her. Not yet, not before she understood what she meant to him. Why couldn’t she recognize that? It wasn’t so much.
Far below lay the kingdom of the afterlife and if he turned back now, he would never arrive. Choose, demanded the situation, like the voice in Edgeworld. “Choose,” said the apparition of his mother far below in her streaming pall.
Why was it either one or the other? He objected to the options even as he sensed that he was on Colemaigne, embraced by a dream that even now was withdrawing—never his mother at all. That was a layer of meaning pulled out of him, not one imposed by the creature. She wasn’t stealing his soul; instead she was sharing, stirring his memories into her own. She had his and he had hers now, hints of it anyway, like flecks of sunlight scattered across the water’s surface.
The image of Leodora blurred into striations, into colors woven through the green and the gold beams of light, with dark darting fish playing around her, all glittering, and then his real eyelids, which had been closed all along, parted, and the glittering light became the fierce brightness of the sun blazing upon his face. He was lying on the pier, on his back, and the sun had toured the sky until it was warming him where he slept. He could think Leodora’s name but not make his lips obey enough to say it. He told his body to sit up and it refused. The most he accomplished was to turn his head enough to see the stones beside him. She was not there, the sea creature, but the puddle of water and the strands of seaweed assured him that she’d been no dream.
With enormous effort, he finally rolled over, dragging his legs out of the water. For how long she had embraced him he couldn’t be sure, but the sun had moved up to midmorning position, so an hour or more at least. “Why,” he protested to no one, “does it have to be me they come for?”
After a while he was able to get up unsteadily.
The puddle of water became a wide wet stripe leading to the gate into the bridge support, which now hung open. She had not gone back into the water.
He picked up his sandals as he tottered beside the trail. It narrowed and then, as he entered, the stripe separated into wet uneven ovals. He closed the gate behind him. Wet footprints with discernible toes climbed the stairs ahead of him, but shrank as they ascended until they were just smudges, vanishing altogether by the time he’d made it halfway up the spiral. Her feet had dried. He gave up, and had to sit and rest then.
The climb the rest of the way back to the surface seemed to take all morning.
The name of the street that ran along the tower was now visible, sunlight splashing across the carved plaque and the nearly redundant designation of TOWERSIDE THOROUGHFARE.
People moved about up and down its length. None of them appeared to be either a sea creature or naked. More likely she, whatever she was, had climbed to one of the levels above. He wondered how long she could endure out of the water, if she transformed utterly, becoming a land creature when it suited her, and if she did, then how many others of her kind had he met and never known? How many might have passed through the paidika? He shook his head, dismissing the matter. There was no way he could resolve it.
Music echoed off the buildings, tugging at him. He smelled food cooking and instinctively followed the scent. Though he might have been disoriented and uncertain from his encounter, he was ravenously hungry.
Shortly he came to a stand selling sweet buns, and he bought three. He’d eaten the first one by the time he paid. The others he ate as he continued walking. They were filled with some kind of fruit in a thick paste. He’d never tasted its like, and he determined to go back and buy more of them for everyone in the theater—but not until he’d taken in the scope of what had assembled on the thoroughfare while he slept.
He could only call it a fair, but it must have come together haphazardly. Citizens stood in clusters in front of various booths, most of which were nothing more than a few poles with a simple curtain across the front if they were closed, swept