“Poetry is glory to the Goddess.”

“That doesn’t explain the jargon.”

“We had,” Shale said after a long, silent swoop, “a lot of time in exile. I thought perhaps if we could, ah, publish our songs, maybe we could draw others toward the Lady. I subscribed to journals by mail. Submitted poems. Received rejection letters. There are advantages to being able to pass for human. Did you just giggle?”

“No.” She pushed from her mind the image of Shale, dressed in stitched-together rabbit furs or whatever he wore for clothing in human form out in the countryside—hells, had he even worn clothing?—arriving at some log-cabin town’s post office with a subscription card for Poetry Fancier’s Quarterly. “So, these poems you’ve recorded in Stone—they describe the Goddess. They’re an authoritative representation of her.”

“Strange phrasing.”

“I’m translating,” she said. “From my language to yours.”

Miles west, at the airport, a great glittering beast ascended into the night, tail sweeping a swath through clouds. Its blackness blended with the space between the stars.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Which returns us to my question: Do we have to be this high to see the poems? I’ve seen them before, in alleys, from street level.”

“Codas,” he said. “Fragmentary midcentury additions of the minimalist school. Many of what you thought complete works were cantos of longer poems designed to be read overhead in moonlight at a particular angle.”

“If we’re meant to be viewing works in alleys from overhead,” Tara said, “we’re still too high. I can’t see any building walls from here.”

“You see nothing for which you are not prepared to look.”

Below her, the city turned silver all at once.

An instant before, they’d flown above an Alt Coulumb dark and jeweled as ever. Then, as if they crossed an invisible threshold, the streets transformed to rivers of silver-blue light. From ground level the effect would be too subtle to notice, since light would never strike the right angle for more than a thumb-size piece of pavement. A drunk might see a patch of glory in an alley shadow and mistake it for a streetlight reflection. This was more. The city was built around luminous words.

“Cow paths,” she said.

“Some,” Shale acknowledged. “But how do the cows know which paths to walk? They followed tracks we carved.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Yes.”

“What does it mean?”

“That,” he replied, “is harder.”

*   *   *

Cat won three games and Raz two. “Superior strength. Hah.” She sank another ball, missed her third follow-up shot, passed to him; he dropped three, then scratched. “What’s with the whiskey, anyway?”

“I’m in the man’s bar. Passengers on my boat pay for the privilege. Shouldn’t I pay him for his floor space?”