the sun touches it. Father told me to, and he was angry, and I was afraid, so I ate…and it tasted dead, and then suddenly everything was like you see it now.”
“Father did this?”
“He said it was part of his plan all along. I didn’t understand a lot of what he said.”
“Where is he?”
I drew my sword, clutching it tightly, furious and at the same time aware of how ridiculous and helpless I must have seemed. But it was my sword now, no longer my father’s, given to me by the Sybil for a specific purpose—
“Sekenre, what will you do?”
“Something. Whatever I have to.”
She took me by the hand. Her touch was cold. “Come on.”
I don’t know how long we walked through the ash garden. There was no way to measure time or distance or direction. But Hamakina seemed to know for certain where we were going.
Then the garden was gone and it seemed I was back in the cramped, swaying darkness of the Sybil’s house again. I looked around for her luminous face, expectant, but my sister led me without any hesitation across a rope bridge above an abyss, while vast leviathans with idiot, human faces swam up out of a sea of guttering stars, splashing pale foam, each creature opening its mouth to display rotting teeth and a mirrored ball held between them. I gazed down through the swinging, twisting ropes and saw myself reflected there on the curving glass.
Somehow Hamakina was no longer with me, but far away, down below, inside each mirrored sphere, and I saw her running ahead of me across featureless sand beneath a sand-colored sky. Then each monster sank down in turn and she vanished, and another rose, its jaws agape, and I saw her again.
There were black stars in the sky above Hamakina now, and she ran across the sand beneath them, a gray speck against the dead sky, receding into the black points which were the stars.
And each leviathan sank down and another rose to give me a glimpse of her, and from out of the abyss I caught snatches of a song she sang as she ran. Her voice was still her own, but older, filled with pain, and a little mad.
“When I am in the darkness gone,
and you’re still in the light,
come lie each day upon my grave;
I’ll lie with you each night.
Come bring me gifts of fruit and wine.
Bring them from the meadow.
I’ll bring dust and ash and clay;
I’ll bring gifts of shadow.”
Without any transition I could sense, I was suddenly on that endless expanse of sand beneath the black stars, and I followed her voice over the low dunes toward the horizon and a black shape that huddled there.
At first I thought it was one of the stars fallen from the sky, but as we neared it the thing resolved itself, and I slowed to a terrified walk when I saw the pointed roofs and the windows like eyes and the familiar dock beneath the house, now resting on the sand.
My father’s house—no, my house—stood on its stilts like a huge, frozen spider. There was no river, no Reedland at all, as if the whole world had been wiped clean but for this one jumble of ancient wood.
When I reached the dock, Hamakina was waiting for me at the base of the ladder.
She turned her head upward.
“He is there.”
“Why did he do all this to you and to Mother?” I said. I held onto the sword and onto the ladder, gripping hard, trembling more with sorrow than with fear or even anger.
Her reply startled me far more than anything the dreamer Aukin had said. Once more her voice was older, almost harsh.
“Why did he do all this to you, Sekenre?”
I shook my head and started climbing. As I did the ladder shivered, as if it were alive and felt my touch.
And my father’s voice called out from the house, thundering:
“Sekenre, I ask you again. Do you still love me?”
I said nothing and kept on climbing. The trapdoor at the top was barred from the inside.
“I want you to love me still,” he said. “I only wanted what was best for you. Now I want you to go back. After all you have done against my wishes, it is still possible. Go back. Remember me as I was. Live your life. That is all.”
I pounded on the trapdoor with the pommel of my sword. Now the whole house shivered and suddenly burst into white, colorless flame, washing over me, blinding me, roaring in my ears.
I let out a yell and jumped, barely clearing the dock below, landing face-down in the sand.
I sat up, sputtering, still clutching the sword. The house was not harmed by the fire, but the ladder smoldered and fell as I watched.
I slid the sword under my belt again and started climbing one of the wooden stilts. Once more the white flames washed over me, but they gave no heat, and I ignored them.
“Father,” I said. “I am coming. Let me in.”
I reached the porch outside my own room. I was standing in front of the very window through which Hamakina had been carried away.
All the windows and doors were barred against me, and flickering with white flames.
I thought of calling on the Sybil. It would be my third and last opportunity. Then, if I ever did so again—what? Somehow she would claim me.
No, it was not time for that.
“Father,” I said, “if you love me as much as you say, open up.”
“You are a disobedient son.”
“I shall have to disobey you further.”
And once more I began to weep as I stood there, as I closed my hands together and opened them again. Father had beaten me once for attempting this act. Then I had gotten no results. Now I did, and it was as easy as breathing.
Cold blue flames danced on my outstretched palms. I reached up with my burning hands and parted the white fire like a curtain. It flickered and went out. I pressed my palms against the shuttered window. Blue flames streamed from between my fingers. The wood smoked, blackened, and fell inward, giving way so suddenly that I stumbled forward, almost falling into the room.
I climbed over the windowsill and stood there, amazed. The most fantastic thing of all was that I was truly in the house where I had grown up, in the room Mother, Hamakina, and I had shared, and in which I had remained alone for half a night at the very end waiting desperately for the dawn. I saw where I had once carved my initials into the back of a chair. My clothes lay heaped over the edge of an open trunk. My books were on a shelf in the far corner, and a page of papyrus, one of my own illumination projects, was still in place on the desk, with pens and brushes and bottles of ink and paint all where I had left them. Hamakina’s doll lay on the floor at the foot of the bed. One of Mother’s hevats, a golden bird, hung from the ceiling, silent and motionless.
More than anything else I wanted to just lie down in that bed, then rise in the morning, get dressed, and resume work at my desk, as if nothing had ever happened.
I think that was my father’s last offer to me. He was shaping my thoughts.
I walked out of the room, the floorboards creaking. I knocked on his workroom door. It, too, was locked.
Father spoke from within. He sounded weary.
“Sekenre, what do you want?”
It was a completely astonishing question. All I could say was, “I want in.”
“No,” he said after a long pause. “What do you truly want, as my son, for yourself?”
“I