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had had to go. To exist once more.

    That, and the killing. It had shocked her deeply. In those terrible last moments, she had looked at the Wildman and seen on his face and in his colors, in the pulsing reds shivering into orange, a terrible ecstasy of killing joy.
    She didn't blame him. If she blamed anyone, she blamed herself: for not speaking sooner, for not knowing the Wildman better, for provoking the fight—in sum, for seeing too much and doing too little. Her gift had brought no good to anyone. Better that she go.
    As the sun rose and cast her shadow long and thin before her, it struck her that this was how her mother must have felt, all those years ago, when she had run away from her husband and child to escape the darkness.
    Am I running away from the darkness?
    She followed the road into a dip in the land, at the bottom of which was a stream lined with willow trees. The stream had dried up, leaving its stony bed exposed to the light of the new day. At the point where the road intersected the stream, three large smooth boulders lay in a line: stepping-stones to carry travellers over the water, now beached by the drought. On the middle one of the three stepping-stones sat a small boy, his head in his hands, weeping.
    As the child became aware of her approach, he stopped snivelling. He peeped at her between his fingers. She advanced slowly, not wanting to frighten him.
    "Can I help you?" she said.
    "Lost," he replied.

    He was indescribably dirty. She guessed he was about six years old, but he was wearing the clothing of a grown man. The sleeves and waist and leggings were hitched up and tied with string.
    "Who are your people?"
    "Don't know."
    "How did you get lost?"
    "Don't know."
    He had stopped crying. His grimy cheeks were well smeared by the rubbing of his hands, but there was no sign of tears. His aura was a feeble muddy orange.
    He jumped off his boulder and held out one dirty little hand for her to take.
    "You look after me," he said.
    It was more a demand than a request. He had a sharp little face and long matted brown hair that kept falling across his eyes. Morning Star took his hand and felt the immediate tenacious clamp of his grip.
    "Come along," he said.
    He tugged at her, so she came along. They crossed the stream to the other side, then left the road to follow a faint path. For a lost child he seemed to be in a remarkable hurry.
    "Where are we going?"
    "Along," he said.
    She established his name, which as far as she could tell was Burny, but he did not ask for hers. He struck her as being very nervous. Nothing odd about that, given that he was a lost child, but it felt somehow out of place, or unexplained.

    The boy must have sensed her hesitation, because all at once he started to talk.
    "So I'm lost and you found me," he informed her. "I'm a lost child crying and that, and here we are, coming along."
    "Yes," said Morning Star, rather taken aback. "Here we are."
    "And you're holding my hand and that, and I'm the poor little kiddy you found lost and crying—"
    It seemed to strike him then that he wasn't crying, so he offered a few token whines as if to round out the picture. They had now left the road and the stream and the willows behind and were approaching a section of the old ruined wall that had once formed the boundary of a longforgotten kingdom. Where their path met the heaps of fallen stones, the way had been cleared so that travellers could pass unobstructed. On either side the remains of the wall rose up in broken mounds.
    Morning Star came to a stop. The child jerked on her arm, but she didn't move.
    "You'd better tell me, Burny."
    He started to cry. This time actual tears flowed.
    "I'm just a poor little kiddy," he wailed. "You found me lost and crying. You got to look after me." He gave a violent tug on her hand. "You got to come along. Just over there."
    "What's just over there, Burny?"
    "It's not fair," he wailed. "I said the words. I did the crying. It's not fair."

    "You did it all