“When the whole system is screwed up like that, you need more than a hoodoo doctor. Straightening things out for individuals isn’t enough anymore. So what you need is a gang of people whose job is to keep the energy circulating, to show other people how it’s done, and to make sure both of those go on even when the gang isn’t there.” Sher leaned back, set her hands on her knees, and looked at me.

“Do you think you’re through?” I asked. “I’m waiting for the answer to the first question. What does this have to do with the town?”

“Oh, work a little bit, Sparrow. It’ll do you good.”

I think I knew, really. I just had to line the facts up in my head. A community of people who made food and entertainments for each other, who had no store or even any regulated system of baiter. A town that had given a herd of musk oxen an escort north, and done its best to keep tigers alive. The people who saved my life because, just then, it needed doing. “Oh,” I said, and, “The whole town?”

“That’s right,” said Sherrea. “Welcome to the Hoodoo Engineers.”

That wasn’t the end of it; I had questions, she had clarifications. But not much later, I walked alone back to the farmhouse.

Or not quite alone. For company, I had my sense of something almost seen, something hovering over me, something that would be revealed eventually, whether I liked it or not. I’d thought it would be in Sherrea’s explanation, and I’d been afraid of it. Now I wished it had been. It was spoiling my appreciation of the fireflies.

Card 10: Outcome

The Tower

Waite: The ruin of the House of Life when evil has prevailed, the rending of the House of a False Doctrine.

Gray: Change or catastrophe. Freedom gained at great cost.

Crowley: His magical weapon is the sword. His magical powers are works of wrath and vengeance.

10.0: Dancing for a rainbow, sweating for the sun

I dreamed that night, for what seemed like all night. I wanted several times to wake up, and maybe even tried to; but I could no more wake up out of the world I traveled through that night than I could have woken up out of the real one.

I’m sorry. That was a bad choice of expression. However I say it, I couldn’t wake up.

It began with the pictographs, black on white. I had forgotten them, or forgotten to mention them to anyone. I was on the left end once more, and next to me the woman with the headdress was saying to me, “There’s not time. It’s not your fault, Wind and Rain it’s not, but you’ll suffer for it all the same. You can’t be taught the dance in a fistful of suns, never mind this little slot of darkness.”

The creature with the flute beside her responded, “What’s to teach? Box step, two-step, cha-cha-cha. Every living thing knows it already. Hey,” it hollered at me, “you know those little bugs in your body? The teeny tiny ones that tell everything what to do? Tell ’em I said to lead!”