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belly. She looked up just as Donnell toppled off the veve, and as the cypress top, surrounded by a halo of ghostly radiance, exploded.

At least it began as an explosion.

There was a blast, flames rayed out, a fireball grew. But when it had reached the limit of its expansion, the fireball did not shrink or dissipate into smoke. Instead, it held its shape; then the flames paled and condensed into a cloud of ruby sparks, which themselves settled into the outlines of a mechanism, one of enigmatic complexity. A piece of jeweled clockwork that folded in upon itself and receded into a previously unnoticed distance: a dark tunnel collapsed through the night sky. The last of the wind went with it, giving out a keening cry that set Jocundra's teeth on edge.

By the time she had crossed the veve to the spot where Donnell had fallen, he was sitting up and staring at the blasted cypress. Blood streamed from his nostrils. She jumped down beside him, held his head, and pinched his nostrils to staunch the flow. His eyes showed hardly any green. Thinking it might just be the brightness of the floodlights, she shaded them with her hand. A few flickers, vivid, but only a few.

'I feel good,' he said. 'My heart's not as erratic.' He gazed up at her. 'My eyes?'

She nodded, unable to speak, her own eyes brimming. She put her arms around him and rested her head on the back of his neck.

'You're smothering me,' he mumbled, but held tightly to her waist.

A scream rang out from the hilltop. Jocundra looked back to see Otille struggling in the Baron's grasp. She swung her head back and forth, kicked his legs with her heels. He picked her up and started toward the house; but Otille managed a final scream, and this time it was intelligible. One word.

'Ogoun!'

Donnell stared at the hilltop long after they had gone, and though his features were calm, Jocundra thought she could detect a mixture of hatred and longing in his expression. 'What's wrong with her?' he asked.

'The wind frightened her,' she said. 'And the tree. What did happen with the tree?'

'I don't know,' he muttered. 'An accident. Maybe you can figure it but.' He turned to the cypress. A thin smoke curled from the ruin of its trunk, misting the stars. His voice became resonant, his tone sarcastic, as he said, 'God knows what all this is going to do to Otille.'

Within two days Donnell's eyes were as brilliant as ever, and he went back upon the veve, thereafter returning to it at least once a day. There was no danger of him overdoing it. While the treatment did serve to trim the size of the colony, it also appeared to have stimulated their rate of reproduction, and Jocundra doubted he could last much more than two weeks of abstinence. The Baron continued to film Donnell - he had dug a niche into the side of the hill for shelter against the wind - but Otille remained barricaded in her apartments. One experience with Donnell's newly augmented powers had apparently been enough. When asked about her, the Baron would grunt and make offhanded comments. 'Otille just need to sit and watch her forest grow,' he said once. 'She gon' get it back together.' But he didn't seem to be convinced.

Terrified by the wind, which was shredding the jungles of Maravillosa as Donnell's power increased, growing in force and scope, some of the 'friends' left the estate, and those who stayed hid out in the cabins. With the exception of Captain Tomorrow. He was delighted by the wind and had to be shooed away from the veve. Whenever he encountered Jocundra, he spoke to her in a scholarly fashion, informing her once that the physics of fantasy was 'on the verge of actuation,' and showing her his design for a thought-powered laser, inspired, he said, by Donnell's 'wind trip.'

As for Jocundra, since the Baron was present to watch over Donnell, she preferred to wait in their room during the treatments. Sometimes she worked on the principles underlying the operation of the veve, but she was not often successful in this. The wind unnerved her. Despite her rational understanding of it, charged ions, vacating air masses, she had the feeling it could carry the paper bearing her explanations off to a realm where explanations were no longer relevant. Mostly she thought about Donnell. He was hiding something from her, she believed, and she did