Tofi asked in the dark, “What’s falling on us?”

“Pebbles,” Marak said. They all were struck and bleeding as best he could tell, and he set Norit down on the mats, trying to tell whether there was any injury to Norit’s head: he found grit and wet in her hair, her aifad carried away in the wind. He felt wet on his own skin, and on his clothes, and a profound chill followed. The three of them, he, and Norit, and Hati, all huddled together shivering while the thunder raged.

In time he warmed, and rested. And uncommon storm that it was, the air grew still before the dawn. Tofi got up and put his head out to find out what might be going on.

“The stars are back,” Tofi exclaimed, “and more are falling down.”

After this, Marak said to himself, nothing could astonish him. He got up to see, found it true, then went back to rest, in the knowledge that at least there were stars in the sky. The convulsion in the heavens had settled again, if only to a steady ruin.

Marak, Marak, the voices said, back again, after such long silence, and rocks and spheres collided, and the heavens fell. He could have wept. They were not lost. The voices knew how to find them. The visions were back. He never thought he could be glad. West, the voices told him. West by northwest.

“Do you hear?” he asked Hati. “Do you hear them?”

She moved her head against his arm. He thought it was a yes.

The sun, relentless, came up as sane as ever. They unfastened the lee-side tent flaps and let in light, welcoming the sun, and where Marak had expected half-healed wounds, he found no fever and no swelling. Where he expected blood from the stones, he saw no blood, rather a patchwork of dirt on his arms and his clothing, and on Norit’s, and on Hati’s, as if they had been pelted with mud.

He walked outside, seeing the ground all likewise splotched and spattered, and the canvas the same. The beasts were all but laughable, having a coating of dried mud all over their backs, and the pale, spread canvas was a patchwork of red and rust like him and like Hati.

“Raindrops!” he exclaimed in astonishment. He laughed aloud, having expected blood and bruises, and finding them marked like fools. “Water drops. No wonder we were wet!”

“In the far north,” Hati said, “sweet water fell hard as stones, and became water again in the sun. So the grandfathers tell it.”

Norit had come out, and so now did Tofi and his men. Norit, too, was splotched with huge dollops of rust, and at some point tears had run down from her eyes, trails through the red smears. Now her eyes, red as fire, were fierce as Hati’s.