The boy opened his eyes. He could not otherwise move, because his legs, arms, and torso had been bound with pliant ropes or vines. The strange growths had pinned him there, and some of them had pierced his body.

Surely he must be dead. How could anyone survive such an impalement?

But he opened his eyes. He opened his eyes and whispered, " Sulean—''

* * * * *

She woke in the chair next to Isaac's bed, sweating in the dry heat. Mrs. Rebka had come into the room and was staring at her.

"We're having a meeting in the common room," Mrs. Rebka said. "We would like you to be there, Ms.

Moi."

"All right. Yes."

"Has his condition changed?"

"No," Sulean said. Thinking: Not yet.

* * * * *

It wasn't really a coma. It was only sleep, though a profound one that lasted many days. Isaac woke from it that evening, and when he did, he was alone in his room.

He felt… different.

More alert than usual: not only awake but more awake than he had ever been. His vision seemed sharper and more focused. He felt as if he could count the dust motes in the air, if he wanted, even though there was only the light of his bedside lamp to see by.

He wanted to go west. He felt the attraction of what was out there, although there was no word for it, no word he knew. A presence, rising; and it wanted him, and he wanted it, with an urgency akin to love or lust.

But he wouldn't leave the compound, not tonight. Isaac's first and purely instinctive long walk had come to nothing—apart from the discovery of the rose—and there was no use repeating it. Not until he was stronger. Still, he did need to get away from the narrow confinement of his room. To smell the air and feel it on his skin.

He stood, dressed, and walked downstairs past the closed doors of the large central room from which emanated the solemn voices of adults. He went out to the courtyard. A guard had been posted at the far gate, presumably to keep him from wandering away again. But he stayed on the other side of the houses, in the walled garden.

The air was cool tonight and the garden was lush. He stepped in among the plants, following the gardener's cobbled path. The night-blooming succulents had put out blossoms, richly colorful even in the faint moonlight.

Other things, small things, stirred in the soil where the ash had been driven down by the rain.

Isaac put his hand palm-down on a bare patch of earth. The soil was warm, retaining what it had conserved of the day's heat.

Overhead, the stars were crystal-bright. Isaac looked a long time at the stars. They were symbols hovering on the brink of intelligibility, letters that made words that made sentences he could almost (not quite) read.