Elizabeth Ann Scarborough - Last Refuge

LASTREFUGE

ELIZABETH ANN SCARBOROUGH

Bantam Books New York Toronto London Sydney Auckland

LAST REFUGE

A Bantam Spectra Book / September 1992

Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.

BOOK DESIGN BY GRETCHEN ACHILLES

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or

mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the publisher.For information address: Bantam Books.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scarborough, Elizabeth Ann.

Last refuge / Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.p. cm.

ISBN 0-553-08961-7 (hc) ISBN 0-553-37031-6 (pbk)

I. Title.

PS3569.C324L37 1992 813'.54-dc20 92-6177 CIP

Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICARRH 0987654321

FOR BETTY LOU SCARBOROUGH, CHIEF PUBLICIST, CHEERLEADER, CONFIDANTE,

READER, CRITIC, AND MOM.

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CHAPTER 1

Section One

K A L A P A

On the morning of the last birthday Mike would ever celebrate, the first changeling was born.

That day, Mike was officially twenty-one years old and an adult. He awoke before dawn and slipped

out of the communal housing compound. The soft gray light of morning outlined the onion-shaped dome

of the chorten against the snowy backdrop of the horned peaks of the guardian mountain, Karakal.

Prayer flags fluttered from lines strung between the chorten's dome and nearby buildings, the wind

carrying the prayers to the heavens. Mike bowed to the chorten, in memory of the heroes it represented,

and turned to walk down the steep path winding from the uppermost point in Kalapa-the chorten-through

the compound built on the ruins of the ancient mystic city. The old city and the current compound were

located on a small mountain set within a valley ringed by ranges of larger mountains, the largest of which

was the horned guardian Karakal.

From the dining hall and kitchen issued muffled cooking noises and the aroma of baking bread and yak

butter tea. Farther down the path the open walls of new stone buildings being constructed from the

boulders of the Great Avalanche waited for the day to begin and workmen to come and add more of the

raw-cut boulders and boards lying nearby. Beyond the buildings, the lushly planted terraces of the

communal garden stepped down the mountainside.

Mike loved this time when the moon, as if waiting for the sun to give it permission to set, hovered just

above the mountains. Even on ordinary days, when he was not having a birthday and had no momentous

events to look forward to, Mike usually rose early to enjoy this quiet time and take long walks before the

paths were thronged with people. He loved feeling the wings of Karakal rising behind his back, even

when he was not looking at the mountain. He savored the sweet damp smell of the mist rising from the

waters of Kalapa's sacred lake, the sight of the lake's blue-green waters lapping the lower garden and

nourishing the roots of the rhododendron jungle.

Mike stood by the lake for a moment, watching the water shimmer and listening to the breeze in the

branches of the rhododendrons, making them clack softly like tiny looms at work. The lake was fed by

artesian springs and hot springs, and bled off down the valley in a pretty stream winding through the

grove. The trees foamed with pink, purple, and white flowers snowing petals into the stream and

carpeting the ground beneath whenever the softest breeze tickled the air.

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His ears picked up the cry of the eagle owl and the distant grumbling of one of the snow lions musing to

itself as it retired to the den for the day. And always, any time of the day or night, if you listened closely

you could hear the cracking and creaking of snow and ice shifting on mountainsides, punctuated every so

often by the boom of an avalanche.

This morning there was another sound as well, a low murmuring that had a distinctly human note to it.

Rounding a bend in the stream, Mike saw the source, sitting cross-legged by the bank, dark fingers

describing little O's as they poised against bony knees, tight black curls thrown back as the childishly

rounded golden-brown face sought the dawn through the upper branches of the trees. "Ooooom," she

said one more time, closed her eyes, lowered her head for a moment, then calling him by his childhood

name said, "Hi, Meekay," and sprang to her feet, brushing away petals that had fallen onto her face.

"Happy birthday. Are you on your way to see Nyima too?"

"Yes, of course. She's supposed to give birth to her new baby any time now. Have you heard anything,

Chime Cincinnati?" he asked, hiding his dismay at her unexpected interruption of his journey.

"Not yet," she said.

He accepted her company with as good a grace as he could muster. She was a weird kind of girl, but his

sister Nyima seemed to like her, and more important, so did her beautiful friend Isme. Thoughts of Isme

had kept Mike lyingawake nights, thinking of things he could say or should have said, things he could do

or should have done, presents he might yet offer to convince her that she should take him as her first

husband.

Although Isme and Chime Cincinnati were the same age, both nearly eighteen, they were as different as

night and day, and not just because Isme was gracefully tall and blond like her mother, the mountaineer

Tania Enokin, while Chime was short and dark. Isme was already a desirable grown woman, with gentle,

womanly ways, and Chime- well, Chime just got odder all the time. She didn't go to school with the other

kids, or play the same games. Instead, she studied and meditated and mumbled to herself and made odd

remarks.

The other kids had not ever been unkind to her, but they hadn't wanted much to do with her either.

Mike, who was three years older than Chime, had tried to look after her when they were both younger,

before he went to work with his father in the underground excavations of the buried portions of Kalapa.

He'd always felt kind of sorry for her, but he'd felt perplexed too. How could anybody grow up in such a

great place as Kalapa, lucky enough to be one of the last surviving people on earth, and seem

so-well-unsettled?Dissatisfied. He couldn't figure her out.

"I didn't know you meditated here," he said.

"I don't usually," she told him. "My favorite place is just beyond the chorten, facing Karakal, but I

thought this morning I'd wait and walk with you to Nyima's. I knew you'd want to check and see if the

baby might be coming in time to share your birthday."

"Yes, she promised to name the baby for me if it's born today," he said, pleased but a little daunted by

the thought of having a niece or nephew born on his birthday, carrying his name. This child would have a

special bond with him and would require a special gift from him. The only thing he possessed that was

special enough was the set of hand-copied books he had hoped to trade for a bride gift, a certain silver

necklace with blue enameled birds, and a length of blue silk that would reflect blue eyes.

"Isme's already there..." Chime teased, with a sly note in her voice and laughter in her sideways glance

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up at him.

"What are we waiting for?" he asked, prodding her to her feet. "They'llbe needing someone to help keep

my other nieces and nephews out from under foot."

"It's good to see so many new babies after all the years of destruction," Chime said, falling in beside him

though he had quickened his pace a little to keep the heat in his own face from betraying his thoughts.

She sounded as if she personally had witnessed the world's destruction, although he knew she had lived

her whole life in Kalapa, as he had. It was one of the things that he and everyone else found so strange

about her. Some of the adults, including his own parents, treated such remarks with respect-but then, his

father at least treated every utterance of every resident of Kalapa with respect. Other people found

Chime's pronouncements strange and a little frightening, sometimes annoying. Mike tried not to be

annoyed, to ignore the implication and just respond to what she actually said.

"Yes, and more are being born all the time. It's a very good thing, of course, all of this new life, but I'm

worried about the haphazard way new families are filling up the valley. We need to make plans so that

people don't cut into the rhododendron grove to make room for more houses. After all, people can live in

the next valley over too, can't they? Everybody doesn't have to live right here in Kalapa."

"The elders were so busy coping with having our generation," Chime mused, "that they didn't think ahead

enough to what would happen when their children grew up and started having children. Since any woman

who comes to Shambala before her childbearing years are ended may continue to have children here,

between our mothers and ourselves we have been doing a good job of repopulating at least our small

corner of the world." She took his hand and swung it back and forth in hers, as if they were still children.

"Don't worry, Meekay. I remember when Kalapa was much more crowded than this."

Oh boy. There she goes again, he thought.

His thought must have showed on his face because she quickly added, "I mean, I don't remember

exactly, but that's what your father tells me that my previous incarnation told him anyway."

"Chime Cincinnati, you're just thinking of the story Auntie Dolma tells the children."

"You'll hear a different version tonight, Meekay, at your birthday celebration," she said, suddenly very

serious. On a person's twenty-first birthday, after the general festivities were over, the adults held a

private initiation ceremony. During it, Mike knew, the elders retold the story of how Shambala, Kalapa,

and the world came to be as they were now. In the ceremony, however, they added all of the personal

memories, histories, predictions, and insights that pertained particularly to the person being initiated into

adulthood, sharing all of the information they possessed about his or her heritage and the circumstances

of his or her birth. More than the presents or the special meal, Mike was looking forward to this

ceremony.

What would they add about him particularly to the basic story?

Know, O best beloved, that you are privileged to be the children of Shambala, which connects heaven

and earth and which is located at the precise joining of the two.

Auntie Dolma, who was the one who told the story best and who loved the works of Rudyard Kipling,

insisted on the "O best beloved" part. Mike thought it added something reassuringly cozy to the story,

which was otherwise rather too sweepingly grand and timeless for comfort.

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Long ago the realm of Shambala and the city of Kalapa were much different than they are now. At that

time, our sacred mountain Karakal was capped with a snowy cone, perfect in its symmetry and bright

enough to outshine the moon. Shambala was a mighty and prosperousrealm, and Kalapa was its principal

city. This was a kingdom without a king, a land filled with kind and wise people dedicated to learning, to

beauty, to the accumulation and creation of knowledge, of science and art.Around Shambala ranged the

mountains. Beyondlay the country of Tibet. People from Shambala visited the people of Tibet, bringing

many of the attributes of Shambala to that country, but still keeping the location of Shambala a secret.

This was not, as you may suppose, to protect the material treasures within the realm, or even the lives of

the wise and kind living treasures who governed the land with grace and joyousness. Oh no, my children,

the real secret of Shambala is its timeless nature. We here in Shambala do not age in the way of the

outside world. Those of us who live here age very slowly. You may expect to live to be more than two or

three centuriesold, and you will remain youthful and healthy until almost the ends of your lives so long as

you remain within the borders of Shambala. Outside, even before the End of the World, people lived

very short lives, for time is different out there. When I was a girl in Tibet, people counted each and every

birthday as precious. Here, life as a whole is precious and only childhood is measured and celebrated by

birthdays.

For thousands of years, life in Shambala was relatively untouched and unobstructed by events in the

outside world. Occasionally, straying travelers would find their way here by accident, but usually

newcomers who would become a part of Shambala were guided here by the Terton, a saintly being or

bodhisattva, as such people are called in the Buddhist faith. The Terton travels beyond the boundaries of

Shambala, and so ages and dies more often than most of us, but he or she is always reborn within

Shambala and always remembers enough of previous lives to fulfill the task of guiding to Shambala those

who belong here.

Inside Shambala, it had always been peaceful, but such was not the case inthe outside world. Wars

became so big, with such ferocious weapons, that eventually even the mountains of Tibet were

broached.

Mike remembered asking Auntie Dolma if she had seen the invasion, for her face was very sad then, but

she said,No, I did not see the invasion. It happened slowly and treacherously, over a period of

time. Tour father saw it, Meekay. For a time he worked as an interpreter for the Chinese. That is

when I met him. He quit when the government doctors killed the baby I was carrying and made

me barren. Many terrible things were happening all around us, and neighbors could not talk to

each other without fear of spies. But your father, who was born in Shambala, brought me back

here to spare me further suffering. I lived here happily for a few years, before the wars grew so

terrible that they reached even this last refuge of peace and sanity. A bomb dropped, whether by

accident or design no one knows, close enough to cause an avalanche on Karakal. The beautiful

city was destroyed, all of the ancient wise people who lived there were killed, the sacred lake was

buried in the debris, as was the city, and our mountain gave up its dome for the horns it wears

today.

The Tenon, our beloved Ama-La, devised a plan to allow the few of us who survived to rebuild our

land. She was a brilliant linguist, an actress, a physician, and a hypnotist, skilled in all of the ancient

psychic sciences. At the time, four powers conducted the war on Tibetan soil, and she convinced each of

them that she worked for them as an officer in a top security prison camp. In that way she was able to

rescue prisoners who seemed to her to be people who belonged here. Most of these were soldiers, but a

few, such as Tatiana Enokin and Keith Marsh, were civilians who blundered into the war zone. For the

sake of security, we continued the deception even when the prisoners were brought here, in this way not

only protecting ourselves but learning what these people were like under harsh circumstances. Their labor

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helped us exhume our city and our lake. Unfortunately, one does not always learn the best side of people

while holding them prisoner, and the person we chose to play commandant, the former Chinese freedom

fighter, Nyima Wu, was all too adept as an autocrat.

The American Colonel Merridew, the same man who coaches you children in sports, fought us even

while he was a prisoner, as did the heroic Sergeant Du P. Danielson.

You have all heard the story of how Colonel Merridew rescued from the jaws of a snow lion the child

Pema, who grew up to be his wife and the mother of Chime Cincinnati. He was grievously injured, but

after that, relations between the guards and the prisoners grew friendlier.

Unfortunately, as people grew closer in Shambala, they grew increasingly more hostile in the outside

world. We heard reports from the outside world of a cache of nuclear weapons still remaining in a small,

fanatical country. Our supply helicopters became more erratic. I myself trekked into the mountains to

meet the choppers, but they didn't come as often, or dropped our supplies in the snow. On my last trip

some of our younger people risked leaving Shambala to try to find out what had become of our chopper.

Then one night we saw the sky blaze with flashes like a fireworks show. Nobody said anything to anyone

else, but I knew in my heart that the worst had happened in the outside world. That same night, Sergeant

Danielson disappeared. He had escaped while the rest of us watched the world die.

Oh, yes, children, Sergeant Danielson knew very well what was happening. He knew that the end of the

world he had known had come. But you see, he also had a family, and although he had decided long ago

he could not live with them, he wished to die protecting them as best he could. He never made it, of

course. The very next pack train, meeting refugees from the outside world, brought him back. I was with

them. I saw for myself that he had turned into an ancient man, reverting, when no longer protected by

Shambala, to his true age. He had dwelled a long time among us.

Colonel Merridew also wished to leave, but when he tried to go, Ama-La, knowing the same fate would

befall him and the others if they stepped beyond Shambala, voluntarily walked across the border and

died. Nyima Wu, trying to prevent Ama-La's death, died herself. But the rest of us lived and have

continued to live under the sacred shell of protection provided to us in this magic place. Our lake

miraculously resurfaced, and you, my children, have been miraculously born to the survivors of the

disaster, and now we celebrate your childhood birthdays, for you are the world's future.

That was the part of the story everyone knew. Auntie Dolma told it to all of the children on their

birthdays. Mike did not find it as entertaining as the fairy tales in his hand-copied books where each

event happened to specific people, with details. But itwas a true story, much of it about people he

actually knew. He thought it would be much better once he had heard the rest of it, the part the adults

would tell him tonight, including what the elders thought his own role would be. He sort of hoped it had

something to do with marrying the princess and living happily ever after. Fortunately, all the disastrous

stuff seemed to have happened in the last generation. He said aloud to Chime, "I can't imagine all that

killing and dying, can you? I mean, have you ever even known anybody who was seriously sick?"

"Your mother said she used to be sick a lot."

"Not since I've know her," Mike said, shaking his head. "About the only time anyone ever seems to be

hurting or sick is when somebody has a baby. It seems to me that there are getting to be a few too many

now. If we're all going to live such a long time, what's the hurry? I don't see why we have to have enough

babies for the whole world right here. Nobody really knows what's out there."

"Not exactly, maybe, although some of the adults did witness the end, remember. Billions of people

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would have been killed by the missiles alone, not to mention the aftermath, the unnatural winters, the

firestorms, the radiation."

"Well, I don't see how it can have killed everybody. Surely some people hid."

"Yes, but what are they eating and drinking? How are they fighting off dangers? Even if there are still

people left out there, and even if they are still having babies, most of their babies probably would not

survive starvation, all of the disease that's surely running rampant after so much death, and radiation

sickness."

"Sure, I know all of that. But it just doesn't seem real somehow. It's got nothing to do with us. Have you

ever seen the place where they used to land the helicopter to bring in supplies? Do you know of anyone

who has ever made that trip in our whole lives? And they used to make it all the time! They don't even

want to check. Our parents are so cautious they make the rabbits look brave. It's not that I don't want a

family, Chime, because I do. But I'd like to spend some time with my wives when theyweren't having to

feed babies. There should be more time to teach the older children without always having totend to

babies. What if we get so many people here, there won't be any place for them to live? By the time all

these babies grow up and have babies, what if-" He stopped and brushed the rhododendron petals from

her springy curls. "What if there are no more trees for them, no more room to play, nothing but the snow?

I mean, Ilike the snow, but what if there's not enough food?"

She patted his arm and said, "Dear Meekay, how earnest and full of foresight you are. But I don't think

you should spoil your birthday with too much worry. The soil here is so rich, the lake so nurturing, that

more trees will grow, and the land will always provide us with food. We have more animals among us

now than were found in all of Tibet during the last war."

He hated it when she talked like that, as if she really was old enough to be his grandmother instead of

being the same age as Isme. Isme never acted as if she knew more than he did.

Beyond the grove, houses built on stilts were crouched above the beds of reeds at the stream's marshy

end. More houses crowded the lower slopes of the mountains beyond the carved stone mound of

Danielson's grave. Nyima and her first four children lived there, in a pretty stone house with a

reed-thatched roof built specially for them by Henri Thibideaux, Nyima Dolma's father.

Nyima Dolma, Nyima's third child, was Mike's only niece. With men having several wives and women

having several husbands, you couldn't tell who you were related to without looking at the records. Auntie

Dolma collected those from the women once a month. Keith Marsh thought maybe Shambala should

adopt a totem system, similar to what his Amerind ancestors had used, to keep clan and family lines

straight. The elders were considering it. Mike knew for sure he was not related to either Isme or Chime

Cincinnati, but he wasn't clear about anybody any younger than they were except for his own sister and

her children.

They followed the path around the pool, brushing against the stilts of houses, past the flower-strewn

grave of Sergeant Danielson, and up the path toward Nyima's stone house. Mike's eldest nephew

squatted outside the door, his little sister between his knees.

"How is your mother?" Mike asked. "Has shehad- "

Just then a scream rent the air, thin and angry, followed by another and another.

Isme rushed outside with her hands covering her ears.

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"What happened? What's the matter?" Mike asked her, because his feet absolutely would not approach

the door from which he heard his sister sobbing now.

"The baby.There's something wrong with it."

"How can that be?" Mike said.

Chime frowned thoughtfully and pushed aside the curtain across the door, making the bamboo beads

clack against each other as they parted.

Mike put his arm around Isme, who continued to cover her ears with her hands, and the two of them

followed Chime inside. The house had only one room, and unlike the communal housing on the hill, this

one had no running water or heat. Earthen pots of water and wet rags sat around the bloody mess that

was Nyima's sleeping mat, and the hot, sharp scent of blood mingled with the fumes of the oil lamps.

Auntie Dolma knelt beside the mat, trying to give the baby to Nyima, who was trying to hold him, but the

red, wrinkled infant kept twisting away from her as if in pain, his little eyes squeezed shut as he screeched

furiously.

"I've never seen a baby like this," Auntie Dolma said, pushing her thick glasses back up onto her sweaty

nose. "All Kalapa babies are peaceful andhappy . What can be wrong with this one?"

"Hmm," Chime Cincinnati said. She too knelt and looked at the baby from every angle she could

manage. Every time she tried to look into his face he squirmed away, though he never turned back to his

mother. "Hmm," Chime said again, and reached for a little arm and held it, which made the baby flail and

cry even louder. "No soul.Very curious."

"Chime Cincinnati, what a cruel thing to say!"Isme cried. "Of course he has a soul. You're frightening

Nyima. He's just fussier than ordinary."

Chime shrugged and patted Nyima on the shoulder. Nyima flinched miserably away from her. Chime

shrugged again and swept the curtain aside as she left the house.

Mike, who couldn't bear the scene, followed her. "How could you say that?" he demanded. "I thought

you were Nyima's friend!"

Chime shook her head, puzzled. "I thought at first the baby was a demon, but no, not even that. Do you

remember when I was small and you used to read me from your fairy-tale books? Remember the stories

about fairies stealing human children and leaving enchanted blocks of wood in their place?"

"Sure. I remember. But there are no fairies around here."

"No," she said sadly. "And yet, here is a baby's body with nothing inside. I do not believe, in all of my

lives, that I have ever seen such a thing."

"Me neither." He began walking with her back toward the lake, then thought of his sister and the ugly

baby born on his birthday and felt vaguely ashamed, as if because it was his birthday, he was somehow

to blame. Hadn't he just been saying how there were too many babies and almost complaining about how

healthy everyone was? Now look what had happened to his nephew. "Look, you'll tell my mom and dad

about this? I don't want to leave right now and-I think maybe we should cancel the party too. I don't feel

much like celebrating."

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"Sure, Meekay," she said, and was gone.

He stayed with Nyima all day, trying to help with the uncooperative baby in any way he could. His

parentsarrived a short time after Chime left. His mother helped Nyima clean herself and the baby. His

father, who found that the baby did not want to be held and rocked, made little flat jokes to cover up for

his sorrow. Nobody said very much until supper.

Over a cold rice bowl and a vegetable momo, his mother gave Mike the notebooks containing her

prison diaries. "Most of what we were going to tell you about us is in here," she told him. "Please read it,

and then your father and I will be glad to answer your questions."

His father gave him a pocketknife with many blades, a corkscrew, and a small flashlight. Isme did not

return, and he didn't see Chime Cincinnati again until the next changeling was born.

In the next few weeks six more babies were born in the same condition as Mike's nephew. Though each

was an individual tragedy, each was also a cause for fear and worry among the people of the valley. The

less well-educated, especially among the refugees who had come shortly after the night of the missiles,

believed the state of the babies to be an inauspicious omen, signaling the end of the magical protection of

Shambala, although Mike's father assured them that according to scriptures the protection was supposed

to last many generations. Others, more scientifically, figured that the magic of Shambala did not protect

them from radiation after all and that somehow or other the state of the newborns was

radiation-poisoning induced.

At first no one paid much attention to Chime Cincinnati, although she was there at or just after each

birth. As she had with Mike's nephew, she would look the child over, shake her head and mutter to

herself, "Hmm. No soul." After a while people did talk of her odd behavior and began to think of her as

unlucky. Eventually everyone left her strictly alone, especially pregnant women.

Mike took his copied fairy tales to his sister's house and read them to her children while she tried to

cope with the new baby. She would not name it, nor would the father, a nomad guerrilla refugee. Mike's

mother called the baby "Fred," just for something to call it.

When Isme's eighteenth birthday came a few months later, Mike had still not decided to trade his books

for a bride gift, nor did he have any other fine thing to give to Isme to tell her that he wanted to become

her husband. It hardly mattered.

Girls were not in the mood for courtship by that time. Every baby born since Nyima had Mike's nephew

was in much the same condition. There was talk among the more hard-bitten former refugees of putting

the children to death so that they did not command valuable camp supplies.

By then birthdays had ceased to be occasions for kites and dragon dancers, lavish gifts and one of Henri

Thibideaux's witty ice sculptures. Boys turned twenty-one quietly, and girls at eighteen were choosing to

pass up their option of beginning their families at that age.

Mike watched as, at dinner, Chime Cincinnati gave Isme a small packet tied up in a piece of old cloth.

"Thanks, Chime," Isme said,her tone a ghost of the excitement a girl ought to feel on such an occasion.

"What is it?"

"An herb to keep you from conceiving, my friend," Chime said bluntly. Some people hissed in their

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breath, others gasped. You'd have thought she was the thirteenth fairy at the christening of the Sleeping

Beauty, but the gift made sense to Mike.

"I have a little something for you too, Isme," said Tsering Li, Chime's mother's half brother. He was tall

and good-looking and extremely good at games, and he smiled possessively at Isme, though Mike did

not recall ever seeing them together before. "My father brought it with him when he came across to

Shambala. It belonged to his mother. I want you to have it, for luck." He gave her a silver ring with a

dragon set in it.

From the sweet sad smile with which Isme accepted the ring and the gravity with which she placed it on

her finger, Mike knew that he had lost out, this time around anyway. Perhaps Tsering Li and Isme would

not marry just yet, but that ring was a promise between them all the same. Just as well. The world was no

longer safe for babies and it was no longer safe for romance.

Mike vowed silently that he would spend the rest of his life digging in the tunnels beneath the city. If he

could not have life, he would learn the secrets of the dead.

CHAPTER II

Chime Cincinnati peered over Mike's shoulder, casting a shadow across the beam of the miner's lamp

strapped to his forehead. "What have you in there, Meekay?"

Mike had been spending as much time as possible in the last few months digging in the bowels of

Kalapa, away from Isme, away from the nasal keening of the unnatural newborns. He wasn't used to

company anymore, except for the companionable remarks of his father and fellow workmen. He could

certainly do without Chime Cincinnati intruding on him, bringing up matters he was trying to forget in the

thrusts of his shovel, the excitement of each small new find. "You shouldn't really be here, you know," he

told her. "This area isn't properly shored up yet."

"Oh, it's all right. Today is my eighteenth birthday, and tonight at my party your father will officially tell

everyone that I am the reincarnation of the Terton, and as such I'm allowed everywhere."

"Happy birthday," he said. "I regret that I have no material gift to give you at this time, however, I will

give you instead a very good piece of advice. You should stop speaking of yourself as if you are different

from everybody else. People would like you much better."

He hadn't intended to say that, but now that he had, it felt good. He'd been getting very fed up with her

air of detachment, even amusement, when his sister, the girl he loved, his father and mother, his nieces

and nephews, and the entire city were in an uproar.

Chime Cincinnati merely gazed up at him with large sad eyes and said in a small, low voice, "But Iam

different. I am the Terton."

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Elizabeth Ann Scarborough - Last Refuge

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