for example—and you pick two or three things that you, who are so gentle and wise, would change about it. Do you know the ramifications of such changes?
The little girl sighs. She plays with the thing in her hand. She flips it over and over, rubbing the smooth surface.
I am not commanding, says her mother. We are not bargaining. I am beyond that; I have formed your very nature. You are prepared, honed, and amplified, which means that I am merely telling you what you will do.
The little girl looks up from her rock. In the shadows of her mother’s hair, there is no face. There is only a tangled nest of glowing threads, each one finer and more delicate than anything she has ever seen.
Go, little Daughter, says her mother. Observer is waiting.
Sarya sneezes.
It’s a sudden and violent explosion, and uncomfortably biological. It results, a second later, in a disturbing mist upon her upturned face. She twitches that face, disgusted, but does not open her eyes. Reality is out there, and she doesn’t feel like dealing with it. As long as she keeps her eyes shut, the universe is no bigger than the inside of her own skull.
“I guess that means she’s alive?” whispers a familiar voice.
“The boss wouldn’t have left her with us if she was dead,” says the same voice from a different direction.
“Are you sure?”
“Now that you mention it…no.”
Something has happened. Something big, in a way that very few things are big. Something has died, or something has been born. The galaxy is different today than it was yesterday—or whenever she was last conscious—and she had something to do with it. But it’s hard to think about big things when you’re small, and that is what she is. She’s small.
And it feels amazing.
“Her fingers are moving.”
“So she is alive.”
“I thought that was already established.”
“I would have called it a working theory.”
Being small is incredible. Being small means you can focus on the small things. You can feel warm light glowing red through your eyelids, a breeze whispering across your face and through your matted hair. You can appreciate the ground you’re lying on, even if it’s rough and uneven and painful in spots. You can take pleasure in the simple drawing of a breath, like this—
Goddess. She did not expect that.
This is memory. This is the hard stuff, the undiluted primal substance that makes Memory Vault shadows seem gray and tasteless. This is a deluge of impressions she never dreamed were locked away somewhere in her brain: flashes of damp green and brilliant yellow, of trickling water and roaring heat, of a vast range of smells and tastes that cannot be classified into the one hundred forty-four categories of Category F food bars, of hands the same shape and color as hers plaiting her hair—
“She’s leaking,” says the voice. “Look at her eyes.”
“She’s Human. They leak from everywhere.”
“That doesn’t sound right.”
“It’s true. The boss told me.”
And then something crawls up Sarya’s right nostril.
She is up like she’s been launched, yelping and slapping at her own face. It’s in there, whatever it is, moving around like it owns the place. She goes in after it with Roche’s finger, thinking that this may very well be the most awful sensation she’s ever experienced—which is really saying something after the last few days—and then with a final explosion of breath it’s gone. Sarya stands, eyes wide open, hands on her nose and salt tracks on her face, in the middle of a forest.
And five meters from the end of the universe.
She stares for a long moment, hands still cupped protectively over a nose that may never be the same. Here, in the green abundance of the forest, reality gives way to utter blackness. Whatever this thing is, it’s blacker than the void. In fact, she is rapidly realizing that she has never even conceived of black before. The path she stands on—the entire forest, maybe the entire universe—ends here, in a wall of black so deep it’s hard to look away. It soars above her as well, but there is no way to tell how high it goes. She is suddenly seized with the impression that this thing goes up for lightyears; there are no visual clues to tell her otherwise.
Behind her comes the sound of what could only be a small throat being cleared. “Sarya the Daughter!” says the voice, more loudly. “Welcome!”
And now Sarya turns, pulling her eyes from the end of the universe to