the topiary had been changed. She didn’t remember the one cut like a huge bird with a fan for a tail, nor the one that looked like a giant depiction of her Meersh the Bedeviler puppet—and surely she would have noticed that one if it had been there the previous afternoon. Who was it cut these bushes, anyway?
People strolled through the park in leisurely fashion; some passing nearby stared at her curiously. Diverus noticed this first and pointed it out to her, and the two of them watched people watching her as they passed. Then one woman, rather than just watching, approached her. With her face hidden behind a small fan that she fluttered, the woman asked, “Would you sell me, young woman, some of your hair?”
“My hair?” She self-consciously touched the fall of it at her neck. She wore it unbound today, enjoying the freedom of anonymity.
“Enough to make a wig for me. I’ll pay you well.”
“I’m sorry, but no.”
The woman made a slight bow of disappointment, then fluttered away.
Diverus said, “They must never have seen hair like yours.”
“But it’s just hair!”
“To us. We might want to leave this park, though, before she finds someone who’s willing to take it from you.”
“Take my hair?” Clearly she found the idea absurd.
“In the underspan of Vijnagar, if someone liked what you had, they took it. If you disagreed with them, there was usually an argument, sometimes a fight. Sometimes a murder.”
“You saw this?”
“Not every day, no. Own nothing to feed someone’s envy and you’ll live a good long time. Otherwise, you have to be willing to fight.”
“You had something to steal?” she asked, thinking that he wasn’t merely reciting but spoke from personal experience.
“No,” he answered. “I had nothing, less than nothing, so I was left alone.”
They continued to wander idly through the park, which appeared larger than possible. Beyond the benches and up a few steps the way was blocked by a stand of bamboo grown so thickly together that when they at last located a meandering path of small stones among the stems, they had to walk single-file along it, weaving through an increasingly impeditive forest, so dense that the clogged air hung motionless, while in branches overhead unseen birds chattered shrilly. The world became green, crepuscular, and claustrophobic.
When it seemed the forest could be compressed no further and remain navigable, the bamboo began to thin, until they were catching glimpses of the world beyond it again. Soon only a single, random row of stems stood between them and the outside. The path ended at a few steps, leading down a slope to a circular pond. In the center of the pond, water trickled over an odd pile of stones that seemed to have been arranged to produce the most noise possible—the trickling and burbling drowned out even the birdsong they’d left behind. Orange fish with large sleepy eyes suggesting a jaded intelligence swam lazily near the edge of the pond and followed them as they walked around it. There were benches at intervals, but no one sat. This whole portion of the park stood deserted.
The path led to a broad oval of sand, ringed by rocks. A solitary figure stood in the sand, his face hidden beneath a low conical hat. He held a small rake and, as Leodora and Diverus came upon him, he was carefully creating a series of crosshatches. The sand had been worked elsewhere into swirls and nautiloid patterns. In silence they watched him perform, and Leodora felt as if she were watching the creator himself, making the world. He paused to consider what he’d done, standing idly with one foot on his thigh and his weight upon the rake. He seemed then like a statue, as if she had only imagined his movement. Quietly she and Diverus crept past him. If he was aware, he didn’t show it. He didn’t move at all. On the far side and bordered by short conical trees, a few steps led down from this strange plateau and across another area of exotically shaped bushes, and to a set of polished wooden trellises that served as gates. Beyond them, people moved past randomly, as if unaware of this enigmatic park.
Exiting through the gates, the two found themselves on a secondary boulevard that paralleled the one they’d taken upon arriving on the span the day before. Looking back, they found that they had walked beneath the oddly canted central tower without noticing and viewed it now on the far