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dawn and many of the ‘stars’ do not rotate around the zenith but wander in a random fashion. Or not entirely random: many leave and return periodically, and some of these have a most unusual motion, and a hint of colour. Other stars come and go quickly enough that a patient observer can map, if not understand, their chaotic path.
    I return to the village to rest, as it is still my home and the changes it undergoes, whilst illusory, are a comfort to me. I still study too; these days, I spend more time with my books than I do exploring. I have seen enough to know that this place is too big for me to chart, and too incomprehensible for me to understand. The only location beyond the bounds of my home that I return to regularly is the starry window. I confess I have become a little obsessed with it.
    Every ten days the angel – an angel – still comes to me, and we talk. Sometimes in my wanderings I encounter other angels; they ignore me unless I question them, in which case they usually provide an explanation full of words I have never encountered, despite my wide reading.
    If I ask about the starry window they give the usual frustrating response: ‘That is not a question I can answer’.
     
    ***
     
    I have now lived here for almost seventeen years – as long as I lived in the real village before I sailed with the Duke. It has been a good life in many ways, but the approaching anniversary of my arrival has made me restless. I keep coming back to that foolish question I can never know the answer to: whether I would have been more content had I chosen to remain in ignorance in my village.
    So, when the angel last visited nine days ago, I asked it two difficult questions, both of which I had given up enquiring about some years ago. The first was about my obsession: ‘What is the starry window?’
    To my surprise it replied with a question of its own: ‘What do you think it is?’
    That threw me for a moment. Then I said, ‘I believe it may show the truth of the world, though I cannot prove it. Am I right in this?’
    The angel said nothing. I remembered the only other time it had refused to answer, when I had voiced my suspicions about ‘Merel’. The memory made me uneasy.
    Finally I could bear the silence no longer. ‘I will take that as assent, then,’ I snapped. Then, propelled by my frustration I voiced my second, more dangerous question. ‘In my years here I have seen many angels, but not felt any closer to God than I did in my life before. Does God actually exist?’
    ‘That would depend,’ said the angel, ‘on your definition of God.’
    The strange response sounded almost frivolous. I thought of the arguments for and against the existence of a truly divine power. I had certainly experienced miracles: that I lived after falling off the world was one, my healed leg another, this whole place arguably a third. Yet the re-creation of my village was not perfect, and more than once I had acted in ways that – as far as I could tell – surprised the angel.
    I chose my next words with care. ‘I sometimes wonder if everything I have seen and experienced in my life is some great machine, running faultlessly, but mindlessly.’
    Though I had not asked a question, the angel responded as though I had. ‘Be assured that there is a mind at work here.’
    ‘But not an omnipotent being?’
    Once more, silence.
    Which I broke, again. ‘I’m not the first, am I? There have been others who have been plucked from the world to live in this place.’ I did not say like some pet – if God truly knew my mind He would know what I was thinking. And if He chose to punish such blasphemy I would at least have my answer.
    ‘You are correct,’ said the angel. ‘There have been other rare enquiring souls who have lived for a while beyond the world of men.’
    ‘And they have not satisfied this mind you speak of either, have they?’
    ‘All have come upon insights of interest.’
    ‘Have any returned to the world with these