«The _land_, Cullen. Heeg wants to own the Stroke. But if the land doesn't like the leader, it rebels.»
«Rebels?» How?»
«Look up at the sky. Look at the land here. Everything is either wet and soggy, or too bright and quivering, like the Jakes.»
«But Felina, I remember it used to rain here before. We had fun then.»
«You were too young, Cullen, to see what was really going on. It was beginning even back then. But we knew you were leaving, so we didn't want to worry you by telling you the truth. We knew that you'd come back some day. All that you've seen so far is what happened after you left Rondua to go back to the other side.»
Far off in the distance, a train whistle _quecched_ once.
«Well, are there a lot of people like Heeg around in Rondua?»
«There aren't any shadows on a cloudy day, Cullen. None at all before a storm, because _everything_ is darker then. Our weather here has been cloudy for years. The Third Stroke is only one example.»
The train whistle slashed through the air again, much closer this time. Pepsi, Martio and Felina moved toward the sound. Mr. Tracy and I stayed where we were.
«When you were first here, Cullen, we had hoped you would be the heir who could save us from all this. But you weren't, although you came very close. We let you go when you were a child, because children are wonderfully selfish and remember only what matters to them at the time. And those are always small things – the color of the cake at their birthday party, or who gave them a Valentine at the second-grade party last Wednesday. But adults remember so much more, whether they like it or not. When you were a child we wanted you to go away clear and empty and happy, so you would have only good memories of your time in Rondua. Then one day you would voluntarily bring us an heir who _would_ have the power to make it right here again.»
His last words disappeared in the clamor of the arriving train which passed in a slowing rush of clanks and spits and hot oiled metal.
I yelled to him over the noise, «_Is_ Pepsi the one? Does he have what you need?»
«Yes! We think so! If we're lucky!»
«But what if you're wrong? What if he's not the one?»
«We all die.»
Kempinski would have been miraculous if we hadn't been in Rondua so long and hadn't seen so much already. Giant animals like our three friends strolled the streets. People dressed in bizarre clothes and living hats moved by in a hurried crush. Different kinds of outlandish music accompanied us everywhere; much of it was reedy, mysterious and oriental. It was a suitable background for belly dancers and fire eaters, or walking through a bazaar in Baghdad or Jerusalem.
At one point I started laughing when we passed a movie theater that said it was showing «WEBER GREGSTON'S NEWEST MASTERPIECE – SORROW AND SON.»
Pepsi held my hand and asked two hundred questions about what we were doing and what we were seeing. I answered as best I could, but my knowledge and memories of Kempinski were dim or clouded by the years I had been away. I had little spots of memory – I knew that that street led to the «Avenue of Napping Bull Terriers» and that we had to buy some coily from a street vendor because it was the best chewing gum around, but little else.
We arrived early in the morning and spent most of the day tramping through the city seeing the sights, trying to remember what it had been like when I'd been there before. We fed the Weez and Daybuck at the Zoo of Blind Animals, ate a big lunch of marucks and toocha juice out in the rice-fields at the edge of town.
As a lavender and gray dusk set in, we made our way to the amphitheater at the center of the city. Everytime we turned a corner that day, the building had loomed up in front of us, colossal and old beyond belief but perfectly preserved. Now people streamed into its many entrances unhindered by any ticket takers.
The night before, Mr. Tracy had said going to the theater was the only necessary thing we had to do while we were in Kempinski. What happened there would determine how long we would have to remain in the capital. He made no mention of why, or what was supposed to go on in that ancient place.
The murmur of the crowd died down quickly when a man appeared on the small stage in the center of the theater, just as we were sitting down on one of the stone benches. His clothing was nondescript and his voice was high and thin, unimpressive.
«Today is the third day of the Search. If contestants fail to build the Wind's Lips again today, the next round will be held as usual in two months' time.»
The people sitting around us didn't react. Eager for things to begin, they were apparently well aware of what the announcer was saying.
«May we have the shapes, please?»
For the next ten minutes, men dressed like different kinds of vegetables brought out transparent glasslike blocks which looked like the blocks children play with. These were much larger, however; larger and lighter, because the men carried them on six or seven at a time.
When they were done, about forty-five or fifty of the things sat in a sloppy heap off to one side of the stage. They came in all sizes; some looked like the boxes you carry long-stemmed roses in, others were larger than a phone booth.
«What are they for, Mom?»
The memory loomed into view like a slowly rising fish. I remembered. What do we know? How much have we forgotten? Is Ronduan history swimming away in all of our minds, only way down deep where the murky things live?
Pepsi pulled on my sleeve. «_Mom_, what are they for?»
«One day a child was playing with blocks exactly like those, Pepsi. By accident, they put them together so specially that they made something called 'The Wind's Lips.' Somehow, whenever the wind blew through it, it was able to whistle perfect songs.»
«The wind or the lips, Mom?»
«Well, we need our lips to blow, don't we, Peps?»
«What happened to these lips? Did they die?»
«Somebody knocked them down a long time ago. But they've been trying to put them back together that same way ever since. No one's been able to do it.»
«What happens if they do make it again, Mom? Do the songs come back?»
Nearby, a man with three hands was listening to us and smiling. Leaning over, he said what I expected to hear: «If you're the one to do it, Sonny, you'll win one of the Bones of the Moon.»
I looked at him. «And only children are allowed to try, aren't they?»
«Naturally! A child did it first, so only a child will have the ability to do it again. Go ahead up to the table, boy. Give us back our music and win your mother the Bone!» He looked at us, then laughed and laughed as if we were the funniest things he had seen all day.
After the first gasps, silence fell on the amphitheater like a sword. Pepsi stood back and listened, with the rest of us, to the growing swirl of music pouring from the form he had made with the blocks. The shape he had come up with in the end looked vaguely like one of those space needle/restaurant things, but it had certainly done the trick. Every sound imaginable poured out of there: Iraqi grunting music, _a cappella_ French children's songs, bird whistles, disco tunes. At one point, I heard a few bars of Danny's favorite Frank Sinatra song. A United Nations of music. Pepsi delighted everyone by turning round and shrugging helplessly at us; as if to say that he didn't understand it either, folks.
The Grand Mayor of Kempinski, Larcquo Hednut, came on stage and presented Pepsi with the prize: a greenish-gold Bone of the Moon that was shaped like a whistling face.
People and animals cheered and applauded. But the most interesting thing to me was that when the presentation ceremony was over, the majority of them filed out of the theater exactly as they'd come in: no hosannas were sung, the victor wasn't carried out on people's shoulders. . . . Old women scolded their grandchildren for dawdling, and two yellow lions tried to decide on where to eat dinner.