“I feel quiet. Calm. It’s like—there’s a door opening, and on the other side of the door there’s my home.”

The answer seemed to please him. He looked at her intently for a few moments more, then he lay back on the quilt beside her, cupped his hands behind his head, and looked up at the night sky.

Mina looked up too. The stars were very bright. She thought she could see the Plow and Orion, the Pole Star, the Milky Way. She thought of Cassandra, and where she might be—dancing, perhaps—then she forgot Cassandra. A child ran by them; she looked around this improvised encampment. Beyond the fires and the dancers, some new vehicles were pulling into the field. She watched them distantly, a small fleet of new, expensive cars. Their lights flickered, their doors opened, and they disgorged their passengers, all male, all suited; the men were shouting to each other; they bunched and spread out, laughing and swearing, making for the barn. Mina turned to Star.

“Who are they?”

“City people. They come here to score from the travelers. And me.” He sounded bored. “They pay well. They’re fools.”

“Are you a traveler?” Mina asked.

“No. I fit in everywhere and nowhere. I belong to no one and nothing. I come and go as I please.”

“Isn’t that lonely?”

“Not now. I’ve found you, Mina. And I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”

He gave her a glittering look. “Let it happen, Mina,” he said, then he lay back down on the ground again, his eyes fixed on the sky and his hand grasping hers.

“Lie down beside me,” he said. “Pretend we’re two figures on a tomb. Lie absolutely still. Watch the sky.”

Mina did so. The sky was now brilliantly colored, striated, and moving very fast. She could see endless patterns, shapes twisting and turning and reinventing themselves.

“Do you know what you want in life, Mina?” Star asked.

“No, I don’t. I don’t even know who I am,” she replied.

“I’ll give you what you want, and I’ll show you who you are,” he said, not moving. “Hold my hand. Feel the power.”

Mina obeyed him. They lay side by side in silence, for hours, for centuries. Mina felt her body be discarded. She felt the strength of her own soul. Even Star’s little dog knew something extraordinary, something momentous, was happening.

After a while she became restive; she whined, then licked Mina’s hand; a few millennia later she lifted her gray muzzle skyward, and howled.

Chapter 6

CHARLOTTE WAS PLEASED WITH the way her dinner had gone. They had eaten by candlelight, at the long table in the kitchen. The pastry had risen perfectly, the steak and kidney pie had been excellent. Gini ate very little, but poor, neglected, half-starved Rowland, who had no one to cook for him—or no one serious to cook for him—had wolfed down two helpings. Had Rowland been one of her own children, Charlotte could not have been more pleased. At ten-thirty, when the others had been shooed through to the sitting room, she and Max found themselves briefly alone in the kitchen. A restful marital quietness filled the air. Charlotte was making coffee; Max, she suddenly realized, was fiddling with some port decanted earlier; it was one of his most precious ports, a Fonseca ’69.