[djo]

...and turn 61, the epilog:


In which Vethru hits the road, and Molly finds something.


Vethru

Well, things could have gone better.

But they could've gone a lot worse, too. I've spent a dozen years in some worlds and walked away with nothing. This time? Not so bad. I got a distorted version of a nice section of source code. Better than nothing. With a few decades of study, comparing it to the parts I already understand, I'll probably be able to fix some of it. It might add up to as much as a tenth of a percent of the whole. Not bad at all, for five years' work.

And the rest of it's still there, in Inland. Still accessible, somewhere. I make a mental note to come back in a few hundred years. No, make that a few thousand. Those damned Vans live forever. I'd rather not run into anyone who remembers me. That'd be awkward. It's either the whole "God has returned! Rejoice!" thing, which is OK but gets to be a hassle, or else you find you're now the uber-evil in a whole new mythology. Better make it ten thousand years. Maybe Pherios will have wandered off by then, too.

"So where to now, boss?" asks Quellian Ji.

"Someplace comfortable," I say. "There's got to be a dimension near here with silk pillows and five-star restaurants."

"How about a luxury cruise?" he asks.

"How about someplace where I can get a nice seagull-burger?"

"No such place, boss," Ji snickers. "Everybody knows seagulls are good luck."

"It's albatrosses you can't kill. Seagulls, who would notice? There's so damned many of them."

"Boss, as long as it has feathers and flies over the ocean, it's good luck."

"Well, I've had seagull," I tell him. "And albatross, too. The former was not a gourmet experience. You know why the albatross crossed the road?"

"Why?" he asks.

"It was glued to the chicken," I say.

He squawks and giggles and just about falls off my shoulder. For some reason, chicken jokes crack him up. Simple things for simple minds. But there's a reason I keep him around, because then he recites, " 'I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide/Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied.' "

"Shut up, bird," I say, and he just laughs as he bobs along on his perch.

Damn it, but he's right. I turn north-by-kata-by-northwest in the six-dimensional manifold we're walking through, and I start looking for a place, any place, where the salt air stings, the tall ships roll on the waves, the wind sings with the creak of the mast and flap of the sails, and new possibilities lie behind every turning of the tide...


Molly

"Look after my family." That was the last thing Pherios said to me, before he left. Because he knew, no, *we* knew, he wouldn't be around to do it himself.

He never came back from Ermor. Neither did Vethru. The world's all different now. None of the pretenders ascended. We're in a kind of peace now.

So what was I doing down here in the tunnels under Triastellus?

It was his darn birds. I started to hear them, after he died. They twittered and tweeted and clucked in my skull, and they wouldn't leave me alone. Pherios probably did it on purpose, giving me a piece of his gift. Birds! What did I know about birds? Hearing voices is bad enough, but I can understand voices, mostly. At least Pherios could see his birds. I just heard them.

I finally gave in yesterday. I started following them. Uncle Belletennares said that works for him, wandering around. So I did, I started walking toward where they seemed to be.

They took me over to Triastellus, way up toward the top. We stopped near Alteion's tomb. I listened to the ducks and gulls in the fountain, and the sounds I heard in my head were suddenly *right in front of me*. Like what was in my head was just an echo of what I was really hearing and seeing, except I was hearing the echo at the same time, instead of a second later. It was really weird.

I sat listening to them for over an hour. Half of the fountain had been drained. I asked why, and they told me they were putting in a new statue. Of Pherios. I couldn't take it. I broke down crying and ran away.

But the next day, I came back. I guess it was OK with the birds, because they were still there. They led me inside.

They bring me way deep under the earth. For a while I can't stop sneezing, but after a while, a long while, I stop. It's like we're so far underground that the dust can't find us.

Then the birdsong starts to thin out. It's like each bird can only come with me part of the way into the tunnels. There are only a handful left when I reach this one section. It's filled with books and scrolls. Some of the titles I can read, but most of them don't even look like our writing. They must be really old.

Each of the arches that connect the rooms in this area has a bird carved in stone above it. Now that I can only hear a few birds left, I can tell that each one stops singing as I pass through its arch. Like they're leading me on a particular path. I pass through the petrel arch, and I stop hearing the petrel. Then I stop hearing that little bird that runs along the shore when I pass its arch, then the plover stops, and then the funny black and white bird you sometimes see way off in the gorge in winter. The puffyn, that's it.

That leaves just one. It's a squawk I know well. It *hurts*, because I know it's him. It's a blue heron. That's what Pherios was, in his visions, just like his dad. I slowly walk through the heron arch, my heart aching because I miss him so much. And I'm so relieved, because the heron doesn't stop speaking after I pass under the arch. Because that would be like him leaving me again. But I'm still sniffling, and I can barely see through my tears as my hands reach for a small wooden chest. It sounds like a fledgling is pecking at it from the inside. It opens easily.

I unroll the scroll on a table, and *wow*.

It's a glowy runic thing, and it radiates power. It's what Pherios wanted me to find. I can feel it. He's watching, and he's happy. I've done what he wanted me to do. I found it. And the heron's voice fades, and it's quiet and peaceful in the chamber. And I feel peaceful, too. I can let him go now.

And then I wonder what to do. This thing I've found, it's so old, and it's powerful, and I'm just a young girl. It doesn't belong in my world. It's like the opposite of what I am, at least what I was before all this war started. It belongs to the world of svartalfs or Vanjarls or whatever. But I guess it doesn't matter. That's life here. Young, old? Past, future? Humans and Vans...war, and now peace? Me sewing dresses, and me hearing the future? It's all here. Two sides to everything. That's how we do things here. That's the way it is. This is my life. This is where I live. This is my home. This is Vanheim.