As he padded south, Brrr considered the all-but-fatal interview with the Ozmists. Maybe Bears who had genuine news they could barter were released unharmed. Maybe these were the Bears competent enough to take their chances in human society. If so, Cubbins had sacrificed his own ambitions in order to help Brrr summon the phantoms.

Still-on further reflection-had any of it actually happened? And why should Brrr presume that Ozmists, being ghosts, were telling the truth about anything? If they could be legalistic and harsh to a Bear cub as guileless as Cubbins, perhaps they could also lie-about whether or not Ozma was still alive, even about whether or not Brrr’s pride was among their particulated number.

The alluring stars in an apparently endless sky had, after all, been a disguise for the cloud of spirits. Ghosts perhaps could lie in death as well as creatures could lie in life.

Under a green bay tree he stretched out, thinking: If even the ghost of the past can harbor a motivation to dissemble, where can any ignorant Lion sensibly place his trust?

Perhaps nowhere. Perhaps lying down and playing dead, as Cubbins should have done with the Ozmists, was the only legitimate response to the villainy of life, the aggrandizement of very matter.

In any event, the Ozmists hadn’t spoken in the voice of Jemmsy, a new arrival in their midst. Neither to hector Brrr for his mistakes nor to hurry him toward his goals. So the Lion would continue to Tenniken to deliver to Jemmsy’s father this precious medal, and to deserve his own. On his own, unpartnered, but by the ghost of a chance, maybe, wiser than a day ago.

5

S OME WEEKS later, when the Lion emerged for the first time from the Great Gillikin Forest into the world of human affairs, he paused to wash his mouth out with well water and straighten his mane as best he could. It wasn’t vanity so much as nerves. He’d never seen an entire hive of humans before.

The first people he saw gave him a bit of a berth, to be sure, but at least they didn’t run shrieking behind slammed doors. They kept their little toy noses in the air. Their little toy ankles, tucked in those little booties, kicked ahead in the best, most dismissive manner. He couldn’t fault the town citizens for self-possession.

He finally managed to startle an old woman who was nearsighted enough not to see him coming. He’d been practicing his inaugural remark for weeks and was pleased with his delivery.

“Beg pardon, madame. I’m enquiring after the garrison of soldiers I’m told is stationed at Tenniken,” he said.

The woman’s crabapple chin bobbed up and she fished for a pincenez in her reticule. “Goodness, a Lion,” she observed, when she could. “Why ever would you imagine you could find soldiers stationed at Tenniken here, of all unlikely places?”

By which he learned he had emerged too far to the east. Not in Tenniken at all, but on the high street of the Gillikinese settlement called Traum.