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that comfort. She thrust out her pain and fury— the Other took it and gave back something that offered peace.

Peace . . . but she was still alone. So terribly alone.

Instinct reached for the first bond, the oldest. Mother! Aryl cried. Why have you left me?

HERE . The word rang like a bell. We are all here. Come back, Aryl. This is the way. Follow me.

Where? I’m alone!!! This with all the despair and longing in her heart.

I know. But you can come back. I know how. I’ll show you.

     
    * * *

     
    She knew that sound . . . a wysp, trilling the arrival of truenight . . .

Costa brought it home for her, its eyeless head seeking shelter under his big arm. A fragile creature, pale and long of wing. Aryl thought it ugly and refused to touch it.

He insisted she stay with him, with the creature, refusing to explain. Over her protest, he disconnected the power cell from the room’s glows, glows that would otherwise shine their soft, steady light over panel wall and rail, that made the bridges leading between homes safe— if prone to attracting everything else that loved light. In an alarming, unfamiliar darkness, Aryl twitched and fidgeted and wished her brother normal. Finally, bored, she almost dozed.

Until the wysp began to trill. Sitting up, she tried to see. Costa’s warm hand found and covered hers, comfort and an urge for quiet.

The trill continued— it was as if three singers lived within that slender throat, each with its own range and tone, competing to see who could make the sweeter sound. She held her breath, afraid it would stop if it heard.

It sings to greet the real dark, the truenight, little sister, he sent, along with a vision of strange tiny lights against a black void. Without eyes, despite the canopy’s shadow, it knows when the sun has truly left us and when it returns.

Aryl listened to the song, then frowned anxiously. Where does the sun go?

To Grona Clan, to give them daylight while we sleep.

The singer increased its volume, lovely but loud.

Aryl yawned. Who could sleep through that?

Costa’s laugh silenced the wysp. That night, Aryl dreamed of chasing the sun over the tops of the rastis, her arms become wings . . .

She blinked, once, twice, slowly realizing she’d dreamed a dream. There was no trill. There wouldn’t be. Soft beams of sunlight filtered through the window gauze.

Midday.

It was abruptly important, why she couldn’t say, to pay the utmost attention to her fingers and toes, to straighten one leg at a time, to ease her body slowly from its curl.

Gah, stiff all over.

She licked her lips. And thirsty.

That sensation aroused others, each cautious. Her eyes were dry and sore. Aryl rubbed at them, feeling grit on her lashes. Her hair was loose. Her hands— she stopped and sniffed. Dresel.

Everything smelled of it.

She found herself on hands and knees, staring down at a wrinkled sheet, her mind helplessly seeking its place within an empty world . . .

... and suddenly, wonderfully, finding it.

Her mother. There, nearby. Above, in her room.

Aryl reached farther, her inner sense touching those warm spots of life that marked the Yena. But they were frail lights, afloat in a seething, churning dark. Now afraid, she struggled to see nothing but those lights, denying that place even as part of her responded to its call and wanted nothing more than to . . .

She fought and won, head hanging between her shoulders. Shudders of relief racked her body. To be whole again was what mattered, to feel the world and her place in it. Aryl clung to that, wanting to know every Om’ray. More carefully now, avoiding that eager darkness, she searched for them all, adding the faint glow of distant clans to the steady warmth of those close and dear and known.

Too few.

And some of those had become— strange. Five. She sought them, found them. Not where they should be . . . but farther away, all together.

The Cloisters? But that was where Adepts lived, apart,