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to marry me."

"As if it could ever be a secret to you, who senses the connections between people just like Aunt Hushidh. Talk about invasion of privacy."

"I do know your secret, Okya," she said, smiling, feeling him putting her arms around his waist, holding his hips against hers. "I know what you want. I know how much you love me. I see us bound by bright cords, tied so tightly that there's no escape ever as long as either of us lives. You are my captive, and I'm never going to have mercy and let you go."

"Those bonds aren't bondage at all, Veya," said Oykib. "They're freedom. This whole voyage I've been in captivity because I couldn't have you. When we step out on that new world, that old world, and I'm tied to you at last, openly, so we can begin our life together- that's when I will truly be unbound."

"My answer is yes," she said.

"I know," he said. "I heard you tell the Oversoul."

Chapter 9

PART 2 - LANDFALL

NINE - WATCHERS

There were many things for a young man to do, many duties that the community required of him, even if he was already married, and to a remarkable woman like Iguo. Because of pTo's extraordinary advancement, people looked to him for achievement, looked for him to be a model of young manhood.

Well, perhaps not always. Many of diem looked to pTo for disappointment at best, scandal at worst. He was too young. Iguo had only married a mere boy like that because her great grandmother Upua had done the same with Kiti. It had become something of a family tradition for the women of that line, to marry a man who was too young-and pTo was no Kiti, as many were quick to point out.

"You're no Kiti, you know," said pTo's own otherself, Poto.

"As well for you I'm not," said pTo. "His otherself was dead the year he made his sculpture and was chosen by Upua."

"You can't go doing crazy things. They're not going to forgive you anything. If you're brilliant they'll say you're arrogant. If you falter, they'll say you overreached. If you're friendly they'll say you're condescending. If you're aloof they'll say you're arrogant."

"So I might as well do what I want."

"Just remember that it's my name you're dragging through the mud. If you're a madman, what am I?"

"A helpless victim of my lunacy," said pTo. "I want to go to the tower."

Resting on the stout limb of a tree, they were watching over a flock of fat turkeys. The turkeys themselves were docile enough, too stupid to know the fate that the people had in store for them. The danger was from devils, who liked nothing better than to steal from the herds of the people. Lazy creatures, devils never did their own work except digging their nasty little holes in the ground and carving out the hearts of trees. During the birthing season, they came in force, stealing sometimes as many as a third of each year's newborns- that was why so many people had lost their otherself. During the rest of the year, though, it was the flocks and herds they were after.

"We're on watch," said Poto.

"We're watching the wrong thing," pTo insisted. "The Old Ones at the tower are the most important creatures in the world."

"Boboi says they're our enemies."

"Why was my wife's ancestor shown the face of an Old One, then, if they aren't to be our friends?"

"To warn us," said Poto.

"The Old Ones know secrets, and if we don't make friends with them, they'll give those secrets to the devils. Then we really will have them as enemies."

"It's forbidden," said Poto, "and we have responsibilities here, and no matter how young you might have been when you got married, you are not Kiti." pTo knew that his otherself was right. He usually was.

But pTo couldn't bear to concede the point, because he knew that if he didn't learn about the Old Ones, no one else would. No one else dared. "I'm not Kiti," said pTo, "but I also am the only man who doesn't fear that he'll be rejected by all the women because of flouting Boboi's ban on visiting the Old Ones."

"You're not the only married man."

"You know what I mean. The older men don't want to go. They get a little slow, a little fat. It's too dangerous for them to go down there into the heart of devil country."

One of the turkeys decided, as turkeys will, that