"Well, before the invasion — in fact, just days before I met with Lucius and he took me to Raven's country — I took an aircar up in the night. Nobody saw me leave Bar-rastea; even my agents were asleep. I touched down ever so gently on the edge of a forest and left the aircar. The trees made a canopy of complete black overhead so I navigated entirely by inscape, walking into a wood alone, at night, far from family and friends.

"And as I walked I began to sing, and as I sang a different world opened before me. I had come to the manifold of the drummers — the manifold I had helped to save a few weeks before. When I emerged from the trees it was to see their towers still standing in the glow of the coronal's arch. Faintly, I could hear a single drum beating in the distance. It was very cold, the ground leeched all heat from your feet as you stepped through the spongy, wet grass. But I knew where I was going.

"Doran, nothing in the Life of Livia could hint at the feelings of freedom and fear I felt there, alone, breaking into a place that was currently guarded by the peers in daylight. My heart was pounding as I found the tower and walked up its steps in complete darkness.

"I replaced the water-worn drum of the last drummer with a new one I'd brought. Keeping the Drummers' manifold alive for another month or two was that simple. I secured the new drum and checked that the rains had topped up the cistern that dripped onto the skin. Then I walked back out again. It wasn't until I reached the outside that I paused for a minute to listen.

"Each drumbeat sounded clear and distinct. Each one rolled out into the night, reaching nobody's ears, but real nonetheless. It was a tremble of air, nothing more, yet in that tremble the drummers lived. In that tremble of air was something not of Westerhaven, not preserved by your Government or to be found in the narratives. Call it the Song of Ometeotl, if you wish. It remained in my ears as I stole back through the forest and returned in secret to my home."

She smiled at his astonished expression. "At the time I didn't know why I did it It was one of those actions that you can't reconcile with the person you think you are. But now I understand. I was honoring the existence and dignity of a reality independent of my own.

"If you want to understand any of the decisions I've made, you have to start there."

Suddenly she laughed. "Don't look so serious, Doran. I've got everything I wanted. I have my music and the people I love around me. I'm part of a Society. I'm a part of my world, I'm not struggling against it the way you have your whole life."

He winced. But it was a fair comment. After a while he asked, "So what happens now? Do you vanish back into the manifolds again?"

She shook her head. "You vanish. But hopefully not forever. I'm glad you came to find me, Doran. Perhaps we'll meet again. For now, all I can offer you is my thanks for being my friend. The best way I know to do that is in music."

Livia grinned, and walking backward in front of him, she began to sing. She sang about youth and age, and the turn of the seasons. It was a song about change and acceptance, and the small human things that made up a day, or a life.

Livia sang; and as she sang she began to fade; and as she faded into the bright air, the song faded with her. In moments she was gone, leaving him alone with the whirring of the bees.

Doran shook his head and walked away. At first he felt only frustration. Was she alive or wasn't she? Had he just met some clever anima running on after its owner's death? Or did the real Livia still walk somewhere, perhaps not in this garden or even on this work! — but somewhere?

When the answer came to him, it did so suddenly and with such force that he laughed in surprise. She'd said she had learned to honor the existence and dignity of a reality independent of her own. But how did you do that? Maybe the key was to refrain from trying to slot everything into your own categories, the way Choronzon and the annies did. Alive by Doran's definition; dead by his definition — could it be that Livia was neither of those things? He knew that she had opted out of the annies' version of reality. Was it so hard to accept that his own categories no longer applied to her either?

He walked on, strangely content. Ever since he had first encountered the masks and manifolds of Wester-haven in the Life of Livia, he had wondered why they seemed so familiar and yet so different from the views of the narratives. Now he finally understood. In this strange new world he was just beginning to discover, you did not bring reality to you. You went to it.

There was a way for him to meet Livia Kodaly again, if he wished to.

All he would have to do was change.

Epilogue

Aaron Varese stood on a stone veranda looking out over his estate. He was sipping a cup of coffee, feeling tired but, for the moment, satisfied.

It had taken months of effort, but things were stabilizing. His world no longer changed daily. For a while after the Ascension of 3340, buildings, trees, people — all had shifted moment by moment. He'd thought he was going to go mad, and maybe he would have — if not for the Book.

He glanced back at the table where it rested, just a slight flutter of anxiety compelling him to make sure it was still there. In those first days, he'd clung to it like a life raft. He had always been good at using it, but he'd needed all his skills to ride out and eventually halt the mad chaos of images and memories that inscape had thrown at him. For weeks, he'd focused on nothing else, done nothing else but use the Book. And gradually, the madness had abated.

He could walk his virtual gardens in peace this evening, because he had spent the day masterfully using the Book. It didn't matter that he didn't understand the now-limited tableaux that came to him, or what his actions meant; what mattered was that they no longer took up every waking moment.

He had time now for peace — and melancholy. For while his estate was now stable around him, it was also a reminder of everything he'd given up.

"There you are!" Esther ran out and threw her arms around him. He hugged her fiercely. "I can't believe you're still real," she murmured into his shoulder.

"I am," he said. She was real — he was almost sure of it. For months his only companions had been animas from the Westerhaven he'd once knew. Esther Mannus's had been among them. They were merely actors who drew him into scenes that he escaped only by using the Book. Once he had used it properly, the men and women dissolved along with the props and sets of the scenario.

A few days ago, Esther had remained after a scene ended. She seemed as surprised and suspicious at this turn of events as he was. Only as the days passed, and they remained together, did they begin to wonder if the other was more than just an anima.

She was his reward — or he was hers. It didn't matter. What mattered was that the Book was merciful.

As the light reddened and vanished in a simulated sunset, he walked with her through scented grass and silence. He felt his heart swelling with some emotion — love? Gratitude? It was hard to separate feelings these days, when you were required to ride an emotional roller coaster all day long. The thought made him smile. "You're a refuge from the world," he said sincerely.

"And you," she said, sighing and shaking her head. "It wasn't meant to be this way, was it?"

"This crazy? No ... I suppose the Ascended body is busy. Somewhere there're people assigned to be Eyes and Ears and so on. If things continue settling down, we should be able to track one of them down and find out what's going on in the outside world."

"I ... heard a rumor today," she said. Laughing at his look of surprise, she added, "Yeah, people have time for rumors now!"