When he returned to the settlement be said nothing to anyone, not even Taniane, about what he had seen. But he felt strangely transparent to her. She stared at him from a distance in a remote, veiled way, as though telling him, There’s a terrible secret that you don’t dare share with me, but I know it anyway. In his confusion and grief he kept his distance from her for several days, and when they spoke again it was of trivial things only, a vague and carefully circumscribed conversation. He was unable to bear anything else just now, and she appeared to know that.

A few days later the wild monkeys of the jungle swept through the settlement again, howling and shrieking, smashing windows, hurling gobbets of mud and dung and more of the nests of the stinging insects. Hresh glared at the intruders with loathing and fury. Everything within his soul cried out against the idea that the People and these dirty screaming animals could possibly be close kin, as the sapphire-eyes artificials had claimed. But when Staip and Konya went to a rooftop and speared half a dozen of them Hresh turned away, shivering in shock, fighting back tears. He could not bear to see them killed like that. It seemed like murder. He did not know what to think. It seemed to him that he was unable to understand anything any more.

Minbain was at work in the fields, setting out the new season’s young flameseed plants, when Torlyri came up to her and said, “I’m trying to find Hresh. Do you have any idea where he might be?”

Minbain laughed. “On the moon, maybe. Or swimming from one star to the next. Who knows where Hresh takes himself? Not me, Torlyri.”

“I suppose he’s wandering around in the ruins again.”

“I suppose. I haven’t laid eyes on him in two or three days.” Minbain had long since ceased to think of Hresh as any child of hers. He was a being beyond her comprehension, as swift and strange and unpredictable as the lightning. She returned her attention to the flameseed bed. After a moment she looked up again and said, “You haven’t seen Harruel, by any chance, have you? It’s been a while since I’ve laid eyes on him, too.”

“Doesn’t he spend a lot of time patrolling in the hills?”

“Too much,” Minbain said. “If he’s with me one night out of five, that’s a lot. There’s something bad brewing in that man.”

“Shall I speak with him? If I can help him in any way—”

“Be wary if you try it. He frightens me these days. Anger comes boiling out of him when you’re least expecting it. And stranger things. He moans in his sleep, he thrashes about, he calls out to the gods. I tell you, Torlyri, he frightens me. And yet I wish he’d spend more of his nights at home.” With a grin she said, “There are some things about him I miss very much.”

“I think I know what you mean,” said Torlyri, smiling.

“Why do you want Hresh? Has he done something wrong again?”

“It’s his twining-day,” Torlyri said.

“His twining-day!” Minbain looked up, astonished. “Imagine that! So Hresh is old enough to twine already! How time moves along! And I paid no attention.” Then she shook her head. “Ah, Torlyri, Torlyri — if Hresh is old enough to twine, how old I must be getting, then!”

“Don’t give it any thought. You carry your years well, Minbain.”

“Yissou be praised for that.”

Once more Minbain returned to her task.

Torlyri said, “If I run into Harruel, I’ll tell him you’d like to see him now and then.”

“And I’ll do the same, if I run into Hresh.”

The wound that had been inflicted on him at the Tree of Life was a long time healing. Hresh told himself that he would never go to the vault of the thirty-six towers again, that he would make no more journeys to the living Vengiboneeza. But as the days passed his innate curiosity began gradually to reassert itself, and he knew he would not keep his vow for long; but he swore that if he happened to stumble upon the Tree of Life a second time when he did go back, he would not set foot in it. He had no desire ever again to see that place where his ancestors had been penned like the beasts that they were, for the delight and instruction of civilized people.

When he did go back, he saw no sign of the place where the Tree of Life had been. Once again the city was much transformed, and of buildings that he recognized from his earlier visits there were only the Citadel and a handful of others. He felt great relief at that; for he suspected that if he had found the Tree of Life again, he would have entered it, despite his oath, despite everything.

Torlyri said, “There you are! I’ve been hunting for you all morning!”

Hresh, muddy and disheveled, came ambling toward her down the wide curving boulevard that led from the Emakkis Boldirinthe sector in the northern part of the city. He wore a remote, abstracted expression, the look of someone who was half in this world and half in some other.

He turned toward Torlyri as if he had no idea who she was. His eyes did not quite meet hers. “Am I late for something?”

“Do you know what day this is?”

“Friit?” he said hazily. “No, it’s Mueri. I’m sure it’s Mueri.”

“It’s your twining-day,” Torlyri said, laughing.

“Today?”

“Today, yes.” She held her arms out to him. “It’s that unimportant to you, is it?”

Hresh hung back, looking down at his feet. He began to inscribe patterns in the soft earth with his left big toe. “I thought tomorrow was the day,” he said in a low, anguished voice. “Honestly. Honestly, Torlyri!”

She recalled him that time on the ledge outside the hatch of the cocoon, trembling in the cold air, begging her not to tell Koshmar that he had tried to slip outside. He was years older now, very different, sobered by his responsibilities within the tribe; and yet he really had not changed at all, had he? Not in any essential way. He was almost a man, no longer a wild frightened boy, Hresh-of-the-answers now, keeper of the chronicles, leader of the Seekers, surely the wisest member of the tribe, and yet he remained Hresh-full-of-questions too, willful, unpredictable, ungovernable. Forgetting his own twining-day! Only Hresh would be capable of something like that.

She had told him, three days before, to make himself ready for his final initiation into adulthood. That meant fasting, purging, chanting, contemplation. Had he done any of that? Probably not. Hresh’s priorities were determined only by Hresh.

If he has not made himself ready, she thought, how can he hope to attempt his first twining? Even he, even Hresh, must prepare himself properly. Even he.

She said, “You look strange. You’ve been using the Great World’s machines again, haven’t you?”

He nodded.

“And seen some disturbing things?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Do you want to tell me about them?”

Quickly Hresh shook his head. “Not really.”

He still had that not-entirely-here expression in his eyes. His gaze was aimed at a point somewhere beyond her left shoulder, as though he were politely tolerating this conversation without being in any significant way part of it. He was lost in some pain Torlyri could not begin to comprehend. She became more and more certain that it would be a mistake to take him for his first twining today.

But she could try to ease his pain, at least.

She reached toward him, touched him, sent energy and warmth to him. Hresh continued to look off into the distance. Something was twitching and throbbing in one of his cheeks.

After a moment he said, as though speaking from very far away, “I can see the past all around me as we stand here. The old Vengiboneeza that was. Vengiboneeza of Great World times.” His voice was oddly husky. His lower lip trembled. For the first time now he looked straight at her, and she saw strangeness in his eyes, and fear such as she had never seen in them before. “Sometimes, Torlyri, I don’t know where I am. Or when. The ancient city lies over this one like a mask. It rises like a vision, like a dream. And I become frightened. I’ve never been really frightened by anything before, do you know, Torlyri? I just want to learn things. There can’t be anything frightening about that. But sometimes I see things when I go into Vengiboneeza that — that—” He faltered. “The ancient city comes to life for me. When it does that it lies over the ruined one like a shining golden mask, a mask so beautiful that it terrifies me. Then I return to this city, the ruined one, and it lies over the ancient one like a skull above a face.”