Brezlun

Part One: The Mediator

Kethrin Decade

Miako paused outside Suzata’s house, tucked her flute case under her arm, and slowly performed the rite of leave-taking. She was in no hurry to get home, but she’d had enough of the party, and her friends—understanding without either condoning or condemning her antisocial tendencies—had let her go. The drinking would go on in her honor into the small hours of the morning. It was the evening of the first day of the first week of the year, her birthday and her choiceday; more than enough reason to celebrate.

When she’d completed the right hand flourish that ended the ritual, she took the flute case by its handle and paused. The case had been carved from a solid block of mahogany, embellished all over with shallow, abstract designs that somehow evoked melody. It had been made by her father’s frenik, Tapadak Wheatgrinder, who had been like a second father to her. He had presented it to her exactly ten years ago today, and instructed her solemnly to take it to the farthest edges of the world; to make music for the strange women who lived without men, and for the men who stopped fighting each other only long enough to get all their wives pregnant, and for the magicians who lived up on the ice.

She had never taken it farther than Littapo. Her mother had called last week to say that Tapadak was dead, burned and scattered in the fields he loved at the age of one hundred and one.

Feeling as if she’d disappointed the old man—a man who’d been old her entire life, old when she’d been born—she denied herself the release of running home. Running was her normal reaction to sadness, or any unpleasant feeling, but she felt she didn’t deserve it today, and anyway she was a decade past choiceday and still living in Felittaka. Past time to grow up.

The moon was up and nearly full, dragging fog off the high tide in Arrow Bay. She couldn’t see the sea but she could hear it and smell it, though it lay a mile away. The section of Littapo where she and Suzata lived was not fashionable or wealthy. The houses were modest, uniform ceramic spheres, one-third buried in the rocky soil. As she walked down the lane, passing into and out of the cones of light thrown by electric lamps, the fog thickened and wafted around her, hiding her neighbors’ houses and threatening to obscure the moon.

She couldn’t resist the melancholy any longer. She stopped midway between two lights, standing in the middle of the deserted lane, opened the case and took out her flute. It gleamed in the inconstant moonlight. She put it to her lips and played the opening bars of the Shadow Waltz, closing her eyes and letting the feeling flow from her heart to her lungs and fingers and out of the instrument.

Miako! someone yelled from far behind her. Stop playing that sad shit and go home!

Miako laughed, blew one final, rude note, and returned the instrument to its case.

Her house was just like its neighbors, except for the color; no two seemed to be quite the exact same shade. Hers was the aqua of shallow tropical water, slightly nubbly like stucco but made of an incredibly tough ceramic that never needed to be washed or repainted. The perfect sphere was punctured by windows, doors, and ventilation openings, partially buried so that the front door was just at street level. She paused on the threshold of the dark house and performed the rite of homecoming, then opened the unlocked door and went inside, setting her flute case on the small table in the hall.

Above that table a tall mirror hung. Miako stared at the dim reflection of herself. Bronze skin, black hair pulled back off her round face, large eyes—and thirty years old. She remembered the child she had been, running wild and barefoot all over her parents’ farm, her mother’s despair that she would ever grow up to be a proper woman, her father laughing at her unruly hair and dirty feet, and their relief on choiceday that she had not done what everyone expected, and chosen kethrin to Tongat. Instead she had merely moved from the farm to the city, and still saw her parents occasionally.

She heard a slight rustle in the living room and turned to peer into the darkness. She jumped when a deep, resonant voice said slowly, Miako Tomaza Seeker.

Who is it? she said.

Miako Tomaza Seeker... a Seeker who does not seek.

She didn’t recognize the voice. It was very strange, almost mechanical, with disturbing harmonics.

What do you want?

I seek a Seeker.

I am Seeker.

Yet you do not seek.

A light clicked on and she saw a tall, hooded figure sitting in her reading chair. He held a book on his lap—an atlas, open to an overview map of Gebertala. From where she stood, Miako could see the star that marked Littapo in the point of Arrow Bay. The man closed the book and reached out a long arm to replace it on the shelf.

You have quite a library for a Felitta, he said. You are a puzzle, Miako.

I’m sorry, sir, do I know you?

No, but I know you.

Have we met? Is there some way I can be of assistance?

We have never met, the man said. And yes, you can be of assistance, by allowing me to assist you.

I don’t understand. Who are you?

The man stood up and Miako realized just how tall he really was. She was average height, just under five feet tall, but this man must have topped six. Possibly seven. She had never seen such a tall person before. Then he threw back his hood.

She gasped and froze. His face was almost human, but looked unfinished, or perhaps melted. He had no hair, not even eyebrows, and his eyes were pure black. There were no nostrils below his thin nose, and no lips. The ears were simple flaps, without the convolutions of a person’s ears. Miako fell to her knees and prostrated herself.

She tried to remember the proper forms, but though her brain was racing nothing was coming to her. I’m sorry, sir, she mumbled into the tile floor. I cannot recall the proper obeisance.

Stand up, he said. I require no obeisance. I keep hoping you Felitta will give up on your silly rituals, but it seems to get worse every time I come back. She kept her forehead flat on the floor. Stand up! he said firmly, so she did. But she couldn’t look him in the eyes. Look at me, he commanded, so she did.

I am not divine, he said. I’m just a Mediator. You don’t need to bow to me, and I’d appreciate it if you would talk to me normally.

At that moment Miako remembered the ritual she had not practiced since her early school days, the ritual every Felitta learned and never expected to use. No one had seen a Mediator since before her father’s great-grandfather had been born.

She began the steps and the flowing hand gestures uncertainly, not sure if he would reprimand her again. The Mediator sighed and crossed his arms, resigned to waiting her out. By the time she reached the final step she felt more confident, and finished the last movement beautifully.

Thank you for the welcome, he said, completing the ritual, releasing her. She sagged against the wall. Come in here and sit down.

She gratefully took the guest seat and he returned to her reading chair. They looked at each other for a moment.

Please ask me for help, he said.

I don’t understand.

I know. Can you simply repeat a phrase for me?

I will gladly do whatever you require, sir.

Good. Say this: ‘Baba, please send me a new Mediator.’

She hesitated; he gestured. She said, Baba, please send me a new Mediator.

Thank you. Let us wait.

She waited with him quietly. After ten minutes he sighed.

Well, he said, it was worth a try. I have no way of knowing if it’s the uplink, the downlink, or both. He held up a hand: she was about to repeat that she didn’t understand. Do you pray, Miako?

Of course, sir.

How often?

Not often. Once or twice a year.

Are your prayers answered?

Very seldom, sir.

But sometimes.

Miako thought that this was the strangest day of her life. She felt as if she were about to drift sideways out of her body. She closed her eyes and took a deep, ragged breath. When she opened her eyes the Mediator was standing over her, offering a glass of water. She hadn’t heard him move. She made the rite of minor gratitude, a brief passing of hands with a grace note to acknowledge that the favor was done by someone above her station, and took the glass.

Can you guess why I am here? he said softly in his complex voice after he had resumed his seat.

No, sir. She sipped the water.

Can you guess why no one has seen a Mediator in four hundred years?

No, sir.

Did you know there’s an old legend that a female Seeker will lead the world into the Fifth Age?

She choked on the water. No, sir, she sputtered when she got her coughing under control, I’ve never heard that.

It’s a Sevessa legend. I guess they thought it would be one of them.

Please, sir, I’m very tired. She’d been a little sleepy when she left Suzata’s, but now she felt exhaustion like the weight of a ship on her head and shoulders.

I know. We can finish our conversation in the morning. I want to leave you with one thought to sleep on, however.

Yes, sir?

This is what I want from you. I want you to come with me—leave your home, and your friends and family, and live up to your name. There is something I must find, and I need a female Seeker to find it.

* * *

When she awoke in the morning, the sunlight streaming through the sheer curtains of her bedroom made the whole encounter seem like nothing more than a disturbing dream, born of sadness at Tapadak’s death, regret at not having done more with her youth, and too much beer. But when she’d finished the rite of waking, the rite of bathing, and the rite of dressing, the Mediator was sitting just where she’d left him.

Good morning, he said solemnly.

Miako didn’t know a rite to make God’s representative go away. All she could think was to offer him breakfast.

No, thank you, he said. Please eat something and then we can talk.

I have to go to work.

You can work after we talk.

She made a simple meal of coffee, fruit, and bread with jam, taking more time than usual on the rite of food preparation. Perhaps she ate a little slower than usual, and took more care with the rite of thanks for the meal to be eaten and that of the meal completed. She peeked into the living room when she was done. He was still sitting in her reading chair.

I am done waiting, he intoned, and she scurried into the room and quickly sat down across from him. I have been waiting for you for ten years, Miako. Ten years, plus two thousand or so.

Please, sir, she said. I don’t understand.

Tell me why you didn’t choose kethrin to Tongat on your choiceday.

This was exactly what all of her friends and teachers had asked her ten years ago. Miako had no better answer now.

I was not ready, sir, to leave my family and my homeland.

Then why did you choose the surname Seeker? She couldn’t answer, and stood to dance the rite of hopeless confusion. When she’d seated herself again, he said, What you seek is not in Tongatka.

Perhaps, sir. But perhaps I simply...

He finished the sentence for her. You don’t know what you’re seeking. She nodded. I have been waiting ten years for you to realize that you chose the wrong path. I can wait no longer. You chose to stay in your birthplace and waste yourself on meaningless work instead of migrating to the land where you would have been happiest and done the most good. You chose your name; now it is time to live up to it.

Last night you said you were seeking something, she said. May I be permitted to know what?

I want to return to Baba, he said. I cannot help you unless you ask, but even if you asked me now I could not help you. As you saw last night, Baba no longer hears me.

But Baba always hears us, Miako said.

Perhaps so for you, but she cannot hear me. That is why the Mediators have been absent for so long. They are all gone but one. I am the last Mediator, and I am broken, perhaps forever. He leaned forward. What I seek is another way to speak to Baba, so once again I can answer your prayers.

What shall I do?

I want you to accompany me on a trip.

Where?

Everywhere. Or perhaps not.

For how long, sir?

A week. Or perhaps the rest of your life.

Miako inhaled sharply.

I’ve been watching you since you were a child, the Mediator said. All your life you’ve been praying for a miracle, or at least a sign. He stood up. This is it.

* * *

He gave her time to think about it. In the silence of her bedroom, Miako looked out the window, stared at the miniature paintings of her parents, and tried to imagine wrenching herself out of her comfortable if disappointing life. She couldn’t see the path from where she was to the life she had imagined when she’d been a child; she never could.

When she was very little, she’d dreamed of what it would be like to be kidnapped by Merta tribesmen and forced to be the fourth wife of a wild, savage chief. At another time she had imagined Sevessa coming to her in the night and whispering that this life was a mistake; she had been intended for vessin that had somehow gone wrong. But most often in her daydreams Tongat came to her at school and took her wordlessly by the hand and led her away to their rocky, icy land at the top of Gebertala, to teach her their mysteries and show her the truth behind the world.

Never had she imagined a Mediator, one of Baba’s messengers, showing up at her door and offering her the adventure she had always craved.

In the end she faltered, just as she had on her choiceday. The wide world tempted and horrified her in equal parts. She came out of her room to find the Mediator standing near her front door. With stiff limbs she performed the rite of reluctant refusal, a rite that was most often performed when declining a marriage proposal. Her face burned with her own inadequacy, and the Mediator walked out the door without a word.

The Littapo Fair

The following morning, Miako paused inside the office door to perform the rite of labor commencing. She added the optional grace note, one arm flung up with hand spread wide, to indicate that she was happy to be employed. Her supervisor, Keving Rosekeeper, was a kind man. When she’d come in halfway through the workday yesterday he had asked if she were feeling well. She had carefully danced the rite of abject apology and explained that the delay had been beyond her control, and he’d merely performed the rite of acceptance and said he was relieved that she was not ill.

The office was undivided, in typical Felitta fashion. Low, comfortable couches were scattered around the vast second floor of Government Building, separated by potted plants, storage cabinets, chalkboards, coffee stations, communication consoles, and shrines. Some couches were clustered so that groups of up to ten people could huddle together in conference, but most were the private work areas of individual workers.

Miako followed the meandering corridor through the maze to her own little space in the center of the floor, nodding and waving to acquaintances as she passed them. She set her flute case on her couch and hung her coat beside those of her nearby co-workers, on a preserved tree whose lower branches had been carved into coat hooks; the upper branches had sparkling, oversized glitter for leaves. A live ficus tree, slightly taller than she was, stood in a brown-and-blue glazed pot beside her couch. She took a moment to inspect its leaves, pulled off three yellow ones, and watered it.

After sinking down into the couch, she unfolded the work surface from the left arm and looked over the papers she had nearly finished reviewing before leaving the previous evening. The census report was due to the World Council the following week. There were no surprises in the numbers this year: the world population hovered, as it should, just under six million. Sometimes, for reasons that no one understood, the ratio of births to deaths fluctuated enough to require birth limits or fecundity drives in Felitta, or changes in the pattern of vessin, but none of that would be necessary this year. In the ten years that Miako had been working in the census office, she had come to think of the world population as a tide that ebbed and surged, controlled perhaps by phases of the moon but subject to bemusing randomness at smaller levels of detail. She retrieved the abacus from the storage unit built into the couch arm and resumed double-checking the arithmetic.

Miako! someone said. She looked up to see Suzata peeking around the thick foliage of her ficus. Don’t forget, we’re all going to the fair this afternoon.

I remember. How are you today?

I’m tired. I met a new man at the dance last night. I didn’t get much sleep.

Miako laughed. The weekends aren’t long enough for you? You have to party on Seconday too?

Maybe tonight as well. The day after tomorrow is Fiday. I can sleep then.

I’ll see you at lunch. You can tell me about him then.

Okay.

The morning passed quickly. By lunchtime Miako had finished her review and carried the census report to Keving’s station near the eastern windows. He was not there, so she left it on a small lacquered table beside his couch. She and Suzata took their coats and went down to the wharf for lunch.

Their favorite fish shack was just down the street from Government Building. It was a grayed three-sided clapboard structure that seemed to be on the verge of collapse—but it had looked exactly the same the day Miako had first seen it, a decade before. She had long since become friends with the couple that ran the restaurant, and they’d told her once that they spent long hours every weekend maintaining the place’s ramshackle appearance. Ambiance, Carl had said in a conspiratorial whisper. That’s the secret to a successful restaurant.

It was not the ambiance but the food, in Miako’s opinion. Carl and his wife Stelna had very good relations with the fishermen in Littapo. Every workday they offered fish that had been swimming in the ocean less than twelve hours ago, cooked magnificently, at a reasonable price. She ate here at least once a week.

She and Suzata took their fried cod and beet-asparagus salads to one of the tall tables that looked out on the street. Although it was cool the street side of Carl’s restaurant was always wide open to allow diners to see the show. While Suzata rambled on enthusiastically about the man she’d taken home the night before, Miako slowly ate her fish and salad, listening with half of her attention, and watched the traffic go by on Government Street.

Government Building was the tallest structure in Littapo, and therefore the tallest in Felittaka: four stories of majestic granite, with carved corners and window frames, large expanses of glass, and an ornate parapet at the roof line. The street that served it was one of the few paved avenues in Littapo. Most of the city of half a million people, the most populous on Brezlun, was served by narrow lanes like the one on which Miako lived.

People rode down the street on horses and the occasional camel or donkey. Carts of various sizes being pulled along the street—by horses, oxen, or mules, singly or in teams—ranged from drab weather-beaten wood to ornately lacquered carriages to brightly-colored ceramic spheres nestled in delicate wrought-iron frames.

It had taken some time for Miako to adjust to the bustle of city life. She had grown up on a secluded farm far up the Whip River, half a continent away, with no brothers or sisters and only two children her own age within walking distance. By now the crowding and the variety of people, food, and buildings were no longer confusing, they were an important part of her life, and she would not willingly give them up.

She smiled at Suzata as her friend finished her story about her new lover. There was no need to pay overly close attention or even to remember his name. In a few weeks there would be another to take his place. Once Miako might have found Suzata’s behavior appalling, but a decade of living in Littapo had made her tolerant of different lifestyles.

Ready to go back? she said.

I can’t wait to go to the fair.

You won’t have long to wait. It’s only two hours. They performed the rite of thanks for the meal together, and Miako waved to Carl as she left the restaurant.

* * *

The fruit trees on the hills surrounding Littapo were in full blossom. It looked as though a tsunami of pale color had deluged the town and run up almost to the crest of the hills, leaving swaths of pink, white, rose, and lavender wrack behind.

Keving gathered his department together at the appointed hour. I would greatly appreciate it, he said with mock sternness, if we managed to avoid the excesses of last year’s Blossom Fair.

What, shouted someone from the back, you mean Tipper tearing off all his clothes and dancing naked on top of the apple barrels? Everyone laughed, but Tipper, a young man with unkempt hair, straightened his shoulders and thumped his chest proudly, grinning.

No, Keving replied, "I was thinking more of the eight babies born twenty-seven weeks later. It plays havoc with my staffing plans. More laughter. Follow me, census staffers, to the Littapo Fair!"

Most of them carried their musical instruments. Miako had her case in hand, and Suzata’s small bongos hung at her back on a cross-body strap. They followed the crowd of fifty people down the stairs and out to the street. It was just a mile or so down the boulevard to the fairgrounds, a pleasant walk on this sunny and cool afternoon.

The street was lined with chestnuts, elms, maples, and sycamores. In the wide center median between the lanes, the massive branches of thousand-year old oak trees sagged almost to the ground. Traffic was heavy heading to the fair, with carts occasionally having to stop for no reason other than congestion. Street cleaners darted in among the slow-moving animals, scooping up the offal and flinging it into their carts.

Keving’s people stayed together for only a few blocks, ending up strung out into a thin line that fragmented and finally dissolved into the crowd at the entrance to the fairgrounds. Suzata took Miako’s hand so they wouldn’t be separated. Before they even passed through the intricate ceramic gates that towered fifty feet above them, they were assailed by the smells and calls of vendors offering food of every sort, from fresh fruit to spun sugar castles to bread pockets filled with steaming spicy fish stew; perfumes, toys, decats of varieties of fresh flowers on long stems, and guides to the fair. Suzata just laughed at the aggressive peddlers and they passed beneath the gates and into the fair.

The fairgrounds were used primarily at the festival that began each season, like the Blossom Fair, but nearly every week in between there was something going on here—spontaneous symphonies, animal shows, storyteller conventions, or cooking classes. Miako knew the thirty-acre grounds well.

What do you want to do first? she said.

Animal barn! Suzata said, nearly shouting to be heard over the happy noise.

Miako shrugged in resignation. She had grown up on a farm with dogs, sheep, and cattle, and perhaps that was why she had no pets herself; but Suzata was obsessed with them. She had a small dog, three cats, a cage full of small flitting birds, ferrets that seemed to vary in number from week to week, and a rabbit.

She dutifully followed Suzata up and down the aisles in the huge barn, examining the horses, pigs, rabbits, chickens, cattle, llamas, and show dogs until she thought she would scream from boredom. Suzata exclaimed over every specimen that was even slightly interesting. When they were done, Suzata gave Miako her choice for their next activity.

Music, Miako said, and they reversed roles. Suzata sighed and they went back out into the sunshine, looking for a peffodia.

It wasn’t hard to find one, the problem was finding one in which a flute could play a significant role. They passed a very loud, energetic group comprised mainly of strings and horns. She and Suzata paused for a moment to watch the dancing. After a moment she realized that the three loose-haired women whirling barefoot to the rhythm were not Felitta—they were Sevessa, from the southern continent, and the dance instantly transformed itself from a scandalous, embarrassing display to a fascinating cultural one.

I’d like to be able to move like that, Suzata said.

Just imitate your cats, Miako said. That’s exactly what they look like when they’re playing with a paper toy.

They stopped again to listen to a storyteller, an aged man who reminded Miako of her old frenik Tapadak, spinning a tale about a cow that had fallen in love with an elk. When he reached the humorous ending, the audience laughed and applauded, and they moved on.

———————

The Fairgoer’s Tale

This is a tale of the long ago in the land of Felittaka.

On my old Papa’s farm we had a lot of silly cattle. There was one that could not leave the corner signposts alone; over months it would chew right through the pole, and then my Papa would have to call the utility company and they’d install a new pole and charge him for it. He’d bang that cow on the head with what was left of the shredded pole, but the cow would not learn. The third time she did it he took that cow out to the slaughterhouse and we had steaks for a year, but I thought they tasted of creosote.

There was another that fell in love with an elk. This was out east of Hungry Lake, good cattle country and good for growing maize, but there was a lot of old forest surrounding the fields, and still is today. A herd of elk lived in the hills and the woods near our farm, and sometimes they’d come down into the maize fields and we’d have to chase them away. We’d hunt them in fall, but they were forest-wise and it was a rare year that Papa actually bagged one.

One spring a young bull elk came down into the fields, looking for handouts maybe or cobs left over from fall. He came right into the cattle field, and one of those silly cows fell smack in love with the skinny, gangly fellow. She’d follow him from one side of the field to the other, and when he’d hop the fence like you’d step over a pumpkin, she’d stand there at the rails and moo and moon until the sun went down.

This went on all spring. That elk would come by nearly every day, and that silly cow would follow him around, nudging him in the flanks and backing up to him like he could actually do something to scratch her itch. He must have been twice her height but half her weight; if she’d sat on him he’d have been crushed like a fresh tomato. She didn’t care about their differences, she was in love. She didn’t seem to mind his big nose, and those proud antlers growing bigger every week, and the fact the he had no spots at all, just a reddish-brown coat with black points.

The young buck did no harm, and after a while Papa decided it wasn’t worth my time trying to chase him out of the fields. Somewhere in the back of his head Papa must have been thinking that the familiarity would make him easy pickings come hunting season.

That didn’t happen, though. First chilly day of the fall the elk came into the fields as usual, and at dusk he stood by the fence, proud and tall with his antlers full and ready for battle. Papa came out onto the back porch, and when the elk saw him he let out a bugle cry that shook the windows. Then that elk did the darndest thing. He nudged that adoring cow with his big, proud rack, then he waited a moment and nudged her again. When she wouldn’t leap the fence he tossed his head and flew over it himself like the magical caribou in the children’s stories. And we never saw him again.

Now that cow watched him go, and you could see something change in her. Like wisdom, maybe, realizing she’d spent the entire spring and summer mooning over a creature that barely knew she existed. In that moment she wised up and became a better cow. She resolved to set her sights lower and in the future be more realistic, more practical, more true to herself, and realize what her limitations were.

She held fast to that resolution. She went right out and fell in love with the barn cat, an old tom that had seen a lot of the world and was wiser than some people I’ve known. That cow followed him everywhere. And that cat knew what was what, so he let her.

———————

Near the flower hall, a small group of musicians was weaving a plaintive melody; just a guitar and two violins. The family eating lunch at a nearby picnic table were smiling appreciatively. Miako listened for a moment, then nodded at Suzata. These were good musicians, but their song needed something and she thought she knew what. She opened her case and took out her dull silver flute, while Suzata pulled her small drums around to the front of her body.

The song they were weaving had a complex, subtle rhythm. Miako held the flute to her lips silently for several minutes before joining in, starting with low, breathy notes that merely punctuated the high, sad wailing of the violins. The guitar provided the foundation and the rhythm on which the violins spun a fantastic structure like the sugar castles they’d seen outside the gate. Miako darted in and out of that construction like a bird flying among the branches of a tree. She wound it tighter, gave it focus, and made it sadder. Meanwhile Suzata set up a soft syncopated beat that freed the guitar to join the violins in erecting the edifice.

When they wound down to a slow, pulsing, diminishing wail half an hour later, Miako was startled to see that a huge crowd had gathered around them, including Keving and many of her co-workers. As the last note died away the audience whistled, cheered, and clapped wildly. The musicians bowed deeply. The guitarist, a middle-aged man with graying hair and wild eyebrows, set aside his instrument and came over to her.

Where did you learn to do that? he said.

Miako ducked her head shyly and was about to deliver a demurrer when another voice rang out clearly in rich harmonics.

Miako Tomaza Seeker, it said.

Her stomach flipped and all the good feeling she had accumulated during the performance and the applause vanished like fog beneath the summer sun. There, in the back of the crowd, the cloaked Mediator towered over the fair-goers. They edged back, making a bubble of space around him. When the silence had grown palpable he tossed back his hood and a collective gasp rose up from the crowd. Decats of people began the rite of welcome that she had had so much trouble remembering the night he’d first appeared; decats more had the same memory lapse and were copying the others, half a beat behind.

The ritual movements trailed away and the crowd was still. Miako could feel the stillness spreading out from him in waves. She closed her eyes and wished herself away from here, but when she opened them again he still stood thirty feet away with nothing but open space between them and a tight cluster of people enclosing them. There was no escape.

I am Chass, he said with a commanding voice that echoed off the surrounding buildings, the last Mediator of Brezlun. I have been waiting two thousand years for a female Seeker, and I require your assistance.

There was a sigh as a hundred people drew breath together, and then the silence grew even deeper. Miako looked around, at her fellow musicians, her friends, her supervisor, the many strangers that she had bewitched with her music. In their eyes she saw confusion, awe, sympathy, envy, even fear, but nowhere did she see a way back to her old life.

Miako carefully set down her flute and performed the rite of onerous duty accepted.

* * *

Suzata led her out to the street. By the time Miako reached the fair gate her arms and shoulders were bruised from thousands of gentle squeezes, hugs, pats, caresses, and slaps. The news had spread through the fair like fire. The people who had seen the visitation pointed her out to the people who had not, and they lined up, making a gauntlet of the curious, the reverent, and the suspicious—a clear path that led directly out of the fair.

Meet me at Papessa docks at sunrise on Fiday, the Mediator had said before his towering form somehow vanished into the crowd. Less than two days to get ready, two days to shuck off her comfortable life. He hadn’t even given her a chance to explain that she could not leave without asking permission of her supervisor and the local council.

She felt exhausted, stunned and yet somehow hyper-alert. Then she realized that she didn’t have her flute.

Suzata, my flute! she said.

Right here. She held up the case in her left hand. With her right she continued to tug Miako’s arm.

They passed through the gate and Miako felt relief that the ordeal was finally over, which lasted the five seconds until she realized that the people in the street were also lined up to watch her pass. No one tried to speak to her, no one called out encouragement or disparagement. They simply watched her walk by. The silence was worse than shouting and cursing would have been.

Why is everyone so quiet? she said.

What is there to say? Suzata replied.

After a while the crowd thinned out and then, without her noticing when it happened, they were simply walking down the street with other pedestrians, and no one was watching them. Suzata released her arm and handed her the flute case. They walked without speaking until they’d passed Government Building and were halfway home.

What do you think he wants? Suzata said.

He was in my house when I came home from the party.

Suzata stopped and faced her. They were on the cobbled sidewalk beside a broad, two-lane street that branched off at an angle from Government Street. It wound up Piffle Hill, with switchbacks and curves, but it wasn’t very steep. The leaves on the elm trees still shone with the vivid translucent green of spring.

You didn’t tell me.

I didn’t know how. It would sound like bragging, or you’d think I was just drunk.

Suzata crossed her arms on her chest. What did he say?

He wants me to go away with him. Looking for something.

What?

I don’t know. I don’t understand what he said. Something about another way to talk to Baba.

How long will you be gone?

I don’t know. She looked down at her feet. Maybe forever.

She was startled when Suzata grabbed her in a hug so fierce that she thought her ribs would crack. She held Miako tightly for a long moment, then shook her, turned without a word, and continued walking.

They stopped briefly at Suzata’s house to pick up a bottle of cherry brandy. She stayed with Miako until late that night, helping her decide what to pack and putting her to bed after she fell asleep on the living room floor.

Rite of Departure

The brandy left no hangover. While she boiled an egg for her breakfast the next morning, Miako debated whether to telephone her parents to tell them the news. She reluctantly decided not to. The communication center nearest to her father’s farm was in the town of Shusha, an hour’s ride away. By the time someone from the comm center could get to the farm to tell them they had a telephone call, and her father set down whatever he was working on and rushed into town, probably worrying the entire way that she’d been injured, it would be late afternoon. She had to go to work, and she wasn’t sure she could deliver a coherent message over the telephone. She would write them a letter tonight.

It was Forday, usually a happy day because it was the end of the first half of the week—Government offices and many businesses were closed on Fiday—but Miako felt like a condemned prisoner. Tomorrow morning her life would be over. There might be a life after this one, but she knew of no stories in which people returned from journeys with Mediators.

On her walk to work it felt warmer than the previous day. Spring was asserting itself. Although the winters in Littapo never really got cold, nor the summers too hot, there was an appreciable