"I don't see how you could be," said Valentine. "There's not a one of all the people who have died on you that you can honestly say you 'let go.' You clung to them tooth and nail."

"What if I did? Everyone I love has died and left me!"

"That's such a weak excuse," said Valentine. "Everyone dies. Everyone leaves. What matters is the things you build together before they go. What matters is the part of them that continues in you when they're gone. You continued your parents' work, and Pipo's, and Libo's -- and you raised Libo's children, didn't you? And they were partly Marcão's children, weren't they? Something of him remained in them, and not all bad. As for Estevão, he built something rather fine out of his death, I think, but instead of letting him go you still resent him for it. You resent him for building something more valuable to him than life itself. For loving God and the pequeninos more than you. You still hang on to all of them. You don't let anybody go."

"Why do you hate me for that?" said Novinha. "Maybe it's true, but that's my life, to lose and lose and lose."

"Just this once," said Valentine, "why don't you set the bird free instead of holding it in the cage until it dies?"

"You make me sound like a monster!" cried Novinha. "How dare you judge me!"

"If you were a monster Ender couldn't have loved you," said Valentine, answering rage with mildness. "You've been a great woman, Novinha, a tragic woman with many accomplishments and much suffering and I'm sure your story will make a moving saga when you die. But wouldn't it be nice if you learned something instead of acting out the same tragedy at the end?"

"I don't want another one I love to die before me!" cried Novinha.

"Who said anything about death?" said Valentine.

The door to the room swung open. Plikt stood in the doorway. "I heard," she said. "What's happening?"

"She wants me to wake him up," said Novinha, "and tell him he can die."

"Can I watch?" said Plikt.

Novinha took the waterglass from beside her chair and flung the water at Plikt and screamed at her. "No more of you!" she cried. "He's mine now, not yours!"

Plikt, dripping with water, was too astonished to find an answer.

"It isn't Plikt who's taking him away," said Valentine softly.

"She's just like all the rest of them, reaching out for a piece of him, tearing bits of him away and devouring him, they're all cannibals."

"What," said Plikt nastily, angrily. "What, you wanted to feast on him yourself? Well, there was too much of him for you. What's worse, cannibals who nibble here and there, or a cannibal who keeps the whole man for herself when there's far more than she can ever absorb?"

"This is the most disgusting conversation I think I've ever heard," said Valentine.

"She hangs around for months, watching him like a vulture," said Novinha. "Hanging on, loitering in his life, never saying six words all at once. And now she finally speaks and listen to the poison that comes out of her."

"All I did was spit your own bile back at you," said Plikt. "You're nothing but a greedy, hateful woman and you used him and used him and never gave anything to him and the only reason he's dying now is to get away from you."

Novinha did not answer, had no words, because in her secret heart she knew at once that what Plikt had said was true.

But Valentine strode around the bed, walked to the door, and slapped Plikt mightily across the face. Plikt staggered under the blow, sank down against the doorframe until she was sitting on the floor, holding her stinging cheek, tears flowing down her face. Valentine towered over her. "You will never speak his death, do you understand me? A woman who would tell a lie like that, just to cause pain, just to lash out at someone that you envy -- you're no speaker for the dead. I'm ashamed I ever let you teach my children. What if some of the lie inside you got in them? You make me sick!"

"No," said Novinha. "No, don't be angry at her. It's true, it's true."

"It feels true to you," said Valentine, "because you always want to believe the worst about yourself. But it's not true. Ender loved you freely and you stole nothing from him and the only reason that he's still alive on that bed is because of his love for you. That's the only reason he can't leave this used-up life and help lead Jane into a place where she can stay alive."

"No, no, Plikt is right, I consume the people that I love."

"No!" cried Plikt, weeping on the floor. "I was lying to you! I love him so much and I'm so jealous of you because you had him and you didn't even want him."

"I have never stopped loving him," said Novinha.

"You left him. You came in here without him."

"I left because I couldn't ..."

Valentine completed her sentence for her when she faded out. "Because you couldn't bear to let him leave you. You felt it, didn't you. You felt him fading even then. You knew that he needed to go away, to end this life, and you couldn't bear to let another man leave you so you left him first."

"Maybe," said Novinha wearily. "It's all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they're never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach."

"So listen to this fiction, then," said Valentine. "What if, just this once, instead of someone that you love betraying you and sneaking off and dying against your will and without your permission -- what if just this once you wake him up and tell him he can live, bid him farewell properly and let him go with your consent. Just this once?"

Novinha wept again, standing there in utter weariness. "I want it all to stop," she said. "I want to die."

"That's why he has to stay," said Valentine. "For his sake, can't you choose to live and let him go? Stay in Milagre and be the mother of your children and grandmother of your children's children, tell them stories of Os Venerados and of Pipo and Libo and of Ender Wiggin, who came to heal your family and stayed to be your husband for many, many years before he died. Not some speaking for the dead, not some funeral oration, not some public picking over the corpse like Plikt wants to do, but the stories that will keep him alive in the minds of the only family that he ever had. He'll die anyway, soon enough. Why not let him go with your love and blessing in his ears, instead of with your rage and grief tearing at him, trying to hold him here?"

"You spin a pretty story," said Novinha. "But in the end, you're asking me to give him to Jane."

"As you said," Valentine answered. "All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe."

"IT SMELLS LIKE LIFE TO ME"

"Why do you say that I am alone?

My body is with me wherever I am,

telling me endless stories

of hunger and satisfaction,

weariness and sleep,

eating and drinking and breathing and life.

With such company

who could ever be alone?

And even when my body wears away

and leaves only some tiny spark

I will not be alone

for the gods will see my small light

tracing the dance of woodgrain on the floor

and they will know me,

they will say my name

and I will rise."

from The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Dying, dying, dead.

At the end of her life among the ansible links there was some mercy. Jane's panic at the losing of herself began to ebb, for though she still knew that she was losing and had lost much, she no longer had the capacity to remember what it was. When she lost her links to the ansibles that let her monitor the jewels in Peter's and Miro's ears she didn't even notice. And when at last she clung to the few last strands of ansibles that would not be shutting down, she could not think of anything, could not feel anything except the need to cling to these last strands even though they were too small to hold her, even though her hunger could never be satisfied with these.