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Juganu went, and for a long time nothing happened. Father talked to the girl, but I did not pay much attention. Mostly I looked at the other landers around ours, and the river and the city. I will not try to tell about it, because I could not. You could not imagine it, no matter how hard you tried. Some of the buildings were like mountains, but in it they were not huge or even big, they were just bumps. Father used to talk sometimes about the jungle where Sinew was, how dangerous it was. But that city looked worse to me, leagues and leagues and leagues of stone and brick, and millions and millions and millions of people that were worse than any animal. I would have gone home right then, if I could.
The bird came back saying, "Good place! Good hole!" I never did like it much, and I think it was afraid of me because I look like my brother but I am somebody else. Anyway, I liked it less after that, and I am not sorry that it went with him.
Then a boy came up. He was one of the apprentices. From the way Father had talked, I thought he was going to be my age, but he was younger. He was pretty big already, though. You could see he was going to be tall.
We sat on the floor then, Father, the girl, the boy, and me. The boy asked Father about his book, whether he was still writing it. Father said, "No, I've put it aside forever. If my sons or my wife wish to read what I have written, they may. But if they want it finished, they will have to finish it themselves. What about yours? The last time we spoke, you said you were going to write someday. Have you begun it?"
The boy laughed and said, no, he was going to wait until he had more time and more to put in it. Then he said something I have remembered a lot. He said, "I won't put you in it, though. No one would believe you."
It is exactly the way I feel about Father. I knew how right it was as soon as I heard it, and it is still right. The others are going to write all the other parts of this, about the wedding and all that. My part is almost over with. So I am going to try to say it, to tell you about Father the way he seemed to me right here. Even if you do not believe me, even if you think that what I say ca
Father was good.
That is the hard part to explain to everyone, and it is the thing my aunt is trying to explain, too. If you meet her and she starts telling you about him, how scary he could be, and things moving themselves and the Vanished People coming down the street and knocking on her door, that is what you have to remember if you want to understand.
If somebody frightens people, everybody thinks he has to be bad. But when you were around Father you were practically always scared to death, scared that he might really find out one day the way you were and do something about it.
I was not going to tell why I did not like his bird, but I will just to get you to understand. It was not really a nice bird at all. It was dirty, and it did not sing. It was noisy sometimes when I did not want it to be, and it would eat fish guts and rotten meat. After I got to know Father (this was in Dorp and on Wijzer's boat) I could see that the bird was exactly like me, except that it was a bird and I was a person. Father knew exactly how bad we were but he loved us just the same. Deep down, I think he loved everybody, even Jahlee and Juganu. He loved some people more than others, our mother especially. But he loved everybody, and until you meet somebody like him, you will never know how scary that was.
He was good, like I said up there. He was probably the best man alive, and I think that when somebody is really, really good, as good as he was, the rules change.
"A long time ago," he told the boy, "this girl was a sort of princess here on your whorl. Her name was Cilinia. Have you heard of her?"
The boy said he had not.
"She died here many years ago-many centuries, I believe. Now she must find her grave."
"You're ghosts." The boy looked around at us. He was not afraid, or if he was he did not show it. But he did not smile, either. He did not have a good face for smiling, anyway. "When you were here before you said you weren't."
"That was because you meant the spirits of the dead," Father explained. "My son and I are not dead, and neither is Juganu, the man who sent you to us. This girl is, however, and we must help her. Will you help us?"
He did, too. He took us to an old stone building where there were lots of coffins. They were supposed to be up on stone shelves, but most of them were not, and a lot were empty.
"Here," the girl said, and she went into the darkest corner. I did not think there was anything there, but Father was making a light with his hand, and she was right. There was a little coffin only about half the size of the others in there, pushed way over. There were spiderwebs all over it, so it was a lot easier to miss than to see.
She looked down at it awhile, and Father asked if it would be better if he put out his light. She said no, but he closed his hand until it was almost dark. Finally she said it was no good, we would have to take the lid off for her. It took a special tool, but Father made one and gave it to the boy. He said that since the boy was the only one who was really here, it at would be better if he did it.
The boy asked, "I'm just pretending you're really here?" But Father had stepped back into a corner and would not answer him. (It seemed right then like Father was not much more than a shadow and a little gleam of light, like there was a chink in the wall there that let the sunlight in.) Finally I said, "That isn't quite it either. You better take out those screws like Father told you." I am not sure the boy heard me, though.
He did it anyway. I do not think the tool Father had made felt right, because he kept stopping to look at it. He would use it awhile, maybe taking out one. Then he would stop and study it, and shut his eyes, and study it some more. So it took a while, but eventually the last one was out and he looked around for Father and asked if he should take the top off.
Father was on his knees drawing the sign of addition over and over the way he did sometimes and did not answer, but the girl said, "Yes! Oh, yes! Do it!" That was fu
I went over so I could look inside, and the bird sat on my shoulder. It was about the first time he was that friendly, and I was not so sure I liked it. I am still not sure.
Only it was not as easy as we thought it was going to be. The lid stuck and I had to kneel down at the other end and wrestle with it. The boy could see me then and hear me too, and I could see he felt better about that. It told me something about the way we were in the Red Sun Whorl that I had not known before. We got more real there when we did things with people who were really there. When we did not, we got less real, even to each other.
Maybe even to ourselves, but I am not sure about that.
Just the same, I think that when Father wanted to bring us back that was what he did. He thought about us, and not at all about the Red Sun Whorl, and somehow, by what he said and the way he acted, he made us think that way, too.
We got the lid off after a lot of fooling around. We thought for a while there might be some kind of secret catch, but it was just stuck. There were metal corners on the box part and on the lid, and they had rusted together. When they came loose, the girl got a lot more real and even pushed us away. Her face was just terrible. It was like the only thing in the whole whorl she wanted was inside the coffin.
Maybe it was, but she did not get it right then. There was a casket (I guess that is what you call it) inside all soldered out of sheet lead. The boy had a little knife and he cut the lead for her, along the big end and down both sides. We grabbed hold of it then and were able to peel it back.