Pulan and Som shoveled ripened soil from the old privy box while Torly helped Cahuan move the seat onto the new now-empty box. Between half-filled flowerpots on the ground, little Quena and two other girls were building an earthling, whose body form seemed to suggest close kinship with the common snowman.

Yoor, all smeared and dusty after some vigorous digging, was trying to show Lasa and Lunin how to create a mirage. The energy of their role playing came so close already, Yoor felt, so close! Together with all their enthusiasm for magical illusions they were bound to stumble across the threshold one of these days.

"We don't have a vim stone!" Lasa exclaimed suddenly, slapping a hand against her forehead. "It can't possibly work! We need power for magic." Lasa came to Yoor with her arm outstretched, fully expecting an enchanted crystal to be dropped into her palm.

But Yoor did not understand. It had all been in Vanian. Enim came to his aid.

"Ah," Yoor nodded. "But vim stones are only for traptions."

Enim stayed to translate while Yoor let visions weave in with his words. "The magic I work gets its power from passion. From people's feelings, convictions, and memories. From wishes, fears, desires."

Waves of emotion rose up in Yoor's music, crushing ashore with ardent fervor in the eyes of a lost pilgrim, a dying swan. Fleeting images of a lover's kiss changed into galloping horsemen, into a veil blowing in the wind. A lone temple in the desert turned into a book that crumbled to dust, a rich, fertile soil from which a sapling scroll rose up, sprouting leaves and rich, purple flowers, sweet nectar dropping down like ink.

"Each tale I tell grows out of tales that have come before. Dreams live on dreams. They need to be free, flowing from one person to the next, changing and blossoming, ripe fruits falling on fertile ground in another's soul."

Lasa and Lunin had added themselves right to the center of the mirage, growing into tale-filled scrolls and dripping down inkily to become dragon eggs in their next life. As the dragons returned from their flight around the courtyard and lay down on the page of a book, Yoor's music softened into the ethereal sounds of the stars, a quiet symphony of the universe.

"All dreams live on, in a realm inside each of us, and beyond all of us. We shape them with every wish we hold, every twinge we feel. We are in their lives always, as they are in ours."

Lasa and Lunin gazed up at the night sky, listening to Yoor's voice drift down to them from the constellations. "What I do is to make myself their friend, their apprentice, their midwife. That is the magic I weave. Tapestries of the dreamscape, filled with the power of yearning and memory."

*

The Snuggery's ivory tower was getting some attention too. Lhut and two of the girls were shaking the wriggling ivories over a sieve, determining who was to go back into the growing boxes, and who was going to be eaten. A few younger kids crowded around them giving opinions, including whether perhaps no one should be eaten at all, but everyone allowed to grow up and fly away.

On a bench between the vines Torly cuddled up to Yoor. "I wish I had grown up in a learning pavilion like this."

Yoor tilted his head to one side. "Hmm. It is marvelous. Full of love. But... there are no lectures, are there?"

Torly shrugged. "So? The point of it is the learning, not the lecturing, isn't it? The kids here learn everything. They learn how to calculate—and to hammer—because they want to build a cart. They learn how to write because they watch others enthusiastically copy texts from a book. They know how to make music or lunch, flower beds or bandages. How get on with each other and even negotiate with the neighbors. And most importantly: how to have their own ideas and projects and an interest in life. I think they learn everything they need."

Yoor titled his head the other way and thought about his own childhood. About hours and hours of sitting still in a group of painfully restrained children who were listening to the official teachings instead of following their own curiosity.

He nodded pensively.

Then Cahuan came up to them and Torly leaned forward to give her a fervent hug. "Thank you. For everything. You are wonderful. And so is the Snuggery."

Cahuan rewarded Torly with a kiss and a warm smile. "We happy you here." Her brow creased a little. "And we have more snuggeries, soon future. Many children need very much. We soon can make for them."

Cahuan pushed back her unruly hair with an uncertain hand. "Only now coin. Manaam will do party with owners for it. And I will go and be beautiful there. So everyone will look and like." She grimaced ferociously.

Yoor raised his brows. "But that's good, isn't it?"

Cahuan gave an impolite grunt. "I not like make show butterfly."

Yoor's jaw dropped. "You do not?" Shock and disbelief washed over his face. He stared at Cahuan wide-eyed, trying to find an anchor in her gaze.

"You do not," Yoor repeated with an empty voice, like a monotonous echo. "You do not like to show off. You do not like to flaunt and to pose." His shook his head. "My word. Who would have thought it possible. Here I was, thinking it is natural, unavoidable really. The fate of those gifted with unearthly beauty. The destiny of butterflies."

Yoor was still visibly hit. But some of the usual gleam began to creep back into his eyes. "You should try it." He got up to demonstrate being on stage, bowing to a ravished audience. The applause swelled. Imaginary flowers landed at his feet. Yoor turned to Cahuan. "It is fabulous. I live my life this way. And I never regret."

Cahuan snorted but smiled. She shook her head, wondering. "I never thought. Not this way. I thought that of course I hate. People stare at me. But, true. Maybe I can like, people stare at me." She sounded very unconvinced.

Yoor cocked his head. "They don't stare. They admire. And they have every reason to admire. You truly are wonderful, and beautiful. They see it, and they are happy." Yoor shrugged. "It is very easy, for you and me, to make people happy. They just look at us and already they are happy. That is good, isn't it?"

Cahuan toyed with a stone in her hand, pondering.

"Up to you, of course," Yoor concluded.

Cahuan wagged her head doubtfully. "I don't know if it 'up to me.' I cannot make me feel different only by say 'feel different!' Only because I hear good idea."

Cahuan shifted slightly on the stairs. "But you give me more than good idea." She looked at Yoor, his easy grace, his radiant self-love. Remembered him flirting, laughing, improvising. Dancing through a colorful mirage, showing off and making gifts. Giving and receiving admiration in abundance, and enjoying all of it recklessly, shamelessly.

"You give me example. True life."

* * *

The lights were slowly changing and fading in the sky over the Snuggery. Pulan was still working on the handcart, whistling softly to herself, and would probably be doing so until the very last shred of light had vanished. Som and Lunin were right beside her, creating a wrollic-tree for the wall beside the Snuggery door. They had dreamed that up: a structure with lots of opportunities to climb and fall and spin around, to sit and hide and come out of narrow tubes. And to find new exciting things in an array of little nests. Which one could also sleep in, if one was small and furry and curled up into a ball.

Enim looked from Lhut to Kaya, a deep frown on his face. With a sigh, he switched back to Kokish. "I really don't know what we should be saying about safety in the mines." He ran a worried hand through his hair, turning to Torly and Yoor. "What should the report call for? How much is enough? It is dangerous work, and it will continue to be so. How many accidents would we tolerate? How many people can get killed and we would still think it all right, because some steps had been taken beforehand to make it less likely?"

They had been on this topic for a while, turning it this way and that, without anyone feeling satisfied.

"It is dangerous work," Yoor said, in a distant, almost singsong sort of voice. "It is dangerous. It is dirty. It's hard. It's unhealthy." He singsonged a bit more, wordlessly, talking to the wind. "It is dangerous. It will continue to be so. If it will continue."

He slapped his hand on his thigh. "That's it!" he shouted.

Everyone startled.

"It is dangerous. Will continue to be dangerous. If it continues. But does it need to continue? Does it?" he challenged them eagerly. "No! We can close the mines! And no one will have to work in there any more. No one will be hurt, no one in danger." Yoor's eyes were gleaming. "Of course, then there will be no new diamonds. But is that a problem? No!"

He held a hand to his heart. "I love jewels. And I have bought jewels in the past. But I do not need them. Not to be happy, not to be beautiful. And, fortunately, not to be loved."

Yoor spread his arms wide. "And that is true for other people too. We can be beautiful, and happy, and loved, without jewels. Without sending people down into darkness and danger. We can just close all these mines. They only produce diamonds."

They all looked at him. Nobody said a word.

Eventually, Cahuan cleared her throat. "But then what people in Shebbetin will do?"

Yoor's brows went up. "Well," he said, spreading his arms. "I am not working in a mine. And I always find things to do. I am not bored at all. Surely everybody likes doing something?"

He waved his hand vaguely. "They could spend time with their children, for instance. That would be good. And with their friends and lovers too." He warmed to his topic. "Then the Mansion needs safe roofs and water pipes and lights. Meanwhile, keep the kitchens running, grow potatoes, feed the horses, repair the wagon. Sing a song, play a game and do some beautiful magic to amuse people. Truly, I cannot imagine us running out of things to do," Yoor concluded.

"No." Cahuan rubbed the back of her head.

Out in the courtyard, Pulan whistled for Lunin's help, and the boy sat his rag doll down in her unfinished cart for a dream ride while he held a plank in place.

Kaya slapped a hand down on her thigh. "How people get food?" she snapped. "That question."

Yoor spread his arms wide. "No problem! There will still be as much food as before, if we close the mines. Even more, perhaps, because there will be more people who can help grow it. Just as with houses, and books and pots and all things. All of that is as plentiful as before, or even more so, because there are more people who can work on it."

Yoor clapped his hands together. "All the people liberated from the mines. They can tend to food and children, rather than just diamonds!"