grow hot and would have said something nasty, but !Xabbu touched her arm.

"There are many ways to solve problems," the small man said evenly. "But we need a new one, or we will still be here when this world melts around us."

Jongleur made a noise of disgust, "So it was a scouting expedition?"

"Of a sort." !Xabbu turned to Azador, who was watching blearily, perhaps regretting the absence of coffee in this meadow beyond the world. "I need to speak to you, Mr. Azador. I have some important questions to ask."

Something flickered behind his eyes, but he only waved his hand negligently. "Ask."

"Tell me again how you came here—how you reached the black mountain, then found yourself in this place."

Sam looked at !Xabbu, puzzled but trying not to show it, as Azador somewhat reluctantly reiterated the story of his arrival—following them into the maze in Demeter's temple, waking into pale nothingness to find the mountain gone.

"But I have been thinking," !Xabbu said abruptly as Azador neared the end of his story. "Thinking that we sat a long time on the side of the black mountain, arguing and talking, after we came through from Troy. Thinking that the gate was gone by the time we began to climb the trail. So how did you step through it without us seeing you?"

"Are you calling me a liar?" Azador half-rose, but sat down again when !Xabbu held up his hand in a calming gesture, as though the violent movement had been mostly bluff.

"Perhaps—but perhaps not." !Xabbu moved a few steps nearer, then seated himself beside the smoking remains of the campfire. Azador slid back a little. Sam found herself staring in fascination. What did !Xabbu know, or at least guess? Azador actually looked frightened. "I believe that you did follow us through," !Xabbu said, "and it could be you are telling what you remember—but I do not think it happened that way."

"Why are we wasting time on this trivia?" growled Jongleur.

"If you want to cross the river before this world disappears," !Xabbu said coolly, "I suggest you close your mouth."

As if the remark had been directed at him, Azador abruptly shut his own gaping jaw. "What are you saying?" he demanded after a moment. "That I am mad? That I don't know what the truth is? Or have you decided I am a simple liar after all?"

"How is it that you came through a gate that had closed, unless it opened again for you? How is it that you found your way off the mountain through all that gray nothing—something that for me needed all the tracking skill that my hunting people have learned in thousands of generations? How is it that you managed to push your raft upstream against the current to catch us? Most strange of all, why do you have clothes when the rest of us came here naked? What are the answers to any of these things if you have not been to this place before?" !Xabbu paused. "Whether you remember being here or not, that is another question."

"Yeah!" Sam said with dawning realization. "Scanbark! I didn't even think about that. He has clothes!"

"That is ridiculous!" Azador sputtered, but the haunted something was in his eyes again. "More sensible to call me a liar."

"If you like," !Xabbu said simply. "But there are other questions, too. Tell me of the Romany, Mr. Azador. Explain how you do not tell secrets to gorgios, as you told me before. How you and your Gypsy friends meet at Romany Fair, to pass stories and share information."

Now Azador truly did look befuddled, staring at the smaller man as though !Xabbu had started speaking in tongues. "What do you mean? I have never said any of those things to you—it was the girl who began this Gypsy nonsense."

Watching, Sam realized that her heart was beating painfully fast. Even Jongleur seemed stunned by what was going on.

!Xabbu shook his head. "No, Azador. You began it. In a prison cell, when I first met you. Then on a boat in a river in Kansas. Do you remember? You called me monkey-man, because I wore a baboon's body. . . ."

"You!" Azador leaped to his feet, sending the last embers of the fire in all directions. "You and your bitch of a friend—you stole my gold!" He lunged toward !Xabbu, who only took a step back.

"Stop!" Sam shrieked. She regretted the shrill, panicked sound, but not much. She yanked the haft and broken blade of Orlando's sword out of her waistband. "You touch him and I'll rip your guts out!"

"I will break your neck, girl," Azador snarled, but did not force the issue. Jongleur was on his feet now too, and for a moment they all stood frozen, a four-sided shape of mistrust.

"Before you do anything else," !Xabbu said, "tell me what we stole from you."

"My gold!" Azador shouted, but his face looked troubled, almost fearful. "My . . . gold."

"You do not remember what it was, do you?"

"I know you stole from me!"

!Xabbu shook his head. "We did not. We were separated by a failure of the system," he said as calmly as though Azador had not been glaring bloody murder at him, as though Sam were not standing with a broken sword in her hand leveled at the man's belly. "What do you truly remember? I think you have been here before, inside the so-called White Ocean. Can you not try to think? We are all in terrible danger."