The Mists of Time
by Margaret J. Anderson

Alfred A. Knopf, New York

THE MISTS OF TIME
for KAREN with love and trust and sharing

This is a Borzoi Book Published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Copyright © 1984 by Margaret Anderson Jacket illustration © 1984 by Michael Hays
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.,
New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada
Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.
Book design by Mimi Harrison
Manufactured in the United States of America
1357908642
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Anderson, Margaret J.    The Mists of Time.
Summary: In the twenty-second century in a land that was once
Scotland, a group of gentle people, who believe in love, trust, and
sharing, encounter several people from the twentieth century and
are also invaded by Barbaric Ones from the south. Sequel to
"In the Keep Of Time" and "In the Circle Of Time."
Space and time—Fiction]    I. Title.    PZ7.A54397Mi    1984    [Fie]    83-19555 ISBN 0-394-86573-1    ISBN 0-394-96573-6 (lib. bdg.)

PROLOGUE
The people of Kelso believe that a story is nothing when it is only words printed on a page. Even when the words are read, the story is only half realized. But when the story is told aloud, joining the thoughts of the teller with those of the listeners, it finally has life. Although they have read books from long ago—fragile, musty volumes discovered in the deserted library of Norsea—their own history is not recorded in books or scrolls. It is a story told while seated at the long, polished table in the Cooking House, at the Gatherings in the meadow by the river, or in the shadow of the huge standing stones of the Circle of Time.
The story has its beginnings a hundred years before in a distant valley nestled between high mountains, far to the south and east. There the people lived, much as they do now, by the work of their own hands. Every task was shared, even the upbringing of children. They put their faith in love and trust and sharing. But in the world outside their valley, people put their faith in machines. Machines made clothes and food and provided people with music and games. Machines took people to the farthest places of the earth, and even into the sky above. But these machines gave off so much smoke and steam and gas that they changed the very climate of the world. The polar ice caps melted, and the oceans flooded the coastal cities, forcing their inhabitants to flee. Years of violence, famine, and disease followed.
When the climate grew hot, the crops failed, even in that isolated valley. The monsoon season lasted all year long, and rain washed away the thin layer of soil from the narrow fields. Hoping to find a cooler land in the north, these mountain people took to the sea in small boats. Three roughly made boats with about eighty people in each—and sheep and goats besides—riding the wild waves, battered by stormy seas.
No one knows how long the journey took, how many days without food, how many nights without sleep. One of the boats was lost, snatched from sight between one great wave and the next. The other two boats found refuge in the estuary of a river. Rowing wearily up this river, the travelers discovered a meadow, bright with flowers. Beaching their boats, they carried the animals ashore and found traces of the old civilization in the deserted town of Kelso, traces of the time when the land was known as Scotland. They borrowed the name Kelso for the new place, and stones to build their houses. They salvaged metal to make a few tools, but they did not try to make machines. The soil was rich, summer days were long and warm, and the people prospered. But even now their thoughts turn to those in the third boat, the Lost Ones. This new land is so vast, their number so few. . . .
They have all heard the story many times. Lenarchus, the wisest of them, has traveled within his mind to the time when the tale begins, but he cannot always find the words that bridge the gap between the speaker and the listener. Vianah tells the story well. Being blind, she sees the images with an inner eye. But Savotar, with his lean, brown, expressive face and melodious voice, tells it best. When he reaches the end, he leans forward and asks, "What about the people in the third boat? Are their descendants living somewhere around these islands? When summer comes, with days so long that one day almost merges with the next, we'll set out on our Summer Journey, seeking the Lost Ones. Surely this will be the year when the Lost Ones are found!"

One

Lara Avara rested for a moment against the rail fence, listening to the bleating of the goats frolicking in the upper pasture and the song of a lark high overhead.
"Let's go down by the river, Lara Avara," Farula said, pushing aside one of the baby goats that was nuzzling against her leg. "It's much too warm for mending fences."
Lara Avara was quick to agree. As the two girls followed the winding path through Kelso, a welcome breeze sprang up, ruffling their jet black hair, Lara Avara's long and loose, Farula's looped back with a flower. They were about the same height, both slender girls, and were dressed alike in embroidered tunics made from finely woven gray cloth.
The village of Kelso was bustling with activity. Outside the low stone houses with their brightly painted shutters and doors, blankets and colorful wall hangings fluttered on clothes lines. Here and there a roof was being thatched or patched, the fresh golden straw contrasting with the neighboring dark brown of weathered roofs. Blue smoke drifted over the pottery kiln where Dolus was making new platters. The sound of singing echoed from the Cooking House.
Lara Avara sighed. Everyone was getting ready for the Ceremony of Choosing, which was now only a few days away.
"If only I was good at something," she said wistfully to Farula. "Kartan and Aetherix both knew they wanted to be artists almost before they left the Baby House. And everyone has always known that Tinodes and Mara will be your Chosen Ones so that you can spend all your time with these silly goats."
"Why don't you ask them to be your Chosen Ones, too?" Farula said eagerly. "Then we could look after the goats together."
Lara Avara shook her head. She didn't even pause to consider Farula's suggestion. They had always been close friends, but she didn't love the goats the way Farula did.
"Or you could choose Nemourah and learn embroidery," Farula continued. "She'd show you how to make tapestries and shawls."
Again Lara Avara shook her head. "I only do the easiest stitches; and look at all the loose threads and knots in my tunic!"
Sewing was one of the first skills taught to the boys and girls in the Learning House. They wore their embroidered tunics with great pride.
"And I'm not patient enough to work in the Baby House," Lara Avara said. "I once slapped little Nephi's fingers when he smeared mealbread in my hair."
Both girls giggled.
"What about gardening?" Farula asked.
"I like working in old Vianah's garden," Lara Avara admitted. "But that's because I like to be with Vianah, not because I want to be a gardener."
"You'll have to choose someone," Farula pointed out impatiently. "Otherwise you'll end up being the only eleven-year-old still in the Learning House."
"I should have lived long ago when people didn't have to choose," Lara Avara answered. "Back in the time when children lived with mothers and fathers."
"It doesn't seem right to think of people owning their children like that and not sharing them with others," Farula said.
"There were more babies born in those days."
"That should have made people more eager to share them," Farula argued. "Savotar says that it was selfishness that brought an end to the Age of Technology. He says they could have done more, gone much farther, if sharing had replaced greed and rivalry and suspicion."
"Not everyone was selfish in those days," Lara Avara answered. "Those strange children who came when Vianah was alone last summer weren't selfish. They helped her, even though they were lost and frightened themselves. Vianah says they were from the twentieth century."
"You can't believe all those stories Vianah tells!" Farula scoffed. "She's full of strange tales about the past—but they are only stories."
Lenarchus believes they came, Lara Avara wanted to say, but she had learned not to talk about Lenarchus to Farula. Farula was apt to start giggling at the mere mention of his name. Sometimes she imitated him, sitting on the ground with her eyes closed tight, but only when she was sure he wasn't looking. Lara Avara had to laugh at her. What Farula didn't take into account was that Lenarchus knew everything that was going on, even when his eyes were closed!
Lenarchus was different, and his strangeness both attracted and frightened Lara Avara. He was tall, taller than anyone else in the village. And while other men wore their black hair down to their shoulders, Lenarchus had no hair at all. His brown head was smooth and polished like a river stone. His face was smooth too, not lined like an old man's, yet he was nearly as old as Merrid, who was the oldest one among them. But the weirdest thing of all was the way Lenarchus sat still for hours in the meadow, staring across the river, never even seeing the little ones playing and splashing in front of him. Searching, he called it. At other times he went off into the woods for days, gathering the healing herbs and berries, but that was a different kind of searching.
Lara Avara and Farula reached the meadow where the Gatherings were held. Today it was ablaze with color— the scarlet of poppies and geraniums, the deep blue of delphiniums and forget-me-nots, the white and yellow of daisies, and a host of other flowers. The two girls gathered armfuls of blossoms and wove them into garlands with practiced fingers. As they wandered down to the river Farula nudged Lara Avara and pointed to a solitary figure at the water's edge. Lara Avara's heart began to beat a little faster when she saw Lenarchus sitting there, legs crossed, rocking gently back and forth, the hot sun beating down on his smooth brown head.
"He's off on one of his Searchings," Farula whispered. "Probably looking for Vianah's imaginary children."
"I don't see why you can't believe they really came," Lara Avara said. "Long ago, people could do things we can't do now. They even walked on the moon. Don't you ever wonder what it was like then?"
She, herself, often did, and realizing this was like uncovering an answer she should have found long ago. What she wanted to learn about was the past—not about the events and dates that Savotar taught them in the Learning House, but about the people. She wanted to know the people—to meet the children who had visited Vianah. And she wanted Lenarchus to be her Chosen One and show her how to find them.
Lara Avara was quite sure that she hadn't put her thoughts into words, yet it almost seemed as if Lenarchus had heard her. He rose to his feet and came walking toward the two girls.
"So you have made up your mind at last, Lara Avara!" he said.
Farula drew back, but Lara Avara waited. "I should have known sooner—but I—I was frightened," she stammered.
"You were right to be afraid," Lenarchus answered. His eyes were like black mirrors, and Lara Avara could see herself reflected in them. Twin selves. "Who else will you choose?"
"Vianah!" Lara Avara's voice was firm. She straightened her shoulders and tilted up her chin.
"But Vianah's so old—and she's blind!" Farula burst out. She was so surprised by Lara Avara's answer that she momentarily forgot her uneasiness in Lenarchus's presence.
"What difference does that make?" Lara Avara asked, turning to Farula.
"Have you started your own collection of artifacts from Norsea?" Lenarchus interrupted.
"It's not things I want to know about," Lara Avara said. "It's the people. And I like the stories Vianah tells."
Lenarchus nodded, as if pleased by Lara Avara's answer. Yet he warned her, "Others will tell you that there are things about people in times past that you are better off not knowing."
"Vianah makes the people from long ago seem just like us," Lara Avara whispered.
"And she has the gift of storytelling," Lenarchus said. "That's what you must learn from her. To have a vision is not enough; you must be able to make others see it too." A shadow of sadness flickered over Lenarchus's smooth face, so that Lara Avara wondered if Lenarchus saw things in his Searching that he would have shared with the rest if only they had listened. The moment passed, and he raised his hand in a gesture of blessing—or dismissal. "Go and ask Vianah if she will be your Chosen One, child, and tell her I sent you." He turned and sat down again by the river.
Lara Avara might have thought she had dreamed the whole conversation if it had not been so obviously real to Farula. It was hard for Lara Avara to deal with Farula's amazement when she was still getting over her own surprise, yet she recognized the rightness of her decisions.
"Lenarchus and Vianah!" Farula kept saying. "Whatever made you choose them? I wouldn't have the nerve! And what will you wear? One of your Chosen Ones is supposed to give you a new tunic for the ceremony, and I don't see Lenarchus or Vianah providing one! You'll have to make it yourself."
Trust Farula to come up with a practical difficulty like that! Lara Avara glanced down at her tunic and wished she had taken a little more care over the embroidery.
When the girls reached the entrance to Vianah's garden, Farula continued on up the path to Mara's cottage. Lara Avara paused for a moment to enjoy the peace of the garden. The air was scented with the heady perfume of roses that climbed the arched trellis. Every plant in the garden had been chosen for the fragrance of its blossoms and leaves or the whispering sound of its foliage in the wind. But Vianah couldn't see the riot of color in the carefully weeded borders. She could enjoy the garden only with her ears, her nose, and her fingertips. She had been blind for as long as Lara Avara could remember.
Lara Avara felt a rush of love for the old woman sitting in the doorway of her cottage. A light shawl was draped over her shoulders even on this warm afternoon. Her blue eyes were turned toward Lara Avara, and a smile creased her wrinkled face.
"Can that be Ollie and lan come back to see me?" Vianah asked. "Or is it Lara Avara come to hear about them?"
Smiling, Lara Avara settled herself on the doorstep at Vianah's feet. Vianah must be feeling stronger today if she wanted to talk about the children who had come last year when everyone was away on the Summer Journey. Andrew and Elinor and lan and Ollie. To Lara Avara's ear, the names all ran together. Names without faces, because Vianah couldn't describe them. But even though Lara Avara couldn't get a clear picture of these children from the past, she never tired of hearing about them.
"Tell me about them from the very beginning," she said, momentarily setting aside the business of Chosen Ones in her eagerness to hear the story again.
"You remember how, last year, while you were all on the Summer Journey, I stayed behind in the old stone tower a few miles upriver from here," Vianah began. "It is a place of memories—not only my own memories of picnics and Gatherings but the lingering memory of all who have found sanctuary within its walls. I am never lonely there. I know every stone of that old building, but last summer I foolishly misplaced the supply of mealbread you'd left for me. The old tower, which I love so much, became my prison. I couldn't find my way back to the gardens in Kelso from there." The old woman closed her eyes.
When the silence grew long, Lara Avara prompted her, saying, "And then you heard children talking."
"When I first heard them speak, I thought I was dreaming. Their voices were strange and yet familiar. As were the things they told me. The two older ones—Andrew and Elinor—went to Kelso and brought me ripe peaches from the tree beside Alloperla's house, and vegetables from the garden. Ian caught a fish in the stream. How pleased he was!"
"How did they get here?" Lara Avara asked. She had heard the story before, and she knew that they possessed a key that had opened not only the tower door but also an unseen door between their time and now. Ollie, the youngest one, had turned the key, but Lara Avara wondered if there was more to the story than that. "Did Lenarchus bring them here, Vianah?"
The old woman shook her head. "Remember that I was alone in the tower when they came to me," she said quietly. "I told you that the old tower has a memory—a memory beyond the twentieth century when they lived."
"What did they tell you about the cars and planes they had long ago?" Lara Avara asked. "And the machines that did the work?"
"We talked more about people than machines," Vianah answered. "Poor little Ollie was a lonely child. She didn't feel part of the others. She was strangely separate from her brothers and sisters."
Brothers and sisters. There was that old idea of people living in families again. In Kelso, each child belonged to the whole village. The babies and little ones were cared for in the Baby House until they were three or four years old. Then, when they no longer needed constant attention, they lived with each of the adults in turn, going to the Learning House during the day. Around the age of ten, they announced their Chosen Ones, and lived with them until they had mastered their chosen skill. Parents must have been a little like Chosen Ones, helping you learn, Lara Avara thought. But suppose you didn't want to learn what they had to teach. No wonder things hadn't gone well.
Lara Avara was about to ask Vianah about being her Chosen One when she realized that the old woman had drifted off to sleep. She stood up and tiptoed into the garden. She would find something to do until Vianah wakened. Vianah rarely slept for long. Lara Avara walked down the garden path, pretending, as she often did, that Ollie was right there helping her.
"We must cut back this bush so that the branches don't reach out over the path and scratch Vianah's face," Lara Avara told an imaginary Ollie. "And we should plant thyme in this crevice in the rock so that it will grow down and cushion the sharp edges."
Lara Avara was startled to hear a voice near her ask, "Who are you talking to?" She looked up and saw Nemourah smiling at her. Nemourah's hair was braided and neatly coiled over her ears and, as always, there was a hint of laughter in her dark eyes. "It's kind of you to spend so much time helping Vianah," Nemourah continued. "There are those of us who are so busy putting our own places right that we should take a lesson from you, child."
Lara Avara stared at her feet. It was disconcerting to get praise she didn't deserve. Mostly she worked in Vianah's garden to avoid less agreeable chores. Today she was just passing time.
"Everyone is busy tidying the village and mending fences, making ready for the Summer Journey. And before we leave, we have the Ceremony of Choosing," Nemourah continued. Lara Avara nodded, only too well aware of that. "This year you must say who your Chosen Ones are. You are old enough to choose what skills you want to master, and who your teachers will be. Have you decided yet?"
"Just today," Lara Avara answered eagerly. "I have chosen Lenarchus and Vianah, but I still have to ask Vianah." It felt good to have it settled.
"Lenarchus and Vianah!" Nemourah studied Lara Avara's bright face, a worried frown creasing her own brow. Finally she said softly, "Vianah is very old, child. It is only through constantly exchanging ideas and skills that we learn. Perhaps you should choose someone who can give you more time."
"Vianah has more time than anyone!" Lara Avara protested. Everyone else in Kelso was always busy with something, even if it was only thinking or making up a new song, while Vianah sat in her house or garden, waiting for an interruption.
"She is old, Lara Avara," Nemourah repeated. Sensing that Lara Avara still did not understand, she added, "Vianah may die soon. Usually one chooses—"
"I'm going to choose Vianah," Lara Avara said firmly. She was filled with an almost superstitious need to choose Vianah, as if by choosing her, she could ensure that Vianah would stay with them. Vianah hadn't changed in all the years that Lara Avara had known her. "I love Vianah and I want to learn the stories she tells!"
"Certainly love is a good reason for choosing," Nemourah agreed. "Lessons are more easily learned from those we love. You have chosen well!" She laughed, and added lightly, "I was hoping you were going to ask me!"
Lara Avara looked at Nemourah's gentle, smiling face and suddenly wished she could have three Chosen Ones. To think that just an hour or two ago she had been afraid that she was going to have to stay forever in the Learning House because she couldn't find even one Chosen One!
Nemourah reached out and cupped Lara Avara's pointed chin in her hand, tilting the child's face so that she looked into her dark eyes. "They will ask much of you, Lara Avara. Would you let me help you embroider a new tunic in time for the Choosing? We can start on it as soon as you have asked Vianah!"

TWO
From Nemourah's window, Lara Avara watched as Farula wandered down the path from the Cooking House, stopping to laugh and chatter with almost everyone she met. Lara Avara was dancing with impatience by the time her friend reached the house.
"I told you to hurry!" she exclaimed, pulling Farula inside.
"Won't Nemourah mind if you show it to me before this evening?" Farula asked.
"She told me to keep it a surprise," Lara Avara answered. "But I'm sure she knows I'm going to show it to you. I have to let someone see it!"
Lara Avara was already unwrapping her new tunic from the folds of an old shawl. Even in the dim light inside the cottage, the fine embroidery shimmered and glowed.
"It's beautiful!" Farula gasped. "How did you make it so quickly?"
"Nemourah did most of it, but it was my idea to copy the flowers in Vianah's garden. And I did the daisies on the cuffs without any help at all. Some of them aren't perfect, but Nemourah says that makes them look more real, as if they were beginning to wilt or had been nibbled by caterpillars!"
Farula studied the embroidery for a few minutes and then said quietly, "You could still ask Nemourah to be your Chosen One, Lara Avara. Especially now that she's made you a tunic. It's like she's choosing you."
Lara Avara looked at Farula, her eyes troubled. Yesterday she had been so sure, so happy with her choice, but now doubts were crowding in. Farula sounded so serious and concerned that Lara Avara almost agreed with her that Nemourah would be a better choice than Lenarchus. Choosing Lenarchus was too—too presumptuous. If Farula had pressed Lara Avara further, she might have gone off to find Nemourah. Instead, Farula said with a suppressed giggle, "It'll be so weird for you living in Lenarchus's cottage surrounded by all that stuff from Norsea. All those old pictures. ..."
"I'm going to stay with Vianah," Lara Avara answered. "She needs company."
"You'll have to be very tidy," Farula pointed out. "Vianah has to have everything exactly where it belongs."
"That's all right," Lara Avara said with a shrug. "After all, the reason's obvious."
Farula had no decision to make about where to live because her Chosen Ones, Tinodes and Mara, were pledge partners. She would stay with them both in their cottage at the edge of the pastureland above the village.
"Will you sit with me at the Ceremony tonight?" Lara Avara asked Farula, running her fingers over the embroidered pattern of the flowers.
"We have to sit between our Chosen Ones," Farula answered. "That means you'll be sitting with Lenarchus. We must be serious tonight, Lara Avara!"
Lara Avara and Farula had done more than their share of giggling when they sat together in the Learning House, but laughing at the Ceremony of Choosing was unthinkable! Lara Avara's stomach tightened at the very idea of it.
That evening, although she felt solemn and important sitting between Lenarchus and Vianah at the Ceremonial Table, Lara Avara was enjoying herself. The feast spread out before them was magnificent. Desmona, the cook, had outdone herself with the savories and cakes, and the fruits and vegetables were arranged with the eye of an artist. Dolus's newly made platters of smooth porcelain looked as beautiful as the food itself. The honored guests, seated at a long table facing out over the river, were served on the new porcelain plates; everyone else ate from the brightly colored everyday pottery. People were sitting in groups on the grass, laughing and talking, with the little ones running among them.
Lara Avara looked around the table at her friends, remembering all the times they had played games of chase and splashed each other in the river at these Gatherings. Eran grinned at her. He was sitting between Desmona and Dolus. There had been no ripple of surprised comment when he announced his Chosen Ones. Eran liked to invent new recipes. Anything to do with food fascinated him, yet he remained the skinniest boy in the Learning House. Andrena, who loved to sing, had chosen Chyra and Alloperla, as all had thought she would.
"It's the unexpected that makes these occasions interesting!" Desmona said to Lenarchus. Perhaps she deliberately chose a lull in the conversation so that she had everyone's attention. "I had not expected to see you at the Ceremonial Table! What do you intend to teach the child?"
"She's interested in the past," Lenarchus answered quietly, with a hint of smile in his dark eyes.
"Savotar says Lara Avara never showed much interest when he taught history in the Learning House," Desmona answered sharply.
Lara Avara stared at her plate, waiting for Lenarchus to defend her, but he said nothing. Perhaps he expected her to speak for herself. "I want to know the people," she said.
"What can we learn from them?" Desmona asked. "They knew nothing of love and trust and sharing. To preserve what we have achieved we must have nothing to do with the greed and wars of long ago."
"That's where we don't agree!" Lenarchus said. "With so few of us, there is the danger of becoming complacent in our thinking, narrow in our ideas. We need to find other people—the Lost Ones, even the Barbaric Ones. But perhaps it is easier to reach others through time than through space. I've found that in my Searching. You see, people separated from us by time are Searching too. Those people feel a responsibility to the future; they understand that the present is only a flicker of time joining the past to the future."
"I don't see why you can't be content with what we have here," Desmona said. Her straight eyebrows drew together as she spoke, making her look more severe than usual.
"There are places where we can reach these people," Lenarchus continued eagerly. "Vianah's tower, the Circle of Time, places that carry an imprint of events." Turning to Lara Avara, he added, "When we go on the Summer Journey, I'll share my discoveries with you."
"I'd—I'd like that," Lara Avara stammered.
She didn't meet Desmona's eye. Lara Avara had never felt close to her. Desmona was very organized and energetic and punctual. These were her talents, and they served her well in running the Cooking House. But she wasn't terribly patient with the dreamers! Lenarchus's wisdom she said she could accept—even if she didn't understand it—but one Searcher was enough in the community. He didn't need an apprentice. Chyra, the harpist, hearing her say this, laughed and added that Lara Avara must sing her own tune. Lara Avara, who wasn't especially musical, wondered what Chyra meant by that.
Farther down the table, Dolus began to reminisce about his own day of Choosing. Dolus, a cheerful young man, shaped rather like one of the round vases he made so well, was saying, "Vianah was my Chosen One. I think I only wanted to be a potter because it was an excuse to have dirty hands! But Vianah's skill inspired me, and I learned much from her."
"You have learned more than I taught you," Vianah said, feeling the smooth lines of a bowl in her hands.
When the meal was over and the table cleared, everyone gathered around Savotar to hear the story of the journey that brought their people to Kelso, a hundred years ago, in the last half of the twenty-first century. It was a familiar story, even to the youngest, but it was retold every year at the Ceremony of Choosing. Now, in the year 2179, it would be told again.
Lara Avara and Farula sat together listening to Savotar describe the land their ancestors came from. Savotar, though young for a storyteller, told their history with great authority, and even the little ones sat spellbound. His face was almost golden in the evening sun, and his smooth black hair gleamed.
"Tell us about the Lost Ones," Lara Avara begged, breaking the silence at the story's end.
"The Lost Ones," Savotar said softly. "Some think that their boat fetched up on a land farther west. They'll come back to us over the sea, and we must be there to welcome them. They'll come to us from the sunset."
Old Vianah took up the story, her voice almost singing the words. "Their boat rides silently over the dark water. In the prow stands a young girl, her hair blowing in the wind. The last rays of the sun turn her dark, tangled hair to reddish gold. She has seen our land in her dreams, and so she can guide the boat safely past the offshore islands and between the jagged rocks at the south of the bay. Even in the dark of night, she knows our land awaits her. Morning comes, and our people find the boat. Someday the Lost Ones will return to be united with their people."
A contented sigh escaped from some of the little ones. They liked the thought of the Lost Ones suddenly appearing, bringing with them new faces and ideas. Next, Andrena and Eran sang a ballad they'd made up for this Choosing about a boy who couldn't sing, who wanted Chyra for a Chosen One, and a girl who couldn't cook, who chose Desmona. Then the little ones sang a song that Chyra had been teaching them. Nephi knew the tune but made up his own words, making everyone laugh. He ran to Chyra, hiding his face in her tunic. She took him on her lap, and they sang a lullaby together. Then there was dancing and storytelling until late in the evening.
Vianah grew tired before the festivities ended. Lara Avara helped her up the gently sloping path. "Go back and join the others," Vianah said when they reached her cottage. "This is your day."
Lara Avara shook her head. "I'd rather stay here with you. The garden smells so good at night, and we can hear the music from here."
They sat together in the twilight. Vianah began to speak again of that other time. She didn't talk about the children who visited her, but she talked about their world. It was almost as if she were telling it from her own memory. The ducks nesting on the pond. A little gray car speeding along the narrow roads to Kelso. Children playing hide-and-seek among the gorse bushes below the tower.
Later, lying on her sleeping mat, Lara Avara felt as if she, too, had been in this place that Vianah described with such longing.

THREE
Lara Avara had been sent to look for Lenarchus. First she tried his favorite place by the curve of the river, but he wasn't there. And he wasn't in his cottage by the forest, nor in the Cooking House. She searched the orchard and the chestnut grove. Giving up, she returned to the meadow where the people were gathered to talk over plans for the Summer Journey.
"We'll begin without him," Savotar said when he saw Lara Avara coming back alone. "Everyone else is here."
That wasn't quite true, for some of the little ones, already tired of waiting, had wandered off to catch the tiny frogs that lived in the swamp near the fish ponds. Everyone was encouraged to speak at the Gatherings, which was why Lara Avara used to stray away sometimes—the talking went on and on. But this evening she was excited to be part of the Gathering, especially when Kartan and Aetherix made room for her between them.
Kartan and Aetherix shared the same skills and the same Chosen Ones—Alloperla and Panchros, the artists—yet they were very different from one another. You could tell at a glance that Aetherix was an artist by the splashes of paint on his tunic. He was impetuous, untidy, and quick to have his say. He painted with great energy, and Panchros said that he had the makings of a good artist but was going to have to find his own way because he wasn't one to learn from others. Kartan, on the other hand, was careful both about his appearance and his art. He was quieter, gentler than Aetherix, yet the two were inseparable. But surprisingly, it was Kartan, the conformist, who understood why Lara Avara had chosen Lenarchus. He alone had admitted her to the circle of older children without any teasing remarks about Searching and finding.
Lara Avara's wandering thoughts were brought back to the Gathering when she heard them mention Vianah.
"The Journey would be too strenuous for her, but we can't leave her on her own again this year," Savotar was saying. "Someone must stay here with her."
Lara Avara glanced around, expecting to see everyone looking in her direction. After all, Vianah was her Chosen One. But they were intent on Savotar.
He was saying, "Last year she was so lonely in the tower that she imagined some children came to see her."
"Why not ask Lenarchus to stay?" Desmona suggested. "Vianah claims these children came from another time. That should interest him!"
Lara Avara didn't miss the ironic ring in her voice nor the murmur of agreement from those near Desmona.
But  Nemourah  spoke  up,  saying,  "Lenarchus  must come with us! What would the Summer Ceremony at the Circle of Time be like without him? We wouldn't even know when to hold it! We rely on his wisdom to tell us when we are close to the longest day."
"Besides, someone did come when we were gone last year!" Kartan broke in excitedly. "When I was gathering up Vianah's belongings in the tower to bring them back here, I found a basket of ripe peaches. The peaches on the trees at the edge of the woods were still hard and green when we left on the Summer Journey. Someone brought them to Vianah after they had ripened."
Lara Avara was glad to hear Kartan speak. Although she knew more than any of them about Vianah's children, she wasn't sure she could have explained who they were to anyone else.
"Even if what you say is true, Kartan, we still need someone to stay with Vianah," Savotar answered.
Savotar was right about Vianah needing company, but Lara Avara didn't want to be the one to stay behind and miss the Journey. Not this year when it held so much promise. Lenarchus might reveal the secrets of the old ruined buildings in Norsea, which dated back to the Age of Technology. Or maybe Lara Avara would learn the art of Searching at the Circle of Time, where the ten tall granite stones had stood for thousands of years. No, she couldn't miss this Journey. She'd bring back a present for Vianah. Perhaps a fragrant plant for her garden.
Mara saved Lara Avara further worry by offering to remain in Kelso. "You can leave the smallest babies behind too," she suggested. "I'll be here to do the milking. There'll be no need to turn the goats out to pasture the way we usually do."
Everyone knew that Mara hated leaving her goats. If she had her way, they'd go with them each year on the Journey! One or two others said they'd stay behind with her.
"The Summer Journey is part of our life," Panchros said, frowning. "A journey of friendship, looking for the Lost Ones. We can't leave people out."
"Each of us has the choice of going or staying," Savotar argued. "We're not excluding anyone."
"Why not go south this year, instead of north?" someone asked.
"We have to go to Norsea and the Circle of Time," Lara Avara said, looking anxiously around. Lenarchus should be here to help decide on the route.
"Don't worry, Lara Avara!" Aetherix whispered. "We'll go to all the usual places. When you've listened to as many of these discussions as I have, you'll find that we always end up doing things the same way."
"You sound as old as Vianah!" Lara Avara laughed. "You've only been out of the Learning House for three years."
"Four years!" Aetherix corrected her.
They continued to whisper and giggle, so much so that they missed Lenarchus's arrival. It was only when he interrupted Savotar from the back of the group that Lara Avara realized he had turned up after all.
"We'll have to take the inland route from Norsea to the old stone circle to get there by the longest day," Lenarchus was saying.
"We've already decided to go up the west coast," Savotar answered sharply. "After all, the reason for the Journey is to look for the Lost Ones."
"Surely the purpose of the Journey is to forge a link with the past," Lenarchus said. "The Circle of Time could give us answers, if only we knew the right questions. . . ."
There were always different views expressed at the Gatherings, but tonight, listening to Lenarchus and Savotar, Lara Avara sensed a tension behind their words. Had Savotar always talked to Lenarchus like that, or was this something new? Savotar sounded almost disrespectful, especially when he called an end to the meeting without letting Lenarchus finish.
On her way back to Kelso, Lara Avara walked with Nemourah. She wanted to ask her about Lenarchus and Savotar.
But Nemourah spoke first. "I'm glad Vianah's going to stay in Kelso instead of in the old tower this year," she said.
"Do you think I should have offered to stay with her?" Lara Avara asked anxiously.
"My goodness, no, child!" Nemourah answered immediately. "Vianah will want to hear all about the Journey when you get back, seeing it through your young eyes. That's the gift you must bring back to her." Nemourah paused, then added softly, "Yet I feel we shouldn't stay away for long this year. I think that's why I'm glad we're leaving the littlest ones behind." She shivered and pulled
her cloak closer about her shoulders. A wind from the north was unusual in summer. "I don't know what's got into me, Lara Avara! Worrying about the Summer Journey instead of looking forward to it with joy."
Lara Avara dismissed Nemourah's worry. Nothing was going to spoil this Journey. And her thoughts weren't on her Choosing or her interest in the past. She was just happy to be one of the older children now, included by Kartan and Aetherix. No matter what route they traveled, the Journey promised adventure!

FOUR
On the morning of their departure, it was hard to believe that anyone would be going anywhere that day. Children were running in and out of all the houses. People were shouting directions and calling to one another. Desmona was trying to find owners for the unclaimed packages of mealbread. Vianah's cottage, where Lara Avara was stuffing her extra tunic into her pack, was the only island of quiet in the midst of the confusion. Saying good-bye was proving hard for Lara Avara, even though she was impatient to be on her way.
"Do you think the children will come again this year while we're gone, Vianah?" she asked.
The old woman smiled. "Perhaps they'll just be here in my mind," she said softly. "Run along, child, but take me with you in your thoughts so that I can share your adventure!"
Around noon, those going—almost a hundred people— mingled with the group of twenty staying behind, bidding them farewell. They sang the Homecoming Song together.
Nemourah assured Mara that it wouldn't be so very long until she heard the strains of the song again. "You'll hear our voices before you see us!" she promised. "Then you can bring the little ones to meet us. The reunion will be worth the pain of parting!"
When they set off into the forest, Lara Avara noticed that Lenarchus and Savotar were in the lead, talking comfortably together. Their differences had apparently been smoothed over. Eran and little Nephi, proudly carrying his own pack, fell into step beside Lara Avara. Close to Kelso, the paths were well defined, carpeted with moss where the trees grew thick, and sprinkled with flowers in the filtered shade. Lara Avara and her companions splashed through crystal brooks, pausing to gather cress and licorice to add to the evening meal. They sang as they walked, improvising on the words so that one tune lasted a mile or more.
Toward evening, although everyone was growing weary, the pace of the group quickened. Soon Norsea would be visible across the water. Even those who had traveled this way for fifty years still felt a thrill of excitement and anticipation as they drew close to the deserted ruins of the once great city.
Norsea was situated on an island directly north of their own. At low tide, the two islands practically became one. The Crossing Place was part of the special magic of the Summer Journey for Lara Avara, like something from a fairy tale in one of the old books in Norsea. They could cross only when the tide was at its lowest ebb. They walked single file, each person stepping in the footsteps of the one ahead. Under the shallow water, a narrow ridge of rock connected the islands. On either side of this rock, to the east and the west, was sand. Sand with a peculiar sucking quality so that if a person stepped on it, his feet were caught and held there.
"It has to do with the shape of each grain of sand," Savotar had once explained. "When the grains are rough, they lock together and support you. When the grains are smooth and round, they roll against each other, and you sink. The more you push against them to escape, the deeper they trap you."
They all knew the story of how, when Merrid was young, he and several older boys had arrived at the Crossing Place ahead of the rest and had tried to cross alone. They had known they must line up the pillar of rock on the shore with one of the tall trees on the top of the cliff, but they chose the wrong tree. They crossed too far to the east. Fortunately, the tide had been falling, and there had been time for the others to rescue them from the sinking sand. This wasn't a story that needed repeating often!
That evening, when they reached the Crossing Place, the tide was rising, and so there would be no crossing until the following morning. Lara Avara and Farula stood at the water's edge, impatient to reach the great city, nestled against a cliff between the curve of a wide river and the sea. The evening sun was kind to the stark ruins, bathing them in golden light and turning glass and metal to sparkling jewels. The girls could not see cracked walls and gaping windows, only the silhouette of towers and domes and the sweeping symmetry of one vast roof. They could not see where puny trees were forcing walls apart and drifting sand was smothering empty houses.
Finally they turned and ran back up the beach. Fires had been lit and everyone was eating supper. Tired out from the excitement of the first day of the Journey, Lara Avara and Farula soon sought the cover of the sleeping shelters that had been built years ago near the edge of the woods. Wrapped in their light wool cloaks, they listened drowsily to the murmuring voices of those still talking around the fire.
The following morning, Lara Avara was awakened by Farula's excited voice. "Savotar's ready to go!" she was saying. "We must hurry! Have a piece of mealbread while I get our things together."
"Let's try and get close behind him," Lara Avara suggested, nibbling the mealbread Farula had handed to her.
The two girls ran down to the shore and joined the other children who were jostling for a place behind Savotar. But when Savotar gathered up his cloak and stepped forward into the water, the children grew quiet and followed him cautiously, each stepping in the footsteps of the one ahead. Lara Avara walked behind Farula. Over Farula's shoulder, she could see the lone tree and rock that guided them. Like waiting sentries, these two pointers must always stay in line. The water was now above her knees. She could feel the firmness of the rock under her feet, but at the same time she had to fight against the pull of the current as the waters swirled around her. This was the meeting place of two oceans, and she could sense them struggling against each other.
When the children had almost reached the other side, they broke into a run and splashed through the shallow water to the shore. Most of them didn't bother to put on their sandals but raced up the sandy slope wanting to explore the ruined city. Lara Avara was as eager as the rest. For the moment she completely set aside her interest in history. There would be time for that later. First she had to relive other Journeys, the wild games, the competitions, the excitement of new finds.
Lara Avara made for the middle of the city, avoiding the tall building in the shadow of the cliff. She had gone in there once before and didn't like it. Savotar said that in the olden days they kept sick people shut up there. Inside, the building was filled with long rows of rusting metal beds and mysterious equipment for making people well. She passed a cement structure with metal doors and barred windows. Another place where they used to shut people in. She walked under a vaulted arch and entered the tallest building in Norsea. It was full of metal boxes. Machines that could think like people, Lenarchus claimed. As she tiptoed through the building she wondered what the machines had thought about. Without electricity, these dead machines were no more interesting than the granite walls that surrounded them.
Lara Avara blinked when she stepped out into the sunshine again. Across the old town square was the City Hall, stark and decadent, with vines growing over the pitted slabs of granite that formed the walls and snaking through empty windows. A ghost building supervising a dead city. Farula was there, playing on the front steps and bannisters with some of the younger children. Lara Avara ran over to join them. She raced up the stairs and perched on the smooth marble bannister as she had done countless times before. At the very moment she began to slide, she saw a tall, bald-headed figure directly below. There was nothing to grab, no way to prevent a collision. Lara Avara simply closed her eyes.
Lenarchus was surprised, Lara Avara slightly bruised. He helped her up, and she ducked down again to pick up the book she had knocked from his hand.
"So Norsea is still a place for hide-and-seek and games of chase!" Lenarchus said, taking the book and dusting it carefully with his cloak.
"I'm sorry," Lara Avara gasped. "I didn't see you until it was too late."
"There's a lot you don't see when you travel at that speed!"
Cautiously, Lara Avara looked up at Lenarchus. Could he be laughing at her? There was certainly a twinkle in his black eyes. "I was on my way to the place with all the books," she explained.
"Ah, the books! This whole city is a book, Lara Avara. It tells the story of a civilization. The city is a triumph of the creative abilities of people. But it also stands as a monument to human blindness. People didn't see where their ingenuity was leading. But don't let me keep you from your books." Lenarchus turned and walked slowly away.
Farula, who had kept her distance during the encounter, now came running down the steps. "Was he angry?" she asked. "What did he say?"
"Just that Norsea is a book," Lara Avara said, and they both giggled.
"We're going up the bell tower. Do you want to come?"
Lara Avara shook her head. She really did want to go to the place full of books. It was the best-preserved building in Norsea and the most interesting. She had learned to read in the Learning House from books taken from that building. Every year people spent hours pouring over the fragile pages of the old books, memorizing stories to tell when they returned to Kelso.
When Lara Avara stepped inside the building, she wrinkled her nose at the peculiar, musty smell and was suddenly tempted to turn and run after Farula and the others. All those rows of books, standing shoulder to shoulder on tall shelves connected by spindly metal ladders and narrow walkways, overwhelmed her. Why had people written so many words, more words than anyone could read in a lifetime?
Some of the books contained pictures. She found one that was full of them—pictures of cars and bicycles and airplanes; pictures of buildings that dwarfed anything still standing in Norsea; pictures of walls built across rivers that had something to do with the strange force they called electricity that worked the machines that now silently rusted away inside the buildings. She turned the pages slowly and puzzled over the way things had been long ago. People should have been happy surrounded by so many wonderful things, but Savotar and Nemourah and Lenarchus all insisted that they hadn't been contented at all.
Just then, Kartan and Aetherix burst into the room. Lara Avara closed her book and watched them. They headed for one of the big metal cabinets that lined one wall. Working together, they eased open one of the drawers. Then Kartan lifted out a book that was bigger than any of those on the shelves.
"What's that?" Lara Avara asked.
"A book of paintings from long ago," Kartan answered.
Lara Avara might have guessed! Kartan and Aetherix didn't forget their chosen skill, not even in Norsea. The book was open at a picture of a girl, close to Lara Avara's age. A smiling girl with light-colored hair.
"She doesn't look a bit like us," Lara Avara said, studying the face. "Do you think they were different from us— not just in looks?"
"I don't know," Kartan said, flipping over the pages. "Here's a girl who looks more like you."
The girl in the painting was older than Lara Avara, but she had the same long, black hair, brown skin, and oval face. Her dark eyes were brimming with tears, but there was more love than sorrow in her gaze. She was standing beside a tall stone. The whole picture was covered with swirling gray strokes, and so the young woman seemed to be receding into a dense mist.
Lara Avara stared at the painting for a long time, feeling a strange kinship with this dark-haired girl. Even after she closed the book, the impression of the picture stayed with her.

FIVE
Lara Avara was only half listening to Savotar telling them about the people who lived on Mainland far to the south. She was thinking about the fun she'd had that day, climbing over the rocks with Kartan, Aetherix, and Farula. Then they had helped Savotar build sleeping shelters out of driftwood. Savotar and Lenarchus had reached a compromise over the route of this year's Journey. They hadn't stayed as long as usual in Norsea, giving them time to travel up the west coast and still reach the great stone circle on the other side of the island before the longest day. Lenarchus had been very insistent about that.
Lara Avara was glad they hadn't missed the west coast. The land here was wild and bleak, vastly different from the lush, forested land of their own island. Deep fjords reached between high mountains. Small beaches of white sand sprinkled with translucent shells nestled along the rugged coastline. They were camping on one of these beaches now.
"We call the Mainlanders the Barbaric Ones because they live as people did long ago," Savotar was saying. "They worship technology and machines."
"But their way of life cannot go unchanged forever," Lenarchus interrupted. He was standing with his back to the setting sun, his cloak wrapped tightly around him. "Each year the fuel to run their machines becomes harder to find. Without fuel, their machines will die, so more and more people will have to work instead. But the Barbaric Ones have no idea of sharing and choosing—some are forced to labor while others do nothing. They may even come here, looking for people to work for them."
"Have you seen this in your Searching?" Savotar asked.
"There is no need to search for something that is evident," Lenarchus answered.
The group around the fire shifted restlessly. Accustomed to receiving new thoughts and ideas clothed in story, Lenarchus's words sounded blunt and threatening.
"It is true that the Barbaric Ones could come here," Merrid finally said. "The stretch of water between our land and theirs is not far for people who have machines to power their boats."
Merrid knew about these people. Years ago, when he was young and adventurous, he had journeyed to Mainland, where they lived. They had made him work for them, tunneling coal from the ground. Lara Avara had heard him talk about it, but somehow she hadn't thought of the Barbaric Ones living there still.
"I thought they were gone," she said. "Like the people of Norsea."
"They're still there," Merrid answered, and added with a smile, "I'm not so old that the days of my youth are ancient history, Lara Avara!"
"What will we do if they come?" she asked, her dark brown eyes wide and anxious.
"We'll greet them as friends," Savotar said soothingly. "When they see us working together with our Chosen Ones at our chosen tasks, they will understand that this is where we belong. They may even want to learn our ways. We aren't going to set aside our belief in love and trust and sharing the moment it is tested."
Despite Savotar's words, Lara Avara felt uneasy. The boat that they all watched for might not bring the Lost Ones after all. Instead, these Barbaric Ones might come riding over the dark water. Lenarchus had turned away from them and was walking slowly along the beach, a tall, lonely figure. Impulsively, Lara Avara jumped to her feet and went racing after him.
"What's troubling you, child?" he asked, pausing to let her catch up.
"These Barbaric Ones. . . . Savotar says they're like the people long ago," Lara Avara stammered. "I thought I wanted to know people from the past—but when I hear about the Barbaric Ones, I'm afraid."
"They aren't really like the people of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries," Lenarchus answered. "In spite of their machines, the Barbaric Ones are farther from the Age of Technology than we are, because they deny the future. The Age of Technology was a race toward the future, a reckless search for new and faster and more complex machines. Even for machines whose only purpose was destruction. The Barbaric Ones have sacrificed their present for the past, struggling to keep machines alive without the energy sources to work them, and by doing so, they have lost the spirit of the past."
"What about your Searching? Isn't that looking back?" Lara Avara asked hesitantly.
"Perhaps in my own way, I am trying to recapture some of the spirit of the past," Lenarchus said slowly. "Although they made many mistakes, people then lived in a time of tremendous excitement and wonder. Strangely enough, our belief in trust and sharing doesn't generate the same climate for discovery. Perhaps we are too content. I want to expand our horizons—across time, not space. But I can reach only those people who believe enough in their own future to reach out to us. That's why I won't find the Barbaric Ones or any of their kind. It's a difficult Search, but we can accomplish it together, Lara Avara. You're not afraid of accepting risk. You showed that when you chose me and Vianah!"
Lara Avara wanted to tell Lenarchus how frightened she really was, but his thoughts had veered away from the Barbaric Ones and the Age of Technology to old Vianah, sitting quietly in her cottage doorway, listening to the evening song of a thrush in the lilac tree. Lara Avara could hear the clear notes of the bird and smell the sweet perfume of the flowers. She shared his thoughts and was comforted.

The next day they turned their backs on the sea and traveled inland across the island. The bare hills gave way to woodland and then to trees very different from those around Kelso. Huge, overgrown rhododendrons with black trunks and leathery leaves that shut out the light so that there was no undergrowth. A lifeless place, where the ground was strewn with decaying leaves and the air was empty of birdsong.
On the far side of this forbidding forest, near the eastern coast, stood the Circle of Time, giant stones that belonged to an age even more remote and mysterious than the buildings of Norsea. Here it was easy to feel a closeness to the past, almost as if the stones cast a spell, erasing time, so that the thoughts and feelings of people long gone still lingered. There were ten stones arranged in a rough circle. Lenarchus said that there had once been thirteen, because there were gaps—two close together and one on the other side of the circle—where other stones had stood. "Like gaps in our understanding of the people who were here before us," he had once said.
Each year, at the time of the summer solstice, they celebrated the Summer Ceremony within the Circle. But before the Ceremony could take place, there were weeds to pull and bushes to cut back, or the stones would be swallowed up by the trees and their link with the past obscured. Everyone shared in the work, but now that it was almost completed, some were resting, others playing. Lara Avara sat back on her heels, surveying the island of grass surrounded by the tall stones and dark trees. Sunshine poured down on her. Lenarchus was sitting near her, his back against one of the stones, staring out across the circle, Searching. Chyra was coaxing music from her harp, her fingers dancing over the strings in accompaniment to the song they made for themselves. A number of the children had already gone down to the beach to play. Kartan and Aetherix must have gone with them, for they weren't around.
Farula also noticed they were gone because she suddenly said, "Let's go and see what Kartan and Aetherix are doing!"
Lara Avara reached out to pull one more weed, a sapling that had sprouted in a gap between the stones. She clawed the soil away from the roots, digging into the damp earth, and her fingers scraped against a cold stone.
She could still hear Farula's voice urging her to come, but a thick mist blanketed the Circle so that she could no longer see her friend. Then the mist began to thin out, stirred by a gust of wind; yet she felt no movement in the air near her. It had grown cold, intensely cold. She looked beyond the next stone, expecting to see Farula, and instead she saw a stranger. A girl she had never seen before. A girl with bushy hair, burnished red as if reflecting the light of the setting sun. Her face was so pinched and white that Lara Avara turned to see what caused the fear in the girl's eyes. Across the Circle, clad in gray cloaks, were three men digging the soil with sticks and their bare hands— digging. . . .
"Lara Avara! Lara Avara! What's wrong?" Farula's voice was shrill.
Lara Avara felt herself being shaken so hard that her teeth jarred together and her head snapped back on her neck.
"Let her alone!" Lenarchus's voice, urgent and authoritative, cut through Farula's anxiety.
Lara Avara's eyes blinked open, and she found herself half supported by her Chosen One, gazing up into his eyes. And in the blackness of his pupils she could see the red-haired girl dressed in her outlandish garb.
"You saw her, didn't you, Lara Avara?" Lenarchus's voice had an edge of excitement now.
"But the others?" Lara Avara whispered. "What were they doing?"
"You saw her!" Lenarchus repeated. "In this place, everything that happened long ago is so close that the layers of time seem to overlap. If we could just bring someone here, we could know so much more. We almost did it, Lara Avara! I'm sure we can! We're finally close to overcoming the isolation of time."
Lara Avara nodded. "I saw a girl, a red-haired girl. She was watching three men in gray cloaks. . . ."
"Who was she?" Lenarchus asked urgently. "Did you talk to her? Who was she? Was she trying to find us?"
Lara Avara wished that Lenarchus wouldn't go on about the girl. She wasn't what was important. What about the others, the others she'd almost seen? But the girl with her hair, glowing like the setting sun, kept getting in the way. She made Lara Avara think of the story of the Lost Ones. But it was the other people that were important. The girl had been frightened by them too.
"Didn't you see those others?" she asked Lenarchus again.
"Only a girl," he answered. "There were no others."
Closing her eyes, she tried to see them again, but they were gone. She was weary and sad.
"Next time, Lara Avara," Lenarchus said softly and then he turned away. Perhaps he understood her turmoil.
But Farula couldn't let the matter drop so easily. All the way down to the beach she kept asking what had been going on. "Was it really one of Lenarchus's Searchings?" she asked. "Or were you just pretending—because he's your Chosen One and you want to be like him? Remember how we used to sit and stare at the river and say we could do magic!"
"It was more like dreaming than pretending," Lara Avara answered slowly.
"You've got Lenarchus wondering!" Farula said. "I've never seen him so flustered."
Lara Avara sighed. She couldn't explain it to Farula, even if Farula would listen. Besides, the memory of it was already blurring around the edges. Yet later, when she was playing on the beach with the other children, the bright sun glistening on the wet sand and shimmering on the dancing waves, she still felt the shadow of the stones hovering over her.

The following day, everyone gathered within the Circle for the Summer Ceremony. They shared mealbread and sang and told tales of other Journeys. Today, Lara Avara, listening to Lenarchus and Savotar and Chyra, felt secure and happy. The words and music were like a spell binding them to one another. Nothing could harm them here where they were all united in love.
Later, Kartan and a few others went down to the beach to collect driftwood for the evening fire, but Lara Avara stayed near Farula. Maybe she would tell her about the girl with the bright hair and strange clothes. Farula would be interested in the clothes. But right now Farula was making cats' cradles with some of the younger children and was intent on transferring the loops of yarn from her slender fingers to their chubby ones.
The sun was dipping low, and the stones cast long shadows across the Circle. Lara Avara listened to the sea breeze rustling in the leathery leaves of the rhododendron trees and rattling dry branches. She felt a prickle of uneasiness. Others must have felt it too, for the voices around her ceased, and Chyra's fingers on the harp grew still. One last note lingered in the air.
A sudden yell drew all eyes to the dark, encircling forest. Wide-eyed and fearful, Lara Avara watched as a crowd of men, waving sticks and clubs, burst into the Circle. They came from all directions. Swarthy, bearded men, with unkempt hair. They were strangely dressed. Their jackets of coarse cloth, tight-fitting trousers, and clumsy boots reminded Lara Avara of the clothes worn by people in picture books in Norsea, but even without being told, she knew that these were the Barbaric Ones from across the water. They had invaded the Far Northlands.
Lara Avara dashed toward the trees, dragging Farula along with her. Half hidden by branches, they turned to look at the chaotic scene in the Circle. Only a few people had the presence of mind to run. Most stood there, allowing themselves to be captured. Lara Avara saw Savotar, his cloak askew and his black hair hiding his face, dragged toward the woods. A youth who looked not much older
than Kartan pinned old Merrid's arms behind him, while two men knocked Panchros to the ground. Lara Avara's people, not knowing how to fight against this horror, only protested with soft-spoken words, and their gentle pleading was drowned out by the harsh shouting of their attackers.
Some of the Barbaric Ones, meeting no resistance, seemed to lose their anger. It was hard to hit out against people whose only weapon was gentleness. But a man with black hair, and with skin as pale as if he had never been in the sun, grabbed Nemourah and threw her down. Lara Avara was close enough to see the startled look on Nemourah's serene face.
Aetherix saw it too. He sprang forward and tried to drag the man away.
"Let him be, Aetherix!" Nemourah said breathlessly.
Her words went unheeded. Nemourah's captor kicked Aetherix. Enraged, Aetherix sank his teeth into the man's hand. The boy seemed to contain enough anger for all his people. He screamed and struggled and kicked. And the Barbaric Ones turned on him, venting all their rage on this youth who exhibited the only form of courage they understood. Lara Avara hid her face as the men beat Aetherix's unprotected head and shoulders with their heavy clubs. It wasn't until the Barbaric Ones dragged away their captives, leaving Aetherix lifeless on the ground where he had fallen, that those left in the Circle understood the tragedy that had befallen them.
They gathered around Aetherix, too stunned to be afraid, too numb to feel grief. Desmona took off her cloak and wrapped Aetherix in its folds. Lenarchus helped two of the young men dig a shallow grave. Lara Avara and Farula watched them, and Lara Avara didn't know if the pain she felt was for Aetherix or for herself. For this was the scene she had witnessed yesterday in the Searching. By having seen it, she should somehow have kept it from happening.
After laying Aetherix in his grave, there was only time for a short Ceremony of Remembering. Desmona reminded them quietly of their belief in love and trust and sharing. "We cannot convert these people to our ways by using their ways," she said brokenly.
"Aetherix was trying to help Nemourah," someone protested.
"And now Nemourah's pain over his death far exceeds anything she is suffering at the hands of the Barbaric Ones," Desmona answered.
"What are we going to do?"
"I think we should get the children back to Kelso," Dolus said. "Now—before these terrible men can come back and take more prisoners. If we split into small groups, they'll have less chance of finding us. And we have an advantage—we know these woods."
"But we can't leave Nemourah and Panchros and the others in their hands," Desmona said hoarsely, her eyes glazed with the pain of all she'd seen. "We can't leave them!"
"Their greatest chance of reaching home, if they do get away from these Barbaric Ones, will depend on traveling quickly through the woods," Dolus answered. "They can do that only if they aren't hindered by the little ones. I know Savotar would want us to take them back to Kelso."
By twos and threes, the gray-clad figures melted into the trees like silent shadows. Farula took charge of two of the little ones, but Lara Avara just stood there, as cold and rigid as the huge stones. Then she saw Lenarchus.
"I knew this was going to happen!" she said wildly. "I saw it in the Searching, and I didn't understand." She was sobbing now.
Lenarchus placed his hands on her shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. "What did you see?" he asked.
"I saw you—digging—and the others—" Lara Avara sobbed. But then there was no more need for words because she knew that Lenarchus understood what she had seen, for she saw it in his eyes.
"The girl had gone just a little beyond our time," Lenarchus said quietly. "So there was nothing you could have done to change what happened. In a way, it had already happened." Lara Avara could see the girl, the red-haired girl, deep in the black pupil of Lenarchus's eye.
"I want to find her," Lara Avara whispered. The feeling of hopelessness was gone. There was only the memory of the red-haired girl. They both looked across the Circle, and for a moment Lara Avara thought the girl had come back. But it was only Kartan, kneeling close to the grave, his tears spilling onto the freshly dug earth.
"Come, child," Lenarchus said quietly. "Kartan will follow when he is ready." He took Lara Avara's hand, and they walked slowly after the others into the forest.

Six
When Lenarchus told Lara Avara that he was going back to the stones, she begged to go with him, but he wouldn't hear of it. And Lenarchus wasn't a person to argue with. Instead, Lara Avara found herself helping Dolus with the little ones. She envied them the way they seemed to have put the terrible scene at the stone circle right out of their minds. As far as she could tell, eluding the Barbaric Ones in the thick woods held no more terror for them than a game of hide-and-seek. They were enjoying this hurried travel in small groups, continually parting from friends and then being reunited at the next stopping place. The adults, too, seemed to be absorbed in the strategy of the journey. Or perhaps they were outwardly calm for the sake of the children. It was hard to tell. Lara Avara felt as if she was the only one who wept for Aetherix as she stumbled through the woods all day and now lay tense in the darkness, listening for the stealthy steps of the Barbaric Ones.
But others were awake, for Lara Avara could hear the murmur of voices. Two figures were sitting just beyond the hastily woven shelter where the little ones were sleeping. She moved closer, thinking to join them, but found herself eavesdropping instead.
"You cannot lay the blame on Lenarchus, Desmona. Besides, you have never placed any belief in his Searching, so why credit him with conjuring up all these people now!"
"He dabbles in things better left alone," Desmona answered. "And I've heard him say that we need new people and new ideas in Kelso—"
"He was talking about the Lost Ones," Dolus interrupted. "We all agree with him about that."
"What about these rumors that a stranger was seen in the Circle—a girl who had nothing to do with the Barbaric Ones?"
"Rumor is all that it will turn out to be!" Dolus answered. "Though I wish Lenarchus had come with us."
"He shouldn't have gone back to the Circle," Desmona agreed. "What can his Searching accomplish now?"
Lara Avara, creeping closer, stepped on a dry stick. Dolus and Desmona jumped up, ready to protect the little ones. For a moment they seemed to fear that Lara Avara was the stranger they had been talking about.
"I couldn't sleep," Lara Avara explained. "I keep thinking about Nemourah and the others in the hands of those rough people."
"Everything will work out," Dolus said quietly.
"How can you say that after what the Barbaric Ones did to Aetherix?" Lara Avara burst out, her voice sharp with anger.
"We must hold on to our beliefs," Desmona said, put ting her arm around Lara Avara. "Now more than ever.
"You talk of believing in love and trust, but you don' trust Lenarchus and his Searching," Lara Avara said drawing away.
"Don't confuse trust with agreement, child," Dolus said. "There's always room for different views and discus sion, but we must never let that lead to anger and violence; otherwise, we are no better than the Barbaric Ones." Wrapping his own cloak around Lara Avara, h led her back to the shelter, saying soothingly, "Forge these troublesome thoughts in sleep, child. Our immediate task is to get our little ones safely home."
Two days later, they didn't break into song, as was their custom on reaching the familiar paths close to Kelso Instead, they entered the village quietly, surprising those who had stayed behind with the babies and live stock. Their joy in being home was tempered by sorrow over the news they brought. Lara Avara made her way toward Vianah's cottage, hardly noticing the profusion of flowers blooming beside the path. She wanted Vianah to comfort her, but it was hard to tell the dreadful story. She knelt down beside the old woman, leaning agains her knee.
"What's wrong, child?" Vianah asked, gently stroking Lara Avara's hair.
"It's the Barbaric Ones," Lara Avara said at last "They've taken away Savotar and Nemourah. And the killed Aetherix."
Vianah's hand, still stroking Lara Avara's hair, didn't tremble. "Tell me about it," she said quietly.
Lara Avara remembered how Nemourah had said that the gift she should bring back to Vianah should be an account of everything she saw on the Journey. Neither of them had known that such a gift would be so hard to give.
When the story was told, Vianah clasped Lara Avara's hand in her own. "Don't let love be swallowed up by bitterness," she said. "Aetherix's death must be forgiven. Anger and hatred, even though they are directed against the Barbaric Ones, will end up destroying us too. And I feel sure Savotar and Nemourah will come back. Maybe not as soon as we would wish—but they will come back."
"There's more to tell," Lara Avara said, and this time her story was a gift because Vianah was fascinated by Lara Avara's glimpse of the red-haired girl, though she frowned on hearing about Lara Avara seeing the three figures as if through the strange girl's eyes. "Do you think she's one of the children you told me about?" Lara Avara asked. "Ollie and the others?"
"I don't know," Vianah answered. "There's so much we don't know! Sometimes Lenarchus is quite feckless! Look at the burden he placed on you—allowing you to Search without understanding. No wonder Savotar sometimes questions what Lenarchus is doing."
"I really was frightened," Lara Avara admitted. "Though not of the girl. I wish now I'd spoken to her. But that place has always frightened me. Those great stones with their long, dark shadows."
"The Circle of Time isn't something to be feared, Lara Avara," Vianah said, speaking so softly that the child had to lean close to hear the words. "We don't know the purpose of those standing stones. Perhaps that's why they mean so much to Lenarchus. And he's right that help in our present trouble may come from the past. We are all, each one of us, linked to former times. We need to reach back and learn from what has gone before."
Lara Avara didn't completely understand Vianah's words, but there was comfort in them. "I'm going up to the orchard to fetch some peaches," she said, getting to her feet. "I'll bring you the biggest one I can find!"

There was always a great deal to be attended to after the Summer Journey—weeds to pull, fences to mend, meal-bread to bake, food to preserve. In other years they had set about these tasks filled with energy and gladness to be home. They would gather at the end of each day to sing and to reminisce about their travels. But this year they had no heart for work. During the week that followed their homecoming, they did only what was needed most urgently, in a distracted way, keeping their eyes on the forest, hoping that the rest of their people would return. And hovering in their thoughts, like a dark cloud, was the fear that the Barbaric Ones might come instead.
Lara Avara spent most of her time in the upper pasture with Mara and Farula, though Mara was driven to say that she and Farula could have milked the goats more quickly on their own. Lara Avara kept going over the names of those she was sure had been captured—Savotar, Merrid, Nemourah, Tinodes, Lona. But what about Kartan? Why wasn't he back? She shouldn't have left him at the Circle. And Lenarchus too. "Maybe the Barbaric Ones have captured them—otherwise they'd be here by now," she mused. She was sitting on a stool in the milking shed, not even making any pretense of helping.
Farula and Mara did not answer. They could hear someone calling to them.
Lara Avara dashed to the door, tripping over a brimming bucket of milk, but the milk was forgotten in the excitement of the news. Nemourah and Tinodes had returned, and all the others would be home soon!
By the time Mara, Farula, and Lara Avara joined the crowd around Nemourah, the story of the escape had already been told, but that didn't matter because everyone wanted to hear it again. The Barbaric Ones had imprisoned the Kelso people in a cave on the beach near the stone circle.
"A few of the Barbaric Ones stood guard, while others went off to see if they could round up more prisoners," Nemourah explained. "They were going to take us to Mainland to the south, and had room in their boats for more people than they had captured. They came back with Kartan and another child—a stranger. They had caught them near the Circle of Time."
"A stranger?" Lara Avara interrupted breathlessly.
"A boy of about Kartan's age."
"A boy?"
"At first we thought he was a Barbaric One because he wasn't wearing a tunic and cloak. But Kartan insists that he is like Vianah's children—a traveler from another time." Nemourah looked around and then, speaking more quietly, continued, "Lenarchus has something to do with his coming. At first we were a little uneasy, but then the boy helped us escape."
"How did he help you?" Desmona asked.
Everyone crowded closer. Nemourah had reached the part of the story that they wanted to hear again. After darkness had fallen, the boy had slipped out of the cave past the guards and had run down the beach. He then swam out to the boats that belonged to the Barbaric Ones and cut one of the anchor ropes so that the boat drifted toward the rocks. While the guards were busy preventing the boat from being wrecked, everyone had escaped.
"But didn't the guards see him swimming?" Lara Avara asked.
"That was when the miracle happened!" Nemourah said, with a tinkling laugh. "The guards would have spotted a lone swimmer, but a large number of seals swam into the bay, surrounding the boy. From a distance, he was just another seal! The guards watched the seals frolicking in the waves, never guessing what mischief one of them was doing!"
"The boy's name is Robert," Merrid said, taking up the story. "And I think we should be grateful to Lenarchus for finding him in his Searching. Without the boy, we would now be on our way to Mainland with the Barbaric Ones. You'll see him when Kartan gets back. They are together, and with a strange girl too. She was waiting at the top of the cliff when the boy helped us escape from the Barbaric Ones."
* * *
The whole village was buzzing with talk about the strangers. Lara Avara's eyes never left the woods. Surely Kartan and these strangers would come soon! Or Lenarchus! Why hadn't he come back? Unable to endure the uncertainty of waiting any longer, Lara Avara crossed the meadow and followed the path into the forest. She hadn't gone far when she heard voices. She stopped, suddenly afraid. Until the Barbaric Ones had come into her life, she had hardly known fear, but it was quickly learned. Trembling, she stepped behind the broad trunk of a chestnut tree instead of running to welcome whoever was coming.
The voices were now so close that she could hear the words.
"Do children sometimes choose their own parents as Chosen Ones?"
"I suppose they do. But it wouldn't really make any difference. It's more important with us to share than to own."
That was Kartan's voice! Lara Avara almost rushed out to meet him, but another voice asked, "Do the Chosen Ones get paid for looking after these kids?"
"Paid?"
"Yes, paid."
"You mean with money? Like in your time? We have no money here."
Kartan was speaking again. Cautiously, Lara Avara peered around the tree trunk and saw the backs of three children walking down the path. Kartan and two strangers dressed in outlandish clothes. The girl had tangled red hair. The same girl whom Lara Avara had seen at the Circle of Time. The boy's hair was as dark as Kartan's, but it looked coarse and curly. The snatch of conversation echoed in Lara Avara's mind, and she found herself again hearing Kartan say, "You mean with money? Like in your time?" Lara Avara's heart was pounding. These really were children from another time!

SEVEN
Lara Avara followed Kartan and the two children along the winding, moss-covered path. She half hoped they would turn around and see her, but she was too shy to call out to them. She couldn't hear what they were saying to one another, but she could tell that Kartan was at ease with the strangers. This surprised her, until she reminded herself that they must know each other well by now through all the adventures they had shared—escaping from the Barbaric Ones, traveling through the forest, and the greatest adventure of all: meeting one another at the Circle of Time. That should have been her adventure!
No detail of their clothing escaped her eye. They wore cloth shoes with heavy soles that left a crisscross pattern when they stepped on soft earth. Their trousers were of a coarse material, dark blue, decorated with metal buttons; their jackets were bulky and brightly colored, but without any trace of embroidery.
When they reached Kelso, everyone greeted Kartan with hugs and laughter, mixed with tears, and smiled shyly at the strangers. They whispered about them to each other, calling them Vianah's children. It was easier to tie the children to gentle Vianah than to Lenarchus with his strange, unpredictable ways. People recalled things they had heard Vianah say about the children from the past, though Vianah herself might have found it hard to believe some of the tales they told! Kartan, impatient to see Panchros and Alloperla, hurried the children through the village to the house by the peach orchard. Several of the little ones followed, curiosity overcoming their shyness.
"Let's go along too, Farula!" Lara Avara said, her eyes dancing.
"We should let Kartan take them to his Chosen Ones on his own," Farula said. "We'll see them at the Gathering this evening."
But Lara Avara couldn't bear to let the strangers out of her sight. She ran after them and finally mustered up the courage to speak to the girl. "I like the color of your hair!" she said softly.
The girl's worried face was transformed by a smile as she answered, "I like the embroidery on your shirt."
"It's not well done," Lara Avara shrugged. It was the one she had made herself in the Learning House.
"I couldn't do anything near as good. When I sew, everything gets tangled—or else the thread breaks and then I can't get the needle threaded again."
"I have these troubles too," Lara Avara answered, their friendship established by a broken thread.
"My name's Jennifer. What's yours?"
"Lara Avara."
"Lara Avara! That's pretty. Kartan talked about you."
When they reached Alloperla's house, the little ones swarmed over to the peach tree, arguing good-naturedly over who would find the biggest peach. Lara Avara followed Kartan and the strangers into the house. Alloperla was seated at her easel by the window, the sun highlighting her black hair, which she wore upswept and coiled in a knot. She was so absorbed in her painting that she did not immediately look up.
Then, recognizing Kartan's voice, she threw down her brushes and ran across the room, enfolding him in her arms. "Kartan! Kartan! You're safe!"
Jennifer moved closer to Alloperla, almost as if she wanted to be included in the warmth of the greeting, but Robert turned to the paintings that covered every inch of the cottage walls.
Even when Alloperla released Kartan from her hug, she held him at arm's length, gazing at him as if she still couldn't quite believe that he was safe. At last she turned to the strangers and asked in surprise, "Who are these children?"
"Robert and Jennifer," Kartan answered. "I met them in the Circle of Time. We're on our way to see Vianah, but I had to see you first. They're like Vianah's children who came last year when we were gone. Maybe she can help them get back where they belong."
Once again, Lara Avara marveled at the easy way Kartan accepted and introduced the strangers.
His ease was catching because, instead of asking impossible questions, Alloperla smiled and said, "Children from another time! How I would like to paint them!"
"Alloperla's always painting people!" Kartan explained, crossing the room to see the painting Alloperla had been working on when they came in.
The tall woman made a quick move as if to prevent him, but changed her mind. Instead, she turned the easel so that they could all see it.
Instinctively, the children drew closer together. Lara Avara felt a wave of physical pain when she looked at the painting. Wild-eyed, hairy men were beating a cowering boy with heavy sticks. The boy was warding off the blows with upraised hands.
"Why did you paint it that way?" Kartan asked hoarsely. "It makes it seem so real, as if it's still happening."
Lara Avara, staring at the picture, hardly heard Alloperla's answer. She was no longer in the small, cluttered cottage. Instead, she was with Aetherix, suffering his pain. It was the mention of the Barbaric Ones that finally brought her back to the present. Kartan, his voice low and anxious, was describing their journey back to Kelso.
"The three us us—Robert, Jennifer, and I—were traveling together when the Barbaric Ones caught up with us," he said. "They trapped us inside the bell tower in Norsea."
Jennifer, fingering a chain and cross she was wearing around her neck, spoke for the first time, saying, "I found this cross in a crack between floor tiles up in the tower. That was just before the Barbaric Ones chased us."
Accustomed to the sound of their own high, musical voices, Alloperla looked at Jennifer with interest.
"We escaped by climbing out onto the roof," Kartan said. "But they saw us when we were running down to the Crossing Place and followed us. They didn't know about the narrow ridge of rock and the sinking sands. And I didn't warn them—I let them cross too far to the east." There was a pleading note in Kartan's voice as he asked, "What else could I do?"
In her mind, Lara Avara saw the Barbaric Ones trapped in the sinking sand, struggling to escape, while the menacing water flowed around them, rising higher and higher. She crept forward and slipped her hand into Alloperla's hand, noticing how cold it felt. The older woman's shock and grief—not only for the Barbaric Ones who had been drowned in the rising tide but also for Kartan who had betrayed them—matched her own.
"Their evil ways are changing us," Alloperla said bitterly. "We mustn't let it happen! We must prove that our beliefs are stronger than their anger and greed."
Lara Avara looked back at the painting. Once again, its power filled her mind. She saw the Barbaric Ones with their heavy sticks; Aetherix, young and defenseless. The picture absorbed some of the horror and shock of Kartan's story. But that was what Alloperla meant. Thinking that another person's evil justified your own was the way people had reasoned long ago.
Alloperla must have caught the expression in Lara Avara's dark eyes as she looked at the picture, for she turned the easel around and said, "Now that Kartan is back safely, I'll put away this painting. Would you let me paint a picture of you, Robert? I never feel I really know a person until I have painted him."
"I wouldn't mind at all!" Robert said, turning to Alloperla eagerly. For almost the first time since coming into the room, he took his eyes from the pictures surrounding them.
"I'm going to see Vianah," Lara Avara said, walking to the door. "Can Jennifer come with me?"
"That would be a good idea," Alloperla answered, anxious to start the portrait. "And you, Kartan, should greet Panchros."
"Where is he?" Kartan asked.
"In the Cooking House, making supper. Tonight there will be a Homecoming Feast to celebrate everyone's safe return."
"But why is Panchros in the Cooking House?" Kartan asked in surprise. "He's never been interested in cooking."
"He hasn't done any painting since we came home. Perhaps now that you are here—" Alloperla's voice faltered. Then she added desperately, "Kartan, these Barbaric Ones are changing us. Without even being here, they are taking away our strength and talents."

On her way through the village Lara Avara could see that a sense of purpose had been restored. People were busy in the gardens and orchards gathering vegetables and fruits for the Homecoming Feast planned for that evening. Desmona was organizing a crew in the Cooking House. Several children were catching fish in one of the holding ponds, though with all the splashing and laughter, it seemed more like a bathing party. Lara Avara looked past the children, hoping to see Lenarchus contemplating the river, but his favorite spot was empty. Why hadn't he come back with the rest, especially with these strangers here?
Lara Avara glanced timidly at Jennifer. Because she and Lenarchus had been the first to see Jennifer at the Circle, she felt a bond between them, but it was plain that the strange, red-haired girl didn't return her warm feelings. She was frowning and muttering angrily because Robert had stayed with Alloperla when she had wanted him to come with her to see Vianah. She seemed to have no answers for Lara Avara's cautious questions. Lara Avara wondered how Kartan had managed to talk with the strangers so easily.
As they passed the Baby House, two small, dark-eyed toddlers waved to them from the doorway.
"Would you like to go inside?" Lara Avara asked. Nobody could stay unhappy in the Baby House.
Jennifer followed Lara Avara up the path, and the little ones tumbled over each other in their eagerness to be near the stranger. They weren't in the least shy of this redheaded girl. They talked about her openly—her strange clothes, her red hair.
"They think you're a Lost One!" Lara Avara explained. "In our legends the girl who leads the Lost Ones back to us has hair as red as the sunset and tangled like the branches of the briar!"
The room was bright with pictures and flowers, lively with the sounds of laughter and singing. One small child was sleeping contentedly on a goatskin rug, and a baby lay on Chyra's lap, watching the movement of her fingers as she plucked the strings of her harp. Several toddlers were playing with the curled shavings that fell as a young man whittled a lamb from a willow sapling. When the animal was finished, the little ones were still more interested in slipping the shavings over their fingers than in playing with the new toy.
The children couldn't get over Jennifer's strange clothes. They touched her shoes and tugged at her jacket, vying for her attention. Soon she was playing a noisy game of ball with little Nephi. Lara Avara watched her curiously. She bristled with nervousness, like the air before a thunderstorm. But when Nephi and another child bumped heads, running for the ball, she lifted the children onto a rocking chair and comforted them, swinging them gently. Seeing her at last relaxed, Lara Avara didn't want to leave.
Before they left, Jennifer had to promise that she'd come back to the Baby House soon. Being with the little ones had calmed her, and now she was full of questions about the gardens, the Learning House, and Chosen Ones. And especially about Vianah. Kartan had told her that Vianah could help her get back to her own time, and that seemed to be all the girl really wanted.
"How did you get here?" Lara Avara asked.
"I don't know! It's all beyond me!" Jennifer answered. "I just know that I want to go home—and the sooner the better."
The anger was back in Jennifer's voice again, and Lara Avara wished she hadn't asked. Yet she added, "I saw you at the Circle of Time."
"That's where it happened," Jennifer said. "The first time something funny happened was a few days ago—if you can still measure time by days when you're two hundred years in the future. Robert had gone to the stones before school because he wanted to paint them. He's really good at painting—better than that Alloperla because his pictures don't give me the creeps—and I'd gone there because I'm interested in archeology. Old stuff, like the stones."
"I want to learn about the past too," Lara Avara whispered. "That's why I chose Lenarchus."
But Jennifer's interest went back to a time before machines had been invented. She had been trying to find the stones that were missing from the Circle. "I was digging in a gap between the stones when my fingers scraped against a rock," she said. "Then it got real cold. For a minute, everything stopped, then I saw these people, and they were digging too. They were your kind of people, and I was scared."
"I know! I saw them, and I saw you too!" Lara Avara interrupted.
But Jennifer was wrapped up in her own story. "Then the whole thing disappeared, like a dream. I should have left it at that, but Robert wanted to see what I had seen. We went back and scraped away the soil that covered the fallen stones to complete the Circle. And this time it's worse than a dream—or even a nightmare. It's like it's real."
"It is real," Lara Avara said, reaching out and taking Jennifer's hand.
"I don't want it to be real!" Jennifer sobbed. "I sure hope your old woman can do something to put things right again. Or this Lenarchus that everyone says knows everything."
When they entered Vianah's garden, the beauty of it calmed Jennifer. "Hey, it's nice! It smells good!" she said, sniffing appreciatively.
"Because Vianah cannot see, she knows the flowers by their smell," Lara Avara explained.
The old woman welcomed the girls warmly. Jennifer knelt down, letting Vianah caress her face and hair with cool, dry fingers, and Lara Avara sat back and listened to the other two talk. Jennifer told about the stones on the moor, the cold mist, the Barbaric Ones, and the journey back to Kelso, the anxiety gone from her voice. And Vianah talked about the children who had visited her last summer. Jennifer questioned her on every detail.
"Lenarchus in his Searching has found the power to disturb time," Vianah said. "And only you can restore it. The answer lies within you. You must believe in yourself, discover who you are, what you want to be, and you will find where you belong." The Cooking House bell pealed out, summoning everyone to the Homecoming Feast, and Vianah's voice changed as she said lightly, "I'll go along too this evening. Hearing you speak of these other times has restored youth to my old bones!"

Eight
Lara Avara helped Vianah to a seat under the big chestnut tree, overlooking the river and the meadow. She seldom came to feast days now, and people were almost as excited to see her as they were to see the strange children. They crowded around to welcome her. Then a new interest caught their attention. Lenarchus had returned!
He came striding across the meadow, the sun shining on his smooth head. Most men wore embroidered tunics and loose trousers to the Gatherings. The women dressed the same, though some favored longer tunics with a band of embroidery around the hemline. Yet Lenarchus, in a plain gray work tunic, leaving his brown arms and legs bare, looked more imposing than any of them.
Lara Avara ran to meet him, bursting with questions, but he only nodded vaguely. Although he was her Chosen One, she still regarded him with awe, especially when his eyes held that distant look. Jennifer, too, was staring at him in fascination, but he walked past both girls and sat down beside Vianah.
"I'll get your platter, Vianah," Lara Avara said softly. She plucked at Jennifer's sleeve. "Come with me, Jennifer."
Jennifer, with a backward glance at Lenarchus, followed Lara Avara over to the laden table. "That one they call Lenarchus really is different, isn't he?" she said. "I can believe now that he makes things happen. He's—weird!"
But Jennifer momentarily forgot even Lenarchus when she saw the beautiful array of food—vegetables sculptured and combined so that they looked like exotic flowers, a fan of honey cakes and nuts, a school of small silver fish sprinkled with herbs. Robert was there, staring wide-eyed at the table. Nephi, too. Jennifer spoke to Robert, but Nephi pushed between them, gazing rapturously up at Jennifer.
"You're his Chosen One for the day!" Lara Avara said, laughing. "Take plenty of food, Jennifer. He'll be helping himself from your plate!"
When they returned with Vianah's dinner, Lenarchus and Vianah were deep in conversation. Several children were hovering nearby, wanting to sit with the strangers. Lara Avara was amazed at how ordinary it quickly became as they all talked of trivial things. Farula had lost her reserve and was discussing clothes with Jennifer. Robert, who seemed very much at home among them, was asking Kartan about a picture he had painted of the stone circle.
After the feast there was singing and storytelling. Nemourah told again about their wonderful escape from the cave in the Far Northland, making it so vivid that Lara Avara felt as if she'd been there. Some of the little ones wanted another story, but a hush fell on the Gathering when Lenarchus rose to speak.
"In my Searching I often see other times and other places," he said. "Through these two children here, I am able to share my Searching with you—and we have become a part of their Search."
"Why did you bring them now—at a time when we are preoccupied with the Barbaric Ones?" Savotar asked.
"Perhaps that is the reason," Tinodes broke in, not giving Lenarchus a chance to answer. "If the Barbaric Ones come as far as Kelso, the strangers can speak for us. Coming from a time when there was very little trust and sharing, they'll understand the Barbaric Ones' minds better than we can."
"That's exactly what must not happen!" Savotar snapped. "We must speak to the Barbaric Ones ourselves—welcoming them with open minds, even with love."
Lara Avara listened impatiently to Savotar and Tinodes arguing. Why couldn't they let Lenarchus tell his own story? But the trouble was that Lenarchus didn't clothe his adventures in words the way Nemourah did. He could have conjured up the stone circle, the mists of time, the cold . . . the silence. . . .
Lenarchus began to speak again, pointing to the moon, which was rising, pale in the long twilight of the summer sky. "During the twentieth century, men walked on that moon," he said. "It's not so hard to believe that people who could conquer space could find their way here."
"But why us?" Robert asked Lenarchus. "The men who walked on the moon were astronauts, trained for the job. What have we done to deserve to see the future?"
"You have belief," Lenarchus answered. "In my Searching, I can reach only those who really believe in things beyond themselves. There are a few, a very few, who can reach as far as you have done."
"What about Jennifer?" Robert asked, looking troubled. "Even though we're here, she doesn't really believe it!"
Lenarchus nodded, his dark eyes brimming with tears. "That's why it will be harder for her to find her way back. For you—for you the choice will be waiting."
Jennifer wasn't listening. She was deep in conversation with Vianah about the other children from the past. The old woman talked of a tower and a silver key, but she had no answer when Jennifer asked how they could get home. Lenarchus had just finished saying that it would be harder for Jennifer than for Robert when Jennifer startled the whole Gathering by raising her voice and yelling at Robert, "We're stuck here forever—and you don't even care!" She sounded almost like a Barbaric One—full of hatred.
Lara Avara felt hot with embarrassment. Nobody talked that way! Some of the little ones began to whimper. Everyone stared at Jennifer, bewildered.
"All you're interested in is painting," she continued. "Just because some of these people paint, you don't even want to go home. My mom must be worried sick! I wanted to stay at the stone circle where there was at least a chance of getting back. But you wanted to come here with them!"
"Don't be so quick to apportion blame, child," Vianah interrupted softly. "I find I am growing weary. Will you take me home?"
People all around watched in an uncomfortable silence as the girl helped the old woman to her feet and led her up the gentle slope. Then they whispered to each other that the child's anger was like the violence at the Circle of Time.
"If these Barbaric Ones do come to Kelso, we must greet them as we do each other—for the sake of our children," Nemourah said. "They mustn't witness anger or suspicion or thoughts of revenge in us."
Robert didn't follow Jennifer and Vianah to the village. Instead, he walked slowly down toward the river.
Lara Avara ran after him, saying, "She shouldn't have shouted at you like that!"
"She'll get over it," he said, picking up a flat stone and skipping it across the river. He watched as the ripples merged and ran toward the shore. "She's frightened."
"Is it the Barbaric Ones that Jennifer's afraid of?" Lara Avara asked.
"Not just the Barbaric Ones," Robert said slowly. He was silent for a moment and then added, "She's frightened of—of being here."
"And you? Aren't you frightened too?" Lara Avara studied Robert's thin, pale face. He was biting his lower lip and frowning, almost scowling, but his blue eyes were calm.
"I'm not afraid—except perhaps of the old man back there."
"Lenarchus?"
Robert nodded. "He knows more than he tells us—or he is telling us more than he knows! I'm not sure which. I think he brought us here, but he doesn't know how to send us back. And that's not fair! Certainly not to Jennifer, who never wanted to be here at all. Go and find her, Lara Avara. Try to make her feel better. She needs a friend."
On the way to Vianah's cottage, Lara Avara thought back to what she'd heard in the Learning House about people long ago. How they didn't know anything about love and trust and sharing. And it was true that Jennifer had shown anger in a way that Lara Avara's people seldom did. Her people were mostly careful of one another's feelings. But Jennifer had been gentle with the little ones in the Baby House. And Robert had met Jennifer's outburst of anger with compassion. He had sent Lara Avara to look for her, to be her friend. That she hadn't expected.
Jennifer was sitting on the doorstep, staring out at the garden. She hardly answered when Lara Avara spoke. A little later, when the girls were lying on Vianah's floor on their sleeping mats, Lara Avara could hear Jennifer's muffled sobs.
"Please don't cry!" Lara Avara whispered into the darkness. "Everything will be all right tomorrow!"
Jennifer's sobs finally gave way to steady breathing, but now Lara Avara couldn't sleep. Her mind raced as she struggled with Jennifer's problems. Kartan had led the strangers to believe that Vianah could help them find their way back. But Lara Avara thought that in spite of Vianah's rich knowledge of things past, she didn't understand Searching. So that left Lenarchus. Lara Avara
wasn't sure what he could do—but maybe with her help. . . . For Jennifer's sake she had to talk to him, to make him understand how much Jennifer wanted to go home. Jennifer was as much an unwilling captive as their people had been in the hands of the Barbaric Ones. Somehow Lara Avara had to put things right for this strange lost girl.

Quietly, she arose from her sleeping mat and pulled on her tunic. Then she felt her way along the wall to the peg where her wool cloak was hanging near the door. She slung the cloak around her shoulders and then paused for a moment, listening to the dry rustle of Vianah's breath, making sure that the old woman was sound asleep.
Outside, the moon was bright yellow, and the soft night air was heavy with the perfume of the flowers in Vianah's garden. Lara Avara had reached the fork in the path that led to Lenarchus's small cabin when she noticed a light in the Cooking House. She ran quickly up to the window and looked in. Lenarchus was sitting at the long table, talking with Savotar and Nemourah. Lara Avara slipped inside and sat down near them.
Although Savotar acknowledged her with a troubled nod, he went on with what he had been saying. "As I see it, the only way is to deal with these Barbaric Ones ourselves, Lenarchus. These two people you found in your Searching are only children. We have no right to place reliance on them."
"I didn't say we should," Lenarchus answered impatiently. "It isn't our need that brought them, but their belief in us—their belief in the future. I've told you that I can reach only those who are looking for something too. But the boy has shown skill in outwitting the Barbaric Ones. If it weren't for that boy's wit, you would be on your way to Mainland by now."
"And perhaps that would have been for the best when we remember what happened later," Savotar argued.
"You mean what happened to the Barbaric Ones at the Crossing Place? Don't blame Kartan. These Mainlanders didn't understand about our tides."
Savotar glanced at Lara Avara and bit back what he was about to say. After a pause, he said in a tired voice, "I'm afraid of the outcome of your Searchings, Lenarchus. It does not do to disturb the universe. Even the smallest child has impact far bigger than itself. A tiny pebble dropped in a pond causes a ripple that reaches the farthest shores."
"There's risk in experiment—in changing things," Lenarchus agreed. "But without risks we don't grow."
"We have grown in our choosing and our enjoyment of our skills," Nemourah said quietly. "Surely you agree that we're ahead of the Barbaric Ones."
Before Lenarchus could answer, Tinodes burst into the room, out of breath and disheveled.
"You have news of the Barbaric Ones?" Savotar asked.
Tinodes nodded.
"Are they close by?"
"They're at the Crossing Place. They're making rafts. But they have metal tools and work more quickly than we could. They'll be here tomorrow."
"We'll be ready for them this time," Savotar said. "We'll prepare a feast, and we'll talk with them. But I think that the children and little ones should be taken to the safety of the old tower. Trust and love do not always yield immediate results."
"What about the strangers?" Lenarchus asked.
"They should go to the tower with the children," Savotar said quietly. "Nemourah, take word to Desmona and Vianah and any others who would be needed here in Kelso if the rest of us are taken prisoner."
Lara Avara slipped out of the door unnoticed and returned to Vianah's cottage. Perhaps there would be a chance to talk to Lenarchus later. Right now, things were happening so fast that she couldn't keep up. This wasn't a pebble that had fallen into the placid pond of their lives. It was more like a huge rock, and they were all being tossed by the crashing waves.
Nemourah tapped on the door before it was quite light. She awakened Vianah and Jennifer. Lara Avara had not slept.
"The Barbaric Ones will soon cross from the Far Northland," Nemourah said, her voice as calm as if she were telling a story at the evening Gathering. "The paths all lead to Kelso. I'm afraid they'll find their way here before too long. Although we mean to welcome them as friends, we're afraid that the little ones will be frightened—remembering what happened before. Savotar has suggested that we hide them in the old tower the way people did long ago. Lara Avara, I want you to help Desmona take the little ones there."
"What if the Barbaric Ones don't want to be friends?" Lara Avara asked.
"If they take even one captive, then all of us will insist on going!" Nemourah said firmly. "Surely over eighty prisoners will be too many for them!" Then she continued, speaking briskly, "I have asked Kartan and Robert to take Vianah to the tower. They had better stay on the main path, but you, Lara Avara, should take the little ones through the woods. There'll be less chance of running into the Barbaric Ones. Jennifer can decide who she wants to go with."
Jennifer, far from being afraid, was excited when she heard that they were going to the tower. "It's one of those places you told me about, the places that bridge the gaps in time," she said to Vianah eagerly. "It's where you met Ollie and the others from our time, isn't it?" Hurriedly, she began to help the old woman dress and gather together things they would need while they were staying in the tower. She was in a fret of impatience by the time Kartan and Robert arrived at the cottage. And they were as eager to be on their way as she was.
"Can't you come with us too?" Jennifer asked Lara Avara. "Get someone else to take the babies."
"They need everyone who can help," Lara Avara answered. "Why don't you come with me?"
Jennifer hesitated and then shook her head, saying, "I'm going with Robert. We have agreed to stay together."
Lara Avara, remembering yesterday's quarrel, was surprised, but she was glad to know that forgiveness came as quickly as anger to Jennifer. "We'll see each other at the tower," Lara Avara promised, picking up her bundle and heading toward the door.
But Jennifer held her back, saying in a low voice, "I'm sorry I was angry. I want you to have this, Lara Avara." She tried to slip the gold chain and cross, which she had found in Norsea, over her head, but it caught in her hair. Tugging it free, she slipped it around Lara Avara's neck.
"It's real gold," Robert said.
"It's Jennifer's love that makes the gift valuable," Vianah put in softly.
"I'll always wear it," Lara Avara promised. The flow of friendship between them eased the tight feeling that had gripped Lara Avara ever since hearing that the Barbaric Ones were coming again. She gave Jennifer a quick hug, kissed Vianah's soft cheek, and ran out into the half light of dawn.

It wasn't easy to coax and carry the little ones through the woods. It would have gone better if they could have kept to the paths, as Vianah's group was doing, but Desmona was afraid of meeting the Barbaric Ones. The tangled brush and fallen trees were almost insurmountable for the little ones' short legs, and Lara Avara felt her back would snap if she had to lift Nephi over one more obstacle.
At last they stepped out of the forest and saw the stone tower, perched on a rock above them, glowing pink in the light of the early morning sun. Looking up, Lara Avara thought of how people long ago had built these sturdy walls, not knowing that they would serve as a refuge to her people now. She and Desmona herded the little ones up the steep slope, impatient to find out if Vianah was already there.
When they reached the door, Lara Avara saw Vianah, with Jennifer beside her, standing just inside. But her excited greeting faltered when she saw Jennifer's face, white and frightened.
"What's wrong?" Lara Avara asked.
It was Vianah who answered, her voice a strained whisper. "The boys have gone."
"Gone," Lara Avara repeated. "Where have they gone?"
"We don't know," Vianah said slowly. "Jennifer and I were resting here in the bottom room of the tower. Robert went upstairs, and I think Kartan was still outside gathering wood for the fire. Suddenly, Robert came running downstairs and slammed the door. We heard the scrape of a key turning in the lock, followed by an empty silence. You cannot imagine that silence. And cold—" Vianah shivered.
"Why did Robert lock the door?" Lara Avara asked with a puzzled frown.
"He didn't know we had come inside," Vianah explained. "One of the Barbaric Ones was chasing him. When the man discovered that the door was locked, he shouted and pounded on it in his rage. The old lock must have given way because the door burst open and the Barbaric One rushed outside. But I do not think that he found the boys."
"Where have they gone?" Lara Avara asked again.
"Perhaps to that other time," Vianah whispered.
Desmona had understood only part of what Vianah was saying. "A Barbaric One? Here, in the tower?" she asked, her voice shrill with fright. She gathered the little ones close to her in a protective gesture and looked around for somewhere to hide. But it was too late. A huge, bearded man blocked the doorway, his shadow reaching ahead of him into the room.

NINE
They all stared in frozen silence as the bearded man blundered through the doorway, a menacing giant filling the room with his glowering presence. His clothes were wet and dirty, his brown hair tangled. The rattle of stones outside the tower drew their frightened eyes back to the door. Even the Barbaric One swung around and looked anxious when he heard the muffled sound of approaching voices. Lara Avara felt lightheaded with relief when Tinodes and Dolus, accompanied by Farula and a number of small children, crowded into the room. The Barbaric One no longer seemed quite so big. He was no taller than Tinodes, though much broader and heavier.
"So they've found our hiding place," Tinodes observed calmly.
"His clothes are covered with mud!" Farula said, staring at the man, fascination mixed with awe.
"And he looks hungry!" Dolus pointed out. "We must build a fire and share some mealbread with him."
With gestures and encouraging words, he invited the bearded stranger up the spiral stair to the main room of the tower. At first the man was wary, protesting loudly in his strange, guttural language, but he was glad of the mealbread and the warmth of the fire. He stood in front of it, his heavy boots planted on the hearth. He seemed to take in every movement in the room. A few more children arrived, looking up at him as curiously as he eyed them. While the older people talked softly among themselves, the younger ones—either tired from their early morning walk or sensing the seriousness of the discussion—were unusually quiet. Vianah sat a little apart on a stone window seat. Jennifer, her face still expressionless, stood beside her, leaning against the wall.
Hesitantly, Tinodes addressed the man, stumbling over the few words of the stranger's own language that he had once learned from Merrid. The Barbaric One answered, speaking rapidly, and pointing at Jennifer.
"I'm not sure that I understand him," Tinodes said, frowning. "But I think he's seen the stranger, Jennifer, before. He wants her to show him the way to Kelso because the rest of his people will be there."
Jennifer was still staring blankly, as if nothing going on around her mattered.
"Someone should show him the way," Dolus said. "It would be a gesture of friendliness."
"I'll go!" Lara Avara offered.
But the Barbaric One was talking again, and Tinodes held up a hand for silence and hunched closer to listen more intently.
"He has the idea that if he meets some of our people on the way to Kelso, they won't hurt him if he has someone with him," Tinodes said slowly. "He doesn't seem to believe that we wish him no harm."
"Perhaps that's how Jennifer is meant to help," Desmona said, looking questioningly at the others, as if hoping for agreement. "Lenarchus says that we should look to the past for help. I, for one, would feel happier if this man was in Kelso with his friends than here with our little ones.
"Jennifer doesn't know the way," Lara Avara protested.
"She came here from Kelso—along the river path. It wouldn't be hard for her to retrace her steps."
Lara Avara crossed the room and clasped Jennifer's hands in her own, looking into her blank eyes. "Do you hear what they're saying, Jennifer?" she asked. "He wants you to go with him to Kelso."
"Let him find the way himself!" Jennifer answered sullenly.
Lara Avara gazed at Jennifer, tears welling in her eyes, and said, "I'd go in your place, but nobody'll listen."
Jennifer seemed to rouse herself a little. "I'll go! It doesn't really matter what happens now. I'm not even frightened."
"We can't let her go," Lara Avara said, appealing to Vianah.
"We must," Vianah answered. "She'll find the way— perhaps not back to Kelso. But we can't keep her here, child, if she chooses to go. She's not part of the pattern. It's like these stitches in my shawl. Sometimes, when I was knitting, I dropped a stitch or caught up a loop of yarn that didn't belong. The pattern was still there, but someone had to weave in the dropped stitch to make it complete again."
The Barbaric One was impatient to start out. Jennifer crossed the room as if sleep-walking and felt her way down the winding stairs ahead of the bearded man. Lara Avara followed them, feeling angry that Lenarchus wasn't there to tell everyone what to do. It was his Searching that had disturbed the pattern of time, and so he should be there to help Jennifer when she needed him. And where were Robert and Kartan?
When Jennifer reached the bottom room and stepped outside, she raised her head and glanced around quickly. Then her shoulders slumped, as if she were disappointed in what she saw. Lara Avara wondered if she had hoped to cross the threshold back to her own time. She watched Jennifer walk slowly down the hill with the Barbaric One beside her.

After they were gone, the day seemed endless. There was no sign of Kartan, and no news from Kelso. The little ones grew tired of playing in the upper room, but Desmona insisted they stay indoors in case any more Barbaric Ones passed that way. "If one of them found this place, others may too. There's no sense in drawing them here by letting the children play outside."
"How will we know when we can go home?" Lara Avara asked.
"They'll send for us," Desmona answered.
The following morning, there was still no word from Kelso. In the night, Lara Avara had dreamed about the Barbaric Ones being trapped by the tide, and had awakened with the terrible realization that the Barbaric One who had found his way to the tower must be one of the men who had somehow escaped from the clutches of the sand. He had recognized Jennifer because he had seen her before at the Crossing Place. And now they had sent her with him to Kelso! Lara Avara tried to explain her fear to Farula.
Farula couldn't grasp her worry. "You're getting more like Lenarchus all the time," she said. "Getting upset over a dream!"
"It wasn't a dream!"
"But you just said you dreamed that the Barbaric Ones were trapped at the Crossing Place."
Lara Avara felt like shaking Farula. "What do you think has happened to Kartan and Robert?" she asked. "Where have they disappeared to?"
"They probably went back to Kelso after bringing Vianah here," Farula answered calmly. "It's like Kartan not to want to miss anything."
Lara Avara gave up and went to look for Vianah. She found the old woman outside the tower, sitting with her back to the warm stone wall, gazing with sightless eyes over the sweep of forest below them. This time Lara Avara allowed herself to express her real fear. "Do you think that they are back in Robert's time?" she whispered to Vianah. "Kartan, too?"
"We must never see ourselves as completely separated from our past," Vianah answered. "Have patience, child. We can only wait and see what will happen."
Patience was something Lara Avara was sadly lacking that day as the hours dragged by without news. The next morning they awakened to the sound of heavy rain.
"We can't sit here listening to the rain all day," Farula announced. She, too, had lost her patience.
"Besides, we're almost out of mealbread," Desmona added. "I think we should go back to Kelso and find out what's happening there."
Everyone was quick to agree, and they set off almost at once, in spite of the rain. When they reached the woods, the trees gave some protection, but soon the rain was dripping from the leaves and making puddles on the path. It was still raining when they arrived in Kelso, which at first seemed to account for the unnatural quiet. Usually people were up by this time of day.
Noticing that Nemourah's door stood ajar, Lara Avara raced over to the house, calling Nemourah's name. She stopped abruptly in the doorway. The wooden chairs were overturned, and the rush seat of one was torn. The table had been tipped over so that it rested on Nemourah's carved footstool, smashing it. A slender blue vase lay shattered on the floor.
Lara Avara could tell from the expression on Desmona's face when she came out of her own house that things were no different there.
"Dolus! Dolus!" Tinodes' voice rose above the bleating of the goats in the goat shed. "Come here quickly!"
Although Lara Avara hadn't been asked, she ran up to the pasture, overtaking Dolus. When she reached the shed, she regretted her haste. A thick, warm smell assailed her nose, and she saw dark red stains on the walls, floor, and even on some of the goats.
"What have they done?" she blurted out. "Why did they do this?"
"I expect they killed some of our goats to eat," Tinodes said sadly.
The thought of using their goats for food was so appalling that Lara Avara felt her stomach rise to her throat. She leaned against the doorpost, and the smell of blood made her retch. Farula, who loved her goats so dearly, must be spared this.
"Run and get me a bucket of water, Lara Avara," Tinodes said. "We need to get the place cleaned up!"
Lara Avara brought some water and then went for more while Tinodes and Dolus scrubbed the floor.
"So this is where our love and trust have landed us!" Lara Avara said bitterly when she returned. "And what will they have done to our people?"
Lara Avara's question was answered later by a note discovered by Dolus in Savotar's house. Dolus had been straightening things up and had almost overlooked the untidy script on the back of a picture taken from the wall. But when he deciphered it and realized that it was a message from Savotar, he called everyone together, even the very littlest ones.
"We have talked with the Barbaric Ones, but they do not understand us," Dolus read, struggling to keep his voice steady. He paused, looking at all the anxious, expectant faces, then continued reading quietly. "It is more than language that separates us. They have grown up without trust and love, and can act only on the orders of people above them. We cannot fight, so we are going with them as captives—all of us, because it will require our combined strengths to keep faith in a strange land. We hope that those who give the orders there will understand us and will let us return to you soon. We will miss you all, the young ones especially, but it is better that they stay here, in Kelso. Jennifer, the stranger, is with us."
Lara Avara could see her own pain and sorrow reflected in the faces around her. The only source of comfort was knowing that Jennifer was with them. But even Savotar, who was so wise and gentle, still called her the stranger. Would he understand what she was suffering—separated from Robert, and now caught up in these frightening events with the Barbaric Ones? And what about the boys? And Lenarchus? It was strange that there was no mention of him.
But there was no time for questions that didn't have answers. The Cooking House had been ransacked and the stores of mealbread taken. Eran found two jars of meal-bread on a top shelf that had been overlooked, but that wouldn't last long. Desmona wanted help with crushing grain and chopping fruits and nuts. Extra workers were needed in the gardens because the Barbaric Ones had trampled through the growing crops. Several houses, which looked as if they had been swept through by a hurricane, had to be put to rights. And there were the little ones to care for. The little ones were into everything, but no one had the time or energy to supervise them every minute.
But Lara Avara couldn't lose herself in work like the others. Everywhere she went, she was followed by a quiet voice saying, "Go and find her, Lara Avara. She needs a friend." Robert's voice. Without even bidding Vianah good-bye, she took a dry cloak from a peg in the Cooking House, begged a small portion of mealbread from Eran, and headed into the forest.

TEN
It was easy to follow the route the Barbaric Ones had taken. The path was muddy and littered with broken branches. As Lara Avara penetrated deeper into the woods she saw that they had even knocked down trees to make rough bridges over some of the streams. They must have used their metal tools.
By the time the sun was at its height, Lara Avara's courage was ebbing. She had been in the woods alone before, but always close to Kelso, looking for herbs or flowers or roots. She'd never been completely by herself like this. Only Lenarchus separated himself from the rest. She wondered where he was now. She hoped that he had been taken prisoner along with Jennifer so that he could keep watch over her—though it was hard to imagine Lenarchus meekly doing the Barbaric Ones' bidding. Lara Avara had no idea what she was going to do when she caught up with the Barbaric Ones. She had no high-minded plan for rescuing everyone. She just wanted to see Jennifer. And that brought her circling thoughts back to Lenarchus again. How, through his Searching, the bond between herself and the strange, tense, redheaded girl had been forged.
Concentrating on Jennifer's need for her kept Lara Avara going. If she could just reach the Crossing Place, surely she'd find them all camped on the shore, waiting for the turn of the tide. But when she got there, the place was deserted. They must have crossed a full twelve hours ahead of her, for the tide was low again, as low as she had ever seen it, a ridge of sand and rock exposed almost all the way across. Given time to think about it, she'd never have dared to cross. But now she lined up the rock and tree as she had seen them over Farula's shoulder not so very long ago. She held the thought of Farula, and felt her there with her when she stepped into the wet sand. Halfway across, the water was lapping her knees, and the sinking sands sucked her feet, but she didn't pause, even to catch her breath. Then she felt the firmness of rock under the sand, and finally she was panting up the sloping shore toward Norsea.
She wasn't prepared for the emptiness of the ruined city. Being alone in the woods had been frightening, but here the aloneness was magnified a thousand times. Or was it that she wasn't alone? Without anything to root her in the present, the people of the past were trying to claim her. Although her legs trembled with weariness, and her stomach ached with emptiness, she forced herself to run through the town. She scrambled up the ravine and didn't rest until she reached the shelter of the forest on the far side of Norsea. Then she walked on again, but the urgency was gone. When the light faded, she was too exhausted to be frightened. Lying under a tree, wrapped in her wool cloak, she nibbled some mealbread and then slept.
The following morning, she was awakened by a chorus of birdsong. Restored by sleep, she felt almost excited as she breakfasted on mealbread and set off again, still following the trail of disturbed undergrowth and broken branches. Around noon, she reached the rhododendron woods. Here the group had fanned out, and it was harder to tell just where they had gone. She stopped to listen, and heard the distant sound of the sea. She was close to the stone circle, and that thought sent a shiver through her. Then she heard another sound, the sound of music. With a rush of happiness, she recognized the strains of the Homecoming Song. They must have escaped and were coming home!
She ran erratically through the grasping trees, toward the song. At last she glimpsed the gray of their cloaks— but the Barbaric Ones were still there. Her people hadn't escaped. They were walking along, singing as if they were on a Summer Journey, yet they were flanked by the Barbaric Ones, who carried sticks and sinister-shaped tools of metal. Nevertheless, the Barbaric Ones seemed to have lost their anger. Lara Avara drew closer and saw one of the Barbaric Ones carefully free Nemourah's cloak when it caught on a branch. He then offered to carry her bundle as well as his own. She handed it to him with quiet words of thanks.
Then Lara Avara saw Jennifer. Her face was smudged with dirt and tears. In contrast to the others, her whole posture spoke of rebellion. Savotar was following her, and beside her was the bearded man who had been in the tower. Just as Lara Avara drew near, Jennifer stumbled on a root, and the man struck her legs with his stick, gesturing for her to hurry along. Jennifer stopped abruptly and turned around to face her tormentor. Her untidy hair stood out around her head like flames and her eyes flashed
with anger.
"I'm tired!" she shouted. "I'm not going any farther!"
The man, enraged by Jennifer's defiance, raised his stick to strike her. But the blow never came. Savotar jumped
forward and snatched the stick from the man's hand.
"Run, child! Run!" Savotar shouted. "Find your way back to your own people. Back where you belong!" He struck the Barbaric One on the side of his head with the heavy stick.
Lara Avara closed her eyes, but the events of these few seconds were already etched in her mind with all the detail of one of Alloperla's pictures. She could see the surprise in the Barbaric One's eyes, and the pain on Savotar's face when he, schooled in generations of peace, raised a weapon in anger.
When Lara Avara looked again, the scene had dissolved into confusion. Other Barbaric Ones had rushed in and were beating Savotar, who had fallen to his knees. For Lara Avara, it was like reliving the attack on Aetherix. She couldn't bear it. She turned and ran. As she dodged between the black branches of the rhododendrons, she saw someone else running too. A flash of a bright jacket and red hair. And behind her she heard the pounding feet of one of the Barbaric Ones.
Thinking back on it later, Lara Avara realized that she probably helped Jennifer by confusing the pursuers, but at the time she was only putting distance between herself and the violence against Savotar. The low branches gave her an advantage over the tall  Barbaric Ones as she ducked through the densely packed bushes. At last, pausing, she listened and found herself completely alone. Tendrils of mist were swirling through the dark branches, the moisture condensing in a glistening film on the thick leaves. The mist grew thicker, and Lara Avara called out anxiously to Jennifer. Her voice echoed eerily, then the mist swallowed up the sound. Lara Avara inched forward, now feeling her way, and her hand scraped against the cold granite of one of the giant stones.
She had found the Circle of Time. Peering into the heart of the Circle, she saw a tall figure approaching. With a sigh of relief, she recognized Lenarchus, but he held up his hands, warning her to be still. Then he pointed to the gap just beyond the next stone, and Lara Avara saw Jennifer kneeling there, tearing at the grass and roots, clawing up handfuls of soil. She wanted to run over and throw her arms around her friend, but the mist had her locked in its cold grasp. She was encompassed by a silence so intense that she thought that her own heart had stopped beating.
Slowly the sun dispelled the mist, an early morning sun casting elongated shadows. She could now see the whole circle of stones—and far beyond. But the landscape was strangely naked, clad only in heather, bright with purple flowers, instead of the rhododendron trees. Without the trees, the contours of the land were clear. In one direction Lara Avara looked toward the sea; in the other, toward the shoulder of a towering mountain. Two figures were plodding side by side through the heather toward the mountain. A boy and a girl, and the sun gleamed on the girl's red hair. Robert and Jennifer!
Lara Avara started to call their names, but no sound came. Only silence and cold. Then the trees were back, closing in all around her, and she saw Kartan and Robert standing in two gaps between the stones. And beside them, as tall and gray as the granite stones themselves, stood Lenarchus.
Only Kartan seemed to be himself, free from the spell of the stones. "I was in that other time," he said, his dark eyes shining. Words spilled out of him, but the things he spoke of made no sense to Lara Avara. "We traveled in cars and buses, Lara Avara! And Ollie, the youngest of Vianah's children, gave me these clothes I'm wearing so that people wouldn't notice I was different. Our clothes are as strange to them as theirs are to us!"
Lara Avara could see stiff blue trousers under Kartan's gray cloak. But now Robert was asking about Jennifer.
"She was here," Lara Avara said, looking around vaguely. "Then I saw her in that other place. Walking up toward the mountain. And you were there too, Robert."
"How did you and Jennifer get here from the tower?" Kartan asked.
"The Barbaric Ones captured Jennifer—along with many of our people," Lara Avara answered. "I thought maybe Lenarchus was with them too."
Kartan and Lara Avara both turned toward Lenarchus who was still standing beside the stone. "I see three boats," he said, and his voice seemed to come from a great distance. "Three boats dipping through the waves, far out in the water. I see Nemourah . . . Panchros . . . Savotar I hear the faint sound of their singing voices drifting in the wind."
Then Lara Avara heard it too, and recognized the melody. The Ballad of the Lost Ones.

ELEVEN
It's good that the stranger got away," Nemourah whispered, bending over Savotar so that he could hear. "She wasn't open and trusting, and it made loving hard for her."
On the journey up from Kelso, Nemourah's gentleness had won the trust of several of the Barbaric Ones, and so they helped make a stretcher from branches and a cloak. Two of Savotar's friends were now carrying him through the woods to the beach where the boats were anchored in the bay. Nemourah, walking beside the stretcher, watched Savotar anxiously, pulling back any branches that were in their way.
The memory of Savotar striking the Barbaric One haunted her. She had been glad to see the child escape into the trees—for a moment she, too, had been tempted to run, to escape the anger and violence that had erupted so suddenly. Instead she had stepped between Savotar and the Barbaric Ones, unmindful of their upraised clubs. Her composure tamed them in a way that scorn or anger could not have done. They fell back and began shamefacedly to argue among themselves. Nemourah had used the hem of her cloak to stop the flow of blood from the wound on Savotar's head. The cut wasn't as deep as she had feared. She had bandaged his head with the wide belt she wore around her tunic.
They had reached the top of the cliff high above the sparkling water. Nemourah was relieved to see that Savotar's color had returned.
"The boy's brave swim made no difference," Savotar whispered sadly. "They've got their prisoners again— more of us now. Perhaps we're even worse off than before."
"The swim made a difference," Nemourah answered. "It made a difference to Robert himself! Besides, it's good that there are more of us, for there's strength in our numbers. We still have trials ahead."
But Savotar was pursuing his own thoughts. "I see now that my rage lost us the trust and respect of these Barbaric Ones. We have to resolve this with patience, even love. If we answer anger with anger, we will lose. But part of the blame lies with Lenarchus for bringing the child into our lives through his Searching. I have always been afraid of where that would lead."
"You cannot deny Lenarchus his own gifts and Choosing," Nemourah said quietly. "But we'll have to get along without them now."
After a quick supper of mealbread, which had come from the Cooking House in Kelso, they were arbitrarily divided into three groups, about thirty in each. Each group was assigned to a boat, with Barbaric Ones in charge. They used one small dinghy to reach the boats. But for the long hours of summer daylight, they wouldn't all have been aboard before dark because the Barbaric Ones were cautious, always trying to balance the number of prisoners and guards in the boats and the numbers on the shore.
"They expect us to try to escape," Panchros said to Alloperla.
"Perhaps with reason!" Alloperla answered. "After all, they may believe we summoned the seals to help us before!"
"But how could we escape with Savotar wounded? We wouldn't leave him," Panchros said.
"They don't know that." Before Alloperla could say more, she was pulled away from Panchros by a suspicious blond-haired man, who was afraid that they were plotting together.
At last, everyone was aboard. Savotar was disappointed to find out that, despite the Barbaric Ones' love for machinery, the Kelso people were going to have to row. There was no fuel to work the engines. But the boats were well designed and traveled light on the water. Although they were leaving their homeland as captives, there was still a spark of excitement and sense of anticipation that was always in the air at the start of the Summer Journey. They had all heard of the Great Mainland that lay to the south, but few had dreamed that they might one day have a chance to see it. Some of them broke into song, and soon others joined in.
Merrid, who had been to Mainland before, was more anxious than the others. He tried, haltingly, to engage one
of the Barbaric Ones in conversation.
"What do you want us to do in your land?" he asked.
"Will we be digging coal from the earth?"
"No! No!" the man answered with a booming laugh, as if such an idea was preposterous. "The old mines have
been abandoned. But there's still good coal and anthracite in the slag heaps outside Colburg." "You want us to find the coal?"
The man nodded. "It will be good work for you—well paid. And the government will give you houses."
Sitting in the open boats, under a clear sky, breathing the fresh, salt-tanged air, they discussed what Merrid had learned. It didn't sound so terrible. But when, more than a week later, weary from the boat trip and long miles of marching, they reached Colburg, their hearts sank. The city, with its regimented streets, cramped buildings, and tall chimneys emitting plumes of sulfurous smoke, was unbelievably ugly in their eyes. In Kelso the small houses, connected by winding paths, nestled in gardens as if they had grown there as randomly as the trees. There was something disturbing about this place where the few trees and patches of grass that managed to grow were imprisoned by iron railings.
They were again split into groups and assigned to houses. Fortunately, these houses were near the edge of the town, where they could see some open countryside, but the houses themselves were dark, ugly ruins. Square boxes upon square boxes. They had been standing empty, and the warm, damp weather had taken its toll. Old Merrid commented that the only thing of beauty in the house where he lived was a slime fungus growing on the bathroom wall.
However, they soon found they weren't going to spend much time in these houses. They left for work each morning at dawn and picked pieces of coal out of the gray mountains of slag for more than ten hours. They were literally moving mountains with only wheelbarrows and their bare hands. They dumped their loads into boxes mounted on wheels that ran on tracks. When the boxes were full, they were pulled away by an engine that belched black smoke.
The Mainlanders were not cruel taskmasters. They provided their workers with food, and each week paid them wages. But money was a meaningless thing to people who had worked at jobs only of their own choosing and for no other reward than joy. There was no joy in picking coal. They thought that boredom would destroy them sooner than the physical labor, though Nemourah worried about the way Merrid coughed from the dust.
Perhaps their worst hardship was that they were housed apart from one other. Pledge partners and close friends were often separated. Alloperla and Panchros didn't even see each other at work because they were on different crews, but the Barbaric Ones became uneasy at any suggestion of change.
"We would work harder if we could all gather together sometimes," Nemourah pleaded earnestly with one of the guards. She was learning the new language quicker than most of the others and was now the voice of the whole group. "We would like to have evening gatherings for singing and storytelling."
"It's not up to me," the guard said. He was a curly-haired young man named Dan. Nemourah had chosen to speak to him because he was friendlier than most of the other guards, often joking with them, and sometimes even helping Merrid when he stumbled under his load. "You'd need permission from someone in the government for that," he added.
"Who would I ask?"
"Leader Anton would be the one," Dan answered. "I'll see what I can do."
Dan might have forgotten his promise, except that he had mentioned it to his girl friend, Greta. She took a great interest in the gentle brown people. Dan had told her that, at first, he'd thought them half savage, the way they feared machinery and didn't understand what money was for, but gradually he'd grown to respect them. "They work harder than any other group I've had under me, but that's not what makes them different," he said. "It's more their inner calm."
"They make your life easier, so you should do what this Nemourah wants," Greta pointed out.
"Maybe I'd be better off keeping out of it," Dan argued. All the same, he tangled with the officialdom and protocol of the government office, and finally arranged for Nemourah to present her case to Anton.
Nemourah's composure almost deserted her the morning she was taken to meet the Leader. She was escorted to the palace by two armed guards, and was admitted to a sparsely furnished room lit by electric light. She felt uneasy, unaccustomed to the harsh glare of the unnatural light. The building reminded her of those she had visited in Norsea, and she wondered how anyone could live in such a colorless place. The walls were bare of hangings and pictures. The chair she was offered was made of a cold, unyielding material. Anton, a heavy-set, red-bearded man, sat behind a massive desk. He was dressed in a dark, close-fitting suit, which must have been uncomfortably warm in the airless room. He drummed his fingers on the desk, waiting for her to speak.
Nemourah stammered nervously as she said, "Our people would like to meet together to share songs and stories." 
"How would we know you weren't using these gatherings to make plans against us?" Anton asked suspiciously, leaning forward in his chair.
"Your people could attend the meetings." 
"Then you would need to use our language." Nemourah shook her head. "We can't sing our songs in your tongue. But perhaps we could teach our language to your people. In that way there would be more understanding between us. We have already been studying your language. Some of us are more skilled than others."
Anton looked steadily at Nemourah. On his desk was a report that said that these people didn't have the initiative to plan an escape or uprising of any sort. Most of them had volunteered to come when he sent men over to their island to recruit workers. That's why there were so many of them. Only one incident had been reported, involving a young man named Savotar, and it was hinted that it had been provoked.
"You can meet for a short time each day after work, provided some of my people attend," Anton said brusquely. "If there is any indication that you are abusing the privilege, there will be no more gatherings." He stood up, signaling the end of the interview.
Nemourah was confused by Anton's words, and she couldn't tell from his tone if he was agreeing to her request or not. Timidly, she asked again if they could hold gatherings.
"I've already said you can!" he roared. "Get out before I change my mind!"

TWELVE
Between the slag heaps and the city stood the shell of an old tower. On the lintel above the doorway, barely discernible in the pitted stone, was carved the date 1574. For the Barbaric Ones, this was a place with no significance because it dated back to a time before the Age of Technology, but it reminded Savotar's people of the tower near Kelso, with old memories clinging like cobwebs. They asked if they could gather there each evening after work. On the first evening, when friends who had not seen one another since they came to Colburg were reunited, there was laughter, joy, and even tears. Savotar scanned the Gathering the way he used to do in Kelso, looking for a smooth bald head, even though he knew he would not see it. How he missed Lenarchus's wisdom, Lenarchus's readiness to accept a risk!
Most of the Mainlanders who had been ordered to attend the Gathering listened with detached boredom. They would sooner have been in town watching an old movie— often the same movie night after night—or listening to the mechanical tunes from the synthesizer. They had orders to be sure that the slag workers weren't plotting to escape or to overthrow the government. They whispered to each other that it was a waste of time. They didn't think these people had the wits to plan an escape. The guards were less than enthusiastic when Anton sent a memo reminding them that they were to study the captives' language.
Dan mentioned the language lessons to Greta. She, in turn, told her friend Tina.
"They want some of us to learn the way these brown people speak and then sit in on their evening Gatherings," Greta said. "Shall we give it a try? It would be a way of passing the time. And it's not as if there will be a lot of misunderstandings to settle. Dan says they're easy to get along with."
"I'd give anything to get hold of one of those fancy embroidered shirts they wear," Tina said.
"You'd better not go dressing like them," Greta teased. "With your olive skin and black hair, you'd be mistaken for one of them, and you'd end up sorting slag!"
"Probably no worse than working in the clothing factory," Tina answered. "And according to what Dan tells you about these people, they'd be pleasanter company than most of the ones I'm stuck with."
Between the time when Greta mentioned learning the language and the first lesson, the young women almost gave up on the idea. They had to go to the government offices on no less than five different occasions to get the necessary clearance and permission and passes. Finally one evening, armed with certificates, identification numbers, and letters of introduction that no one would be able to read, they presented themselves at one of the drab, boxlike houses where the captives lived. The Kelso people greeted them warmly, though they were a little shy with Greta, whose fair skin and copper-colored hair made her strikingly different from themselves.
Alloperla volunteered to teach Tina and Greta, but soon everyone was taking part in the language lessons. Chyra taught them the words of a song, and Nemourah named the colors of her embroidery thread as she sat with her sewing. Her hands were roughened and chapped by her work on Slag Mountain, but she liked to sew in the evenings. Mostly, though, she repaired torn clothes and did not work on the embroidery she enjoyed.
Over the weeks the young women learned quickly, especially Tina, who could now follow much of what was said at the evening Gatherings. She listened to Savotar's stories and began to share the love of these quiet people for this place called Kelso that she had never seen. Sometimes she and Greta brought candy or cookies or other small gifts of food.
"This reminds me of the honey cakes Desmona used to make," Nemourah said appreciatively as she sampled one of their cookies.
At home, Tina and Greta talked so much about their language lessons that their families wanted to learn. Then Dan convinced several of his friends that they should go along. Soon a large group of Mainlanders gathered in the bottom room of Alloperla's house in the evenings.
Alloperla and Nemourah were especially happy when the Mainlanders brought their children with them. The Kelso people found the emptiness of life in Colburg without the little ones harder to endure than their loss of freedom. In Kelso, everything had centered on the children. The adults taught their skills to the little ones with love and patience. Almost every task was shared. They were all so used to listening and answering and being constantly interrupted that the children's absence was a nagging ache. Mainland children were shy and not nearly so curious as their own little ones had been, but they gradually warmed to their new friends and would respond to a hug or kiss with a pleased giggle.
It was Tina's grandmother who, in the end, made the biggest difference. She was very old, but she surprised Alloperla by picking up the Kelso language quicker than any of the others.
"I'm amazed you learn so fast!" Alloperla said when she was giving the old woman her third lesson.
"It's more remembering than learning," she answered softly. "I've heard many of your words before. My father used them when I was a little child."
"Where had your father learned them?" Alloperla asked. "Had he been to the Far Northland and met our people?"
The old woman shook her head. "He was not from the north, but from a place far to the south. He and many others came here by boat to escape the heat at the time of the changing climate. They joined up with these Mainland people."
"Were there other boats?" Alloperla asked, her voice tight with excitement.
"So I've heard tell," the old woman answered, not realizing the significance of her answer. "There were three boats in all, but two were lost in a storm. The same storm drove my father's boat against the rocks on the north coast. They were rescued by Mainlanders and welcomed into their homes."
"The Lost Ones!" Alloperla said. "We have found the Lost Ones at last."
"Led to us by Greta, with the bright hair, who came to learn our language!" Nemourah said with a rippling laugh.
But the joy of finding the Lost Ones was tempered with sadness. The reunion should have taken place on the shores of the Far Northland. And Savotar, more than any of them, recognized the threat that underlay the discovery. Unless they found a way of escaping from their servitude in this foreign land, they too would, in time, become lost among these Mainlanders. Lost beyond finding. Lost even beyond Lenarchus's Searching. How he missed the old man's wisdom and strength and daring!

THIRTEEN
Lara Avara, Kartan, Robert, and Lenarchus stood close together on the beach, watching the waves wipe the sand clean of footprints. "Watching a memory fade," Lara Avara whispered. By the time they had reached the bay there had been no sign of the three boats. Only the trampled sand showed that the Barbaric Ones and their people had been there, and now they were losing even that tenuous contact with their loved ones.
They walked back up the beach to the cave under the cliff where they would sleep that night. Lenarchus pulled a package of mealbread out of a deep pocket in his cloak and shared it with the others. "Tell me again what you saw at the Circle, Lara Avara," he said, perhaps to divert their thoughts from the captives.
"I saw Jennifer and Robert—they were both there, walking away from the stones toward a bare mountain. Then Kartan and Robert were with us—here." Lara Avara turned toward Robert, looking at him questioningly. Their eyes met, and for a moment she shared his thoughts. She could hear the wind rustling in the rhododendron leaves and the distant pounding of the surf. The sounds of the Circle of Time. She felt a deep, wrenching pain and then heard someone calling Robert's name— Jennifer's voice, sharp and urgent. The name was echoed in another voice, light and musical—a voice that could have been her own. To escape the pain, and the pull of the voices, Lara Avara jerked away from Robert and addressed Kartan. "What happened to you at the tower?" she asked abruptly. "Vianah said she heard the door slam, and the sound of a key turning in the lock—"
"It was Robert who turned the key," Kartan said. "To lock the Barbaric One inside. He didn't know Vianah and Jennifer were there. And he didn't know that we were going to find ourselves in his time."
"In his time? In the twentieth century?"
Kartan nodded.
"How did you know you were in a different time?"
"The forests were gone—the hills were bare. When I think of how hard we have to work to keep our small patch of land clear, I cannot understand how they tamed the whole countryside. Nothing but fields and plowed earth. And in other places there was no earth visible at all—only buildings and black roads."
Lenarchus wanted to hear every detail. Kartan told how he and Robert traveled from the tower to the Circle of Time by bus and car. He had talked to other children, and had seen live animals that were now only in pictures in books in Norsea. It was a disjointed, frightening tale— but exciting too. But at last they had reached the huge stones, which looked very little different then than now.
"Except that there were no trees," Kartan explained, "only purple heather. We went to the stones to try and find our way back here. Robert said that we had to dig down and find the fallen stones, covered by earth and roots. Then the Circle would be complete again. It grew very cold . . . and dark . . . and quiet. . . ."
"We know the rest!" Lara Avara broke in, afraid that Kartan's words might bring back the pain.
"Robert, did you want to be here with Kartan?" Lenarchus said gently.
"I want to have Chosen Ones and to learn to paint," he answered, looking steadily at Lenarchus. "In my time there is no Choosing. I work on my dad's farm, but I'd rather be an artist."
But there would be no Chosen Ones for Robert in Kelso now, Lara Avara thought. She did not say it aloud.
On reaching Kelso, Lara Avara felt that she was returning to a place she hadn't seen for a long, long time. It wasn't so much the place that had changed, it was the people. The chaos left by the Barbaric Ones had been tidied up, yet there was no mention of a storytelling or Homecoming Feast to welcome them. The older children were all working in the gardens as if life had become a battle against weeds. Desmona gave the impression that she was only glad they were back because they represented more hands to do the work.
"Kartan, you can learn to make mealbread," she said. "We're short of help in the Cooking House. Robert can help, too, though Tinodes needs someone to work on fences in the upper pasture."
"What about painting—and choosing?" Robert asked, more surprised than any of them by Desmona's abruptness. "You sound like my dad! I don't want to mend fences and chase sheep. I thought—I thought people understood one another here!"
"Maybe you'd rather help Lara Avara with the little ones," Desmona suggested.
Lara Avara studied Desmona, sure that her face had grown sharper along with her voice. She didn't express any surprise that Robert was still with them, and she didn't mention Jennifer. "I'm going to see Vianah," Lara Avara said quietly. She knew Vianah wouldn't have changed.
Passing the Baby House, Lara Avara heard the unusual sounds of crying and whining and raised voices. She didn't go in. When she reached Vianah's garden, she saw that the paths were strewn with broken branches and rocks, and flower beds trampled, the bird bath knocked over and cracked. No one had bothered to tidy the garden. How could Vianah go for a walk when things were out of place?
Inside the house, Vianah's beautiful pots lay smashed in a corner. Vianah, sitting in her chair near the window, turned toward the door, her face radiant at the sound of Lara Avara's voice. Somehow the broken pots and ravaged garden seemed worse to Lara Avara when she saw Vianah sitting there unconcerned. Lara Avara knelt at Vianah's side and hugged her.
"Welcome home, Lara Avara!" the old woman said, running her fingers lightly over the child's upturned face and smoothing her long, black hair back from her forehead. "When I awakened this morning and heard the birds singing, I was sure you would come back today!"
"They haven't been looking after you properly," Lara Avara said, getting up and beginning to tidy the cottage. She pushed things noisily into place, not even trying to hide her irritation. "This house is a mess, and you look thin and tired."
"There's so much to do, and so few left to do it," Vianah said sadly. "Desmona needs help in the Cooking House. You really should go down there, Lara Avara."
"Everyone tells everyone else what to do now," Lara Avara answered. "To work well and do our best we need to choose our own tasks. That's the way it has always been. Now Desmona thinks everyone should help her."
"Perhaps choosing only works when there are enough people to do all the varied tasks," Vianah said sadly. "Desmona has to grind the meal and chop fruits and nuts before she can even start her baking."
"What about your meals?" Lara Avara asked suspiciously. "Have you had to go down to the Cooking House?"
"They've taken care of me," Vianah said with a smile. "But I haven't much appetite these days. Though I'd enjoy a mug of milk if Tinodes can spare it."
On her way up to the goat shed, Lara Avara thought sadly about the last time she had been there. She was glad that Farula still had both her Chosen Ones, Tinodes and Mara. She was one of the few who did. Lara Avara waved excitedly when she saw Farula coming down from the pasture with a bucket of milk. Farula began to run, milk slopping everywhere.
"Tinodes said you were back!" Farula shouted. "But I wasn't going to believe it till I saw you with my own eyes! Where did you go? Why did you go off without telling anyone? Vianah said you went after the red-haired girl."
"I'm so glad to see you," Lara Avara said, throwing her arms around her friend.
"There you go spilling the milk again!" Farula said, laughing as she steadied the bucket. "I was on my way to the Cooking House. Come with me!"
Lara Avara fell into step beside Farula and asked, "Have you noticed how Desmona has changed? She'll be telling us what to do as soon as she sees us!"
"It's those Barbaric Ones who have changed everything," Farula answered. "And these strangers too."
"The strangers? You mean Jennifer and Robert?"
"If Lenarchus hadn't meddled with things, all this would never have happened."
"The Barbaric Ones have nothing to do with Lenarchus!" Lara Avara exclaimed. "And Robert helped us. Have you forgotten already?"
"Everything was fine before they came," Farula snapped.
Tears filled Lara Avara's eyes. Farula wasn't being fair. They had sometimes argued back in the days when they were in the Learning House, but they had never been angry with each other like this. Lara Avara wondered if Farula had been jealous of her friendship with Jennifer. But the separation between them had happened even before Jennifer came. It had started with her choosing Lenarchus.
When they reached the door of the Cooking House, Lara Avara didn't follow Farula inside. She filled Vianah's mug from the pail and returned to the cottage.
Lara Avara watched Vianah drink the milk, noticing that her hands shook as she lifted the heavy cup to her lips. "What happened to the mug you usually drink from, Vianah?" She needn't have asked. The Barbaric Ones had broken it when they were searching for food for their journey back to Mainland. Dolus, with no one to help him, was forced to make serviceable mugs and bowls to replace the broken dishes instead of the fine pottery he enjoyed.
Lara Avara spent all her time with Vianah during the weeks that followed, insisting that Vianah needed her. More than once, people came to ask for her help, but she turned them away.
One morning, Kartan appeared at the door. "You've done everything you can here," he said, looking around Vianah's tidy cottage. "Besides, Vianah sleeps most of the time."
"I still have work to do in the garden," Lara Avara answered stubbornly, picking up a wicker basket and going outside. "Plants are blocking the paths, and dead flowers need to be cut back."
Kartan followed her. He watched as Lara Avara began to prune the roses that grew over the arbor, carefully picking off dead blossoms and placing them in the basket.
"What's the good of doing that?" he asked impatiently.
"The roses will stop blooming if I don't pick off the withered flowers."
"We can't eat roses! You should be thinning cabbages and carrots so that there will be vegetables in the Cooking House next month. The seedlings are choked by weeds, and so are the fish ponds. You and Robert aren't doing your share."
"Robert?" Lara Avara repeated. She rarely thought about him now. Here with Vianah, she could pretend that everything was the way it always had been, with everyone busy and happy. Vianah strengthened that belief. She talked of Summer Journeys of long ago and about the Lost Ones. Or about lan and Ollie and Elinor and Andrew, the children with the key to the tower. She told Lara Avara how the tower had looked in Ollie's time. She spoke as if she had actually seen the pond below the tower and the little stone farmhouse where Ollie stayed with her Aunt Grace. She seemed to have forgotten the shadow that the Barbaric Ones had cast over their lives.
"Robert doesn't share the wisdom of his time, though it could help us now when there are so few of us to do the work and so many little ones," Kartan said. "When I was there, I saw fields as big as our village that one man had harvested in a day, and I ate food that we've never heard of. Potato chips and chocolate bars. He says you could only buy them—you couldn't make them. But someone made them, and I think he should tell us how!" 
"What does Robert do here?" Lara Avara asked. "He spends his time painting. At first he redid some of Alloperla's pictures that had been damaged by the Barbaric Ones. But now he paints his own. But what use is a picture of a trout when the holding ponds are empty? We can't eat pictures!"
"He believes in Choosing," Lara Avara said, feeling a strong bond of sympathy for Robert. "I think I'll ask him for a painting for Vianah."
"For Vianah!" Kartan exclaimed.
Lara Avara nodded stubbornly. "I can tell her about it," she said. "Vianah says she sees clearly through my eyes."

Winter came. The weather was still warm, but daylight hours were short. With everyone so busy, Vianah had few visitors, though Lenarchus sometimes came to see her. They shared memories in such a gentle, rambling way that Lara Avara wondered if Lenarchus could really be the person she had chosen for his wisdom and Searching. He often brewed tea from special herbs, but Lara Avara wondered why he never brought Vianah medicine, when she tired so easily and had no appetite these days.
One afternoon, when the sun broke through the clouds after a morning of heavy rain, Vianah asked Lara Avara to take her into the garden. "I love a good rain," Vianah said. "The birds sing more sweetly after it, and the air is more fragrant."
Lara Avara eagerly fetched Vianah's light cloak and cane. She guided the old woman along the familiar paths, happy that she had cleared them so carefully and trimmed back the shrubs.
Vianah explored the garden, brushing the flowers with her fingertips. "The camelias are blooming," she said, sniffing appreciatively. "And the daphne is growing well." She reached out to pick a twig, shaking loose a cascade of raindrops.
Desmona, on her way to the Cooking House, paused to talk. "How are you, Vianah?" she asked. "It's good to see you out."
"I am enjoying the garden," Vianah answered. "Lara Avara has been so kind tending it for me."
"She has indeed," Desmona said. "But perhaps now that she has it tidy, she can help us in the Baby House. They really need her there."
"I keep telling her she shouldn't spend all her time with me," Vianah agreed. "She should join in the singing and storytelling at the Gathering after the evening meal."
"There hasn't been time for that," Desmona admitted.
"The singing and storytelling are more important than ever now," Vianah answered. "Otherwise, the Barbaric Ones are taking even from those of us left here. Perhaps they have changed us more than they have changed Savotar and Nemourah and the others who are their captives."
"Who's to lead the singing with Chyra gone?" Desmona asked sharply. "And Savotar was our best storyteller."
"There are the younger ones," Vianah answered. "Andrena or Kartan or Lara Avara. Kartan has a great tale to tell, if you only had the time to listen. And have you ever asked Robert about the stories of his day?"
"It's hard to find time for storytelling when the nuts are rotting under the trees," Desmona said impatiently. "We should be gathering them for drying today when the sun is out." She hurried on her way, her thoughts already ahead of her in the Cooking House.
"Take me back indoors, Lara Avara," Vianah said quietly.
The garden was suddenly huge measured by the old woman's frail, uncertain steps. Lara Avara took her arm to steady her, but could do nothing to relieve the effort of Vianah's fluttering breath. It was Desmona's reminder of the Barbaric Ones and the changed times they lived in that had exhausted Vianah, Lara Avara thought crossly. It wasn't just the walk in the garden.
Safely back in her accustomed chair, Vianah was still tired. At supper time, her mug slipped from her fingers and smashed on the floor.
"How careless of me!"
"Don't worry about it, Vianah," Lara Avara said, picking up the pieces and mopping up the spilled milk. "Dolus can make you another."
"It's not enough to make a pot that will hold water," Vianah whispered. "It must also be filled with the love and pride of the one who makes it, or it will always be an empty vessel."
The following morning, before Vianah was awake, Lara Avara slipped out of the cottage. She'd make Vianah a new mug herself.
Dolus, already at work, was stooping over his wheel, his deft fingers magically creating a slender vase from a lifeless lump of clay. He greeted Lara Avara with a wide smile. "I was hoping for company today," he said.
"I want to make a mug for Vianah."
Dolus helped Lara Avara shape the clay. While she was making the mug, feeling the smooth clay take form under the pressure of her fingers, she felt a glow of happiness that had been missing for a long time. Although the mug wasn't perfect, Lara Avara knew that Vianah would like it. Dolus promised to bring it to the old woman's house as soon as it had been fired.
When Lara Avara reached the cottage, she was surprised to find Vianah still lying on her sleeping mat. Lara Avara kneeled beside her, noticing how peaceful she looked, with the morning sun streaming down on her face. The lines of weariness that sometimes tightened Vianah's mouth had been smoothed away by sleep.
"Vianah! Vianah!" Lara Avara whispered.
Vianah did not stir.
Lara Avara reached out and touched her. Then she called her name again, urgently. Tears streamed down Lara Avara's face when she realized she could not waken the old woman. Vianah, her Chosen One, would never drink from the lopsided mug that Lara Avara had made with love.

FOURTEEN
Farula reached out and took Lara Avara's hand. "I'm sorry," she whispered. They walked down to the Gathering Place together. The river was running high, and the meadow looked ungroomed, with dark seedpods and withered stems the only reminders of last summer's flowers. Sunshine glistened on the wet grass, but heavy clouds to the west threatened more rain.
Lenarchus was already at the Gathering Place with most of the others. He came forward to greet Lara Avara, but she could not return his smile. She knew that she was supposed to be happy at Vianah's Remembering, thinking about her love and all the good times they had shared, but it was no use.
"Vianah was your friend, too," she said angrily to Lenarchus. "Why don't you do something? I don't see how you can just let her go—and want us to pretend to be happy!"
"What would you have me do?" Lenarchus asked gently.
"Bring her back—with your Searching!" Tears streamed down Lara Avara's cheeks.
"By doing that, I would be limiting Vianah to the realms of my Searching, Lara Avara. It is far better that she go on her own journey of Searching. It's a journey that each one of us has to make, each from a starting point we have determined for ourselves. Vianah was ready for this journey, child. Please don't weep for her. We're going to celebrate the Remembering at the old tower because it is a place she loved. But first we are going to share food together."
Watching the little ones' excitement over this picnic in the wet meadow, Lara Avara realized how long it had been since they had all been together like this. Andrena led the singing, and though it lacked the volume of former Gatherings, it didn't want for joy. Then they followed the path through the wet woods to the old tower, moving between the trees like flickering shadows in their gray cloaks. The little ones dodged ahead and behind, some of them singing the songs from the Summer Journey, with others joining in. At the end of the column, Dolus, Tinodes, Des-mona, and Mara walked slowly, holding the poles that bore Vianah's coffin.
Lenarchus and Robert, dressed in a tunic and cloak like all the rest, walked ahead of Lara Avara. They were so comfortable with each other that Lara Avara realized that they must spend a lot of time together.
Echoing Lara Avara's earlier feelings, Robert was saying, "Everyone's so happy! It's not like this when someone dies at home."
"These were Vianah's favorite songs," Lenarchus answered. "She brought us love and laughter, and that is what we must remember today. She wanted to be buried near the curve of the stream at the edge of the woods, within the sound of the rooks calling to one another around the tower. The tower was Vianah's special place. It's Vianah's love and laughter we want to remember today."
But it wasn't easy to hold on to the love and laughter when the coffin was lowered into the shallow grave. Lara Avara and Lenarchus pushed the dark, wet soil over it.
"Vianah was older than any of us," Desmona said quietly. "So old that no one remembers her birth or early years. They used to say that she was found here, playing in this stream, and taken back to the Baby House. I think, myself, that someone made up the story to account for her unusual eyes—the color of cornflowers! Vianah was in every way a part of us and one of us. Yet it seems right that she should rest here, for she really loved this spot."
Lara Avara thought about Desmona's words as they climbed up to the tower for the Remembering. Vianah was in every way a part of us and one of us. But did she, perhaps, belong to that other time too?
They gathered in the shade of the old stone walls. Below them stretched the forest, with its humps and ridges, and its color varying from moss green in the sunshine to deep black in the shadowed valleys.
Dolus spoke first, telling of Vianah's skill in pottery when she had her sight. It had been she who taught him to make his first bowl. "As others learn from me, something of Vianah will be in their skill, and so Vianah will still be with us. But how can we pass on our skills now that there are so few of us? And what of those who have been taken to Mainland? What about their skills?"
"Vianah's love was her greatest gift," Mara said. "I have noticed that our love for one another has grown less instead of more in these difficult times."
"Since the Barbaric Ones came, the loss of even one of our numbers is a threat," Tinodes added.
"This is a day of joy, not sadness," Desmona interrupted. "A day of thankfulness for all that Vianah gave us. I see now that it is we, ourselves, who are destroying what we believe in, not the Barbaric Ones. Vianah's death reminds us that we have been so caught up in our troubles that there has been little love and trust and sharing." To Lara Avara's surprise, Desmona added, "Only Lara Avara remembered the old ways. She put Vianah's happiness first. She tended Vianah's garden, while I scolded the rest of you for not weeding the vegetables. Lara Avara gave love, while we thought only of our own needs and work."
Lara Avara stared at the ground and saw the grass and flowers at her feet through a blur of tears. She wanted to tell them that she had been selfish, working in Vianah's garden to escape all the changes in the village. She hadn't offered them her friendship during these last months. She had refused to help Kartan. He had lost both his Chosen Ones, and Aetherix as well, while she had still had Vianah and Lenarchus. She had scarcely talked to Farula except when she fetched milk for Vianah. She wanted to tell them, too, about the happy times with Vianah before the Barbaric Ones came, but she couldn't trust her voice for that either.
Late in the afternoon, when everyone was ready to go home, Lara Avara asked Desmona if she could stay a little longer. Desmona agreed, but reminded Lara Avara gently that it would soon be dark.
"Wouldn't you rather someone stayed with you?" Desmona asked.
Lara Avara shook her head. She sat down by the tower door and watched the others pick their way down the hillside. Some of the little ones splashed each other in the stream at the bottom before running into the woods. Gradually, the sound of their voices became indistinguishable from the chatter of the woodland birds. Lara Avara closed her eyes, letting memories of Vianah flow over her—how they had loved each other—memories that she had been unable to share. What was she going to do without Vianah? The pain of needing her was close to anger now. Vianah shouldn't have left her alone like this. Lara Avara began to cry.
It was growing dark and was unusually cold. Lara Avara shivered and drew her cloak closer around her shoulders. Looking up, she saw through her tears a thin mist seeping out of the stone wall of the old tower and condensing into swirling tendrils that reached toward her. She shivered again. The mist enveloped her, draining her completely of all warmth and thought and feeling.
Then there was silence, a silence so profound that it seemed that there could be no awakening. Yet warmth and light and sound returned. Lara Avara opened her eyes. The sun was high overhead, shining down on a naked world. What had happened to the forest? Here and there a tree stood, awkward and alone. The bushes had been marshaled into wavering lines surrounding fields of grass and grain. A roadway, like a black ribbon, tied buildings together. Buildings of stone like those in Norsea, yet not like them at all. The road followed the contour of the valley floor, where the stream they crossed on their way to the tower should flow. Her eye traced the road to a point where it turned sharply by a huge oak tree, and Vianah flitted through her thoughts.
The scene below was naggingly familiar. Then she remembered Vianah's description of the pond almost overgrown with weeds and a farmhouse built of gray stone. She pressed her back against the stone wall of the tower and closed her eyes. She tried to visualize the forest-clad hills in all their varying shades, hoping that when she opened her eyes she would see them again. The air was throbbing with discordant noise, but gradually Lara Avara could hear one sound closer than the rest. The sound of someone crying. She opened her eyes and saw a small girl with wispy fair hair and red, swollen eyes sitting near her on a rock. The child looked so woebegone that Lara Avara was momentarily distracted from her own fear.
"What's wrong?" she asked. She had to repeat the question before the girl heard her.
But when the child did see Lara Avara, her grief was immediately replaced by astonishment. "You're one of Vianah's people," she said. "How did you get here without the key?"
"I don't know," Lara Avara said, frowning slightly. "Do you really know Vianah?"
"I saw her once—last summer."
Last summer! Lara Avara stared at the little girl. Could she be one of Vianah's children? Perhaps the youngest one. She was about the right age, but Lara Avara had always pictured her with straight, black hair. "Are you Ollie?" she whispered.
The child nodded eagerly. "You must be Lara Avara!" she said. "Vianah told us about you, and I wanted to know you!"
"Why were you crying just now?" Lara Avara asked.
Tears welled up in Ollie's eyes again. "Mostly about Aunt Grace," she said, her voice trembling. "And my father talking about selling the house down there, and us not being able to come here anymore. I love it here. I don't want everything to change. It isn't fair!"
"What about Aunt Grace?" Lara Avara asked quietly.
"She died," Ollie answered. "She was buried this morning. Down there in the churchyard, near where the road turns by the oak tree."
Lara Avara followed the direction of Ollie's pointing finger, and in her mind she again saw Vianah's resting place under the trees at the curve of the stream. Wide-eyed, she crouched against the tower wall, unable to find words for the thoughts that were running through her mind.
"Aunt Grace was really my father's aunt," Ollie was saying. "She was very old."
Lara Avara shivered and pulled her wool cloak closer around her. Ollie, dressed in blue shorts and a thin yellow shirt, didn't seem to notice the cold wind.
"I came to the tower today, wanting to get to your time like we did before," Ollie continued. "I thought that if I could just see Vianah again, I wouldn't be so lonely for Aunt Grace."
"Vianah—Vianah died—we held her Remembering at the tower. . . ."
The two girls stared at one another. "She often talked about you," Lara Avara finally whispered. "She hoped you would come back."
Suddenly it was easy to talk about Vianah. Lara Avara told Ollie all the things she should have said at the Remembering. It didn't hurt to say them now. And Ollie talked about Aunt Grace. While they shared memories, it almost seemed as if they were talking about one person. A huge red machine turned the corner by the oak tree and went rumbling along the road. Lara Avara, her eyes dilated with fear, watched it until it was hidden by a hedge. Even after it was gone, the sound and smell of it still hung in the air.
"I want to go home, Ollie," Lara Avara said. "Tell me how! Please!"
"I don't know how," Ollie answered. "Even Elinor and Andrew didn't know how to make it happen, and they're not here anyway. They're in London."
"But how did you reach Vianah last year?" Lara Avara asked.
"It had something to do with the key," Ollie said slowly. "But it doesn't always work. It didn't work when Kartan and Robert wanted to go back."
"You knew Kartan?" Lara Avara asked, surprised.
"Did he get back to your time? There was nothing about him in the newspaper article about Robert and Jennifer."
"The newspaper article!" Lara Avara was so confused that she could only echo Ollie's words.
"You can read about them for yourself," Ollie said, getting to her feet. She dug into her pocket and brought out a crumpled piece of newspaper. Smoothing it out, she handed it to Lara Avara, pointing to an article with the headline Missing Children Found Safe.
Two missing children, Robert Guthrie and Jennifer Crandall, had been found by searchers near the Stones of Arden. Neither child was any the worse for the experience of having been lost in a heavy mist overnight. Lost overnight. But Jennifer and Robert had been with them for weeks! The paper had been in Ollie's pocket for some time and was harder to read than the old books in Norsea. Beside the article was a picture of two children. Even though the picture was blurred, Lara Avara could see that it was of Robert and Jennifer.
"Did Kartan find his Chosen Ones?" Ollie was asking. "Robert wished he could have Chosen Ones too. You see, he wants to be an artist, but they have a farm, and his dad needs him to help all the time. His dad says artists don't make any money."
"The Barbaric Ones have taken our Chosen Ones away—to their own country," Lara Avara said. Even talking about the Barbaric Ones was easier than letting herself think about what she was doing here with Ollie.
"Won't you go after them?" Ollie asked.
"They took them to Mainland, across the sea. We have no boats big enough to follow and bring so many people back," Lara Avara answered sadly.
"I forgot about it being so hard to get around in your time," Ollie said. "It took Andrew half a day to go to Kelso and back when he fetched the food for Vianah. It only takes us fifteen minutes by car!"
"Maybe Andrew could help us now, like he came and helped Vianah before."
Ollie's small, serious face puckered into a frown. "It's strange, but he hardly believes that happened now." Then she added, brightening up, "If you were to come back to London with me, he'd have to believe it! I could hide you in the back seat of the car under a blanket. Someone did that in a book I read once!"
Lara Avara drew back from Ollie, frightened at the very thought of traveling in one of those noisy machines. She could hear the sound of it throbbing in her ears. It was coming closer. She looked up and saw a dark shape with outspread wings passing between herself and the sun. It was bigger than any bird she had ever seen, and it flew with its wings held rigid. A strange, heavy, unnatural shape. She drew back against the tower wall, closed her eyes, and covered her ears with her hands to shut out the noise. She could feel the coldness of the stone behind her seeping through her cloak. The sound grew higher, rising in pitch until it finally passed into silence. Lara Avara remained motionless, afraid to open her eyes.

FIFTEEN
The warm, damp air was heavy with the smell of the forest trees. A cadence of birdsong from a nearby bush, followed by complete silence with no undertones of throbbing sound, reassured Lara Avara that she was in her own familiar surroundings. But what had she expected? she asked herself, snuggling into her cloak. It had been nothing more than a dream.
The sound of voices from inside the tower made her heart pound again. She drew farther back into the shadow of the wall as the door opened slowly. A figure stepped outside. To her relief, she saw that it was Robert. He pulled the door closed behind him and then turned to gaze out over the forested hills. Although it was too dark for her to be sure, she thought that he looked disappointed, sad.
The door opened again, and this time Lenarchus appeared.
"It didn't work!" Robert said in a low, angry voice. "I was so sure it would. We were so close to them at Vianah's Remembering that I swear I could have reached out and touched them. They were here with us, or we were there with them. But when I tried to get there, I couldn't."
"Perhaps we're not ready to let you go," Lenarchus said.
"Were you trying to go home?" Lara Avara asked. "Back to your own time?"
Robert peered into the shadow. "Are you still here? I thought you'd gone back to Kelso ages ago."
"Why do you want to leave us?" Lara Avara asked. She felt angry, although she knew she didn't have the right. She had thought more about Jennifer this last winter than about Robert, who was still with them.
"At the Remembering I got to thinking about the others—the ones I left behind. I'm sure I could get along now. And maybe they miss me."
"But you did go back!" Lara Avara said. "I told you before how I saw you and Jennifer walking up the hill."
"You saw someone that looked like me—"
"And just now I had a dream—" Lara Avara continued. She had to make Robert understand that he didn't have to leave them.
But he interrupted her roughly, asking, "How can I put my faith in someone else's dreams?"
Lara Avara could feel Lenarchus watching her. Perhaps it had been more than a dream, she thought. She remembered Ollie's eyes, reddened from weeping for her Aunt Grace, the strange symmetry of the fields and roads, the harsh sound of the machines, and the scrap of paper that told about the missing children being found on the moor.
"Show him the paper," Lenarchus said softly. "Show Robert the paper."
Until that moment, Lara Avara had not been aware that she still clutched the fragment of paper in her hand. She walked slowly over to Robert and handed it to him.
Robert read the article through several times and then looked at Lenarchus questioningly. "How can I be there—and here?"
"Perhaps your love of painting has stayed with us," Lenarchus said. "You sacrificed that in going back . . . but it must have made it easier ... in a time when there was no Choosing. There won't be the arguments about the farm work."
"But without painting—"
"The boy and his parents will understand each other better!" Lenarchus said. "But we should go back to Kelso! I have no need for Searching to know that Desmona is anxious!

The lamps were lit in the Cooking House, and everyone had gathered there.
"Robert! Lara Avara! Where have you been?" Farula shouted, rushing to the doorway and pulling them over to the long table. "Desmona has been toasting honey cakes, and we saved some!" She reached for the warm platter and set it in front of them.
Lara Avara took a cake, suddenly ravenously hungry. While she ate, she watched Robert talking and laughing with Kartan and Eran. He belonged here! How could he have thought of leaving them? Some of the others were cracking nuts and chopping fruit for a batch of meal-bread, and all their talk was about returning to the old ways.
"If we include even the very smallest ones in everything we do, they'll be learning, and there won't be a need for so many of us to be in the Baby House all the time," Dolus was saying.
"We can't include them in the preparing of food," Desmona said firmly.
"They're helping now!" Dolus protested, a bewildered expression on his round face.
"And look what has happened to the nuts and fruits we have chopped!"
Lara Avara and Farula laughed when Desmona pointed to the empty nut bowl in front of the little ones, who were all munching happily with rounded cheeks.
"They can help me with the goats," Farula offered.
"Lara Avara can tell the little ones about Nemourah and Savotar and the others," Lenarchus said. "Their names must be kept alive so that the little ones know them when they come back."
Silence fell at the mention of the prisoners.
"It isn't enough just to talk about them," Kartan burst out. "We should be doing something."
"If we continue to build on what they taught us, we are doing something," Dolus said, nodding earnestly. "You and Robert should go back to your painting, and you should teach the little ones. But you must give them more than just your skill in painting. Remember all that Alloperla gave you."
"Let's have a song, Andrena!" Mara said, looking around at the ring of solemn faces.
Andrena thought for a moment and then she began to sing. She sang the Homecoming Song, the song they always sang when they returned from the Summer Journey. When the strains of the music died away, Lara Avara looked around and noticed that Lenarchus was sitting on a cushion against the wall, rocking gently back and forth, his eyes focused on something beyond her seeing. "They, too, are Remembering," he said softly. "I can hear their music, feel their sadness. For a moment I think we all sang the same song."

Far away, in the dark shadow of Slag Mountain, Chyra bent her head toward her harp, and her face was hidden by her long, black hair. She ran her fingers over the strings, fingers stiff and callused from sorting coal, even though she was careful to wear heavy gloves while she worked. The music rippled like the water in the tower stream running to meet the river. Everyone stood quiet, listening to the song, and it soothed them.
"Merrid was always more curious about distant places than the rest of us," Nemourah said when the last notes had died away. "But I wish he could have been buried in the woods near Kelso."
They had gathered for Merrid's Remembering. From the start of their time in Mainland, Merrid had been troubled by a hacking cough, yet he had worked alongside the others, even though they would gladly have done his share. His knowledge of the Barbaric Ones' language had helped them through the early weeks. But the time had come, about a month ago, when even the guards and overseers agreed that Merrid could no longer work. They told him to stay home and rest. But the cough worsened, and the old man grew weaker. How they wished for Lenarchas and his herbal lore. Merrid didn't respond to the medicine the doctor sent him. On a gray evening, after a week of relentless rain, he died.
His Remembering was painful in this alien land. Today, talking of Kelso and the past made acceptance of their present life harder to bear.
Even though there were Mainlanders among them, Alloperla suddenly changed the tone of the Remembering by saying angrily, "We must do something! It was our meekness that cost Merrid his life. We can't work all day and come home to nothing more than a bowl of turnip soup in the evening. They are practically starving us! The rest of us will become ill too."
"They say this shortage of food will last till the next harvest," Panchros said. "I find it hard to understand what has gone wrong. Food was plentiful when we first came."
"It has to do with their way of storing it," Savotar explained. "They preserve food by keeping it very cold. Last month, when the electricity failed for several days, great quantities of food were wasted."
"I thought electricity made heat," Alloperla said, frowning.
"Both heat and cold," Savotar answered. "Though, in truth, I don't understand how that can be."
They didn't take much interest in the Mainlanders' machines. Sometimes Savotar worried about this. Lenarchus wouldn't have turned his back on everything he didn't understand. Even after all these months, they still cringed when the train that carried the coal away from Slag Mountain roared to life each day. The noise and smell were something they would never get used to.
"Perhaps they'll send us back to Kelso if their food supply is running out," Nemourah suggested hopefully.
Savotar shook his head. "The coal is much too important. They use it to make electricity. But I think that when their crops and fruits ripen, we should offer to make our own mealbread."
"After a day on Slag Mountain?" Alloperla asked.
Savotar nodded. "They might even shorten our work hours if we were using the time to make our own food."
"When the days grow longer, I am going to paint again," Panchros said. "I even find myself wanting to paint the black mountain against the red sky on a fine evening."
The idea of taking up some of their old skills had a soothing effect. Chyra began to play one of the songs the children used to enjoy, and several people began to sing. But the music was cut short by an angry exclamation from Lona, one of the younger women.
"Alloperla was right when she claimed that we are too meek," Lona said bitterly. "All this talk about making mealbread and painting pictures is a waste of time. Instead, we should be planning how to get back to Kelso. Have you forgotten our little ones there? Have you forgotten how wonderful it was to waken in the morning and fill the day with work of your own choosing? I often worked as hard back in Kelso as I do now, carrying clay from the river up to the pottery kiln or moving rocks to build a wall. But there was purpose in what we did, and joy in working for those we loved!"
"Hush, Lona, my child!" Nemourah said anxiously. She was painfully aware of the Mainlanders in their midst. It wouldn't help if they jeopardized the few small freedoms they had already gained. But she understood Lena's anger. Lona was expecting a child, and they all worried at her having to work so hard on the mountain. Hers would be the first baby born in captivity. They wondered, too, what would happen after the child was born. The thought that the Mainlanders might take the child from them alarmed them most of all. There hadn't been many babies in Kelso in recent years, and a new baby was a cause of great rejoicing, a gift for all to share.
"You must be patient, Lona," Savotar said quietly. "Don't give up hope. We will go back to Kelso, but the means of our going will come to us through our belief in love and trust and sharing." He ran a finger along the scar on his forehead, remembering the day he had gone to the strange girl's defense. He hoped she had found her way home. But the end didn't justify the means. "Violence and anger can only breed hate," he continued. "Love and compromise take longer. But when I ask patience of the rest of you, believe me, it is no more than I am asking of myself."
Savotar sighed. He could tell that his high-sounding words were of little comfort. He needed a quicker, more dramatic answer for Lona. Lenarchus came again to his mind, perhaps because he had been thinking about the strange child. He longed for the old sage's wisdom in this foreign land. He hoped that Lenarchus was still Searching—Searching for a way to bring them home.

SIXTEEN
Vianah's Remembering prompted a return to the spirit of Choosing, and with the Choosing they rediscovered the power of love and trust and sharing in their lives. But although they learned from one another, and practiced their chosen skills, they sadly missed Savotar's voice at the Gatherings and the gentle wisdom of Nemourah. They missed, too, the skills of Chyra and Alloperla and Panchros. No one could fill the captives' empty places.
Lara Avara stayed with Farula in Mara and Tinodes' cottage near the upper pasture. It seemed almost as if she and Farula shared Chosen Ones now. Lenarchus was always so remote and preoccupied. He often sat alone by the river or took solitary walks in the woods. Everyone knew that he was trying to reach the captives, but Desmona only sniffed and said his time would be better spent teaching in the Learning House or weeding the carrots. Lara Avara enjoyed being with the little ones, teaching them and amusing them with stories. Sometimes she managed to persuade Kartan or Robert to tell them about their adventures, though Kartan preferred working in the gardens or the Cooking House with Eran, and Robert was reluctant to do anything that wasn't connected with his painting. Lara Avara often perched on one of the stools in a corner of Alloperla's cottage and watched the sureness of Robert's strokes as he painted. She was no good at judging the texture of a batch of new paper he and Kartan had made, or the effect of a new dye, but she always knew when Robert got a picture exactly right. She also knew that Robert liked when she came to watch, even if he never said so in words.
"I don't think you choose to paint, so much as painting has chosen you," Lara Avara said one day when they had all come to ask Robert to go fishing with them and he had refused.
"He reminds me of Aetherix," Kartan said sadly. "With paint on his tunic and in his hair."
The mention of Aetherix brought back other memories. "No matter how hard we try, we can't make Kelso the way it used to be," Farula said wistfully.
The one time of year, more than any other, when they all felt the loss of the old ways was early summer when they used to plan the Journey. The first summer after Vianah died, they all agreed that there was no point in trying to go even as far as Norsea with so many little ones. "It would be worse than herding goats!" Tinodes had said. And with scarcely enough mealbread to see them through the next week, they hadn't provisions to last them for a month or more.
But with  the years slipping away—two,  three,  and four—the prospect of going on a Journey became brighter. They had gathered under the chestnut tree by the river to discuss it. The long table held the remains of a feast. Some of the younger ones were splashing in the shallow holding pond, and others were damming the stream that came down from the upper pasture. Lenarchus, looking at the crowd of children, put forward the idea that if they couldn't all go on the Summer Journey, then perhaps he, with one or two others, could go as far as the Circle of Time.
"Leaving the rest of us here wondering if you'd fallen into the hands of the Barbaric Ones!" Desmona exclaimed.
"It's in order to free our people from the Barbaric Ones that I want to go," Lenarchus said earnestly. "My power of Searching is strongest at the Circle of Time. Maybe I could reach them from there. Or maybe I can find someone to help us."
"If there's any help at all, it's in ourselves," Mara snapped. "We can't put our trust in magic!"
Somehow the impact of Mara's short speech went beyond the actual words. She mostly spoke at the Gatherings about the welfare of her goats. Lara Avara and Kartan exchanged looks of surprise, hearing her contradict Lenarchus.
"There's no need to speak of magic in that belittling voice, Mara, though I prefer to call it Searching," he answered. He was standing apart from the rest, dressed in his plain, short-sleeved tunic, although the evening was cool. "I don't laugh at you for keeping goats! Searching has been my chosen field since I was a boy. I haven't learned everything yet, especially because there was never anyone to teach me. I have to find the answers alone."
"But your search for answers has put others at risk," Tinodes said. "You can't control the outcome. Savotar never liked your changing things."
"I wouldn't practice cooking if, in my ignorance, there was a chance that I would poison someone," Desmona said.
Lara Avara looked anxiously around. She sensed that the older people were openly aligning themselves against Lenarchus. Robert must have felt it too because he got up and walked quietly over to the old man, as if siding with him against the rest. Lara Avara looked at Robert fondly. He had grown tall, and was as brown as Lenarchus, but his untidy curly hair always made him stand out.
Lenarchus paid no heed to Robert, but answered Desmona, saying quietly, "If you find a new herb or fruit, you put yourself at risk by tasting it first. That's all I want to do."
"But it's not only you who is affected," Desmona said bitterly. "You meddled with the past, and the next thing that happened was that those Barbaric Ones came here!"
That's not true, Lara Avara wanted to shout. The Barbaric Ones had nothing to do with Lenarchus. But she could see in the faces of Mara, Tinodes, Dolus, and the others that they believed Desmona. Before Lara Avara had a chance to speak, the discussion had taken another turn.
"Advances in science always involve risk," Lenarchus was saying. "And once we've made a discovery we have to build on it. There's no going back."
"We're done with science," Dolus said angrily. "It's part of the past, like the Age of Technology. It brought only grief!"
"It wasn't the science or the knowledge itself that was bad," Lenarchus argued. "Besides, there are many kinds of science! I'm exploring something new, something that they may not have understood two hundred years ago, even at a time when they had reduced space to nothing! Don't you ever feel sorry that we lost the power to fly and the knowledge to send men to the moon?"
"I'm only sorry that the Barbaric Ones wrecked our way of life by taking Savotar and the others from us," Dolus said. He picked up a bowl of translucent pottery, rich with the colors of the earth. "If I break this bowl, I can make another," he said. "But nothing can replace these lost years waiting for our loved ones to return."
"They'll come back!" Lara Avara said, jumping to her feet. "I know they will!" Until the words were spoken, she hadn't known this was true. But suddenly she was so sure they would come back that she felt she had to convince the others. "We should go on the Summer Journey so that we are there to meet them when they come!"
Lara Avara's confident words fell like a spark on dry tinder.
"With no babies, and even the littlest ones able to walk a long way, it seems right to go," Eran said eagerly.
"We have a plentiful supply of mealbread on hand," Desmona said. "And the gardens are planted and weeded."
"It's been a good spring. There's no shortage of grass for the goats," Farula added.
Suddenly everyone was eager to go to the Far Northland, but the prospect of the Journey did not quite eradicate the rift between Lenarchus and the rest. Only Robert had stood by him, but Lara Avara knew that Lenarchus also counted on her.
"Your intervention made the Journey possible," he said, smiling to her as they walked back to the village from the meadow. Two of the little ones darted between them. They were running everywhere, exuberant over the news that they were going on a Journey. "It shouldnlt surprise me, Lara Avara," Lenarchus continued. "You are joined with me in my Searching, though I haven't asked for your help for a long time. Maybe because your thoughts are somewhere else these days!" He looked over at Robert, smiling, and Lara Avara felt herself blush. Without waiting for an answer, he asked, "Have you noticed how they tie the invasion by the Barbaric Ones to my Searching, but hardly give me credit for Robert's coming? Some of them pretend he's always been here. And I must admit, he makes it easy for them to believe that, mostly because he would like to believe it himself."
"It's not fair of them to blame you for the Barbaric Ones," Lara Avara broke in.
"Someday they will thank my Searching for the return of our people," Lenarchus said confidently. "I am sure I can reach them in the Circle of Time. My power is always stronger there. That's why we must go back to the Circle. We'll clear away the weeds as we have other years, and we'll plant flowers where Aetherix lies. Within that Circle I'll have help from those who have gone before us. These stones affirm the bond of all humanity—past, present, and future. There are rocks and boulders scattered all over the land, but only those stones, because they were taken and shaped and placed in a pattern that we recognize, tell us that thousands of years ago people were struggling to find order and meaning in life. And they will help us in our search for order, for we are all, each one of us, part of these former times as much as we are part of the future."
The next day, Lara Avara saw Robert sitting outside the milking shed sketching some young goats. She told him about her conversation with Lenarchus, but perhaps she didn't get his words right because Robert just laughed.
"Lenarchus reminds me of my grandfather," he said. "Not in looks—I can't picture Grandfather in a tunic and cloak! But he had a mind of his own, and more belief than other people. He used to tell me about the power of the stones, how once every hundred years or so, the stones move closer to the sea. Strange things happened if you saw the stones move."
"Do you still think about going back?" Lara Avara whispered. She was fearful of what Robert's answer might be, but the question couldn't go unasked forever.
"It would need to be a powerful reason to take me away from you, Lara Avara," Robert said, smiling into her eyes. "Or from my painting!"
At that moment, Tinodes came out of the goat shed, but by some trick of the light he didn't look like himself at all. He was dressed in heavy clothing, his face rugged with a thrusting jaw, his hair close cropped. He spoke roughly to Robert. Then Lara Avara saw that Robert looked different too, and he was holding some sort of heavy metal tool. The scene shifted slightly, rippling like the surface of a pond stirred by a sudden breeze. Now Tinodes and Robert were talking together about something as ordinary as a new painting for the Learning House. Lara Avara tried to recapture how they had looked the moment before, but all she could remember was the expression in Robert's eyes. Empty, sad. Had she been . . . Searching? Had she glimpsed Robert in that other time, with a metal tool instead of a pencil in his hand?

SEVENTEEN
The morning of the Journey arrived, a morning of bright sunshine, heralding a perfect summer day. Everyone had gathered in the meadow by the river. Those children who had been not long out of the Learning House four years ago were now as tall as the adults; the little ones looked like the wading birds at the edge of the holding pond, leggy and fidgety. Most of their tunics were too short, but a few had inherited clothes left behind by the captives, and these were too long. Looking around, Lara Avara realized Robert wasn't there. She went racing up through the village and headed toward Alloperla's cottage. Just as she had expected, he was working on a canvas.
"They're all waiting for you, Robert!" she said impatiently. "They want you to tell the little ones the story of the Lost Ones before we leave."
"Why me?" Robert asked. "You or Kartan or Andrena can tell it better than I can."
"You haven't done much else to help get ready for the Journey," Lara Avara pointed out. "And you don't spend enough time in the Learning House. You think only of your painting!"
"You're the one who gets angry when anyone tells us what to do and doesn't respect our right to choose," Robert answered mildly. But he cleaned his brushes and picked up his bundle, which was waiting by the door. Apparently he hadn't completely forgotten about the Journey.
The little ones were sitting under the chestnut tree. Robert sat down in their midst and plunged into the story. "Perhaps this is the year we'll find the Lost Ones," he began. "They'll come to us at sunset, their boat riding silently on the dark water. In the prow stands a young girl, her hair blowing in the wind. The last rays of the sun turn her dark, tangled hair to reddish gold. She has seen our land in her dreams, so she can guide the boat safely past the offshore islands and between the jagged rocks at the mouth of the bay. Even in the dark of night, she knows our land awaits her."
"Will Savotar and Nemourah be with her?" Nephi asked.
"No, they aren't Lost Ones," Robert answered with a smile.
"That's a different story!" another of the children said.
"It's sad to think that those we love have become only another story in the minds of our children," Dolus said, his broad face thoughtful.
Then Andrena began to sing, and they set off into the woods. The early part of the Journey wasn't as easy as Lara Avara remembered it. The paths were overgrown.
They had to detour around fallen trees and look for new places to ford swollen streams. When they reached the Crossing Place, however, the tide was low, and they were able to cross without waiting. Nephi followed close behind Lara Avara, the water reaching his knees. He stepped on the back of her heel at every other step. She turned around to tell him to be more careful, but when she saw his serious face, she remembered how she used to be afraid that if she didn't place her foot exactly in the footstep of the person ahead, she would be caught in the treacherous sand and sink.
"We're more than halfway across," she said, smiling encouragingly. "We're through the deepest part."
The little ones fell silent, their dark eyes round with wonder when they saw the buildings of Norsea. They followed Lenarchus up the steps of the old City Hall, listening solemnly to everything he said. They should be scrambling up and down playing hide-and-seek, Lara Avara was thinking. Norsea had changed—or perhaps they had changed, in spite of trying so hard to preserve their ways.
Lara Avara was glad when it was time to leave the empty city, except that traveling on took them nearer the Circle of Time. The Circle of stone giants waiting for them to come. They reached the dark rhododendron woods, and uneasy memories crowded Lara Avara's mind—the mystery of seeing Jennifer; the men digging Aetherix's grave; the Barbaric Ones shattering the evening peace with violence; meeting Kartan and Robert after they had been to that other time. She shivered, feeling the coldness of the mist in her mind. Anxiously, she looked for Robert. With a feeling of relief, she saw him up ahead, walking with Farula and Eran. They were all laughing and talking together, apparently unmoved by the atmosphere of the forest. Eran and Farula were both taller than Robert, and Farula wore her hair braided and coiled over her ears the way Nemourah used to. Lara Avara, with her hair loose like that of the younger children, admired Farula's poise and grace.
Dodging around several of the younger ones, Lara Avara caught up with her friends and stayed with them the rest of the way to the Circle. The place was more ordinary than she had expected, the stones smaller, diminished by the tangled growth that surrounded them. Dolus expressed dismay at the amount of work they would need to do, but the little ones immediately began to pull up weeds and vines. They were excited to be in this place they had heard about so often but couldn't remember.
The older children cleared the encroaching vines from Aetherix's grave and planted flowers there. Then they attacked the forest of young saplings that had invaded the rest of the Circle. When they saw the difference they were making, they began to look forward to the Ceremony. Lenarchus was the only one who didn't share in the work. Wrapped in his gray cloak, he sat at the edge of the Circle, so still that he could have been mistaken for one of the stones.
Lara Avara and Farula were working side by side. "We should have brought the goats!" Farula said, straightening up to ease her back. "They'd have enjoyed this!"
"Then we could leave them here as caretakers," Lara Avara suggested.
"Mara wouldn't let them stay so far from home!" Farula giggled.
They spent the night on the beach in the cave formed by the overhang of the cliff. Though they had worked hard clearing the Circle, sleep was slow in coming, and now most of them sat together talking quietly. Gentle waves lapped the shore as the late-setting sun washed the world with golden light. A small band of sandpipers, each mirrored in the wet sand, followed the receding waves, dancing to an unheard tune. Despite the peace of the evening, the Barbaric Ones had left their mark here, for it was in this cave four years ago that the prisoners had been held. And it was here that Robert had swum to the boats, and so the story was told again.
"Are we waiting for the seals to bring Savotar back?" Nephi asked.
"Perhaps it's time that we did something more than wait," Kartan said, frowning slightly. "We've done nothing but wait for so long."
"That's why we are here!" Lenarchus said, his voice ringing out, disturbing the sandpipers on the shore. They rose in a small cloud and then settled again farther along the beach beyond a rock. "Perhaps I can reach our people in my Searching the way I once reached the children from the past. Didn't you feel the vibrations in the stones when we were working there? Almost as if the fallen stones were trying to rise from the ground. I know that I was close to our people today and that they are reaching out to us."
"You're experimenting with something that is too powerful for us to deal with," Desmona said, her voice shrill. "One lesson we can learn from history is that each discovery was like a two-edged sword that could be turned against the very people who thought they had mastered it. Suppose the one you reach is Savotar, and you bring him back here, leaving the rest of the captives without his guidance. They might even be blamed for his escape. Let these things alone that are beyond our understanding. I tell you, we are far better to rely only on ourselves and to hold to our belief in love and trust."
"If only you would trust me, Desmona," Lenarchus said sadly. He walked out of the cave back to the Circle of Time to continue his lonely vigil.
A week later, the Circle was cleared and the plans completed for the Ceremony.
"We can hold it tomorrow and then return to Kelso," Desmona suggested.
"That's too soon!" Lenarchus answered sharply. "We must give our people longer to get here."
The children all sided with Lenarchus, not because they shared his certainty that the captives would return, but because they were enjoying camping out and playing on the beach now that the work was done.
Dolus suggested a compromise. "Before we hold the Ceremony, let's climb the hill that overlooks the sea to the south and east. From there, we can look out toward the Great Mainland where our people are living now. Although we can't see the land, it is important that the children see the stretch of ocean that separates us from our people. The children mustn't forget them."
The following morning, Lenarchus slipped out of the cave before dawn. When the others were ready to set off on the climb, Robert announced that he was going to stay behind to paint a picture of the stones. Although he hadn't said anything the previous evening, Lara Avara knew that he was unhappy with the others for not listening to Lenarchus. Now she suspected that Robert was staying behind to be with Lenarchus. And if they were planning to try to reach the captives through the power of the Circle, Lara Avara wasn't going to be left out. She would stay behind too.
"Please come with us, Lara Avara!" Mara begged. "You're good with the little ones."
Lara Avara shook her head. "I'll decorate the stones for the Ceremony," she promised.
"And I'm going to collect driftwood on the beach for the evening fire," Kartan said.
Lara Avara looked at him sharply. Was he staying because she was?
"Let's go now before everyone has found an excuse to remain here!" Desmona said, shepherding the little ones out of the cave. "You and Robert can help us up the cliff path, Lara Avara."
So they climbed the path together, but at the top Lara Avara and Robert parted from the others and walked to the Circle. It was strangely quiet with only the two of them there. The silence made Lara Avara uneasy. No birds sang in the trees; no wind rustled the dry leaves. The only sound was the distant beat of the surf. She gathered a bouquet of rhododendron flowers and stood in the Circle, not quite sure what to do with them. The blooms were almost past, and the florets were falling, leaving the stamens bare. She laid them down and walked across the Circle to join Robert, who was sitting with his back to a stone, intent on his sketching after all.
She glanced at the drawing and saw that Robert had drawn a small child, a little girl wearing a pinafore and heavy boots, standing near one of the stones. Lara Avara looked up and saw that Lenarchus was kneeling in the spot where Robert had drawn the child. She frowned. She hadn't seen Lenarchus there until now. He was rocking gently back and forth, his eyes wide open but unseeing.
"Do you hear anything?" Robert asked, looking up.
"Nothing," Lara Avara answered. But perhaps she could hear a sound over the distant waves, a sound so faint that it might only have been imagined. "Could it be a child crying?" she asked.
"It's so lonely," Robert whispered. "I think the child is lost, but maybe Lenarchus can rescue her."
"Let's get away from here," Lara Avara said urgently.
She tugged at Robert's sleeve, but he paid no heed. His face was pale, almost sallow, and his eyes had a distant look.
"Listen!" he said.
They strained their ears, then were both startled when a shout splintered the silence. "Lara Avara! Robert! Where are you? Come quickly!"
Robert looked dazed for a moment, then jumped up, the remote look gone from  his eyes.  "That's Kartan's voice," he said. "Come on! He needs us!"
They ran from the Circle, crashing through the woods, answering the urgency in Kartan's voice. They found him alone on the top of the cliff, staring out at the sea. Following his gaze, they saw a boat rounding the headland. The boat turned and slid over the smooth water toward the shore. They watched in silence. The Barbaric Ones had returned.

EIGHTEEN
Sitting on the front steps of the bleak, square house where they had now lived for four years, Lona watched little Captive and the two Mainland children he was playing with. One dark head and two tousled gold heads bent close together, intent on a column of ants marching along an invisible road. Captive, the most curious of the trio, placed his finger across the road to see what would happen.
"Watch out! They might bite!" Lona warned.
She knew she was always too quick to offer the little boy advice. She almost lived his life for him these days. The Barbaric Ones were to blame for that because they had made her stay home with the child after he was born. They saw him as belonging only to her. At first, she had found it hard being isolated with her child, but now that Risa and Clover both had little ones, she rather liked it. She sometimes felt guilty that with Captive taking up her energy and thoughts, she no longer dreamed of Kelso as the others did. She had heard whispers of plans for escape, but where she had once been impatient, she now urged caution. She was against taking any risk that might put Captive in danger.
Hearing the whistle that marked the end of the working day on Slag Mountain, she called Captive to come and get ready for the evening Gathering. Risa and Clover had already gone up to the tower with their babies. But Captive didn't want to leave his friends, and so Lona decided to let him play. She'd have the soup hot and the table set when the others came home. They'd be pleased about that.
Savotar noticed Lena's absence from the Gathering and was troubled by it. Later, little Captive ran from him in shyness, burying his face in the skirts of one of the Mainland mothers. Nowadays, the child hardly even talked to Agus, Lena's pledge partner. Instead of making their exile from Kelso easier to bear, Captive made it harder. He also made Savotar see that they mustn't keep putting off their attempt to escape. It wasn't enough for them just to get together and talk about it—but there were so many ways the plan could go wrong.
That evening, Savotar sat in the barren, gray-walled dining room listening to the idle talk around him. It was mostly about home, and how this was the time for the Summer Journey. As he listened he could almost see the Circle of granite stones casting long shadows in the evening sun. He could even see Lenarchus between two stones, hunched inside his gray cloak. Savotar stood up and walked slowly across the Circle. Lenarchus looked up, and Savotar saw himself reflected in the old man's eyes.
"There's risk in changing things," Lenarchus said softly. "But without that risk, we become captives of our own fears—the most confining captivity of all."
"How can I know when the time is right?" Savotar asked.
"We are already here—waiting," Lenarchus answered as the gray walls closed in around Savotar again.
Savotar looked around, bewildered. Nemourah was still sewing, leaning toward the window to make the most of the fading light. Alloperla was wondering aloud if this year those left in Kelso had undertaken the Summer Journey.
"I know that they did," Savotar answered quietly. "They are at the Circle now, waiting for us to come. We must not disappoint them. Tomorrow I'll offer to work as a loader so that I can check out the final details of our plan."

Savotar swung a heavy sack of coal onto his shoulder and walked toward the train. He had never been this close to the machine before, and he sweated as much from nervousness as from the heat of the day. He thought about the furious noise of the engine as the train rattled past the tower each evening, intruding on their joy at the Gathering. He wondered if his people had the courage to carry out the plan. The fumes, smoke, and coal dust made it hard to breathe. He steadied the sack on his shoulder with one hand and grasped the rail of the ladder that was fixed to the side of the boxcar with the other. It was hard to pull himself up, holding on with only one hand, but he managed to mount the ladder and tip the coal into the cavernous depths of the boxcar. It would be easier to clamber up without the sack of coal.
That evening, while Chyra led the singing at the Gathering, Savotar and Nemourah sat in the midst of a small group, talking earnestly. Nick, the overseer, watched them, but was reassured to see that there were several Mainlanders in the group. He recognized the guard Dan and two women, Tina and Greta. But the next night, the group around Savotar was bigger, and the undercurrent of excitement more evident. Nick questioned a few of the guards, but they laughed at his suspicion.
"You won't find these people plotting an uprising," one of the guards said. "They're too spineless for that!"
But after listening to the fervor with which they sang the Homecoming Song that night, Nick went to see Leader Anton. He wasn't going to take any chances.
Anton was not a man to take chances either. He immediately revoked the right of the slag workers to hold any Gatherings.
The news broke like a summer thunderstorm coming out of a clear sky. The Mainlanders heard it first. They waited until after dark and then crept down to the old house beyond the slag heaps to spread the news.
"They've forbidden us to hold any more Gatherings!" Nemourah whispered to Alloperla, passing on the news she'd just heard from Dan. Her voice trembled as she added, "They must be suspicious. I wonder what they know."
"It has always worried me that we have had to include so many others in our plans," Alloperla said.
"What about trust?" Nemourah chided gently. "We have to trust our new friends. We should also trust Savotar. Maybe he is ready for this."
***
Nick was on the early shift the following morning. Everyone came to work on time. There seemed to be an unusual amount of talk, both among the workers and the guards. Nick supposed they were talking about the canceled Gathering. At least they didn't show any animosity. But that was the way with these people. The only thing that happened out of the ordinary that day for Nick was that Dan handed him a message in the middle of the afternoon telling him that his daughter was ill. His wife wanted him to come home. Nick put Dan in charge and left immediately.
Almost everyone on Slag Mountain watched Nick leave.
Once Nick was gone, people began to work harder, hurrying to fill their sacks. They were, perhaps, a little less careful than usual, throwing slag as well as coal into the bags. Alloperla measured her sack, and finding it almost full, swung it onto her shoulder. Then she walked down the mountain, across a stretch of barren ground, and around the back of the coal train. She paused, looking up and down the length of the train. She had expected that someone would be there to help her. She hurriedly dumped the sack of coal in the weeds beyond the tracks, hoping it wouldn't be noticed. Then she counted the boxcars, stopping at number thirteen, right in the middle of the train. She tucked the dirty sack into her belt, so as to have her hands free, and then climbed the ladder up the side of the boxcar. She swung herself over the top, and dropped down inside, helped by eager hands. Panchros was already there. He rushed forward and hugged her.
"I'm glad that's over!" she said breathlessly. "I've never been so afraid!"
"The worst part is still ahead," Panchros warned. "The waiting!"
They could only see the sky above their heads. The heavy sides of the boxcar excluded all sound. They had no way of knowing what was going on outside.
The day seemed even longer to Lona in car eleven. Early that morning, before the Mainlanders were up, the three young mothers had taken their little ones for a walk. They often took the children out to enjoy the freshness of a new morning, before the sky was dimmed by smoke. The difference this morning was that they followed the railway track instead of going into the woods. Even stranger, though fortunately there was nobody about to notice, they didn't come back. They climbed the ladder of the eleventh boxcar and lowered themselves and the little ones down inside.
At first, they were buoyed up with excitement. "It's like the first morning of the Summer Journey," Risa whispered.
But as the day wore on, Lona found it hard to keep Captive quiet. The two babies were content just being held, but Captive grew bored. He began to run up and down the car, laughing at the echoing sound of his feet. Lona grabbed him. "The Barbaric Ones will find us if you don't keep quiet!" she said in a fierce whisper. Just then, a cascade of coal showered down into the car.
"Something's gone wrong with the plan," Risa said.
"Or someone miscounted," Clover suggested.
Some of their fear communicated itself to Captive. He played quietly with pieces of coal, arranging them in patterns on the dirty floor.
The hours were passing just as slowly for Savotar out on Slag Mountain. He was afraid that someone would notice their thinning ranks before the day's end. Most of the Mainlanders supervising this shift were their friends. A number of them were actually going with his people to Kelso, but Savotar wondered about some of the others. He constantly reminded himself that nothing could be accomplished without trust.
When the final whistle of the day sounded, there were not many workers to put down tools. They straggled down the hillside, singly and in pairs. Savotar dodged behind the train, and walked the length of it, swinging himself up into the engine compartment. His heart missed a beat when he saw the engineer and coalman, then he recognized them as friends. They came regularly to the evening Gathering. Both were slim, with brown skin. It was easy to believe that they were descendants of the Lost Ones when they wore gray tunics and cloaks to the Gathering, but today, clad in the uniforms of their jobs, they looked like Mainlanders.
"We're ready," Savotar said, his shaking voice betraying his nervousness. "Will we be going soon?"
"Not before the usual time," the engineer answered. "We don't want to do anything to arouse suspicion. Anton did us a favor by canceling the Gathering. Otherwise they'd have wondered what was in the wind when no one turned up this evening. Now, it may be tomorrow before they miss you, and there'll be nothing to connect you with this train leaving for the north coast."
In spite of the sense behind these words, Savotar could hardly wait until the men finally went about the business of breathing life into the great machine. They moved levers and turned valves. They studied dials. They shoveled coal. Watching them, Savotar almost understood how people could grow to love machines. One did so very little, and in return, the machine did so much! This machine could give them freedom, speeding them away so quickly that Anton could not follow. Savotar wondered if these Mainlanders would miss their machines in Kelso. Perhaps giving up a machine was like giving up freedom. Once you were used to it, you couldn't do without it.
These thoughts were jarred right out of Savotar's mind when the train started. The engine shuddered as it roared to life, and everything around him shook and rattled. It must be worse for those inside the boxcars, he thought. They must feel trapped. At least he could look ahead and see the iron rails that beckoned them on their first step to freedom.
For the people in the boxcars, the night seemed to last forever. Just before dawn, the train reached the north coast, the end of the line. No one seeing the dazed, frightened people who scrambeld down the vertical ladders to the platform would have recognized this as a daring escape. They stood in small, bewildered groups, their bodies so used to the lurching motion of the train that stillness and silence now seemed something to fight against. They gulped the tangy, salt air, and a little courage seeped back into them. They could tell they were close to the sea.
"Where are the men who were to help us?" Savotar asked Tina anxiously. She had arranged for her cousins, two fishermen here in the north, to provide boats. Sometimes Savotar felt that his trust didn't quite match up to Tina's. She seemed to believe these cousins of hers would do anything for her.
"They'll be with the boats," she answered. "We're to meet them on the dock. We should get over there quickly before the workers arrive here to unload the coal."
Savotar had no need to urge people to hurry. They picked up their small bundles, mostly containing meal-bread for the journey, and ran silently through the deserted streets. Relief flooded through Savotar when he saw two old fishing boats tied up beside the dock, dark against the now lightening sky. Two young men, with black hair and sallow skins, greeted Tina with affection. They solemnly shook hands with Savotar and all the rest in turn.
When the boats finally put out to sea, the tension drained out of Savotar. After being cooped up in the boxcars, the fresh air and physical work were a relief. But as day gave way to night, and night to day again, he sensed a feeling of unease among his people. Some were even beginning to question the wisdom of bringing so many Mainlanders with them to Kelso. There were close to thirty Mainlanders, and they spoke as if more would follow.
"Everything is going to be different when we get back to Kelso," Alloperla complained.
"Perhaps we need change even there," Nemourah answered softly. "Our people are all like one another, like smooth pebbles on the beach, with no rough edges. Do you remember the Crossing Place and the sinking sand? The reason the sand gives way under our feet is because each grain of sand is smooth and rolls against the next. It is the rough edges that give sand strength. We will find that is also true of ourselves. These Mainlanders will give us strength. Together we will build the future."
The sound of high singing voices drifted across the water from the other boat. Chyra picked up her harp and began to play. Soon everyone—the Kelso people and the Mainlanders—-joined their voices in the Homecoming Song.

NINETEEN
Kartan, Robert, and Lara Avara watched as the boat slid over the smooth water toward the shore. Another boat rounded the headland, but by now the prow of the first boat was slicing the sand. People jumped out into the shallow water, hitching up their cloaks to keep them from getting wet. They threw their bundles ahead onto the beach.
"Panchros! Alloperla!" Kartan shouted, recognizing his Chosen Ones even from that distance. "You have come back at last!"
He went scrambling down the path to the beach. Lara Avara and Robert followed.
Perhaps this is only a dream, Lara Avara cautioned herself as she ran. The soft sand slowed her pace so that she felt like a runner in a dream. Then shouts of welcome and happy voices rang out like music. Nemourah, tears of joy running down her smooth cheeks, was one of the first to reach them. This was just how Lara Avara had pictured it.
But at the last minute, Lara Avara checked her headlong rush into Nemourah's arms. Immediately behind Nemourah was a bearded man and a golden-haired girl. Although they were wearing gray cloaks, they were unmistakably Barbaric Ones.
"Lara Avara!" Nemourah was saying. "It has been so long—and to think that you are waiting here to greet us! For a moment, I didn't know you. You have grown so tall and beautiful!"
"These people—" Lara Avara said, looking past Nemourah's shoulder.
"They are the Lost Ones! We found the Lost Ones!"
"They're Barbaric Ones," Lara Avara protested, her voice rising in fear. "Why are they here? Have they come to take the rest of us away?"
"They've come as friends, Lara Avara," Nemourah said gently. "These are the children's children of the Lost Ones. We found them among the Barbaric Ones, and they have come to join us."
"But they're not like us!"
Lara Avara would have said more, but she was now surrounded by chattering people, several of these Barbaric-looking Ones among them. They were talking to her in her tongue, but colored with the harsh accent of their own language. They were even calling her by name. Then she saw Savotar smiling down at her.
"How wonderful that you are here to welcome us!" he said. "This is how I knew it would be! But where is everyone else? Are they all right?"
"They're up on the hill looking for you," Lara Avara said. "I'm sure they're looking in the wrong direction, for we didn't expect to find you here on the beach!"
Savotar laughed, and the tension drained from Lara Avara.
When the other boat reached the shore, it seemed as if there could be no end to the excitement and confusion. Lara Avara was astonished to see Lona leading a small boy through the shallow water, then she noticed that two other women carried babies. Four years had brought changes that she hadn't thought about in all her imaginings.

Farula and Nephi, laughing and out of breath, were the first to reach the top of the hill. Below them they could see the glittering reflection of the morning sun on the water. Traveling along the path of the sun, approaching the land, were two boats, small in the vastness of the sea.
They checked their laughter. "Is it the Lost Ones?" Nephi asked, looking up at Farula with dark, questioning eyes.
Farula didn't answer. Instead she called to Tinodes and Desmona to come quickly. They scrambled up the slope and stood beside her, watching the boats in silence. Soon everyone had reached the top of the hill, but only the very youngest were sure that the Lost Ones had come. The others had learned caution. The boats were turning into their bay. Desmona's thoughts were immediately with Kartan, Robert, and Lara Avara.
"We must hurry back down," she said urgently. "There's no time to waste. We must warn them about those boats. . . ."
But before they even reached the bottom of the hill, they heard music. The music of Chyra's harp, and the high voices of their own people singing the Homecoming Song! They all tumbled down the steep cliff path, so excited that they scarcely took time to help the little ones. "Savotar! Nemourah! Lona!" Their shouts of welcome drowned out the song.
The little ones were shy at first but then they crowded around Captive, who was glad to find new friends. He had been missing the little Mainlanders. The children struck up an immediate friendship with Tina but were somewhat in awe of Greta with her golden hair.
People laughed when Lara Avara had to introduce Farula and Eran to Nemourah.
"You have grown so tall, Farula!" Nemourah exclaimed. "And you, Eran, must have been eating all those good things you've been making in the Cooking House!" With a twinkle in her eyes, she added, "I think we'll be hearing about pledge partners soon!"
Lara Avara remembered how Nemourah always knew things without having to be told. She hoped she wasn't going to make any teasing remarks about her and Robert. She looked around, suddenly uneasy, wondering where Robert was. She couldn't see him anywhere. Then, looking back up the beach, she saw a child, standing on a lip of grass at the edge of the cliff. Robert was scrambling up the cliff path, but before he reached the top someone snatched the child from behind and pulled her to safety. Lara Avara breathed a sigh of relief. The little one could easily have fallen. Laughter and chatter still hummed all around her, but she felt detached from the excitement.
"We've cleared the Circle for the Summer Ceremony,"
Kartan was saying to Savotar proudly. "What a wonderful Ceremony it's going to be!"
"We'll hold it today," Savotar answered. "There will be many tales to tell!"
Lara Avara could see the Gathering in the Circle of Time as clearly as if it were actually happening; Savotar in the center of the Circle, the focus of all their eyes as he told about his adventures in Mainland and how he had brought his people safely home; she and Lenarchus sitting together, a little apart from the others. But where was Robert? She looked around the imagined Gathering and knew she wouldn't find him.
Lara Avara came back to the present, the noise, the shouting, the laughter. Lona was waving to her, and Chyra was singing a plaintive song about some place called Slag Mountain. But Lara Avara could think only of Robert. She went running up the beach and then crashed through the trees, knowing that she was racing against time itself.
When she reached the Circle, she was afraid that she was too late, the mist hung in so close. Then she made out three figures—Robert, Lenarchus, and a little girl. The child was very young, hardly old enough to walk. She was dressed in a coarsely woven brown dress and a white pinafore stained with berry juice. Her mouth was also red with juice, her face smeared with tears, and her brown hair was tangled.
"Who is she?" Lara Avara asked Robert. "What's she doing here?"
"Lenarchus found her—she's just a child. She must have been lost near the stones, and her belief that someone would find her was so strong that she got caught up in Lenarchus's Searching. We've been waiting for you, Lara Avara, because I'm going to take her back, and we need you to help us."
"No!" Lara Avara said, and was surprised by the harshness of her own voice. "There's too much at stake, Robert! If you go with her, you might not get back here again."
Somewhere at the edge of Lara Avara's mind she heard the sound of music—the Homecoming Song. The others were coming up from the beach to celebrate the Summer Ceremony. Lara Avara had only to delay Robert for a few minutes and all their people would burst into the Circle, shattering the fragile link that Lenarchus had established with the past. "You can't go now, Robert," she said. "The Lost Ones have come. All our people are together—Alloperla and Panchros, your Chosen Ones, have returned. Think what you can learn from them!"
But the reminder of Chosen Ones he had never known wasn't enough. "Please help us, Lara Avara," he begged. "It takes three of us—three of us with belief—to complete the circle. The little one may be too young to understand what to do, but if she stays here she becomes a Lost One too."
Lara Avara looked down at the child, still sniffing and hiccupping. She was so young that she'd soon forget. She could easily become one of their people, especially now when they were welcoming these Mainlanders. The child looked up, stretching out a chubby hand to reach the gold chain that Lara Avara always wore around her neck. The chain reminded Lara Avara of Jennifer—Jennifer who wanted only her own time. She looked at the small girl again, her sturdy legs scratched with the purple heather of a distant moor. Then her eyes met Robert's. She stood there, with the stone behind her, tears running down her cheeks, and her pleading words remained unspoken.
She held out her hand. The little one was so cold that Lara Avara took off her own cloak and wrapped the whimpering child in it. Then she knelt down, and with her arms still around the child, she began to dig in the soft earth, groping for a fallen stone. Robert and Lenarchus were both clawing out the dirt, as if scraping away the layers of time. Lara Avara felt the cold, the silence, the emptiness of the mist. She was battered by sound; she was battered by silence. The little one pressed against her. When Lara Avara opened her eyes, the place was familiar. The vastness of the moor, the great shoulder of the mountain, the purple of the heather, the starkness of the Circle of Time—she had seen them all before. And then she saw a stranger. She shrank back into the shadow of the stone as he came toward her.
But the man had eyes only for the child. He knelt down and shook her gently. "Where have you been wandering, lass?" he crooned. "Where have you been?"
The little girl opened her eyes and laughed up at the man, her trusting blue eyes reflecting his joy. The man burst into song, and the laughter and the song became part of a louder laughter, a more joyous song. Lara Avara was back in the midst of her own people, who were gathering together to celebrate the Summer Ceremony.
She was bewildered by the size of the crowd. Kartan and Farula waved to her, wanting her to join them, but she remained crouched against a stone, searching among all those faces for the one face she feared she would not find. Her heart raced when a youth with dark, curly hair smiled at her, but he was one of the Mainlanders. Then Lenarchus appeared at her side. Without words passing between them, she knew that he was grieving for Robert too.
There were other griefs, as well as joy, shared at the Ceremony. The deaths of Vianah and Merrid. Then the talk centered on how it would be when they got back to Kelso. The Lost Ones—as the Kelso people were learning to call them—sounded as if they already knew Kelso. The girl called Greta wanted Dolus to help her make a slender vase. "With a design in blue, like Nemourah's favorite vase," she said.
"With more people in Kelso, we'll need a bigger kiln," Dolus said cheerfully. "There's a place where we can get good clay, but it has been too far to take the little ones."
They couldn't wait to set out for Kelso, saying that until they held a Gathering in the meadow by the river, they wouldn't really be home. Desmona and Eran were already discussing the Homecoming Feast. Dolus wanted to design new bowls, but Nemourah said they couldn't wait for that.
Lara Avara wrapped herself in silence and plodded through the woods, while others skipped and ran. She didn't walk alone, however. Kartan was at her side, sharing her loneliness for Robert.
"The others haven't even missed him," she said bitterly.
"Ah, but they have!" Kartan answered with a laugh. "Desmona was the first to notice that Robert was gone. Hearing that he left us exactly when Savotar returned with the Lost Ones, she now gives Lenarchus the credit for putting everything right—for finding the Lost Ones and bringing back the captives—restoring the pattern. Even Savotar, with his tales of adventure in another land, doesn't have the standing Lenarchus and you have, Lara Avara!"
Lara Avara didn't respond to Kartan's light-hearted tone. "If only I could know what happened to Robert," she said. "I didn't see him in that other time—he wasn't there—only the child and the man. . . ."

They had reached Norsea. Everyone had expected the Lost Ones to be eager to explore the ruined city, but they wanted only to hurry on to Kelso. To them, Norsea was no more than Colburg without the people.
"There's something I want to show you, Lara Avara," Kartan said. He sounded more hesitant than eager. "Do you remember the picture we looked at years ago? I said then that the girl reminded me of someone. . . ."
They went into the library with its dank, musty smells. When Kartan crossed the room and pulled out a heavy drawer, the memory of the last time was so sharp—Aetherix full of life and laughter—that tears came to Lara Avara's eyes. Kartan opened the huge book.
With startled recognition, Lara Avara stared at the picture. A painting of a young woman with long, black hair. She was standing beside a tall stone and was partly hidden by a swirling mist that seemed to be seeping out of the stone. A small gold cross on a chain around her neck glinted against her brown skin. Lara Avara's fingers automatically clutched the cross Jennifer had given her. She looked at Kartan with wide, questioning eyes.
"Who painted it?" she asked. "What's it doing here?"
"The book tells a bit about the pictures," Kartan answered. "It was painted by Robert Guthrie, who was a famous artist toward the end of the twentieth century."
"Then he did get back to his own time, and he took his love of painting with him. He followed his Choosing, even in that other time!"
"And he took you with him too, Lara Avara!" Kartan said, smiling.
Lara Avara stared at the painting, stared at her own face looking back through the mists of time. Robert had not forgotten her, and she would never forget him.
They caught up with the others at the Grossing Place, and now Lara Avara shared in their excitement as she listened to the swirl of chatter all around.
"I want Kartan to teach me to paint," said a bearded man whose name Lara Avara had not yet learned.
"And I hope Desmona will teach me to cook," Tina said.
Lara Avara felt as if Tina's words closed the gap of four years. Here they were talking about Choosing again! But there was no more time for talking. The notes of the Homecoming Song were spilling out from Chyra's fingers as she played her harp. Everyone began to sing. Savotar beckoned to Lenarchus to lead the way down to the shallow water at the Crossing Place. Lara Avara and Kartan ran to find a place close behind the leader, the way they always had when they were younger.
Lenarchus was waiting for Lara Avara. "You must follow in the steps of your Chosen One," he said. Then he added with a laugh, "They want us to lead the way back to Kelso. That's quite a mantle of fame for us to wear— and you without even a cloak!"
When they reached the other side, Lara Avara looked back at the long, wavering column of people. She saw all the people she loved—Kartan, Farula, Eran, Nemourah. And she saw new faces—Tina, Greta, and others she didn't know yet. Threads from the past had brought them all together, and now they would weave a new pattern more bright and wonderful than any before.

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Margaret J. Anderson completes her picture of a 22nd-century world with The Mists of Time. She was born in Scotland, where these books are set, and graduated from the University of Edinburgh with honors in genetics. She now lives in Corvallis, Oregon, with her husband, a professor of entomology at Oregon State University. They have four children.