"Are you a saint yet?" said Budding, and Blooming moved me back to Once a Day's sharp knee, and Blink said, "Bits and pieces," and moved me to the knee of another girl, a girl in a starred black robe with a great cat beside her, watching. "How can you think about me," she said, "when I'm not there?"

"Miss! Two misses," said the cat. The ball was retrieved and went to Zher's knee. Once a Day said softly: "Beautiful."

"After all," said Painted Red as they paused, "it's only a game."

"Whose knee?"

The ball started fast around. "The object," said Houd, "is to never discover you're playing it."

"To someday," said Painted Red, 'become transparent; and in transparent life to be free from death."

"To learn to live with it," said Blink. "We learn to live with it; we try. We have our systems and our wisdom..

"How is truthful speaking done?" asked Zhinsinura. "Let's both tell a secret."

"I don't remember riddles," said Once a Day.

"The Salutation, the Body, and the Complimentary Close. You can find a path through that."

"A path," said Painted Red.

"Is only a name," said Zhinsinura.

"Is drawn on your feet," said Mbaba.

"For the place where you are," said Zhinsinura.

"When-we-wandered," said Mbaba.

"Where you've been on it," said Zhinsinura, "is only a story."

"And then, and then, and then," said Blink.

"Some of the stories are pleasant ones…"

"That's Relativity," said Houd.

"… and some are not. That's dark and light."

"He was dark," said Stick, and picked up the ball with tweezers of wet black wood. The ball slipped and bobbled within the twiggy tweezers. He could get no grip. And they had been doing so well.

"How many lives does a cat have?" asked Puff. "Quick."

"Many lives," said Painted Red, "many lives in the moment between birth and dying." Stick just managed to wiggle the ball to her knee, and everyone said aaaah.

"Whose knee?" they all said. "Dr. Boots's knee," said Once a Day softly; "this is spring."

"And truthful speaking is…"

"Transparent," said Painted Red.

"And dark and light is…"

"Opaque," said Zhinsinura.

The ball they played with was a hazelnut. Zhinsinura's tweezers that reached for it were like a nutcracker. "Opaque, transparent," said the ball. "Like way-wall."

"Miss," said Once a Day, a little sadly, but as though she'd expected it.

Zhinsinura, smiling, picked up the ball in her fingers. "Way-wall?" she said. "There's no such thing." She inserted the nut in her cracker.

"Three misses," Teeplee said. "Game's over." Zhinsinura calmly cracked the nut.

I looked up at that sound. Above me, a thin crack ran the width of the skull, making fingers.

The cigar in my hand had gone out. Brom lay asleep, but not in the bed where he usually lay. Through the door in the floor I could see the fire burning low and shadowy. Outside the sound of the evening was heavy, and I realized what it was - rain. The crack in the skull widened with a little noise, and I jumped up with a cry, which woke the doctor but not Brom.

What doctor?

"That's not right, though," I said. "It wasn't really three misses."

"Yes," the doctor said. She wasn't old, though her hair was white and the hands which held my black and silver cloth around her were lined. She moved, and the bed crackled beneath her. She looked at me with wide still eyes.

"Because," I said, "I do know how truthful speaking's done."

"Yes," the doctor said.

"It's done the same as dark and light."

"Yes," the doctor said.

"Yes," I said, "because when you speak truthfully, what you're doing is telling whoever can hear you about the dark and light, just then. The better you tell an old story, the more you are talking about right now."

"Yes," the doctor said.

"So I have always been dark and light. I never had to learn it, because I didn't know it."

"Yes," she said.

"And never stopped saying what I really meant or really meaning what I said, because how could I do otherwise?"

"Yes."

"Then there's no difference. They're the same."

"Yes."

"And is that what it means, then, that there's no such thing as way-wall?"

"Yes."

"So. All right. Two misses, then."

"Yes."

"The game goes on."

"Yes."

"So. All right. But," I said, sitting down, "if they're the same, then what's the difference?"

"Yes," the doctor said.

A loud crack overhead made me duck. I looked up. The split in my head was widening horribly. Rain seeped in, staining the white gray. Brom looked upward, and then at me. I went to my pack, tossed in the Four Pots, and found my specs. I put them on. "I think," I said, "that it's time to be going."

The doctor watched me as I came close to where she lay in the bed. "This will cover us, it's big enough," I said, and drew off the black and silver which covered her.

In the gloom I thought there was a cat with her in the bed; but of course she was the cat. She turned herself with careful grace and went on fours out of the bed and across the floor. Her tabby legs and thighs were like those of Fa'afa of the List; her hands helped her across the floor to look out the window. There she sat with knees up and her hands on the window ledge. Her tail swept around to cover her clawed feet. Above us the skull crunched and split; a fine white powder fell.

"Anyway," I said, my voice catching, "we have to go."

She looked from me to the rain, and then to the door in the floor. Soundlessly she padded to it and disappeared through it. Brom followed her. I shouldered my pack, and gathered up the black and silver, put on my hat. I glanced up: the skull was crazed.

They were waiting at the outside door, with the thoughtful reluctance of cats before rain. Brom would have to decide for himself; I moved hesitantly to the doctor and knelt before her. The wet wind from the door made her shiver, but when she saw I wore the silver glove - I don't know how I came to have it on - she grew calm and raised her arms slowly to slip them around my neck. With a soft cry that I don't remember, was it Yes or No, I put one arm beneath her and lifted her to carry. And we stepped out into the night and the rain.

The leaves oozed under my feet as I stumbled down the incline away from the head. Gusts of rainy wind blew across the way, and I nearly stumbled with my burden. Behind me, I thought I heard the head I had abandoned crumble to pieces; I tried to look back, but it was all darkness and woods, and the doctor's hands held me. I could feel her breath on me, gentle and warm, as though she were asleep and though my grip on her tightened at every stumble and lurch, she was easy; she even seemed to nestle against me under the robe which covered us.

When I came to broad naked Road I stopped. I looked both ways, but it was all wind and rain and stone and dim black-boned trees. "I think," I said, already panting, "I think I know a place where we might go."

"Yes," the doctor said, muffled by the black. She sighed; I sighed; and we started north.