"What is it?"

"Why did you dream this city instead of another Everville?"

"I was a child in Liverpool, and full of hope. I remember it fondly. I didn't remember Everville the same way."

"But you still want to know what's happened to it?" Phoebe pointed out.

"So I do," Maeve replied. "Now tell."

Without knowing what aspects of Evervillian life would most interest the woman, Phoebe began a scattershot account of life at home. The Festival, the problems with the post office, the library annex, Jed Gilholly, the restaurants on Main Street, Kitty's Diner, the Old Schoolhouse and the collection it contained, the problems with the sewage system "Wait, wait," Maeve said. "Go back a little. You spoke of a collection."

"Yes-"

"It's about the history of Everville, you say?"

"That's right." "And you're familiar with it?"

"I wouldn't say-"

"Yet you didn't know who I was," Maeve said, her face more pinched than ever. "I find that strange." Phoebe kept her silence. "Tell me, what do they say about the way Everville was founded?"

"I don't exactly remember," Phoebe replied.

Suddenly, the virago started to yell. "Stop! Everybody stop!" The little procession came to a ragged halt. Maeve leaned out of her chair and beckoned Phoebe closer.

"Now listen, woman," Maeve said. "I thought we had a bargain."

'We do."

"So why aren't you telling me the truth? Hub?" "I... don't want to hurt your feelings," Phoebe said.

"Mary, mother of God, I've sufferings to my name the likes of which-" She stopped, and started to pull at the collar of her robe. Musnakaff started to say something about not catching cold, but she gave him such a venomous look he was instantly silenced. "Look at this," she said to Phoebe, exposing her neck. There was a grievous scar running all the way around her neck. "You know what that is?"

""It looks like-well it looks like somebody tried to hang you.

"they tried and they succeeded. Left me swinging from a tree, along with my child and my husband."

Phoebe was appalled. "Why?" she said.

"Because they hated us and wanted to be rid of us," Maeve said.

"Musnakaff? Cover me up!" He instantly set to doing so, while Maeve continued her story. "I had a very strange, sour child," she said, "who loved nothing in all the world. Certainly not me. Nor his father. And over the years people came to hate him in return. As soon as they had reason to lynch him, they took it, and took my poor husband too. Coker wasn't of the Cosm, you see. He'd come there for my sake, and he learned to be more human than human, but they still sniffed something in him they didn't like. As for me-" She turned her head from Phoebe and peered down the hill.

"As for you?" Phoebe said.

"I was what they wanted to forget. I was there at the beginning-no, that's not right-I was the beginning. I was Everville, sure as if it had been built of my bones. And it didn't suit the Brawleys and the Gilhollys and the Hendersons and all the other fine upstanding families to remember that."

"So they murdered you for it?"

"they turned a blind eye to a lynching," Maeve said. "That's murder, I'd say."

"Why aren't you dead?"

"Because the bough broke. Simple as that. My sweet, loving Coker was not so lucky. His bough was strong, and by the time I came out of my faint he was cold."

"That's horrible."

"I never felt love for any creature the way I felt love for him," Maeve said. As she spoke Phoebe felt a mild tremor in the ground.

Musnakaff apparently felt it too. He turned to his mistress with a look of alan-n. "Maybe it would be best not to speak of this," he said. "Not out in the open."

"Oh pish!" Maeve said to him. "He wouldn't dare touch me. Not for telling what he knows is the truth."

The exchange puzzled Phoebe, but she didn't let it distract her from her questions.

"What about your son?" Phoebe said. "What happened to him?"

"His body was taken by beasts. He always had a stench to him. I daresay he made a better meal than Coker or me." She pondered for a moment.

"This is a terrible thing to say about your own flesh and blood, but the fact is, my son was not long for this world one way or another."

"was he sick?" "In his head, yes. And in his heart. Something in him had curdled when he was a child, and I thought for the longest time he was a cretin. I gave up trying to teach him anything. But there was malice in him, I think: terrible malice. And he was best dead." She gave Phoebe a sorrowful look. "Do you have children?" she said.

"No." "Count yourself lucky," Maeve replied.

Then, abruptly shaking off her melancholy tone, she waved Phoebe away, shouting, "Rouse yourselves!" to her bearers, and the convoy went on its way, down the steep hill.

The state of the dream-sea had changed considerably in the hours in which Phoebe had been a guest in Maeve's house. The ships in the harbor no longer lay peaceably at anchor, but pitched and bucked, tearing at their moorings like panicked thoroughbreds. The beacons that had been burning at the harbor entrance had been extinguished by the fury of the waves, which mounted steadily as the party descended. "I begin to think I'll not be able to keep my end of the bargain," Maeve said to Phoebe once they were on flat ground.

"Why not?"

"Use your eyes," Maeve replied, pointing down towards the beach, where the breakers were ten or twelve feet high. "I don't think I'll be speaking to the 'shu down there."

"Who are the 'shu?"

"Tell her," Maeve instructed Musnakaff. "And you, set e down." Once again, the convoy came to a halt. "Help me out of this contraption," Maeve demanded. The bearers sprang to do just that.

"Do you need help?" Musnakaff asked her.

"If I do I'll ask for it," Maeve replied. "Get on with educating the woman. Though Lord knows it's a little late."

"Tell me who the 'shu are," Phoebe said to Musnakaff.

"Not who, what," Musnakaff replied, his gaze drifting off towards his mistress. "What is she doing?"

"We're having a conversation here," Phoebe snapped. "She's going to do herself some harm."

"I'm going to be doing some harm of my own if you don't finish what you were saying. The 'shu-"

"Are spifit-pilots. Pieces of the Creator. Or not. There. Satisfied?" He made to go to his mistress's side, but Phoebe caught hold of him.

"No," she said. "I'm not satisfied."

"Unhand me," he said sniffily. "I will not."

"I'm warning you," he said, jabbing a beringed finger at her. "I've got more important business than-" A puzzled look crossed his face. "Did youfeel that?"

"The tremor, you mean? Yeah, there was one a few minutes ago. Some kind of earthquakes'

"I wish it were," Musnakaff said. He stared at the ground between them. Another tremor came; this the strongest so far.

"What is it then?" Phoebe said, her irritation with Musnakaff forgotten.

She got no answer. The man just turned his back on her and hurried away to the spot on the cobbled stones where Maeve was standing. She could not do so without help. Two of her bearers were supporting her, and a third waiting behind in case she should topple. "We must move on," Musnakaff called to her.

"Do you know what happened on this spot?" she said to him.

"Lady-"

"Do you?" "No."

"This is where I was standing when he first came to find me." She smiled fondly. "I told him, right at the beginning, I said to him: There'll never be anyone to replace my Coker, because Coker was the love of my life@'

At this, the ground shook more vehemently than ever.

"Hush yourself," Musnakaff said.

"What?" said Mistress O'Connell. "Hushing me? I should beat you for that." She raised her stick, and swung at Musnakaff. The blow fell short of its mark, and Maeve lost her balance. Her bearers might have saved her from failing, but she was in a fine fury, and kept flailing even as she toppled. The stick struck the bearer to her right, and he went down, bloodynosed. The man who had been watching over her from behind stepped in to catch hold of her, but as he did so she took another stumbling step towards Musnakaff, swinging again. This time she connected, the blow so hard her stick broke. Then she went down, carrying the bearer to her left-who had not relinquished big hold on her for an instant@own with her.