“It’s too complicated,” he said. He threw a fistful of leech-flesh into the mangroves where it spattered and made the leaves tremble and rain. “Your land, it’s impossible to understand. That’s why you have a story about everything, down here, because it’s the only way to make sense of anything. No laws, no rules; they don’t even work! The mangroves grow wherever they please! It’s magic! Oriati Mbo runs on magic!”

“You’re afraid,” Tau-indi said, recognizing, somehow, the dismay in Cosgrad’s voice. “What are you afraid of, guest of my house?”

“We’re going to lose,” Cosgrad said, snatching at the kudzu vines. The frog on his right knee vibrated with indignation. “I’ll never understand you, so Farrier will take her favor, Farrier will try his methods, and he’ll fail! We’re doomed, Tau, the whole work of the revolution is doomed!”

Oh principles. Tau realized that Cosgrad was tripping—he’d licked the tiny frog! He licked the frog to see what would happen! And now he was having frog dreams!

Cosgrad picked up the stone and underhanded it in a tight snapping motion. “We’re going to lose!” He began to weep in quiet sighing bursts. “I can’t understand you, you’re all too old and complicated, I’m too young and simple and Farrier’s going to have his way, and he’ll fuck it up, and we’re going to lose! Back into the silt and the ooze! The end of humanity!”

“Come,” Tau murmured, “come, come.”

They walked the poor man back to the picnic as he fought with frog dreams. “It’ll be all right,” Tau whispered to him. “No one will lose. Everyone can win. We’ll teach Falcrest the magic of trim, and everything will work out. Falcrest can be made mbo, and filled with delights, and we can even give you all the other kinds of cats.”

*   *   *

THE truth was an awful birthday present!

Tau had been all wrong about their friends. Kindalana and Abdumasi hadn’t been keeping their trysts secret from Tau—they’d thought Tau wanted to be alone, Princely and self-reliant. They thought Tau had pushed them together.

Perhaps now their friendship could be repaired? Perhaps. But the strangeness between them had become a habit, and habits were hardest to fix.

As they all straggled home from that birthday, each of them bugbitten and thirsty and maybe satisfied, depending who, Tau-indi resolved to make another try at reading the Whale Words. A good Prince should read the Whale Words beginning to end, for if Oriati Mbo had a holy text, it must be the Words.

Everything in the world happened in circles, the Whale Worlds told Tau. This was why the world held together. The end of the story told the beginning how to happen, so that the story could go on.