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being like a small stubborn flame that would not go out.

    Skimmer season arrived again, more terrifying than ever before. The beasts flew over Weld in such numbers that the walls and roofs of the dark, sealed houses seemed to vibrate with the sound of their passing. It was very hot, and there were wild tales of folk who had run mad in their stifling rooms, throwing open their windows and taking great gulps of night air before skimmers overwhelmed them.
    As Sholto had predicted, attacks became morefrequent in Southwall, especially in the streets near Joliffe’s home. Deaths were now so commonplace that they were barely noted except by those close to the people who had been lost.
    The Warden’s skimmer warning signs had gone up on every corner as usual, but no one touched them. The citizens of Southwall had lost the taste for protest, it seemed.
    “And there have been no more riots, in Northwall or anywhere else,” Lisbeth said one evening when the house had been sealed as tightly as a jar of bell fruit preserves, and she and Rye had sat down to eat. “That is something to be grateful for, at least.”
    Rye nodded absently. That afternoon, he had counted the buckets of skimmer repellent remaining in the storeroom. He thought there was enough repellent left to last until the end of the present season. But what of the next?
    Sholto will be back before then, he told himself.
    But a few days later, he came home from school to find Lisbeth wearing two gold flower badges instead of one. Lying on the table was the scroll bearing the Warden’s seal and declaring that Sholto was officially regarded as lost.
    “Do not believe it, Mother!” Rye cried fiercely. “Sholto is not dead! And neither is Dirk!”
    Perhaps Lisbeth had wept when the Warden’s letter first arrived, but she was tearless now. She shook her head and turned away.
    “Stop hoping, Rye,” she said. “We have our home, and we have each other. Let that be enough.”
    That night, Rye dreamed more vividly than ever.
    He saw Dirk crawling through a dark, narrow space, his face blackened and running with sweat. He saw Sholto sitting in what appeared to be a cave, writing furiously in a notebook. He saw vast, scaled bodies beating water to foam. He saw monstrous feathered shadows flying through cloud. He saw the trunks of trees melting into the shapes of men and women with hair that flew around their heads like flames.
    And rising above the rhythmic pounding sound that he had learned to expect, there were harsh cries and the deep, vibrating music of a vast bell or gong.
    He woke, shaking, in the darkness and stayed awake till dawn. It was far better to lie listening to the skimmers than to risk dreaming again.
    He left home at his usual time, but he did not go to school. Instead, obeying an impulse he could not really explain, he went to the house of Tallus the healer.
    No patients were waiting. A scrappy note had been pinned to the door of the healer’s office.

    Rye ventured down the hallway and hesitated outside the workroom door.
    He had not seen Tallus face-to-face since, as a small child, he had fallen from Dirk’s back and dislocated his shoulder. He had never forgotten the experience.
    “See this, young Rye?” Tallus had barked, pulling at the fluff of white hair that ringed his bald scalp. “Once it was as red as yours. Can you believe that?”
    Openmouthed, Rye had shaken his head, for a moment quite forgetting the pain in his shoulder.
    “Red hair means luck, they say,” Tallus had said. “Luck — and other things.”
    For some reason, he had then glanced at Rye’s mother, who had looked worried and shaken her head, very slightly.
    “But white hairs,” Tallus had gone on smoothly, “mean old age. And as you can see, I am very old indeed. If you can count the red hairs I have left on my head, you will know how many years I have to live. Will you do that for me? I should like to know.”
    And while Rye, fascinated, was trying to find even one