The crocodile’s effort, however, betrayed it to the crocodile hunters who materialized an instant later, casting barbed spears.

Life is cruel.

Those crocodile hunters were unusually nervous. They wondered why the birds were going crazy. They wondered why the monkeys had gone berserk, why one had fallen into the black pool. Understanding them was no problem. They spoke Nyueng Bao as though it was their native tongue. Which it was.

I was somewhere in the delta.

Faintly, faintly, behind the raucous birds I could sense the amusement of crows.

I had no sense of direction.

There was no Smoke to take me home.

I was not just dreaming. I had control but did not know what to do with it... Up. Up was always good with Smoke. The higher you went the more the earth looked like an incredibly detailed map. Then you needed only find a landmark you knew. I went up.

I was in the nastiest, most untamed part of the delta. The whole world was black water, bugs and densely packed trees. That was very nearly my idea of hell.

I had to go way up above where the buzzards soar to see anything else. In the meantime psychic chills twisted the imaginary me; fear gnawed hard and deep. Rising with me was a momentary certainty that I would never find any landmark.

The sun was a landmark. If you had eyes to see it.

I could not see much very well. Not even the birds that shied away.

So I could not find a landmark the logical way. Well, there was a different green over that way.

The different green proved to be empty rice paddies. I zigged this way, zagged that, found a village, found the path that ran out of the village and followed it. I moved at wild speeds. Still, I knew, it was going to take me a long time to get back to where I started.

Damned Soulcatcher!

I heard the voices mocking crows.

I saw a village that looked familiar.

Some would say all Nyueng Bao hamlets look alike. They do, pretty much, from what I have seen. But their temples vary radically according to the wealth and status and age of the town. I had seen this temple before, weeks ago when I was searching for Goblin. I had, in fact, glimpsed a girl who looked so much like Sahra that I wanted to cry when I left Smoke’s world.

I paused there, drifted around, watched the villagers about their early morning business. Everything seemed typical of a Nyueng Bao hamlet, from all I had heard. Even though it was the middle of winter there was work to do. People were getting set to do it.

It was a very prosperous town. Very old, too, probably. The temple was large and looked like it had been there for ages. A pair of mighty two-headed elephants formed pillars to either side of a door as tall as three Nyueng Bao men. The two-headed elephant represented the god of luck among the Gunni. I recall One-Eye saying luck took that form because it was powerful and two-faced.

Oh. That must be the girl I had seen before. The ringer for Sarie. She came out of the temple looking exhausted, sad. Could this be the same woman? The earlier one had looked like a slightly younger version of Sarie. This one looked like an older one, after having gained ten pounds and several years. She had that incredible face but both her hips and breasts were slightly heavier than Sahra’s had been and she was ill-kempt, something Sarie never was, even in the worst of times. This woman was dirty, ragged, in despair.

But she did look so much like Sarie that I wanted to go to her and take her pain away, whatever it might be.

I drifted closer, almost enjoying my own self-pitying pain, wondering why the woman wore white when almost all Nyueng Bao except priests dressed in black. Except on special occasions.

I could ask Thai Dei when I got back. If I ever found the way.

I was so near the woman I could have taken her into my arms and kissed her had I been in flesh. I wanted to, she resembled Sarie so much in her face.

Had Sarie had cousins? I know she had uncles because at least one died during the siege of Dejagore. She might have had aunts who stayed behind, too. The party of pilgrims had included only a fraction of the delta population.

The woman in white looked square where my eyes would have been. Her eyes widened. Her skin went pale. She let out a shriek, then collapsed. Several old men in colored robes rushed out of the temple. They began trying to bring the woman around, gabbling at one another too fast for me to follow. She regained her composure as they helped her to her feet. “I thought I saw a ghost,” she said in response to insistent questions. “It must be the fasting.”

Fasting? It did not look like she had been missing many meals to me.

So she had sensed my presence, eh? Worth remembering. But I had a battle to get back to. I was no use to anyone down here, all but lost. I found the road out of town, followed it in a direction I believed would eventually bring me to Taglios. From Taglios it would be an easy course to chart south.

I did not have to make the trip the hard way. Not long after I found the river my whole universe began to rock. After its third unnatural shaking I began to feel pain. Twice more and I went into darkness, passed through, and came up to awareness inside One-Eye’s wagon. The little shit was holding me up by the shirt and slapping me while he growled something about waking my ass up.

I was sitting up beside Smoke when I opened my eyes. I was soaked with sweat. I was shaking.

One-Eye demanded, “What the hell is the matter with you?”

“I’m not sure. Soulcatcher, I think. It was sort of like when I used to fall through time to Dejagore. Only I kind of squirted like a sugarmelon seed, right off to somewhere in the delta. I knew what was happening but I couldn’t control it. In a way it was like walking with the ghost. But I couldn’t see very far...” I realized I was babbling, in Taglian yet. I managed to bite down on it.

“We’ll talk about it later. I’ve got work to do.”

I opened my mouth to protest.

“You want to talk, go see Croaker. Or do whatever else you want. But get out of the way. I’m not kidding about the work.”

Angry, I clambered out of the wagon. It was daytime out there, just as it had been in the swamp. There was a lot of smoke. There was plenty of noise from the front, where the situation seemed to be static. There was not much chance the Old Man would take time out to hear about my misadventure. It did not affect what was happening right now.

I went over to the campfire. It had gone out. In fact, it had gone cold.

Where were Thai Dei and his mother? Where was Uncle Doj?

Not here.

I found water and drank, wondering how long it would be before the water supply became as critical as the food. I napped. Eventually One-Eye completed his business. He came out and sat beside me. “Now tell me about it.”

I told him.

“You might have learned something important this time, Kid.”

“Like what?”

“I’ll let you know after I talk to Croaker.”