“Before our Fremen ancestors came to this planet, night was the time for storytelling, songs and poetry. In the Dune days, though, that was reserved for the false dark, the daytime gloom of the sietch. The night was when they could emerge and move about… just as we do now.”

“But you said dissect.”

“What does that song mean?” he asked.

“Oh. It’s… it’s just a song.”

“Siona!”

She heard anger in his voice and remained silent.

“This planet is the child of the worm,” he warned her, “and I am that worm.”

She responded with a surprising insouciance: “Then tell me what it means.”

“The insect has no more freedom from its hive than we have freedom from our past,” he said. “The caves are there and all of the messages written in the sprays of the torrents.”

“I prefer dancing songs,” she said.

It was a flippant answer, but Leto chose to take it as a change of subject. He told her about the marriage dance of Fremen women, tracing the steps back to the whirling of dust devils. Leto prided himself on telling a good story. It was clear from her rapt attention that she could see the women whirling before his inner eye, long black hair thrown in the ancient movements, straggling across long-dead faces.

Darkness was almost upon them when he finished.

“Come,” he said. “Morning and evening are still the times of silhouettes. Let us see if anyone shares our desert.”

Siona followed him up to a dune crest and they stared all around at the darkening desert. There was only one bird high overhead, attracted by their movements. From the splayed-gap tips on its wings and the shape, he knew it was a vulture. He pointed this out to Siona.

“But what do they eat?” she asked.

“Anything that’s dead or nearly so.”

This hit her and she stared up at the last of the sunlight gilding the lone bird’s flight feathers.

Leto pressed it: “A few people still venture into my Sareer. Sometimes, a Museum Fremen wanders off and gets lost. They’re really only good at the rituals. And then there are the desert’s edges and the remains of whatever my wolves leave.”

At this, she whirled away from him, but not before he saw the passion still consuming her. Siona was being sorely tested.

“There’s little daytime graciousness about a desert,” he said. “That’s another reason we travel by night. To a Fremen, the image of the day was that of wind-blown sand filling your tracks.”

Her eyes glistened with unshed tears when she turned back to him, but her features were composed.

“What lives here now?” she asked.

“The vultures, a few night creatures, an occasional remnant of plant life out of the old days, burrowing things.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because this is where they were born and I permit them to know nothing better.”

It was almost dark with that sudden glowing light his desert acquired in these moments. He studied her in that luminous moment, recognizing that she had not yet understood his other message. He knew that message would sit there, though, and fester in her.