A besieging force of darkness crouched silently around the town, held at bay by the hot, quavering glare of street-lamps and lights in windows. Madyl felt the contrast vividly as she walked out onto the next street, for this one marked the edge of Byrnera’s stronghold of firelight, the street beside the docks and the sea. She paused a moment, staring out into the unbroken blackness of the sea and overcast night sky, listening to the tireless rush and crash of the unseen waves. The endless abyss of shadow made her a little nervous, but also heightened her sense of adventure, out on the road alone. Then she turned resolutely away and resumed walking, scanning the buildings along the road, reviewing the directions her fellow workers had given her.

“The fisherman Tacas keeps a window open till late in the night,” the eldest of the women had explained. “His wife makes the most wonderful fish soup, to sell to busy folk like us who need a quick supper.” Now, indeed, as Madyl spotted the house that accorded with her directions—“seventh from the corner after you come to the sea”—she saw a large window spilling cheery golden light out onto the road.

Madyl smiled, feeling very accomplished to have made her way here on her own, and in a strange town at that. This would impress the older women, who had been afraid to let a child of eleven go out alone for their supper. She approached the window and peered inside at a plain but clean kitchen, lit by a lamp on the ceiling. A round wooden table and some chairs took up the greater part of the space. Was anyone in here? Then, in a corner, she noticed someone scrubbing a pot—but it wasn’t the fisherman’s or anyone’s wife. It was a boy, perhaps a few years older than she.

“Hello?” Madyl called. “Can I buy fish soup here?”

The boy’s head jerked up as he dropped the pot with a crash. “Oh! Yes, certainly. Wasn’t expecting any more customers by this hour.” Taking a thoughtful look at Madyl, he added, “Wow, what are you doing out so late?”

“I’m a laborer for Madam Loruis, the dyer,” Madyl explained. “Some of us had to work late tonight.” She laid some coins on the windowsill and held up the steel canister that was to carry back the soup.

The boy nodded, took the money and the canister, and went over to the stove, where a large black pot still sat. “So, you haven’t been in Byrnera long, have you?” he queried, as he ladled steaming soup from the pot into the canister. “Just guessing from your accent—you’re from Sylhoa, or somewhere in the hill country, right?”

Madyl nodded. “My family are farmers. Times aren’t easy. They sent me to work here to make some more money for us.”

“Working and on your own in town. And at your age, too.” The boy sounded impressed. Then he looked intently at her and frowned concernedly. “You’re not happy, are you?”

Madyl realized that something in her tone or her face, or both, must have given that away. She said nothing, unsure how to begin explaining—that she missed her family and village every day, that she couldn’t bring herself to talk to strange adults or city folk, that she was already more tired of crushing sea creatures, stoking fires, and stirring vats of dye than she knew how to say.

“Hm.” The boy gauged her expression, looking sad. Then his face lit up, as if a new idea had come to him. He came back to the window, handed her the canister and leaned over the sill, an earnest look on his face. “Hi, when do you finish work?”

“Well, I can’t be sure . . .” Madyl tried to calculate.

“Well, will you be through by midnight?”

“Oh yes, I’m sure.”

The boy nodded. “Great. Meet me then at the southern end of the docks. There’s a little something you ought to see. Wait, on second thought, just come outside and I’ll walk there with you. I know where Loruis’ place is. Okay?”

Madyl nodded, her surprise quickly yielding to curiosity and excitement.

“Excellent. See you soon. By the way, my name’s Pecron—Tacas is my father.”

 

After she and the other laborers finished work, Madyl had no trouble keeping awake. She lay on her pallet in the resident laborers’ quarters, but eagerness for her mysterious appointment crowded out sleep. As soon as she heard the deep tones of a far-off bell clanging midnight, she slipped on her shoes and cloak and padded out to a back door. She hastened out to the street, where Pecron stood waiting, a lantern in his hand.

The boy smiled. “You ready? Great. Let’s go.”

For the next few minutes, the two kept silence. Most of Byrnera lay slumbering now, with lit windows only here and there, though street lamps kept the roads visible. Pecron kept to the main roads, a sensible choice, as Madyl recalled; she had been warned to avoid the alleys at night. Eventually he looked at her and spoke again. “Say, what’s your name?”

“It’s Madyl, of Lychmar,” she answered, naming her village.

“Madyl. Good to meet you. But moving here hasn’t been easy for you, has it? You miss home?” She nodded.

“I knew that look on your face the moment I saw it,” Pecron asserted. “My family used to live in Cynmonar, and I felt the same way when we had to come here. We nearly always have to be working now, so it gets lonely. But I’ve found something that’s been helping me, and I think it might help you too. Hi, here we come to the sea.”

Indeed, the ceaseless whisper and crash of the darkened sea was again breaking the silence of the slumbering town. As they emerged on the seaside road, Pecron turned south, and Madyl asked, “How does it help you? Does it make you forget the hard times?”

“Well, sort of . . .” The boy seemed to be groping for a good explanation. “It helps me forget for a while, but it also helps when I have to go back to them. You’ll see when I show you. I wanted to go to the beach because it usually has a good wind.” That was all she got from him till they had reached the edge, where the docks abutted on the bare, sandy shore.

The boy jumped off onto the sand, offered Madyl a helping hand down, then hurried a little farther out, plunging into the unbroken shadow. As they pressed into the thick blackness, she almost marveled that nothing pushed against them. She could still see the lamps hanging over the docks, but they illuminated nothing from here; she and Pecron were in their own small bubble of fiery light. A chilly, lively north wind swept across the beach.

Pecron held a side of his jacket over the lantern, shielding the flame from the gusts. Madyl watched him expectantly. “See, my family used to work in the archives up in Cynmonar,” he explained. “Nothing grand, just cleaners—but when most of the place burned up, we managed to save some of the records and whatnot that were there. I only saved one thing, but it’s worth more than any treasure I can think of.” Letting go his jacket for a moment, he reached into his pocket and handed something from inside to Madyl. It was a small scroll, on thin, worn parchment, stiff in her fingers.

At first, she returned only a puzzled look to Pecron, but her curiosity quickly revived. Surely whatever was inside the scroll was the secret. Slowly, excitedly, she began to unroll it, and soon saw an inscription, brief but in an elegant hand: Why should a man be scorned if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out? The world outside the prison has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. Puzzled, she unrolled it a little more, and found another inscription further down the sheet: Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, and yet it is still I who see. She had not quite unrolled it all the way, but there didn’t seem to be room for any more writing, unless it was in tiny letters near the bottom.

“Pecron, what is this?” she asked with a frown.

“It’s one of the records of Argonel, the first great traveler to leave us his writings,” the boy replied, evidently not at all dismayed by her confusion. “It’s said that he crossed borders no longer open to ships, to lands no man today could find, and recorded some of the sayings of their wise men.”

Madyl began to grow impatient. “So what? What’s so great about that? These don’t even make any sense.”

“I didn’t understand them at first either, but I think I’m beginning to,” Pecron answered, his grin beginning to return. “You haven’t opened it all the way yet—go ahead!”

Quickly Madyl unrolled the last bit of the scroll. Out tumbled something small and round and gleaming, down into the sand. Pecron held the lantern out toward her, instructing her to shield it with her cloak; she took it, after furling the scroll and placing it back in his pocket. This done, he bent over and picked up the fallen object. It was a little ball of fine thread, pale silver like a tiny moon. “This, now,” he said with obvious satisfaction, “this is the real treasure.” He took hold of a loose end of the thread and let the rest drop to the sand, swinging the strand around until the ball was completely unrolled, its shimmering coils splayed around his feet. Bending over again, he took up the other end, turned away from her toward the beach’s stretching blackness, lifted high one end of the thread and tossed it up into the racing wind.

In the lantern’s dim, hot glow, Madyl saw the end of thread rush up and away as if the wind had somehow caught it. The rest of the strand quickly followed, rising to follow the flying end, vanishing into the dark, while Pecron still held the other. In moments, the thread had all lifted off the ground, and what the boy still held now jerked taut.

“There! That’s the signal,” Pecron exclaimed. Hastily he began following the thread, grasping it hand over hand, while Madyl scurried after him with the lantern. What were they doing now? Magic thread was indeed interesting, but clearly this boy used it to find his way to something else. She considered asking again what wonderful thing they were to see, but decided against it, figuring that he seemed to prefer showing his mysterious surprises to explaining them. After they had hurried for several minutes across the darkened beach, the thread’s direction turned off into the grassy dunes, and then into something like a wild meadow beyond them. Had the thread really been this long to begin with? Had it somehow lengthened magically?

“Almost there now, I can tell,” Pecron declared. The ground now began to slope upward. Madyl, already panting, hoped that this boy did not expect her to run after him too much farther, especially uphill. They wriggled through a dense clump of trees and shrubbery, after which Pecron abruptly stopped. This time his behavior did not puzzle Madyl at all.

A stone’s throw ahead of them, at the top of a low bluff, stood a sort of gigantic tool or machine. Despite the darkness, the subtlest glow seemed to rest on it like a layer of dust, so that it stood out against the night. It looked like an enormous telescope, made of silver or something similar, standing on three great legs and facing up into the sky. The nearer, narrower end, which emitted a clear if soft light, looked wide enough for several men’s heads to peer through.

“What . . . how . . .?” Madyl stammered, gaping at the towering, luminous instrument.

“Yes, this is it!” Pecron cried joyously. “This, Madyl of Lychmar, is my secret kingdom—and it can be anyone’s! Come see!” He raced on toward the telescope. Wild with excitement, Madyl needed no urging to follow.

The near end was on a comfortable level for her to look through. For a moment or two, she only saw a vague, light blur, as of swirling clouds in the day. Quickly, however, this cleared away, revealing a dazzling vision. Rather, it revealed countless visions. Bright and clear as reality, a myriad of images spread before her, depicting people in every setting imaginable—in forests, in ships on rivers or the sea, crossing deserts or moors, in every sort of city or town, in simple cottages or castles of stone, in places to which she could give no name, in places that seemed to be up in the sky or under the sea. There were beasts of every kind she knew and some she didn’t, dragons, gryphons, goblins, sprites, other magical things. Though there were so many, somehow the details of each were marvelously distinct. And they were moving—the figures in the images were living, moving, doing things. At first, Madyl was overwhelmed by this multitude of sights, but when she began to shift her gaze slowly across each image, one by one, she thrilled at their beauty.

“I had a feeling you’d love it.” Pecron’s voice jolted her out of her spellbound gaze. She glanced over at him, and saw that he was watching her with great satisfaction. “Now, to get in, pick one image and focus on it. Follow what happens in it.”

“To get in?” she echoed, a little nervous despite her delight.

The boy nodded. “That’s the best part. You’ll see.”

Now more thoughtfully, Madyl scrutinized the panorama of images, considering which one to give special attention. From what Pecron had said . . . were they somehow to enter one of the pictures? Now that she was looking more carefully, she saw that not all of these visions were beautiful or even pleasant. Some scenes felt wrong or twisted in a way she couldn’t quite explain. Others were worse, grotesque nightmare-visions from which she quickly looked away. The harder difficulty, however, was one opposite to this—that out of the likable images, she didn’t know how to choose just one.

“How about that one with the clifftop fortress?” Pecron suggested, pointing. “That’s one of my favorites. It has bears.”

Madyl glanced at this scene, but then found her eye drawn by another. “No . . . I think I’ll choose this,” she decided, pointing to an image of a man in a small sailboat, out on stormy waves. Though she couldn’t see him very well, what she did see somehow reminded her of her father.

“Okay,” Pecron replied agreeably. “Just focus on it, watch it carefully, pay attention to all you see happening. Then watch what happens.”

Accordingly, Madyl gazed intently at the man on the storming sea. The sky above him was dark, almost as dark as night, with torrents of rain flogging all below. A ferocious wind blasted the waters, making them surge and foam like horses whipped beyond caution, mixing a swirling, splashing white with the darkness of the sea. The little craft, driven hard in the wind, seemed barely keeping afloat as it floundered across the mad waves. The man, clinging to a wheel in front and staring doggedly ahead, was evidently exerting all his skill and strength. Madyl had hardly ever seen men working boats, except at a distance. She had certainly never seen them try to sail in storms; she had had no idea that they had to face such terrors.

Then lightning flashed, and she noticed something she hadn’t before. A child, a girl no more than her own age, was huddled in the stern of the boat, pressing her face against the bottom and clinging desperately to something beside her, a seat perhaps. Here, then, probably, was a father fighting to save his child’s life as well as his own. The fierce determination in the man’s face, she now realized, was not unlike what she had sometimes glimpsed in her own father’s face when he set out for yet another day to bring some yield or profit from the stubborn, ungrateful land. She had never quite understood that look of his until now. She could see the boatman’s face so well now; she could almost hear the crashing of the sea and the thunder, feel the lurching of the boat, the driving wind, the drenching spray of rain and waves.

Then, with a start, Madyl realized that she really was hearing and feeling those things. All around her, she saw the tempestuous sea under the dark sky; she was there in the little vessel with the boatman. She began to glance around for the edges of the telescope, the ground and grass; but Pecron gripped her shoulder, gently but firmly. He at least was still there. “Don’t be afraid. It can’t hurt you. See, you’re not really wet. But try to get out and you’ll spoil everything. You’re doing great; just keep on.”

His voice and touch were a relief; the scene was no longer terrifying, but only thrillingly frightful. Clutching his arm, Madyl obediently kept her attention on the scene they had entered. Now she could see more of the picture. A long way ahead of the boat was a distant but bright glow, some sort of beacon, no doubt, atop what had to be a great sloping stretch of rocky land. That, no doubt, was what the boatman was struggling to reach. To chart a course across this mad sea, especially in a little boat, seemed impossible; but she could see in the boatman’s face that he would not yield while the child’s life was in the balance.

Suddenly something else began churning the water, something from beneath it, right beside the boat. A great school of large fish was rushing by. From what Madyl could glimpse of them, they were round like wineskins and about the size of pigs. They streamed past the boat in the direction of the land. Madyl glanced backward to see if she could tell how far back the line went. Upon turning, however, she saw something that made her forget that.

A dark shape, like a fish’s fin but larger and thicker, was protruding above the waves and rushing after the fish with at least equal speed. It was still at a distance but swiftly approaching. With a shock of alarm, Madyl understood that the fish were fleeing a predator.

She turned back to the boatman, shouting, “Look out! There’s a bigger one coming!”

“He can’t hear you,” Pecron said.

Then the boatman turned and picked up something just beside him—a net, a fishing net. Probably he was a fisherman. But surely he wasn’t thinking of trying to fish now?

Indeed, to Madyl’s bewilderment, the man threw his net into the water, right where the fish were passing; but instead of trying to haul it back up, he simply held on. A moment later, the boat jerked and began rushing along in the same direction as the fish—in the direction of the land.

Now Madyl understood. She had heard that some fish, when fleeing large predators, would make for shallower waters where a large creature could not follow. This fisherman had harnessed the shoal, so to speak, to bring him back toward the shore.

What happened next seemed at the time to take ages, though Madyl later realized it could not have been more than a few minutes. Drawn by the fish over the surging waves, the boat lurched and tumbled wildly along a zigzagging course, nearer and nearer the land. At several terrible moments, Madyl was almost sure the little craft would overturn. Every now and then she would glance nervously behind to see if the larger fish, or whatever it was, was gaining on them, but she could never be sure whether it looked closer or not. After a certain point, though, she realized that the dark fin was definitely farther behind. At first this puzzled her, but then her heart jumped with hope as she understood that they were entering shallower waters. At almost the same moment, another flash of lightning revealed that the land was now much closer, the beacon-light larger. Now she could also make out the smaller lights of houses high on a ridge.

The boat continued riding closer for a little way, but then turned and began moving alongside the shore. Evidently this was as far in as the fish intended to go. The fisherman must have realized this too, for he suddenly let go of the net. The boat spun aimlessly as the waves convulsed beneath it. A moment later, the fisherman heaved a deep breath, stretched both his arms, and jumped into the water.

Madyl gasped, but then saw that he was standing. Though the waters rushed and beat around him, he could stand in these shallows. She could see exhaustion in his face, but he firmly gripped the boat and strode slowly ahead, pushing it toward the land. Though she felt as if she were standing in the boat, it didn’t look as if she or Pecron were adding any weight to it. A considerable amount of water, however, had accumulated inside, so that the girl huddled in its bottom lay in a puddle. Would the child drown without even leaving the boat?

As they entered the breakers, a brutal wave smashed into the fisherman and knocked him off his feet, tumbling him about, and hurled the battered vessel, which now finally overturned. Instantly Madyl found herself standing on the ground beyond the waves, along with Pecron, watching the two near-drowned figures struggling in the surf. With the speed of desperation, the man rose out of the waves, clambered upright, and snatched up the child from the water, hurrying to shore with her. The tide would take his boat, but he had succeeded. He and the girl were saved from the storm.

Having escaped, the fisherman sank down on the sand and all but collapsed, clutching his girl to his heart, heedless of the wind and rain still beating down around him. His lined face was stamped with such weariness that Madyl felt a sting of deep pity. Not even in the busiest times on the farm had she known exhaustion like that. She now saw that he was an older man, so that he might be either the father or the grandfather of the girl with him. Then she noticed, with alarm, that the child in his arms didn’t seem to be moving at all. Was she dead? Or dying? Surely she wouldn’t die, not after all the effort the fisherman had put forth for her. Rapt with anxious concern, Madyl stared at the two bedraggled figures, waiting for the girl to show some sign of life.

It was only a few moments, however, before the fisherman regained sufficient strength to lift the child’s body again and press her middle in motions that Madyl recognized from memory: he was trying to get the sea water out of her lungs. It looked as if he was forcing out some, but could not do enough on his own; he would need help.

Presently, breathing deeply again, the fisherman laboriously got back on his feet, the child’s head resting on his shoulder, and set off across the rain-beaten beach. Madyl earnestly hoped that these two would not have much farther to go in this brutal storm. The man was heading, she noted, in the general direction of the ridge where lights indicated a town or village.

Then Pecron started walking along behind the fisherman; and Madyl, still holding onto his hand, quickly followed. She could feel the wet sand crunching beneath her shoes, as well as the persistent rain and wind, but her fingers assured her that her skin and clothes were in fact untouched.

She had expected the uphill climb to be unbearably slow and long, but was surprised to find that it went by quickly, almost in a blur of wet and dark, despite their trudging steps. The fisherman, weary as he was, never missed his footing or even slackened as he ascended the muddy slope, and Madyl and Pecron climbed up equally well. Soon enough, they were approaching the nearest of the cottages that formed what she now saw to be a village rather like her own, only without the surrounding farmland.

The fisherman beat on the door, which soon opened; a young woman stood in the middle of the warmly lit doorway. Hastily she motioned for him to enter, dismay and pity on her face, and quickly closed the door behind him.

Madyl gave a little cry of distress and hurried forward, instinctively reaching to knock on the door, although she knew that no one within would likely hear her. But she had hardly taken two steps when she stumbled to her knees, blinking in bewilderment. They were not outside in the rain at all, but inside a warm cottage filled with firelight. Members of the family within were bustling about, wrapping the old man in a blanket, laying the girl down on a little couch near the fireplace.

“Pecron . . . how did . . .” she stammered, climbing to her feet.

“While we’re in these scenes, we are in another’s tale,” the boy explained. “We go where he is, feel what he feels—for the most part.”

Madyl thought. “So I guess what we’re in now is the fisherman’s tale?”

“It definitely seems that way.”

Thinking some more, she went on, “So, is that why I could feel things like the rain and the boat rocking and the sand, even though they couldn’t really touch me?”

“Exactly.” Pecron nodded, smiling.

Madyl looked around the room again. Evidently they were not seeing everything the fisherman saw, for he was now coming back into the room from a little hallway, having apparently just changed into dry clothes provided by this family. He sat down on a chair near the fire and watched the unconscious child, stroking her damp hair. Still the girl showed no sign of life.

After long, anxious minutes had passed, Madyl wondered aloud, “Is she dead?”

“No,” said Pecron.

“How do you know?” she queried, surprised again.

“Because I’ve been here before,” he replied.

“Here? You mean . . . in this, er, you’ve entered this picture before?” She frowned. “But . . . you mean it all happens the same way every time?”

“Of course!” Pecron almost seemed amused that she would ask.

“But . . . why go back if you already know what happens?”

“Because you get to know it better every time,” he declared. “You understand things you might not have, notice things you didn’t the last time. Unless it’s just so dull that you can see it all in one go,” he added with a short laugh.

Madyl stared thoughtfully into the fire. “I don’t know if I’ll want to come back to this one. It’s scary, and kind of sad. I . . . I don’t think I’d want to watch these people almost drowning again, and having to do all that in the storm.”

“Oh, well . . . m-maybe, but give it a chance.” Pecron sounded like he was groping for the right response. “Scary or sad things don’t make it bad—some of my favorites have those. You can’t really know what you think until it’s over. It isn’t yet, you know.”

To this Madyl couldn’t think of an answer. Silently she went over to the window and peered between the curtains. To her surprise, she found that she could see a strip of warm light just above the horizon, far out over the sea—a narrow but long hole had opened in the clouds. In its light, she could see that the torrents were slackening, the wind relaxing and coming now only in spasmodic gusts. She could see the water, far below the high ground where the house stood, grey and covered with foaming white crests that rose and fell in it.

“Pecron! I think the storm’s going away!” she shouted excitedly.

“That’s right.” The boy nodded brightly. “Now look over here.” He gestured toward the fireplace.

Madyl looked, and her heart leaped. The girl on the couch was blinking and turning her head, looking up at the fisherman. He bent tenderly over her, and she wriggled a moment, then threw her arms around his neck. He now smiled at last and pressed her to his heart.

A great warm wave of joy welled up inside Madyl as she looked on. All the suffering of the storm, and even the loss of the boat, didn’t seem to matter at all now. Of course, it didn’t matter to the fisherman. Having looked after this child was joy enough for him. Madyl felt very sure that she herself would do as much for her family if ever they needed it.

At that, another thought came to her, a sudden thrill that set her heart afire. She was doing something like that for her family—by working in Byrnera. Facing the hardships of homesickness, strange surroundings, and tedious labor . . . wasn’t all that a struggle not unlike riding a boat across a stormy sea? And she was doing it for her dear family, to help them get by in these hard times. If the fisherman could keep toiling and enduring for love, so could she!

“I have to remember that,” she murmured under her breath. “I will remember that.”

The child on the couch was smiling now, sitting up and saying something to the fisherman that Madyl couldn’t quite hear. Just then everything began to grow blurry. A mist seemed to be filling the room. Quickly the mist became thicker and obscured everything, then suddenly dissipated. When it cleared, she was again standing on the grassy ground of the bluff, by the end of the great telescope wherein the scenes all appeared, with Pecron beside her.

For a long moment all was silence. Then, slowly, the two children looked at each other, and Pecron asked, “Well, what did you think?”

“I . . . I . . . that was amazing!” Madyl exclaimed. Then she laughed and jumped with delight. “Thank you! Pecron, thank you!” The boy laughed with her, his face beaming in utter contentment.

 

A wind somewhere high in the sky had raked holes in the roof of cloud, so that here and there the soft moonlight spilled down and the tiny stars glistened through. They had no need to gather up the thread on their way back; Pecron explained that, after each use, it reappeared in its neat ball inside the scroll. They crossed the beach quickly and in a few minutes saw the lamps above the docks, seemingly floating in the shadows.

While they had been mostly silent on their way there, they talked freely on the walk back. “So how did you find out about the thread’s magic?” asked Madyl.

“Well, I was just nine when the archives burned down,” Pecron recalled. “It wasn’t long after that I was playing with the thread one day—I had unraveled it and was just swinging it around—when suddenly the wind came up and carried off one end of it, like you saw. That was the first time it led me to the visions glass—that’s what I call it.”

“So did anybody in the archives know about the thread?” she wondered.

The boy shrugged. “If they did, they were keeping quiet about it.”

Madyl thought some more, then asked, “And have you told anyone else about it—like, your family?”

He frowned as he contemplated the answer. “I’ve tried, now and then, but I never found anyone who seemed to have the time or interest to join me in exploring.”

Madyl became puzzled again. “How could anyone not be interested in something like that?”

Pecron shrugged again. “I don’t think anyone else believes I’m seeing anything more than a lot of pictures. So for the most part, I’ve stopped trying to tell them. And I’ve a feeling that even if they did follow me, they wouldn’t see what I see in the vision glass. I don’t think any of them would appreciate living through those tales. You’re the first I’ve found,” he added, his smile returning.

Madyl smiled back. “I’m really glad you showed me. I’m glad we entered that picture. I think I’m even glad about the scary parts—I don’t know why; it’s funny.”

“They’re part of what makes it what it is,” Pecron replied happily. Madyl realized that she very much liked his smile.

For the rest of the walk through the silent streets, Pecron told her about other excursions he had made into the vision-worlds. When at last they approached the resident laborers’ quarters next to Madam Loruis’ house, Madyl turned and asked, “Pecron, can we do this again tomorrow night?”

He grinned. “See you then.”