Although the routine of the days did not change over all those years, the pace gradually altered due to Mother Sage becoming more and more frail. When I was a young boy, she needed only someone’s arm and her stick to lean on to help her up the hill. In the last years her maidservant and I used to carry her in her basket chair. At that stage the amount of information she brought back for me to note down was much less than it used to be, and I suspected that, since she could not have exhausted all there was to be seen, she was simply sleeping through much of her time of vigil.

   Having less to do in the mornings, and Mother Sage never having got around to telling me about the slaves, I suppose it was inevitable that I started taking an interest in the maidservant, who was the one slave I could observe closely, since, with Mother Sage way up the hill, she usually sat near me doing mending or making things. And because I was in the habit of spending my time writing, I took to jotting down notes of what the maidservant said and did. In this way, the writing that I think of as my own book started to build up.

   Over the years Mother Sage has had a succession of maidservants. Each of them has been called Fey – every one of them. I was unsure whether Fey was another word for maidservant or a personal name. When it occurred to me to ask her, Mother Sage told me it was a name, but she clearly was not interested in talking about why they all had the same name. I asked the current Fey why all the maidservants have had the same name. She told me that none of them has any name: the slaves do not use personal names; Fey is just the name Mother Sage has given them. I was surprised, and I mentioned to Mother Sage what Fey had said as we ate our afternoon meal together.

   She took my question as an opportunity to remind me what primitive people they are: ‘Like animals,’ she says, not having personal names or naming things around them. They have no regard for individuality, no personal ambitions and no idea of ownership or control. They just mill around doing what their kind has done for countless generations: tend their gardens, make simple things out of some of the materials, keep the firebreaks clear and trap animals. They all sleep together in a heap, fondle each other and giggle all the time. ‘They’re called “Fey” because they are fated to die young,’ she said, and certainly the only old person I’ve seen is Mother Sage herself.

   Next day, I told Fey what Mother Sage had said about her name, and she laughed. Of course, they laugh at everything. But I asked her why she laughed at being given a name which meant she would die young. She said she hoped she would die young, that it was better to ‘go to the forest’ than to be old and ugly and suffer pain and be weak and useless and lose her teeth and be unable to chew fresh meat. And anyway she would still be here. I think this was the most I had heard her say all at once. She was obviously sincere. Such a strange people; they intrigue me more and more.

   Sitting with the Feys, I had observed them engaged at the crafts which Mother Sage despised so much. I had to ask Mother Sage what the tasks and tools were called in the ancient language. When she told me the words, she said yet again that technology would do such work better and faster. But I enjoyed watching the Feys’ nimble fingers. They used to spin thread with distaff and spindle, knit parts of garments in multicoloured designs with the bone needles clicking and jerking, or they would weave or coil baskets of various shapes and sizes.

   Beginning to write my own book gave me the incentive to investigate the current Fey’s craft work in detail. I felt that, whatever Mother Sage said, these crafts could be part of the New Beginning, along with the technology from the ancient times. So I asked Fey questions about the work she brought with her each day, such as how the fibre she was spinning was extracted from the plants, how the thread was dyed, how she chose the designs for the knitted pieces, or what the sealant was made from that I had seen inside some of the finished baskets. Whatever I asked, and however I phrased the questions, I never got a satisfactory answer. She knew the ancient speech, so she understood each of my words but somehow she did not see what it was I wanted. Willing to please, she would give me whatever I named: the piece of work in her hands, or something fetched from our house or even from the village.

   On one occasion my question was about ink. Having tried fetching me a fresh little basket pot of ink, and seeing that this did not satisfy me, she started off for the village, then she stopped and beckoned me to follow her. I had been to the village before – not frequently because Mother Sage had always discouraged it – but I was curious so I followed. When I saw where Fey was taking me, I thought it was a real breakthrough: that she had understood what I wanted to know, because she had brought me to a slave who was engaged in making ink. He was mixing various dark-coloured substances with water and filtering the mixture through a fine cloth set inside a basketwork funnel whose spout led into a larger version of the small basket bottles I was used to. I encountered the same problem as I had with Fey when I asked him questions: he could not or would not explain anything. After this episode I went to the village quite often to observe the slaves at their work, and to learn more that way. I then found that the ink makers use the juices crushed out of crinkly brown nuts mixed with a black substance from strange lumps which insects make on a certain tree and a gum obtained from the bark of another tree.

   At the time I did not think of this independent activity as any sort of rebellion against Mother Sage. It had never seemed that she ruled my thoughts and actions, although I suppose she did, as anyone bringing up a child must do, even if they do not intend it to be that way.

   However, now I was thinking for myself, purposefully with my own book in mind, I began to question certain things. My main question concerned the New Beginning: when was it going to change from information to action? Mother Sage was ancient and frail, and might not live much longer. Without her the ancient memories would vanish. Who besides myself was going to be involved? Of course, I sought a suitable opportunity and asked her. She said that the boys like myself from all the villages would gather for a great march to the place for building the new city. She also said that in due course I would have sons to carry on the work of bringing back civilisation. I asked her whom I would marry, since she had told me of the custom from the ancient days of a man and a woman joining for life for sexual activity and parenting. She said I could marry one of the slave women, which surprised me in view of her low opinion of them. Then she remarked that I would have to pick a very young one because they were so promiscuous that otherwise my chosen bride might be already pregnant with some other man’s child and, being a lord, I should have my own sons. Then she became too tired to talk any more, and instructed Fey to help her to bed.

   After this conversation I began to look at Fey in a new way. She was young and pretty and smiled a lot, and she seemed to want to please me. I flattered myself that her willingness was more than the eager servitude which the slaves generally showed. It seemed to me that my project of recording the craft skills was a way of pursuing a promising intimacy. She was, I felt, particularly eager to satisfy my curiosity about the crafts now that the episode with the ink had shown her a satisfactory way of responding to my questions: she simply took me to someone who was making whatever I named, so we had many pleasant walks up and down the avenue.

   Mainly in order to prolong what I thought was a deepening relationship with Fey, I decided to go through the various types of craft methodically, starting with baskets, which were a major component of the slave people’s culture. I brought each type of basket in turn to her, and she duly took me to someone making one, sometimes that day, but more often some days later, presumably because she knew somehow which kinds were going to be made. Interestingly, in view of her lack of comprehension earlier, she never forgot a request, and was able to keep a queue of them in her mind.

   Then a new breakthrough in our communication came about. One day, to my surprise and delight, Fey responded differently from before. She took the basket I handed her and mimed the actions of making it, glancing up at me and asking by her expression whether I was following. It seemed that she had at last understood that I had been seeking information from her, when at first she had seemed not to understand the very concept of information. After a while I realised that the miming was, in effect, part of the slave language, and that I understood it. She mimed the actions of making and using the baskets, and she also conveyed something of the experience and inner being of the people whose way of life involved baskets in so many ways. One important insight was that the slaves do not teach the crafts to their children; they do not need to because the children have eversight, which enables them to copy the actions of all those who have carried out a craft in the past. I remembered then what the book binder had said about following the patterns of the binding of books.

   I did not have eversight, but I could record what I had learned. I duly made notes of the basket craft. Those which were containers of liquids and drinking vessels had to be woven finely and close. Some would hold liquid simply by the strands swelling tightly together when wet. Others were sealed: some with river mud first and then some sort of tree sap, wax or other substance produced by insects, sometimes warmed in the sun; others were lined with leather or animal bladder. Looser woven baskets were used to carry and store food from the gardens, as fish and animal traps, and as baby carriers. Fey also explained the construction of the basketwork furniture which we had in our house, and the window lattices and doors and the matting on the floors.

   As our mutual understanding grew, I thought about what Mother Sage had said about taking a wife. I knew that in the ancient days marriage arrangements varied between cultures. In some cultures marriage was a liaison between families, in others the partners chose to marry for feelings of sexual attraction and compatibility of personality or interests. I certainly liked Fey’s company, and I started thinking about having sexual intercourse with her: something I had no experience of. I remembered Mother Sage telling me that the slaves were promiscuous but this did not cause me to think less of her. I told myself that since she would probably be sexually experienced, I could approach her with sexual overtures and she would know what to do.

   So one morning when we were sitting together, I stopped my writing, put my pen down, stood up and walked over to her and, perhaps rather clumsily, bent down and put my arms around her and my cheek next to hers.

   To my surprise and dismay, she cried out in alarm and distress; she pushed me away, stood up and ran off up the hill towards Mother Sage’s vigil place. I had been brought up to be dignified so I did not run after her, and I waited in some confusion and anxiety to see what would happen next.

   While I waited my thoughts were in a turmoil. This seemed to me to be the first time in my life when anyone had denied me something I really wanted. I suppose that my wants had been manipulated. Always having been told I was privileged, I did not see the behaviour that was expected of me as restrictive. I had seen the slave children tumble together in their play, but since I had a life apart, high on the hill in the big house, I did not desire the physical contact they had with each other. I had sometimes seen the behaviour which Mother Sage called ‘promiscuous’, in which people of all ages fondled each other on the sensitive parts of their bodies, to their obvious mutual enjoyment. But I had been told that civilised people reserved such contact for the marriage bed, so I did not regard it as something I was not allowed, but as something I chose not to indulge in until the proper time and circumstances. Now I saw my situation in another light. Anyone in the village was free to fondle Fey, and I, the great lord from the grand house on the hill, was the only one who was not allowed to.

   I waited and fretted all that morning while the sun moved until it reached its greatest height in the sky. This was the time Fey and I usually went to the top of the hill to carry Mother Sage down in her basket chair, so I decided to walk up there. But I found that I was not needed because Fey and another young woman were in attendance and Mother Sage waved me away. I followed them down the hill. When they reached the house and had put the chair down on the veranda, Fey dashed away towards the village, and Mother Sage introduced me to the new Fey.

   Suddenly the thoughts of the morning coalesced into a wave of emotions that I had hardly known before; a rush of anger, a flush of embarrassment, but mostly confusion: should I run after Fey; should I demand her return? So I did nothing but stand woodenly, staring in disbelief at Mother Sage; my wise, gentle teacher and guardian, who should not have let this happen.

   ‘Sit down here, Roy,’ said Mother Sage gently. ‘We need to talk.’

   Her words broke my paralysis. ‘I don’t want to sit down and talk. I want Fey to come back.’ I strode towards the avenue which led to the village and shouted out, ‘Fey, Fey, come back here! I order you to return.’

   ‘ Roy, don’t do that. Come here and let me explain.’

   I ignored her. I could see Fey still running away. I strode back towards the house where I could see the new Fey disappearing round the back to the servants huts.

   ‘You there! Go after Fey. Fetch her back.’

   The new Fey turned and made some miming movements towards Mother Sage. To my astonishment, because I had never in my life seen her use slave language before, Mother Sage mimed a reply. The new Fey turned away and disappeared.

   I almost ran down the avenue, but my knees suddenly felt weak. I sank to the ground and began to sob hysterically.

   Mother Sage just let me cry. I stopped after a while, got to my feet, and sat down in the chair beside her.

   ‘All right, tell me whatever you have to tell me. I’ll listen. But I liked Fey, she was my friend. I didn’t mean her any harm. I just wanted — Why can’t I have what I want any more? What’s happening?’ I almost started to cry again.

   ‘Hush, I know,’ said Mother Sage soothingly. ‘Fey can come back if she wants to, and if you still want her when you understand things better. You may not feel that she is a suitable partner for you – she is expecting a child – I have told you about that problem. But we’ll talk about that later. You have to know the truth, and part of it is that you cannot order the people around any longer. I thought you were already beginning to realise that they are not really our slaves – I told you what slavery meant in the ancient times. Making you think they were slaves was part of the environment we provided for you so that you could grow up.

   ‘Sometimes it is necessary to deceive children for their own good; this was often done in the ancient days. I had to encourage you to despise the slaves to convince you that you are superior to the slaves when, in fact, you are just different. And of course they have some special powers that you lack, which could make you feel you were inferior to them – and in a way you are.’

   She spoke gently, but her words hurt me, made me feel small and pathetic. ‘You mean eversight?’ I croaked.

   ‘Yes, partly. I told you that eversight is a primitive kind of awareness that all things have, and that is true. I encouraged you to think that your kind of consciousness is superior to eversight. That is not true. Yours is a restricted consciousness, which shuts out eversight. It is a ‘handicap’, to use the ancient term for something which reduces someone’s abilities.’

   ‘Then why did you tell me all those lies?’ I burst out. ‘Was it some sort of experiment? What about the New Beginning? Is that a lie too?’

   Mother Sage shook her head. ‘No! But — Yes, maybe it is an experiment – but because we want to help. When you were a little boy, it was decided to try to raise the children like you – for the firesoul completion, which we decided to call the “New Beginning”. Very few of your kind are born. They are oddities; they don’t fit in. My people are very casual about raising children anyway, so any that need special help usually fade away and die before they are full grown. Shall I tell you how it happened that I became your Mother Sage; would that help? This part is my own story.’ She looked at me with what must have been love and concern, but I saw it as pity.

   I looked back at her, but my thoughts were directed inwards, warily prowling around what was happening to my identity. I shook my head and shuddered. Trying to escape I looked away: down the hill where Fey had run, then over to the arbour where we had been sitting that morning and her abandoned basketwork, up to my bedroom with its balcony over the veranda where we sat. That was where I needed to be: in my bed, under the covers, where I could make a cocoon for myself for a while, and then see what emerged.

‘1 just need to think for a bit, ‘I said huskily. ‘Have me some fruit and cordial sent up. ‘It was the last command I ever issued.

   When I woke up from a dream-ridden sleep it was pitch dark night. I must have brooded under my covers, dozed off, and then slept during the entire afternoon and long summer evening. I got up and went out to the balcony. Though I knew the layout of the room intimately, it was strange to trust my memory rather than my sight. It had been a cloudy day, and now no moon and stars were visible. The utter darkness felt appropriate to my still-confused mood. ‘Who am I?’ I asked the darkness. And it seemed that the darkness answered. ‘You are flfesoul,’ it said. ‘You have a burning flame within you which makes everything beyond the moment dark as night, consumed and forgotten. ,

   ‘The slave people, the village people, what are they then, how are they different from me?’ I asked.

   ‘They are watersoul, , the darkness replied. ‘Their soul flows everywhere for all time so that there is no time, other than where patterns grow to completion. ,

   ‘I do not understand, ‘I muttered.

   ‘You will, , it told me.

   ‘1 must ask Mother Sage, ‘I said.

   ‘Mother Sage is dead, , the darkness sighed.

   Guilt! Another pew emotion assaulting me. I had not let Mother Sage tell me her story .I rushed out of the room, down the stairs, stumbling around the turns of its helix and jarring my ankle as I misjudged the bottom, and then out of the door. I knew somehow that she would still be where I had left her. The basket chair .And in it a little cold figure, like a fallen nestling, so tiny in its aged shrunkenness.

   I knelt and put my head in her lap. ‘Tell me your story , Mother, , begged. And my tears began to pour , and shuddering sobs racked body.

   The next morning I woke up in my bed to the sound of heavy rain falling and pouring down off the thatch. The shell chimes outside my door were jingled and the new Fey came in with a tray. I sat up and she put it in front of me and backed away smiling. On it was the usual plate of fruit and meat and a jug of cordial and a mug. I noticed with irritation that the meat was fresh. I had not had the chance to explain that I much preferred the dried meat; it was more tasty because of the herbs and spices which were rubbed in before it was hung up to dry .I did not mind fresh fish, but fresh meat from trapped mammals had a slimy chewiness which made me retch. Mother Sage told me that in the ancient times people used to cook meat on a fIre, which softened it and gave it a bitter carbon taste which people liked. I tried this once, not meat from a cooking fIre, but charred meat left after a forest fIre. I did not really like that much better .

   I was hungry because I had missed two meals the day before, so I ate all the food, even the meat, which was worse than I’d remembered from trying it before, as it was tough and stringy.

   After I had fInished an awful thought came to me. ‘They wouldn’t, would they! ‘ I said aloud. But I had a feeling that my suspicion was right. My stomach began to heave. And then I thought, ‘Well, after all, why not? She’s gone from her body. Pity to waste meat that no one needs to catch. Perhaps it’s an honour. No, somehow I don’t think they know about honour. ,

   I got up then. On the way to the stream to wash myself I stepped across the veranda. I did not look at the basket chair because I knew she would not be there. But when I got back I sat in it, naked and wet from my bath, and I gazed out through the curtain of rain at the blurred trees and grey sky .Then Mother Sage told me her story .

Roy, my darling little king -the name Roy means ‘king’, did I ever tell you that? Our life together has been such an adventure. Although I did not give birth to you, I gave you a life you would not have had, and you gave me a second life in return. I am so grateful to you for the sense of wonder you gave me. Curiosity is a delightful feeling. Through you I learned how to peep at the world, and to discover knowledge little by little, and to store it away in secret caches of the mind. I caught a little bit of ftresoul from your flame, I think.

   I had a full life before as watersoul. Can you imagine how it would be to know yourself as an immortal pattern, as a turn of a cycle, as hugely insignificant, with a universal wisdom awesome in its usualness? Oh dear, I am playing with words, aren’t I. More simply, I knew everything just as everything else knows everything. Except for you funny lumps of firesoul nature, that is. You are different. You are arrogant and ignorant, although you don’t know it, and you can be charming. All other beings are all-wise and humble, which could make them seem dull and predictable, I suppose, to people like you anyway. There, I am making judgements every bit as sweeping as if I were firesoul. Watersoul do not assign values; they have no notion of good or bad, or right or wrong, or better or worse; well, perhaps they do in sense of what is more or less practical or pleasurable, but they have no idea of ethics; they just do as they please. But by becoming partly firesoul, I picked up the habit of judging and evaluating.

   In my first life, like all watersoul I was blissfully happy; happy as a fish or a patch of moss or a star .And I was happy when I felt my time had come to an end; that my pattern, this fragment of the human pattern, was completed.

   I went to the forest. You have heard the phrase. It is the customary way to death in our village to wander into the deep forest up beyond the second fIrebreak. It is a reconnection with wilderness. Death then comes, perhaps from a cat or a wolf, perhaps starvation or infection or a poisonous bite or an injury such as a broken limb. It is a last adventure, and eagerly anticipated by all of us.

   I awoke knowing that the day had come. I felt the warm bodies of my sleeping companions and we shared some pleasure rubbing. Then I started out on my journey. I walked slowly, weaving a path through the spiral herb beds near our group sleeping-hut, around the orchards, stroking the trees and bushes, taking in the heady scent of blossom, seeing the petals fall and the fruits swell, to be picked and eaten or stored, the leaves falling and the winter sleep coming and the cycle going ever round. Seeing the pattern complete and clear: all the stages present but not confused, was evidence, had I needed it, that my time was almost over.

   Then I reached the outer garden, where woody plants for building grow. The pattern is calmer here, generations of young trees slowly growing from seeds spread by their mothers, some carried by birds or buried by small animals. The trees are cut when thumb and finger can just meet around the trunk; sooner than that for those at the edge of the first firebreak, where strips of saplings are cleared whenever it is necessary to re-weave a wall of the storage room beneath a sleeping hut: an important task, since we need provisions for the winter and we must keep raiding animals out. These careful patterns of village life are my soul.

   I stepped out of the wood into the wide strip of the firebreak. Here we keep new growth cut close to the ground and grass springs up to cover the earth. Watersoul people have no use for grass. We cannot eat it. We enslave no animals who can. We pick out every blade from the gardens so that valued herbs may thrive. And yet, when we come here, the carpet of grass under our feet rings with the shrill tones of the very beginnings of humanity; co-evolutes of one pattern: hominids, fire, burning forests, grassland, grazing beasts, a tide of transformation echoing down the ages until the fragile uniformity of grass and cattle dragged out the tough tangles of wilderness to flyaway in the purging storms which extinguished fire in the souls of men. Cocooned in a worm of life, humanity emerged feminine and watersouled, shunning fire for fear of the pattern returning .

   Shuddering at the memory , I walked quickly across the green carpet towards the near forest, eager for the scents and the heady atmosphere of untamed wilderness. I was about to plunge inside, to begin my final adventure, when a strong tug at my clothing jerked me back into the firebreak and my senses back into my lifetime.

   A boy had wandered after me, one of the strange lonely little boys who are occasionally born. He had been drawn by an event which I had not noticed, since it was a regular occurrence and part of the patterns. There was a wildfire approaching. Together the boy and I watched the fire sweep across the near forest, its flames licking towards us over the bare firebreak, scorching the green carpet, but finding nothing more substantial to carry it across to our woodland. It might have brought me my death; instead it brought me a new life.

   The boy tugged at my skirt, frightened and yet thrilled. Seeing the fire reflected in his excited eyes, I suddenly connected with an ancient human pattern: I found myself looking into a soul quite unlike my own, and I saw why these children are so lost and lonely amongst us. His soul was like the fire which blazes in the moment, its past consumed and black, straining towards its future where there would be fuel for its flames. I felt the heady freedom of an awareness of the potential in the future; the illusion of unrestricted choice and self determination, seemingly unhindered by resonance with patterns already formed. I wondered what the child could become if he were helped to develop his own nature. Could there be a new beginning for his kind? Were these children born because the firesoul pattern is not yet completed?

   Soon the fire had passed us, leaving behind smouldering stumps and the bitter stench of woodsmoke. I looked down at the boy. He was staring after the crackling flames and thick curtain of smoke fast disappearing into the distance. I crouched down to his level. ‘Wasn’t that exciting!’ I said. ‘What shall we do now?’ I had no idea what this meeting, and my glimpse into the boy’s soul, was going to mean, but it was clear that my life was not after all to end, but was entering a new phase.

   I took his – your – hand, and we went back to the village. That night I took you into my sleeping hut. Later I learned by eversight that what had happened was not an isolated incident, but part of a new pattern of which others were a part. There was a wave of incidents, similar to our meeting at the firebreak, over many villages, perhaps all over the world. Firesoul children were to be raised because their pattern was not completed. Their upbringing was to be modelled on patterns from the past. In particular, the unequal social division which was almost universal in ancient times was to be simulated, by watersoul people acting as slaves so that the firesoul boys could be lords. No authority had dictated what should be done, apart from the need of the firesoul pattern for completion, which is ultimately irresistible, overcoming even watersoul dread of the destructive power of fire in men’s hands. We would facilitate, but not participate in, the New Beginning for the firesouls who had not completed.

   Through eversight, the guardians discussed how to bring up the firesoul boys. You had to have a special house, a village house was not going to be right for you. I decided that ours would be built half way up the big hill, some way away from the village in the setting sun direction.

   Dramatic though the firesoul reawakening was, with its profound effect on our two lives, and on others like us in other villages, once the house was built life soon settled down to a routine little different from before. You will find a record of my part of our task in the big basket in my sleeping room. The experiences and ideas of a watersoul attempting to think like a firesoul may prove to be of value in the great venture ahead of you. My task is done, my foundling child and young lord, and, if the deceit necessary causes you to blame me, my confession is made. Was it through eversight that Mother Sage told me her story? It all arrived in a flash of time. I was still wet from bathing at the conclusion, still staring at the curtain of rain, my identity and self-worth confirmed but profoundly altered. It seemed that I mattered, but what was I?

   I went up to Mother Sage’s room and found the basket with her writing in it. The top page was written in very shaky script, unlike her usual neat hand. The first line read, ‘I must tell Roy about eversight.’ I read the page.

   ‘We invented the ancient language word eversight for the watersoul consciousness so that the firesoul boys would think of it as some especially keen sense, like the vision of a bird of prey, perhaps, which you would not envy particularly. But eversight is not a sense, it is a consciousness: a connectedness with the universe, a seamless flowing.

   ‘I allowed you to imagine what I did during my vigils as reading some kind of history book or record of memories, set out in chronological order; but the universe is not as you conceive it. There is no dominant linear order: no time line. The past has no time; it is not really past at all; watersoul know it as all still present, as it was when it happened, although it is hidden from those with firesoul consciousness. The order that is there is pattern, not succession.

   ‘What I had to do to obtain the ancient knowledge needed for your development was to shift my consciousness into that of various people who were alive at that time, and experience their lives in order to share their knowledge and understanding. I had to tune into the patterns of human experience of those ages, but this was difficult because the patterns are weak. The cycles were extenuated by the perpetual change people called progress, and then they were interrupted by the collapse, and their immediacy is lost. But for your sake I made myself seek out those patterns, so that you would have a way of being to tune into, and be able to develop your firesoul nature. And gradually I learned to think as you do, and then the search for ancient knowledge became easier. All the other Mother Sages were doing the same, and thespectfully away. From our hill we can see them working in the village gardens, by the river and over the first firebreak in the nearer forest. They never seem to stop; they are busy all the time at one small task or another, but they giggle and hum little tunes as they go. Mother Sage finds them annoying and silly. I try to follow her example because she is so wise and knowledgeable, but I cannot help seeing their ways as charming.

   The slaves understand ancient language, which is the language Mother Sage taught me. But they also have a language of their own which I cannot follow. It consists of signs and facial movements and sing-song sounds; very fluid and complicated, and seems confusing to me, with so much to take in at once. Ancient language, which Mother Sage and I use for speech and writing, is based on everything in the world having a name, and actions and operations on things having names, and then one strings the names and actions together in a single long thread. Mother Sage says that ancient lange pattern grew dense and the path was broad and clear.

   ‘You asked me once why the women who tended me were called Fey. Just as in our time of the watersouls, firesouls are sometimes born, so in the time of firesouls, there were a few people with watersoul and the wisdom it brings. But they were regarded with suspicion by your kind, who were dominant, and many were cruelly persecuted; they were called “witches”. By those who were more tolerant, their strangeness was sometimes called “fey”, which is why we chose to that as a name for you to use of our kind.

   ‘A few years ago I came across a woman from the end of the ancient period who had something of this strangeness called fey. She was also a mathematician. Without telling you of it, for fear of confusing you, I have been recording her work, which she called “pattern mathematics” – when you thought I was dozing. It is all written down. It may have been a mistake to keep it from you; there may be a special role for you, which will become known to you in due course, for which this knowledge will be useful. But I do not know for sure; I cannot see ahead, and my time has already been overextended.’ Roy paused, knowing that he had said more than enough. Even so he had not arrived at the point in his story when he had experienced the change of heart he called his ‘realisation’.

   ‘I think I’ll stop there,’ he said. ‘Does anyone want to ask me anything about what happened?’ It was not really a question. Everyone round the campfire had tense, ‘I’ve got something to say’, postures. 9 The New Beginning ‘When I was growing up Mother Sage didn’t let me play with the slave children.’ Roy was surprised at himself for voicing a childish grievance he could not recall ever feeling. What a silly thing to say! he thought. What must the others be thinking of me?

   They had been taking turns to tell the stories of their lives from before the trek began. It helped to while away the longer evenings now that winter was approaching, and was relaxing after the lecture sessions when they shared their expertise, and attempted to take notes by the light of crude torches and firelight. They had divided into specialist groups as soon as sufficient people had joined: groups of ten or so huddling over the big books, drawing up contents lists and indexes to pass on to other groups. By the end of the trek they hoped to have collated all the indexes, so that all the ancient knowledge was accessible.

   Some of the men had little in the way of personal stories to tell, having been strictly separated from village life by their Mother Sages, as all the guardians had been called. They simply related accounts of the progress of their education, the compilation of their books, and insights and ambitions that arose from time to time. Roy had hung back from telling his story, increasingly reluctant the more of the others he heard. As he had feared, his story was different, and might appear threatening to the others, and to the realisation of their cherished goal. But it was really too soon to be sure. Taking turns, and telling a little each evening, meant that only early lives had been related, and his story was not very different from theirs at that stage.

   He looked around at the listeners. The whitely lit faces, veiled by woodsmoke, appeared friendly enough; no smirks or frowns. He went on. I do not play with the slave children because, since I am a lord, I have to be grave and studious and not run around laughing or go splashing in the river as the slave children do.

   We treat our slaves very well and they are happy and well fed. Mother Sage told me that in the ancient days slaves were made to work until they dropped from exhaustion, and beaten if they disobeyed or tried to run away. Our slaves bring us food and other necessities and they bow smilingly as they back respectfully away. From our hill we can see them working in the village gardens, by the river and over the first firebreak in the nearer forest. They never seem to stop; they are busy all the time at one small task or another, but they giggle and hum little tunes as they go. Mother Sage finds them annoying and silly. I try to follow her example because she is so wise and knowledgeable, but I cannot help seeing their ways as charming.

   The slaves understand ancient language, which is the language Mother Sage taught me. But they also have a language of their own which I cannot follow. It consists of signs and facial movements and sing-song sounds; very fluid and complicated, and seems confusing to me, with so much to take in at once. Ancient language, which Mother Sage and I use for speech and writing, is based on everything in the world having a name, and actions and operations on things having names, and then one strings the names and actions together in a single long thread. Mother Sage says that ancient lange pattern grew dense and the path was broad and clear.

   ‘You asked me once why the women who tended me were called Fey. Just as in our time of the watersouls, firesouls are sometimes born, so in the time of firesouls, there were a few people with watersoul and the wisdom it brings. But they were regarded with suspicion by your kind, who were dominant, and many were cruelly persecuted; they were called “witches”. By those who were more tolerant, their strangeness was sometimes called “fey”, which is why we chose to that as a name for you to use of our kind.

   ‘A few years ago I came across a woman from the end of the ancient period who had something of this strangeness called fey. She was also a mathematician. Without telling you of it, for fear of confusing you, I have been recording her work, which she called “pattern mathematics” – when you thought I was dozing. It is all written down. It may have been a mistake to keep it from you; there may be a special role for you, which will become known to you in due course, for which this knowledge will be useful. But I do not know for sure; I cannot see ahead, and my time has already been overextended.’

Roy paused, knowing that he had said more than enough. Even so he had not arrived at the point in his story when he had experienced the change of heart he called his ‘realisation’.

   ‘I think I’ll stop there,’ he said. ‘Does anyone want to ask me anything about what happened?’ It was not really a question. Everyone round the campfire had tense, ‘I’ve got something to say’, postures.

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