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“It was very clever of you, Yoi-as-born-in-the-evening I will tell everyone that it was you and notdown the breeding house steps like a child

We walked out of the ar day

The sun streaked through heavy clouds and played chasing gaan to snow We laughed and stuck out our tongues, feeling very strange indeed to feel snowflakes falling into our skull-water We turned back to look at the bright, tiled roof all covered in white, and saw at the door a beautiful, sad-eyed young wolass Her hair fell in crystal rivers to her waist, and her dress was crisply cut, frosted at the elbows Her hands were slender and tipped in blue, her cheeks jeweled and clear, a little glass mole on the side of her transparent nose She waved us farewell, her h which the sun blazed

At her feet was a huge, fat lizard on a glittering leash, his glass belly rippling, crystalline and swollen, his fringe sharp enough to cut, his tongue hanging out of his lass bookmark

THE

FERRYMAN’S TALE,

CONTINUED

“OUR LITTLE CORAL BULL WAS A SENSATION IN the Greater Kappa His lesson, which becah to catch the breath of all the turtles with their feet tangled in cucumbers How to make a rose which would never die or wilt, which would lose one petal in a century, whose gloss and shine were like glass, which would last until all the glass of the world were turned back to sand”

“This is the rose I seek”

The Kappa gestured toward the glass houses “It is there I told you we chose this place—we chose because of Yazo, darling Yazo, Yazo-as-born-at-the-bottom-of-winter By the tirew tall in the thesis-fields, and the corral was full of rolling Manticore, fat and furry as kittens, and fluttering Firebirds, she had alers in shreds, her eyes were sunken, her hair had all fallen out She did not know her name—but I told it to her every day I woke her and whispered in her green ear: ‘You are Yazo, who is beautiful, and was born at the bottorafts and splices that made my name—I told everyone that she was the senior of us, that she was my collaborator, my indispensable partner Her na I said in themattered She prodded our kittens listlessly, and did not notice if they nipped her thumbs But she did what shethe skull-water, that it was ht She pleaded with us to move the Greater Kappa to a safe place, a place where horrid villagers would not be forever bowing to us, and laughing at our spill, where we could be sure that ould not lose ourselves as she did”

Yoi ledtraced lines over every pane of glassy ice Shapes moved inside, but she did not invite me to enter

“The Greater Kappa is all around you,” she said gently “These are greenhouses Here on the roof of the world our water freezes and does not flow out—by her we are saved, and the best ainst the depredations of the average vicious child”

“I a my hand on her little shoulder, where the rih your houses seeive me what I need”

She snorted “We do not need your help”

Pushing the door of one of the larger houses open, I was thrust into a world of green, green plants and green turtles, and a sea of heads glittering blue, liquid water rippling bright Hundreds of eyes turned to arded me with calm