Silent but for the spank of the river on the raft's sides and the chuckle of the forest, we followed the current. Zhinsinura smoked tobacco, and continually changed the pipe from place to place between her teeth. "About the letter," she said once, "we have only an old joke. The angels said every letter has three parts: the Salutation, the Body, and the Complimentary Close." I listened to the roll of the ancient words and said nothing. The gullied banks were tumbled with ruined places, mostly become forest now, revealed only by an angelmade angle or straight line in the moss. We glided past them, passing through drooping willows as through thin draperies, and after a time came up against a wharf in the river, swung the raft around and tied it up.

A path from the wharf led up to a - what was their word - glade: a kept place of young willows and soft grass, which the sun reached into. Some of the List were there and watched us approach, but gave no sign; some were naked. In the center of the glade stood a small house of angelstone, which over time had sunk and was now partly buried in the soft earth; a narrow path led down to its low door. Zhinsinura took aside the two we had come with; they nodded together, looked at me smiling, and sat to wait. As she had before waywall, Zhinsinura took my shoulder in a firm grip and led me down into the darkness within the little house.

There was but one small window. For a moment the dimness was spangled with the sunlight still in my eyes. I saw that the small square place was empty; then I saw that it was not. There stood there a box, or pedestal, as clear as glass or clearer; inside it, silver and black balls or knobs were suspended in rows as though in water. And on top of the box was a clear sphere, the size of a man's head, with nothing at all inside it.

"The fifth," I whispered.

"Boots," she said. She was drawing on her hand a silver glove, a silver glove that glowed like ice. "Sit," she said. I sat; I didn't think my knees would hold me anyway; Zhinsinura with her gloved hand pretended to turn one of the knobs within the box. The knob turned. The clear sphere, with a small noise like a shocked, indrawn breath, changed instantly to black: black so black it appeared no longer a sphere, a black circle cut out of the world.

"Now close your eyes," Zhinsinura said; "It's best to close your eyes." I did; but not before I saw that with her silver glove she was pretending to turn another of the knobs within the box; and that the black circle was rising from the pedestal, moving like a Light; and that it came toward me.

And then there came the time that I must tell you of, but can't; the time when Boots was there, and I was not. When I was not in Rush that Speaks, and Boots was; when Boots lived; when she was Rush and I was not; when I was not at all. I remember nothing of it - I wasn't there - and though Rush was stained with Boots's being, stained and colored with it forever, he remembers nothing, forgot all even as I returned to him: because though Boots has many lives she has no memory. I know only the last thing Boots did: and that was to close her eyes. And then she left him. It was in that moment, when Boots left, that I got my letter: my letter was myself.

"Open your eyes," said Zhinsinura.

That - "open your eyes" - entered in at the doors of Rush. I was not, and that entered nothing; but still as quick as ever it found and ran along the old path which such things had taken countless times before. Only this time, as though it were a Light, it was able to see the path, infinitely long, which it took. The path was Rush: the walls and snake's-hands were his stuff, the countless steps and twists and false ways and rooms were him, chest full of Rush, it was all Rush: all along, Rush was handholds, ways, stairs, a path for that to get deep in. And I - I was nothing; but when Zhinsinura said that, "open your eyes," I uncurled outward from some tiny center of not-being and built Rush to receive it: the path those words took and the place the path led through spun out both together. The words watched me watch myself make a place that held a path which the words took through the place to where I built it. A place like spheres, like the trees of bread, but all within each other, spheres of bright complexity made only of making, each sphere fitting within a larger just in time to let "open your eyes" escape into the smaller, until the words and I had made up Rush to hold us both; and we all three, in a silent swift coupling, laced all our ways together. And I opened my eyes.

The black sphere was retreating from my face, returning to the pedestal to perch. Zhinsinura with the silver glove pretended to turn knobs. The sphere settled; Zhinsinura turned a knob. The sphere was clear again. Boots slept.

Zhinsinura said, "Can you go? We'll go now."

The whole great place I had built to hold Open Your Eyes vanished like a cloud, and just a little more quickly than I had built it, I built a new Rush with a new path to receive these new words. And I knew then (unmoving, unable to, hands gripped around my updrawn knees, mouth wide as my eyes were wide) that I had built oh how many million before, and lost each, changed from each, they were less real than clouds, I was less changeless than a banner in the wind, and I knew that I would build a million others, each as different as this one was from… what? How had I been, a moment before? What was the huge thing I had only just learned? Gone… I tried to grasp at something to Be, some house to Be in, and could not; and Dread came chasing out through all the spangled spheres of Rush, and I felt myself building a house for it to live in, and as soon forgetting I had ever lived in any other thing than Dread. I struggled to rebuild, remember, but struggle only enriched Dread's house, and I was only Rush here now afraid.

But sunlight happened then, for Zhinsinura led me out.

And the house of Dread was less than memory because Sun took up all my room.

I almost wept and almost laughed to think how I must build a house not just for every word but for everything at all that has a name. A Willow happened, and Walking on the Grass; a Person I Knew happened. Each time I turned my head a thousand things ordered their paths and chattered with each other about whose would be next, and each time I turned a thousand Rushes were made and fell away tinkling, sighing, whispering, crashing.

I stopped, stock still. Zhinsinura's tug on my hand made me recoil. I must be careful. Surely, in this rush, something, something is bound to lose its way. I must be careful not to draw Path wrong for any name to lose itself on. Wait, wait, I pleaded; but they wouldn't wait, and how had I ever been able to build fast enough for Everything? I was tense as stone with effort, and Dread was all I knew how to accommodate: but at Dread's door I stopped: something was rising in me, something was rising to meet all that I could not meet.

What rose was, I will say, Boots. I will say that though Boots had left, she had also stayed. I will say that Boots rose, and that out of her house deep within me she spoke and said: Forget. Forget you were ever other than the perfect house you are forever building, and whether it is a house of dark or light it will build itself. As for any name that enters there, it couldn't lose itself; for if the house is whole, why then isn't Path drawn just as wholly on its feet?

I will say Boots said this, I will say that this was what her letter said; I will say even that at her words the stone tension went out of me, I fluttered like a banner in the wind, and wept and smiled at once. I will say so: but the secret, oh the secret is that Boots has nothing, nothing, nothing at all to say.