* * *

“Please,” asked Abu, “can I have a drink of water?”

“There is water,” said the boy’s voice.

“Can’t you light a light? I’m sick of this darkness. I feel as if I had been swallowed. There’s no air in here.”

“Light can’t help that.”

“No. I don’t suppose any of you have a drink,” continued Abu petulantly.

“Suppose.”

“Oh, never mind. Water will do fine.”

The boy lit a match. It shone on tired faces, or people curled up sleeping. Nobody moved, and it burned out.

“Well?” demanded the prince.

“I don’t understand,” said the boy. “You want water. There is water. Are you lying to me?”

“I want someone to get it. Please, will someone get it for me?”

“I don’t understand,” said the boy again after a pause. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m tired. I want someone to get it. Or I won’t tell you any more stories.”

Abu felt a cup pushed into his hands. He took it and drank.

“You have no pride,” observed the boy.

Abu took another drink. “You don’t understand at all,” he said. “You never will. Why you stay here is a mystery to me. Why you don’t go home.”

“I was born here. This is my home.”

“Yes, but there is nothing for you here. Why not go back?”

“I know the songs,” replied the boy. “No one can live there. There’s nothing to eat. There’s nothing but snow.”

“But . . . hasn’t it gotten warmer here since you were a child? It’s spring there too. Up by Rang-river, it’s nothing but green grass. No large animals yet, but plenty of rabbits. The trees won’t grow back for another generation. But God knows it’s a better life than here.”

He heard movement in the little cave, exclamations, and a hand closed painfully around his knee. “You’re lying,” said the boy. “Don’t lie.”

“Why should I lie? Don’t you know? Hasn’t anybody ever left here to go back?”

“Yes,” said the boy. “They are alive or dead. We are not like you. We can’t see it through their eyes.”

“Then let me tell you.”

“No. You see, but you don’t understand. I don’t want to see that way. Now there is grass. What color?”

“Green and gold.”

“Long or short?”

“Waist high.”

“Snow on the mountains?”

“Yes. Near the peaks.”

“Birds?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Abu.

“Yes,” said the boy. “You see, I do know. There are birds of prey. Hawks and harriers.”

There was a long silence, and then Prince Abu broke it. “Let me finish my story,” he said. “About the cannibals. I haven’t finished.”

“No,” said the boy. “I know what you will say. They wanted to kill us after we ate them. So they sent an army when the weather changed. The Paradise thaw. They burned our town. Your cousin was there.”

“You’re right,” said Abu, surprised.

“You think I’m stupid. But I was born here. I know how to talk, how to think. I learned everything I could. I am young, and I can’t live in a past I never knew, like my fathers and my mothers. Always in the past. The eternal present, always in the past. But I can’t live that way, because I want compensations for slavery. I want comfort . . . in my mind. I want to want things, to believe things.”