"About these screws," Teeplee said.

"Yes, yes," I said. "Take them." He did, slowly, surprised at my indifference, wondering if maybe he'd made a bad bargain for them. "Where did you find it?" I asked.

"Well, well, there it is."

"Was there, with it, anywhere near it, a ball - a silver ball, well, maybe not silver, but this color?"

"No."

"Are you sure? Maybe there was. Will you go there again? I could go with you."

He narrowed his eyes at me. "What about this ball?"

"I don't know what about it," I said, laughing at his confusion, and at my own. "I don't know. I wish I did. I only know I'd give everything I have to get it, not that that's very much."

He scratched his bald buzzer's head and looked down glumly at the glove. "It isn't even a pair," he said.

So I had this thing then to think about. For a long time I wouldn't put it on; it lay, stainless and impossible, amid my things, and no matter how I folded it took the shape of a living hand, though it was fine and nearly weightless to hold. When at last I did draw it on - it slid voraciously over my fingers and up my wrist, as though hungry for a human hand after long years - I took it off again almost immediately. I think I was afraid of what my hand within it might do. From then on I only looked at it and thought about it - thought in circles.

There were other things, too, to occupy the nights. The other would argue that it only made me want her more, and I would concede that; anyway, my reconstructions of our pale twilight dreams were feeble, we had marked too few. Sometimes I would lie with my skirts up working furiously with the useless thing and find myself at the same time shedding cold tears just as useless.

You really shouldn't laugh.

Third Facet

There came a day when I understood winter was forever; though there would be days when it didn't freeze and days when the sun shone, they would always be followed by cold and rain again.

That day had begun fair, but afternoon dragged the clouds back over and they began again their ceaseless weeping. Toward evening the drizzle subsided to a sniffle, but the clouds hung low and baggy with further business to do. I sat smoking, letting pile up on the inside of the concave eyeball a little pile of rose-colored ash which the wet wind played with. No, no spring this year; the wood was slimy with despair and chilled to the marrow. Not quite dead, not frozen; there had been little snow all winter. But hopeless.

Be thankful, he told me, that she wasn't there to go back to. She knew you wouldn't come back from Boots being as she was, only a poor cripple, not the one and not the other; not yourself whom she first loved, yet nothing other either.

I don't understand, I told him. I have understood nothing, and now I have nothing left. I overthrew my deepest wisdom for her sake, made myself a clear pool for her reflection. And now there's only empty sky.

Well, don't you see? he said. You tried to become transparent, and all the while she was working to be opaque.

Like way-wall, I said.

She must become opaque: you must become transparent. There's no force on earth left stronger than love, but.

Opaque, I said. Yes.

Transparent, he said.

Never a moment when I revealed to her I had seen something in her but she changed it at that moment to hide further from me.

She wanted not to know it herself, he said. There's no blame in that.

It was as though I went after her into a cave, marking my way with a long string; and just when I came to the end of the string, and so couldn't follow any further, Dr. Boots snatched the string from my hand.

It was only one way, anyway, he said. So there's no way out.

We agree, he said, on that.

Well then, I said, I think it's time to lighten that load.

I went to the pack that held everything I had and took from it the case that held the Four Pots. I took it back to the window, unsealed it and opened it. The first pot was blue and contained stuff colored orange - the two colors of the house called Twenty-eight Flavors; it was medicine's daughters for every sickness. The second pot was black and contained the rose-colored stuff that had dreamed me out of a knot with Seven Hands. The third was silver, and contained the black granules that lighten a load. The fourth was bone-white, and contained the white angel's choice I had seen Speak a Word refuse (no, she said, not this year). I picked up the cigar I had left burning on the edge of the window; I held it deep within two fingers, closing my eyes against the rising smoke, and thought about them. I thought of Houd standing before that mirror which showed a tall-hatted man giving giant pots to a boy. "It confuses the dark and light," he'd said, "and for a while you think only about the confusion, and not about everything."

"Everything?" I asked.

"That's Relativity," he said.

Well, Relativity, then, whatever that is; we'll try a confusion. I opened the silver and the black pots; from the one I took a granule of black, like a cinder, and swallowed it. I wet my thumb and pressed it across the rose surface of the other, and then wiped the thumb inside my lip. And then went on smoking, building a pile of ash in the window, which the wind, grown harder, blew off into the wet.

There was just enough room inside my head for the game, though people standing in back to watch filled up the window-eyes and made it dark. The players sat cheek to cheek in a circle with knees drawn up. They played with only one ball, and though there was a lot of chatter, there was no argument about how to begin: the ball began on my mother's knee.

"Whose knee?" they said, and the gossip Laugh Aloud moved the ball to Mbaba's knee. "As for the silver ball and glove," Mbaba said, "they're gone; but for the rest, see here": and she opened her mouth to show a perfect set of teeth, as green as grass.

"Whose knee?" they said, and the ball moved to Painted Red's knee, and from hers to Seven Hands's, who said, "One day, big man, one day," and back to Painted Red, who was saying, "A knot in the cord - that makes me laugh." The ball in her long, sure tweezers paused in air. "Whose knee?" they said, and the ball went to Once a Day's knee. She raised her impossible blue eyes and said, "Ever after."

"Ask women," said Seven Hands, and moved the ball to In a Corner, who said, smoking softly, "Lighter than air, lighter than air."

"An old joke of Roy's," said Once a Day, and moved me to Painted Red. "Many lives," she said, "many lives in the moment between birth and dying."

"This is spring," said Once a Day, and with an unsure hand she moved tweezers toward the ball on Painted Red's knee. Zhinsinura shook her head slowly as the tweezers came close.

"How many lives does a cat have?" she asked.

"Nine," said Painted Red.

"Miss," said Houd, who wore a bracelet of blue stones; and with his yellow-nailed hand he put the dropped ball on his own knee.

"Whose knee?" they all said, and tweezers came for the ball. "Great Knot and First Trap make Little Trap, Little Trap and the Expedition make Little Second Gate, or Great Trap Unlocked in Leaf cord," said Painted Red, and the ball began to fly again from knee to knee.

"The fly sees out all around," said Budding, and moved me to Blooming's knee.

"And sees nothing that holds him back," said Budding; "and still he can't move."

"And let that be a lesson," said Blooming, and moved me to Blink's knee. "We're all legless men," Blink said, yawning. "It doesn't get better, a lost leg, like a cold."