But that night Coyote spoke to Hiroko, when he thought no one was listening. “Roko you got to take those kids outside and show them the world. Even if it’s only under the fog hood. They’re like moles in a hole down here, for Christ’s sake.” Then he was gone again, who knew where, off on one of his mysterious journeys into that other world folded over them.

• • •

Some days Hiroko came into the village to teach them. These to Nirgal were the best days of all. She always took them down to the beach; and going to the beach with Hiroko was like being touched by a god. It was her world— the green world inside the white— and she knew everything about it, and when she was there the subtle pearly colors of sand and dome pulsed with both worlds’ colors at once, pulsed as if trying to break free of what held them.

They sat on the dunes, watching the shore birds skitter and peep as they charged together up and down the strand. Gulls wheeled overhead and Hiroko asked them questions, her black eyes twinkling merrily. She lived by the lake with a small group of her intimates, Iwao, Rya, Gene, Evgenia, all in a little bamboo stand in the dunes. And she spent a lot of time visiting other hidden sanctuaries around the South Pole. So she always needed catching up on the village news. She was a slender woman, tall for one of the issei, as neat as the shore birds in her dress and her movement. She was old, of course, impossibly ancient like all the issei, but with something in her manner which made her seem younger than even Peter or Kasei— just a little bit older than the kids, in fact, with everything in the world new before her, pushing to break into all its colors.