Page 135 (1/2)

All this completed, I went to the city fathers of Shadukiam and asked for my payment, my opals and silver I considered briefly that I should have asked for better, but agree stones rarely break theirs Ilowered darkly and mumbled that he could not possibly render my payment when the flowers that crowned his city were clearly no roses, but some monstrous abomination of a flower that only a specter like myself would knohere to find

“Did I not do just as you asked? Did I not find for you an imperishable rose?”

“Well—” The littlehis bracelets in anxiety as I flared ree They are not strictly imperishable, are they? One petal in a century, it’s quite a lot of work for city sanitation on those occasions…” He sweat red and redolent under my nose

“I have worked wonders for you,” I whispered

“Even so,” said he

“I will bring down the Do of the frame will be heard all the way to the sea”

“Again,” said the wretched governor, his heree”

It is difficult to subdue a Hsien One ed me and bound me and there were so many of them, so many, like ants, and the blood they drew from my scalp hite and thick, like hest of the diamond turrets, which were clearer and sharper in those days than they have ever been since, and with so littering edge of the turret slide through h my skin I shrieked owl-shrill, but there was no help, only their laughter, which perhaps you knoell enough, s tried to release me, but they were kept away by volleys of arrows so thick they see the onme die I screah I was a great bell tolling out their hours

I bellowed out any number of dooms, any number of hideous wishes to the alabaster ears of my mother Maybe she could not see rackles, the sparrows, the doves? She did not see me But I seeo, that as the ninth sun set I sobbed weakly and begged her to let that place die, too, to let it becoray as her own dry kneecaps, to let it starve, since it would feed no one but itself

I seem to remember this, and I am sorry

THE TALE

OF THE CROSSING,

CONTINUED

“WITH THAT NINTH SUN I PERISHED THERE, AND I cannot say what became of my body, noI remember, the lonely shore and the ferry And the bones and the lizards—we are all translated on these shores, and I am sure I don’t understand it, but there is a kind of poetry in metamorphosis, and if I could but see my lizards, I should be very interested to knohat is written on their backs But I was angry at first, and the little things scratched so terribly, and my journey on the lake was much farther than yours When the storm ca and impatience, a nice old wo out of her palms I tried to steer myself, and fell into the water I’d advise you not to try it When I spluttered and gasped one, and I have been the ferryman for all the years upon years that have piled up since in this place”

Seven blinked and chuckled a little “That’s quite a story”