“My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken us? We have been thrust into the fire before, but we have never denied Thy Holy Law.”

Aenea! My God! What?

Shhh. It’s all right, my dear. I’m here.

I don’t… what?

My name is Kaltryn Cateyen Endymion and I am the wife of Trorbe Endymion, who died five local months ago in a hunting accident. I am also the mother of the child named Raul, now three Hyperion-years old, who is playing by the campfire in the caravan circle as aunts watch him.

I climb the grassy hill above the valley where the caravan wagons have circled for the night. There are a few triaspen along the stream in the valley, but otherwise the moors are empty of any landmarks except short grass, heather, sedge, rocks, boulders, and lichen. And sheep.

Hundreds of the caravan’s sheep are visible and audible on the hills to the east as they mill and surge to the sheepdogs’ herding.

Grandam is mending clothes on a rock outcropping with a grand view down the valley to the west. There is a haze over the western horizon that means open water, the sea, but the immediate world is bound about by the moors, the evening sky of deepening lapis, the meteor streaks silently crossing and crisscrossing that sky, and the sound of the wind in the grass.

I take a seat on a rock next to Grandam. She is my late mother’s mother, and her face is our face but older, with weathered skin, short white hair, firm bones in a strong face, a blade of a nose, and brown eyes with laugh lines at the corners.

“You’re back at last,” says the older woman. “Was the voyage home smooth?”

“Aye,” I say. “Tom took us along the coast from Port Romance and then up the Beak Highway rather than paying the ferry toll through the Fens. We stayed at the Benbroke Inn the first night, camped along the Suiss the second.” Grandam nods. Her fingers are busy with the sewing. There is a basket of clothes next to her on the rock. “And the doctors?”

“The clinic was large,” I say. “The Christians have added to it since last we were in Port Romance. The sisters… the nurses… were very kind during the tests.”

Grandam waits.

I look down the valley to where the sun is breaking free from the dark clouds. Light streaks the valley tops, throws subtle shadows behind the low boulders and rocky hilltops, and sets the heather aflame. “It is cancer,” I say. “The new strain.”

“We knew that from the Moor’s Edge doctor,” says Grandam. “What did they say the prognosis is?” I pick up a shirt—it is one of Trorbe’s, but belongs to his brother, Raul’s Uncle Ley. I pull my own needle and thread from my apron and begin to sew on the button that Trorbe had lost just before his last hunting trip north. My cheeks are hot at the thought that I gave this shirt to Ley with the button missing.

“They recommend that I accept the cross,” I say.

“There is no cure?” says Grandam. “With all their machines and serums?”

“There used to be,” I say. “But evidently it used the molecular technology…”

“Nanotech,” says Grandam.

“Yes. And the Church banned it some time ago. The more advanced worlds have other treatments.”

“But Hyperion does not,” says Grandam and sets the clothes in her lap aside.

“Correct.” As I speak, I feel very tired, still a little ill from the tests and the trip, and very calm. But also very sad. I can hear Raul and the other boys laughing on the breeze. “And they counsel accepting their cross,” says Grandam, the last word sounding short and sharp-edged.

“Yes. A very nice young priest talked to me for hours yesterday.” Grandam looks me in the eye. “And will you do it, Kaltryn?”

I return her gaze. “No.”

“You are sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Trorbe would be alive again and with us now if he had accepted the cruciform last spring as the missionary pleaded.”

“Not my Trorbe,” I say and turn away. For the first time since the pain began seven weeks ago, I am crying. Not for me, I know, but at the memory of Trorbe smiling and waving that last sunrise morn when he set out with his brothers to hunt salt ibson near the coast.

Grandam is holding my hand. “You’re thinking of Raul?”

I shake my head. “Not yet. In a few weeks, I’ll think of nothing else.”

“You do not have to worry about that, you know,” Grandam says softly. “I still remember how to raise a young one. I still have tales to tell and skills to teach. And I will keep your memory alive in him.”

“He will be so young when…” I say and stop.

Grandam is squeezing my hand. “The young remember most deeply,” she says softly. “When we are old and failing, it is the memories of childhood which can be summoned most clearly.”

The sunset is brilliant but distorted by my tears. I keep my face half turned away from Grandam’s gaze. “I don’t want him remembering me only when he is old. I want to see him… every day… see him play and grow up.”

“Do you remember the verse of Ryokan that I taught you when you were barely older than Raul?” says Grandam.

I have to laugh. “You taught me dozens of Ryokan verses, Grandam.”

“The first one,” says the old woman. It takes me only a moment to recall it. I say the verse, avoiding the singsong quality to my voice just as Grandam taught me when I was little older than Raul is now: “How happy I am As I go hand in hand With the children, To gather young greens In the fields of spring!”

Grandam has closed her eyes. I can see how thin the parchment of her eyelids is. “You used to like that verse, Kaltryn.”

“I still do.”

“And does it say anything about the need to gather greens next week or next year or ten years from now in order to be happy now?”

I smile. “Easy for you to say, old woman,” I say, my voice soft and affectionate to temper the disrespect in the words. “You’ve been gathering greens for seventy-four springs and plan to do so for another seventy.”

“Not so many to come, I think.” She squeezes my hand a final time and releases it. “But the important thing is to walk with the children now, in this evening’s spring sunlight, and to gather the greens quickly, for tonight’s dinner. I am having your favorite meal.” I actually clap my hands at this. “The Northwind soup? But the leeks are not ripe.”

“They are in the south swards, where I sent Lee and his boys to search. And they have a pot full. Go now, get the spring greens to add to the mix. Take your child and be back before true dark.”

“I love you, Grandam.”

“I know. And Raul loves you, Little One. And I shall take care that the circle remains unbroken. Run on now.”

I come awake falling. I have been awake.

The leaves of the Startree have shaded the pods for night and the stars to the out-system side are blazing.

The voices do not diminish. The images do not fade. This is not like dreaming. This is a maelstrom of images and voices… thousands of voices in chorus, all clamoring to be heard.

I had not remembered my mother’s voice until this moment. When Rabbi Schulmann cried out in Old Earth Polish and prayed in Yiddish, I had understood not only his voice but his thoughts.

I am going mad.

“No, my dear, you are not going mad,” whispers Aenea. She is floating against the warm pod wall with me, holding me. The chronometer on my comlog says that the sleep period along this region of the Biosphere Startree is almost over, that the leaves will be shifting to allow the sunlight in within the hour. The voices whisper and murmur and argue and sob. The images flit at the back of my brain like colors after a terrible blow to the head. I realize that I am holding myself stiffly, fists clenched, teeth clenched, neck veins straining, as against a terrible wind or wave of pain.

“No, no,” Aenea is saying, her soft hands stroking my cheek and temples. Sweat floats around me like a sour nimbus. “No, Raul, relax. You are so sensitive to this, my dear, just as I thought. Relax and allow the voices to subside. You can control this, my darling. You can listen when you wish, quiet them when you must.”