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was already tried beyond all reason ... and I’m not a sibyl yet !
    She had
heard that Daft Naimy had been born a Winter. She had heard that he had once
been a tech-loving unbeliever ... that he had scorned natural law by shedding
the blood of a sibyl. That he had been driven mad by the Lady as punishment;
that this was how he served his penance. The trefoil symbol the sibyls wore was
a warning against defilement, against trepass on sacred ground. They said it
was death to kill a sibyl, death to love a sibyl, death to be a sibyl ... and
they meant a living death. Death to kill
a sibyl ...
    “There is the Sinner who worships false gods!
See him!” The
gnarled hand flew out like an accusing arrow.
    Sparks
’s face rose up past the end of the
pier into its line of flight as he climbed the laddered gangway. His face
hardened over with hateful resolution as his eyes focused on the old man in the
distance, and then on her own face. Death
to love a sibyl ...
    Moon shook
her head in denial, answering another unspoken accusation. But his eyes were
gone from her again, looking at Gran instead; showing her with that look all
the things she had loved, and was losing. At last she understood what they
meant when they said that it was death to be a sibyl.
    “But I’m
not a sibyl yet.” The whisper caught on her teeth.
    Someone
called up to
Sparks
from below; he threw back an answer before he came toward them, tall and pale
and determined. The tide was ebbing; the water of the bay lay far below the
pier. All she could see from here of the Winter trader’s ship that would take
him away was the tip of its mast, like a beckoning finger. “Well, I guess
that’s about it. All my things are on board; they’re ready to sail.” He looked
down at his feet as he stopped before them, suddenly awkward. He spoke only to
Gran. “I guess—I guess I’m saying goodbye.”
    “Prepare for the End!”
    “Sparks
...” Gran put out a hand, reached up to brush his cheek. “Must you go now? At
least wait until your Aunt Lelark gets back from sea.”
    “I can’t.”
He shook his head against the touch. “I can’t. I have to go now. I mean, it’s
not forever—” as if he were afraid that if he waited, tomorrow could become
forever too easily.
    “Oh, my
beloved child ... my beloved children.” She stretched her other arm stiffly,
brought them both together in her embrace, as she had done since time past
remembering. “What will I do without you? You’ve been all my comfort, since
your grandfather died ... Must I lose you now, and lose you both at once? I
know Moon has to go, but—”
    “Repent, sinner!”
    Moon felt
the tightening of Spark’s mouth more than she saw it, as his head came up and
he glared at Daft Naimy. “Her destiny’s been calling her all her life—and so’s
mine, Gran. I just didn’t know they’d lead us separate ways.” His hand pressed
his off world medal like a pledge; he pulled away from them.
    “But to
Carbuncle!” more like an oath than a protest. Gran shook her head.
    “It’s only
a place.” He grinned, gripped her scarf-wrapped shoulder in reassurance. “My
mother went there; and she came back with me. Who knows what I’ll come back
with. Or who.”
    Moon turned
away, clutching the sleeves of her parka as though she were strangling
something. You can’t do this to me! She moved to the edge of the pier, looked over the rail and down along the
sheer, sea weedy face of the stone-built jetty, at the trader’s ship rocking
patiently far below. She took a long breath of damp-heavy air, and another,
sucking in the harbor smells of seaweed and fish and salt-soaked wood ...
listening to the murmur of voices below, the creak and slap and whisper of the
moorage in the restless tide. So that she wouldn’t hear
    “Your world is coming to an End!”
    “Good-bye,
Gran,” his voice muffled by an embrace.
    Suddenly
all that she saw and heard, that was so terribly familiar, took on an overlay
of alien ness as