Lolla-Wossiky stood panting, his head spinning. He felt weak, weary. He had no idea what the boy had been thinking. He only knew what visions to send him, and then at the end, no vision at all, just to stand there, that's all he was to do, stand there and stand there until, suddenly, he sent a strong pulse of fire at the boy and buried it in his heart.

And now what? Twice now he had closed his eye and appeared to the boy. Was he through? He knew that he was not.

For the third time Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye. Now he could see that the boy was much brighter than he was; that the light had passed from him into the child. And then he understood– he was the boy's dream beast, yes, but the boy was also his. Now it was time for him to wake up from his dream life.

He took three steps and knelt beside the bed, his face only a little way from the boy's small and frightened face, which now shone so brightly that Lolla-Wossiky could hardly see that it was a child and not a man who looked at him. What do I want from him? Why am I here? What can he give me, this powerful child?

“Make all things whole,” Lolla-Wossiky whispered. He spoke, not in English, but in Shaw-Nee.

Did the boy understand? Alvin raised his small hand, reached out gently and touched Lolla-Wossiky's cheek, under the broken eye. Then he raised his finger until it touched the slack eyelid.

There was a cracking sound in the air, and a spark of light. The boy gasped and drew back his hand. Lolla-Wossiky didn't see him, though, because suddenly the boy was invisible. But Lolla-Wossiky had no care for what he saw, for what he felt was the most impossible thing of all:

Silence. Green silence. The black noise was utterly, completely gone. His land-sense had returned, and the ancient injury was healed.

Lolla-Wossiky knelt there, gasping for breath, as the land returned to him the way that it had been before. All these years had passed; he had forgotten how strong it was, to see in all directions, hear the breath of every animal, smell the scent of every plant. A man who has been dry and thirsty until he was at the point of death, and suddenly cold water pours down his throat so fast he can't swallow, can't breathe; it's what he longed for, but much too strong, much too sudden, can't contain it, can't endure it–

“It didn't work,” the boy whispered. “I'm sorry.”

Lolla-Wossiky opened his good eye, and now for the first time saw the boy as a natural man. Alvin was staring at his bad eye. Lolla-Wossiky wondered why; he reached up, touched his missing eye. The lid still hung over an empty socket. Then he understood. The boy thought that was what he was supposed to heal. No, no, don't be disappointed, child, you healed me from the deep injury; what do I care about this tiny wound? I never lost my sight; it was my land-sense that was gone, and you gave it back to me.

He meant to shout all this to the boy, cry out and sing for the joy of it. But it was all too strong for him. The words never came to his lips. He couldn't even send him visions now because both of them were now awake. The dream was over. They had each been dream beast for the other.

Lolla-Wossiky seized the boy with both hands, pulled him close, kissed him on the forehead, hard and strong, like a father to a son, like brothers, like true friends the day before they die. Then he ran to the window, swung out and dropped to the ground. The earth yielded to his feet as it did to other Red men, as it hadn't done for him in so many years; the grass rose up stronger where he stepped; the bushes parted for him, the leaves softened and yielded as he ran among the trees; and now he did cry out, shouted, sang, caring not at all who heard him. Animals didn't run from him, as they used to; now they came to hear his song; songbirds awoke to sing with him; a deer leapt from the wood and ran beside him through a meadow, and he rested his hand upon her flank.

He ran until he had no breath, and in all that time he met no enemy, he felt no pain; he was whole again, in every way that mattered. He stood on the bank of the Wobbish River, across from the mouth of the Tippy-Canoe, panting, laughing, gasping for air.

Only then did he realize that his hand was still dripping blood from where he had cut himself to give pain to the White boy. His pants and shirt were thick with it. White man's clothing! I never needed it. He stripped it off and flung it into the river.

A funny thing happened. The clothing didn't move. It sat on the surface of the water, not sinking, not sliding leftward with the current.

How could this be? Wasn't the dream over? Wasn't he fully awake yet?

Lolla-Wossiky closed his eye.

Immediately he saw a terrible thing and shouted in fear. As soon as he closed his eye, he saw the black noise again, a great sheet of it, hard and frozen. It was the river. It was the water. It was made of death.

He opened his eye, and it was water again, but still his clothing didn't move.

He closed his eye, and saw that where the clothing was, light sparkled on the surface of the black. It pooled, it shone, it dazzled. It was his own blood shining.

Now he could see that the black noise wasn't a thing. It was nothing. Emptiness. The place where the land ended, and emptiness began; it was the edge of the world. But where his own blood sparkled, it was like a bridge across nothingness. Lolla-Wossiky knelt, his eye still closed, and reached out with his cut and still-bleeding hand, touched the water.

It was solid, warm and solid. He smeared his blood across the surface, and it made a platform. He crawled out onto the platform. It was smooth and hard as ice, only warm, welcoming.

He opened his eye. It was a river again, except that under him it was solid. Wherever his blood had touched, the water was hard and smooth.

He crawled out to where the clothing was, slid it ahead of him. All the way out to the middle of the river he crawled, and beyond the middle, making a thin, glowing bridge of blood to the other side.

What he was doing was impossible. The boy had done much more than heal him. He had changed the order of things. It was frightening and wonderful. Lolla-Wossiky looked down into the water between his hands. His own one-eyed reflection looked back up at him. Then he closed his eye, and a whole new vision leapt to view.

He saw himself standing in a clearing, speaking to a hundred Red men, a thousand, from every tribe. He saw them build a city of lodges, a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand Reds, all of them strong and whole, free of the White man's likker, the White man's hate. In his vision they called him the Prophet, but he insisted that he was not that at all. He was only the door, the open door. Step through, he said, and be strong, one people, one land.

The door. Tenskwa-Tawa.

In his vision, his mother's face appeared, and she said that word to him. Tenskwa-Tawa. It is your name now, for the dreamer is awake.

And more, he saw much more that night, staring downward into the solid water of the Wobbish River, he saw so much that he could never tell it all; in that hour on the water he saw the whole history of the land, the life of every man and woman, White or Red or Black, who ever set foot on it. He saw the beginning and he saw the end. Great wars and petty cruelties, all the murderings of men, all the sins; but also all the goodness, all the beauty.

And above all, a vision of the Crystal City. The city made of water as solid and as clear as glass, water that would never melt, formed into crystal towers so high that they should have cast shadows seven miles across the land. But because they were so pure and clear they cast no shadow at all, the sunlight passed unblocked through every inch and yard and mile of it. Wherever a man or woman stood, they could look deep into the crystal and see all the visions that Lolla-Wossiky saw now. Perfect understanding, that was what they had, seeing with eyes of pure sunlight and speaking with the voice of lightning.