“I know. That’s why I like you. And you like me.”

“Who made you?”

“I don’t know. Who made you?”

“I’ve forgotten. Perhaps the person who lives inside me.”

“Like a pit in a plum?”

“Like a pit.”

“Maybe the pit can’t see the old man. Pit to prune, not receiving.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Yes you do.” And she did and the shape-shifter asked, “Is the pit where the rage comes from?”

“Do you feel the salamanders falling?”

The creature turned ten eyes up toward the heavens. It was true. The night was a mist of lightly falling amphibians. So tiny, delicate. Each a memory of a time and place where she had almost been free. But not quite.

“It’s amazing. It’s perfect. Perfecto. Perfection. Purr.”

The shape-shifter began to purr like a cat. The dark bird had never seen a real cat, but the shape-shifter put the image of a contented cat in her mind.

“The ground feels better after, beneath my feet. Even though they are gone.”

“It’s really a person. It was a person. Now it’s so many things. I wonder if the person is happy now. So distributed.”

“Happy is a human concept.”

“I’m not human and I want to be happy.”

“Are you happy in this moment?”

“Yes.”

“Then that is enough.”

For the dark bird, for it was all she had.

“I like the wind, too.”

The wind over the desert floor now was a shushing and rushing and a swirl that brought with it the cold cool embrace of fragrant scents from beyond the City. The reassurance that there was a place beyond the City. Out of mind.

“What will you do—after?” the shape-shifter asked.

“After what?” asked the dark bird.

“After the end of it all. After the rains. After all the resolves resolve.”

“I don’t know. What will you do?”

“Nothing. I won’t be here anymore.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know. But you will be here. You will live here.”

The dark bird, the ugly duckling, frantic: “Can you help me? There is this thing in my head. A poison. A command. A rot. A presence. I cannot get it out. I do terrible things. I do terrible, terrible things.”

“So do I.”

“So you understand.”

“I do.”

“Can you help?”

A barrier against the slaughter. The slaughterous impulse that came in exterior and inhabited.

Killing the pale men on the other Earth invaded by the Company. Killing them because she could.

“I am going into your mind now. I am in your mind, in the future. When you are older and weaker. I can see into your mind there, then, not now. I am snapping the connection. I am snapping the cord. So it will be alone, quarantined, the mad thing inside you. It will live there, but cannot access you.”

“And now?”