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and after that I found myself looking for her when I passed, found myself disappointed if a day went by without her quick eyes, her bright triangle of a face, there to greet me. I began to think of her, to wonder what had put her there, what stories she was hearing about the choices fate had left her. I began to think of ways to help her—a scholarship, new clothes, a bicycle. And then one day I had another thought.
    Why not a daughter of my own? Why not?
    My father’s house is gone now. I watched them tear it down, the machine taking large bites out of the rooms I had scrubbed so many times, the rooms that had held so much unhappiness and death. It was a relief to me, finally, when nothing remained. I find it fascinating to watch the process they follow to make these new high-rises, the steel girders and poured concrete, the bam-The Great Chain of Being
    17
    boo scaffolding alive with workers. These workers know it used to be my father’s house that stood here, and sometimes they take me inside and show me what they’re doing. I nod, impressed, listening to the echo of my footsteps in so many layers of empty space.
    Tonight it’s dusk, and the air is spilling over with sweetness from the flowers. I sit in the car, watching the workers move in the bright pools of light, thinking of the daughter who will come to live with me next week. I’ve prepared her room—new paint, a few toys—but I’ve kept it simple. She’ll fi ll it up herself, soon enough, with things that are her own. I like to think of that, my house filling up with the unexpected. In the same way, it pleases me to think of the new lives that will soon occupy this space.
    Hundreds of people will live here, and they will have no connection whatsoever with my future or my past.
    One by one the lights go out, the workers leave, and fi nally the last light flickers off and returns this building to the night. I start my car then, and pull out into traffic. It’s a clear night, full of stars, and I wonder for a moment which one of them my mother looked at on the day I was born. No destiny in that, only a bright wish, a continuity of light to light. Look at me now, hands on a wheel, driving myself to a place where no one else has lived, where only the future lies waiting. I am that light. I have no other destiny. I am Eshlaini, and history ends with me.

    Spring,
    Mountain,
    Sea
    When Rob Eldred came home in 1954 with his over-seas bride, it was already winter. They drove north from the city, through the fi rst fierce storm of the season, and the heavy snow seemed to fall invisibly through the roof of their new car, muffling their words and gestures until eventually they ceased to speak. Rob drove slowly and without stopping, fighting back a restless disappointment. The landscape he had dreamed of with such longing during his days in the navy had disappeared. In places the roads had been reduced by the storm to narrow lanes, and everywhere he looked the white fi elds faded into the pale horizon, the sea of white broken only occasionally by a bare tree, an isolated house, a stretch of metal fence.
    Even to Rob, who knew that the snow would give way to a spring of shimmering green fields and dark blue lakes, the place looked bleak and lonely. He stole glances at Jade Moon, who had pulled the collar of her red wool coat close around her neck, and whose dark eyes scanned the landscape as if seeking out a refuge.

    Spring, Mountain, Sea
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    That winter in upstate New York was especially harsh, and Rob Eldred would always remember it as the most diffi cult season of his life. Although Jade Moon had grown up in a village where snow drifted high over the thatched roofs and closed the roads for months at a time, during that first winter in her new country she could never get warm. Their house was small and set into a hill, protected from the worst of the wind, yet even so Rob was always turning up the central heat as far as it would go.
    He would come home from work,