47

"An' why couldn't we bring our real bodies here?" I asked.

"Because if I spent the rest of my life trying to get here I would hardly be any closer than I am now under that tree in my sleep."

"You as far from yo home as I am from my freedom," I said, surprising myself with the thought.

John smiled and nodded. He put his hand on my shoulder and we walked on in the strange landscape.

As we walked he spoke to me in his commanding tone.

"But I could bring us here because all I have to do is remember and the great mind delivers me."

"Like if I remembered the river you brought me to?" I asked. "I could go there just by rememberin' it?"

"Yes," John said. "Behind all of existence there is one great mind. And every single living, thinking being is a part of that mind. Once you learn to co

"Like make-believe?" I asked.

"No. We are really here at this moment but as wraiths."

"Ghosts?"

"Someone ignorant of the Great Mind might see us as ghosts but no one on Elle would make that mistake."

As we walked the red and purple forest gave way to a wide plain made up of what looked like piles of stones. The stacks of rock were gray and red-brown and none were piled higher than a man. The piles were all shivering. They looked like rock-studded cocoons ready to release their butterflies.

"That's right," John said as if he could hear my thoughts. "They are living things, creatures of the Calash."

"These are your people?" I asked.

"No," the taller and taller boy said. "Not really. I mean, once we were all one people but that was so long ago that there are very few records that survive to document our relationship."

As he spoke one of the shivering piles of stones exploded outward, disgorging an albino creature that was made up of a great head, from which hung a dozen limbs that seemed to work as both legs and arms. The creature (which was about the size of a wild boar) climbed to the top of a nearby pile and shook itself, throwing off the water of its birth. Then it moved its head around until great blue wings sprouted from the back. The beautiful creature let out a terrible scream and then flew aloft on its blue wings.

"Where's it goin?" I asked as my friend and I watched the winged thing fade into the pink-and-red horizon.

"To seek the God-Mind and kill it," he said. "To rend the universe open and feast on its heart."

Up until that moment I wasn't truly troubled by the sights I beheld. Even the physical changes to John's body didn't seem so strange to me. I already knew he was different on the inside from the way he talked. But John's words about destruction set off a deep agitation in my heart. I had no idea what a God-Mind was but I had heard the word God before and I knew that killing was bad no matter who it happened to.

The stacks of birthing stones spread out as far as the eyes could see. Here and there albino members of the

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Calash race were rising up from their cocoons and taking flight.

"There must be more of'em than Mud Albert could count," I said.

"They are as plentiful as the stars," John agreed, "and yet there is but one."

"What's that mean?" I asked. "You will see," he said.

Another stack of stones burst open nearer to us. The big-headed white creature with its dozen limbs crawled out and shifted and turned until it had wings. But this one, rather than gliding off into the sky, turned its one great black eye upon my friend and me. The creature screamed as did the previous newborn, but instead of leaving he dove at us. John and I ducked down to keep from being battered by those blue wings. As we arose the eerie bird-like thing wheeled in the sky, obviously intent on attacking again.

"Let's skip this part," John said.

He waved his orange and purple hand through the air and suddenly we were standing on a black platform in a wide, glassy sphere. There was no sky above or ground below us, only thousands of small black platforms that jutted out from the sides of the globe. When I looked around the sphere I realized that we were in the largest place that I had ever been, even larger than that valley where I saw the she-bear and first imagined being free.

While I watched, a small creature walked out up the ledge nearest my eye. He was no larger than a baby chick but the same proportions as tall, lean John. He was bright yellow in color and when he saw my face he smiled and nodded. The light above his head lengthened like a candle reaching its highest flame.

"Hello, hero," he said.

"My name ain't hero, it's Forty-seven, but hello to you too, little yellah man."

As I spoke these words I noticed tiny little men and women were climbing out onto the thousands of ledges around me. They were every different color of the rainbow and all of them so bright that the big sphere got as clear as midday.

"Who are all these little people?" I asked.

"They are my people," Tall John said in my ear.

I turned to ask how we got from one place to the other. But as I did so I found myself facing another small ledge, and on that ledge I saw a tiny little Tall John standing there and smiling.

"Is this what you really look like?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"And is this your home?"

"This is Talam the primal hive," small Tall John said. "It is where we fled when the Calash tried to steal our technology and use it to tear open the fabric of the world."

I had no idea what his words meant but I knew that it couldn't be good.

"As I told you before, there is a higher place," John said.

"The Great Mind," I added.

"That's right. It is the place where all mind resides. You are there and I am too, but we are also in the physical world with our bodies and with each other. In the physical world every being is different, but there, in the higher place, we are all the same."

I didn't know what he meant by all that. It sounded like when Brother Bob would deliver a sermon but here there was no podium or cross. Without those things to secure my eyes I realized that I had never understood those sermons.

"And so you and them Calash things are really the same?" I asked.

"Yes," my diminutive friend said, "and no. In the upper reality we are all the same, flowing in one direction, with one eternal plan. But here in the material world the Calash believe that they can break the barrier between mind and matter and feast upon the pure energy of the God-Mind."

"And that's bad?"

"They will never succeed, but in trying to do so they could throw the whole universe into turmoil. They will never be able to conquer the walls of heaven as they wish, but they can destroy all life and therefore strangle the spirit until it is warped out of all understanding."

All around me thousands of thousands of tiny bright-colored men and women began to weep.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked, intent upon helping those wee folk if I could.

It was the most important decision of my long life and I didn't even stop to think about it. Tall John, my first true friend, said that there was a battle brewing between him and the wing-heads called the Calash. Well, then, I would do what I could to defend my friend and the universe whatever that might be.

There came a tittering among the uncountable elfin citizens of the great hive. Then they all cheered. They had small voices but there were so many of them that the sound came like a roar.

"I told you," John said, addressing the unlikely congress of elves. "I told you that he was the one."

"But will he have the ability to stand against Wall?" a thousand voices asked.

"Victory can never be assured," John replied. "But at least he is willing."

"You could destroy the planet," a thousand thousand voices bellowed. "Destroy Earth and Wall will die."