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Then I walked for another long while before I realized I could see light,
somewhere up ahead.
First, I saw a faint gleam, like one of the stars that disappears when you
look straight at it. That grew brighter, then larger. The speck became a
glint, then a crevice of light. I kept walking. And came, at least, to the
doorway, where I could look out of the tunnel. I saw hills green hills, and
mountains beyond them and bright sunshine.
I stepped out onto the grass, still damp with dew, and stumbled almost
immediately. The world felt wrong around me or perhaps felt wrong. In that
first moment of confusion I wasn t sure. But I put out my hands to catch
I
myself, and realized that I couldn t see them.
Surely I am dead, I thought.
A ghost in the world.
I turned to look back. The tunnel was gone. Instead, I saw the city.
The city was set into a valley. From the hill I stood on, I could see it all
like a box of jewelry spilled onto a table.
The buildings glistened in the sun like pearls, but pearls of a hundred
different vivid colors. A path led down from where I was, and I started down
it.
Last winter, during my melancholia, Zivar had become convinced that if only we
ran fast enough, we would be able to fly this, she was certain, would cure me.
She d dragged me outside and made me run around in the snow before letting me
go back to bed. As I walked along the path, my recollection of that day came
back to me with a vivid force, and I started to run again, even though I was
barefoot. After a moment or two of running, I kicked off with a foot as if I
were pushing up from the bottom of a lake, and the air lifted me as water
would have.
I can fly.
Truly. Just as Zivar said&
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isters/Krit_0553902784_oeb_c16_r1.htm (1 of 11)5-1-2007 1:02:32
Freedom sSisters
Flying took no particular effort, as it turned out merely intention. I
probably hadn t needed a running start. I set myself toward the shimmering
flower garden of a city, and a short while later I soared over it, then down
into it, alighting like a bird on the roof of one of the tall buildings.
The buildings here were tall and narrow, as if they d been stretched out, and
the colors shimmered within the rocks themselves. The building I had lit upon
was blue, with an orange roof. I slid down to the edge and peered at the
street below. There were people here, and they looked like people. Tall, but
otherwise fairly ordinary, at least from above: black and dark brown hair,
tanned skin. No one looked up at me. I hesitated for a moment, then slid off
the edge and floated gently to the ground, landing in the street itself. No
one looked at me. They passed quickly, busy with their own errands. They all
had a faint shimmer, I decided, just like their buildings. Perhaps the shimmer
was in my eyes and not my surroundings. And I saw the eyes of a woman as she
passed. They weren t brown, like normal eyes, or even blue. They were red, and
with slitted pupils like a cat s. I recoiled, and for a moment her eyes
flicked toward me and I thought she would see me. But they looked right
through me, and she kept on.
I raised myself to my toes, then up into the air again, gliding over people s
heads. They couldn t see me, and that made me wonder if they also couldn t
touch me but I flinched at the thought of trying to stand still and let
someone walk into me, or through me. I skimmed along the edges of the
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buildings; I could smell the velvety scent of the red flowers that cascaded
from window boxes. When I hovered just outside a window, I could smell a
delicately earthy scent like rice cooking. I wondered if I could eat here. At
least I could smell.
I could hear their voices, too, but no words. Each voice I heard was
singing humming, really. Some of them seemed to be humming in harmony. Just a
few of the people in the streets seemed to be doing it; most were silent.
If this is the underworld, why is everyone else different from me?
If I am a ghost, why am I a ghost somewhere so strange?
The city was very strange: the brightly colored buildings and the oddly
colored eyes were the least of the strangeness. There were no horses here none
at all. There were large animals that looked a bit like oxen who pulled
wagons, and there were people who rode in the wagons, but no one rode astride
the oxen. The clothing was all as bright as the buildings: red, blue, green,
yellow. Dyes like that would cost a small fortune, but even the simplest
clothing seemed to be colored that way. Finally, when the sun went down, the
city didn t become as dark as it should have. In nearly every window, I could
see the soft glow of a steady white light, as if every person in this city
owned bottled moonlight and took it out as needed. I peered in windows, and
each household seemed to have a stone the size of my cupped hands that glowed
brightly, giving them light as they went about their business. The white
stones never stopped glowing; if someone wanted to go to sleep, they simply
tossed a black cloth over it to dampen the glow.
I stretched out on the roof of one of the buildings and stared up at the sky.
I felt no urge to sleep, no tiredness.
Well, that could just be the cold fever&
Or it could be this strange place. The moon was in the same phase as it was at
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