"I've brought you some fritters. They're still hot."

"I don't want any."

"Come on, baby. Let me in. Please?"

"No! I'm not a baby! I don't want to see any of you!"

He held his breath as the footsteps moved away down the hall, then leaned his forehead against the glass. Quilla always meddled; Quilla didn't really care about him. If she did, she would understand, she would stay away from the refugees, she would take his side. She was no better than the rest of them.

By listening carefully he could hear voices from the living room, rising and falling, talking about him, and he flung a shaft of silent hatred down to them. It was all right to hate them, he told himself, because they hated him. If they didn't, they would do what he wanted them to do; they would know how he felt. But he'd take care of it. He'd get rid of the maggots, and then his family would understand him and forgive him and know that he had always been right.

Thus bolstered, he eased the sash up and slid his leg over the sill.

The roof of the kitchen curved away from his window, its flexible solar panels bright in the starlight as they rose in serrated ridges over the support beams. On other nights they had looked to Hart like frozen waves on a choppy sea, gleaming with a life of their own, but tonight his interest lay only with the thick branch of the halaea reaching over the roof toward his window. He dangled by his fingers from the sill, his toes just touching the roof, then dropped on a beam and crouched for a moment to make sure of his balance before crossing to the tree. He swung hand over hand along the cool limbs, slid down the trunk, and scuttled behind the hedge of creeper vines. Their cascades of night-blooming flowers smelled sweet and tangled in his hair as he peered through the vines at the living room window. Framed in light, the adults talked and gestured. They had not heard him leave.

The night wind was cold, and he pulled his jacket closed as he ran down the hillside toward the stream. He crossed the water on a series of small rocks, disturbing the night peepers and a few tiny, six-legged lizards. He left the stream east of Haven and moved through the meadow, coming up on the schoolhouse away from town. The teacher's window was dark, and Hart expected that Simit was probably back at Tor Kennerin, talking with Mish and Jason. In the distance Hoku's surgery glowed faintly. Hart hid in the shadows, listening, then fumbled the lightsticks from his pocket and held them in his hand. Dead leaves from the kaedo were piled under the porch of the school. He could start the fire there.

The leaves rustled underfoot as he knelt by the porch and felt for the catch on one of the lightsticks. His hand shook. He caught his lip between his teeth and concentrated, his thumb searching for the small node of the catch.

He touched it, flicked it, and a yellow flame appeared in his hand. He extended his arm toward the pile of leaves, staring at the flame to make sure it did not die. As the flame licked the topmost leaf, a hand reached from the darkness, grabbed his forearm, and almost lifted him from the ground. Hart cried out and a hand clamped over his mouth. His chest ached with fear, and he dropped the lightstick. A thick voice cursed. Hart was jerked back and forth as his captor stamped out the small fire. A smell of singed leaves floated on the air. Still cursing, Hart's captor dragged him from the school. The ache of terror rose from his chest and clenched in his throat, almost paralyzing him, but when Hart realized where they were going, he doubled his efforts to get free, kicking and squirming and trying to bite the hand over his mouth. A door banged open, and Hart was flung headlong into Gren's shack.

Hart lay on the floor and heard himself whimper; the sound shocked him.

Kennerins don't cry, he thought fiercely, and the terror lessened. He rose and stood while Gren bolted the door and moved toward the fireplace. Gren stood warming his hands, silent, and Hart moved quietly toward the door.

"You stay where you are," Gren said without turning, and Hart froze in place. Gren shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it onto a rickety cot against the far wall, then turned and reached over the fireplace for a jar. He lifted the jar to his lips and drank, shuddered, set the jar back with a bang, then bent to stir a pot which hung suspended over the flames. He lifted a spoon and tasted the pot's contents, then reached for a loaf of kasirene bread.

The knot in Hart's throat loosened, and he looked around the shack, at the beaten-earth floor, the chinked walls, the pitched roof overhead, the stone fireplace which belched thin smoke into the room. Lengths of unfinished lumber balanced on stumps served as a table, and two stumps rested by the wall. Gren dragged one of them to the table and sat on it, within easy reach of the cooking pot. A few articles of clothing hung from nails on the walls, and a large wooden box occupied one corner, its top closed and locked with a great metal clasp. The only light came from the fireplace at the far end of the cabin. Closer, a length of thick material covered the one window, and cold seeped in through it. Hart's legs felt stiff, and he flexed his knees.

"Stay put," Gren said, again without looking, and began to eat.

"You'd better let me go," Hart said, his defiance marred by the shake of fear in his voice. "I'll tell my parents that you stole me, and -- "

"And I'll tell your parents that you tried to burn the school, and that you're the one who set fire to the doctor's house."

"They won't believe you."

"They will. Stay put." Gren continued eating.

Hart stayed put and considered Gren's statement. If Mish and Jason had been angry at his refusal to go to school, how would they react to what he had tried to do tonight, or what he had done four weeks ago to the doctor's house?

The more Hart thought about it, the more unhappy he became. His nose felt warm and stuffy, and his eyes prickled.

"I want to sit down," he said. Gren waved toward the other stump. Hart sat, his feet barely touching the floor, and tried not to cry.

Gren finished his meal and pushed the pot and plate aside, then turned to face the boy. He crossed his legs, and his pale eyes looked impenetrable in the flickering light.

"Rich kid," Gren said with disgust, and Hart looked up, surprised.

"Spoiled rich kid. Think you own the universe, don't you? I know your type.

Think you can get away with anything and crap on anyone else. Think everything's a game made to amuse you, and everyone else is a toy, an animal.

You don't have to worry for anything and don't have to give a damn." Gren spat into the fire. "Just take whatever you want, come in and take everything you've got, everything you've worked all your life for, and throw it away.

Robbing me of my life, damn it!"

"I haven't robbed you!" Hart shouted, his tears forgotten. "You came here and stole my planet! You stole my house and my barn and my -- "

Gren reached over and hit the boy's head, knocking Hart to the floor, but Hart had been hit so much that day that the blow did not shock him. He lay as he had fallen, feeling pain at his temple, and refused to stand. Gren cursed, picked him up, and dropped him onto the cot.

"You're not hurt," Gren said, but Hart turned away from him.

"I am so," he muttered. The sheets smelled acrid.

"And I didn't steal anything of yours. You stole my entire world, and my family, and all the work I'd done."

"I didn't. I wasn't even there."

"Your type of people did it -- just the type of person you're going to grow into."

Hart sat and glared at Gren, his fear gone. "If you don't like my type of people, you can go away. You can leave Aerie and take all of those other people with you. I don't want you here; I didn't ask you to come. I wish you would all die and leave me alone."

Gren stared at him for a moment, then his mouth opened and made a harsh, breaking sound. Hart realized that Gren was laughing, and his fear returned. He cowered back on the cot as Gren reached for his jar on the mantelpiece and drank again. The man sat at the edge of the cot, almost tipping it over, and smiled at Hart with cold amiability.

"I'll break you," Gren said without anger. "I'll change your song soon enough, rich kid. I'm not going to leave you alone."

"If you don't, I'll tell my parents," Hart said with more bravery than he felt.

"And I'll tell them about your fires, shall I? It's called arson, rich kid. You're an arsonist. Back on NewHome, when they catch an arsonist, they burn him alive. Have you ever seen anyone burned alive?"

Hart stared at Gren and his mind made flickering, painful visions. He began shivering uncontrollably. Gren cursed and wrapped a blanket around Hart's shoulders. The fire hissed and Gren tossed another log into it. Hart started and cried out, and Gren smiled again.

"Don't tell them," Hart whispered finally. "Don't tell them."

"Maybe," Gren said, and sat, abruptly businesslike. "I'll not tell them provided you do something for me, too."

Hart stared. After a moment Gren continued.

"You come here every day after school, understand? Every single day, and I don't want you telling anyone where you go. All right?"

"Why?"

"Don't ask questions!" Gren shouted. "Are you going to do what I say, or shall we go talk to your parents?"

"I'll come," Hart promised quickly. "Every day, I promise -- I'll always come."

"Good." Gren stood and crossed to the chest in the corner, beckoning to Hart. Hart held the dirty blanket around his shoulders and followed.

Gren opened the lock and prized up the lid of the trunk, and Hart looked down at gleaming metal and shining glass. Gren lifted beakers and scalpels and plates and tubes, his fingers gentle and assured, and he waved them before Hart's eyes.

"I had an assistant back home," he said. His expression relaxed while he played with his implements. "Gone, like everything else, except this. I killed three people to keep my lab, and I'd do it again. But I have it now, and I'm not too old to start once more." He replaced a scalpel and stared into the trunk. "I'm a biologist, rich kid. You know what a biologist is?"

Hart shook his head. Gren stared at him, then shut the trunk, his cold humor gone.

"You will, before long." He grabbed the blanket from the boy's fingers and pushed him toward the door.

"Go home!" Gren shouted. "Go on, get out! And if you tell anyone, I'll burn you alive myself! Go!"

Hart stumbled from the door, gasped, and ran, demons at his heels.

Skittering night birds rose cawing from the grasses, water from the stream splashed his legs and filled his shoes, and the bark of the halaea tree was cold and harsh against the palms of his hands. He scrambled into his room, closed and bolted the window behind him, and hid in the depths of his closet, cold, sobbing, and bereft in a world full of sudden strangers.

*Mish*

IT WAS A LONG, UNHAPPY TIME, THAT FIRST Aeran winter after the refugees came. We didn't have enough food, of course, despite the provisions which Hetch had left with us in late autumn. The grain gave out first, then the dried vegetables and fruits, and the meat we had salted and preserved. Toward winter the last of Hetch's ship provisions were gone, and there was some talk of eating the livestock. The refugees were sullen, pinched, blue, and would trudge through the mud to Tor Kennerin to make long, angry speeches of complaint, as though they did not realize that we, too, were hungry. They seemed to me, then, a plague, a rapacious horde consisting solely of gaping mouths and a constant, buzzing noise of dissatisfaction.

Winds swept from the northern icecaps and frozen islands, bringing us the coldest winter we could remember. Snow piled high on the flanks of the southern mountains and eddied through the hills near Haven, while a constant, bitter rain fell on the fields and village, mixed with hail, driven by a screaming wind. Eagle, our sun, disappeared behind skies of unrelenting gray.

Tor Kennerin was always cold that winter, and I kept low fires burning in the greenhouse as I watched the sickly 'Zimania' seedlings. Of the five hundred seeds Hetch had given me, only one hundred fifty germinated, and of these I lost twelve to the cold. A sorry beginning for a plantation.

A sorrier beginning for the refugees, though. Often, as I paused at a window or in the soggy yard before the house, I could see the huddled figure of Hoku amid the storm, moving from house to cabin to shack as she tended the many sick. We lost four people to the cold and to hunger before the kasirene came to our midwinter rescue with gifts of fish, and more fish, and more fish yet, until Tor Kennerin and everyone in it reeked of the sea, and I swore that I would starve rather than eat another bite. Hoku came, poked at my swollen belly, and ordered me to eat whether I liked it or not, since she didn't give a damn if I starved, but she wouldn't let me starve the baby. I gave in with muttered complaints, which were ignored. I complained much that season.

I had entered pregnancy joyfully, seeing it as a reaffirmation, a promise that the basics of my life would remain the same despite Aerie's changing face. Quilla had marked the beginning of our marriage, Jes the beginning of our life on Aerie, and Hart was conceived the spring we realized that we had established ourselves, that we would not fail on this new world.

And this winter child would mark the change, would tie it to the past and link it to the future. There would always be Kennerins on Aerie. Yet when I told Jason, he said, "Good Lord, woman, isn't there enough to do already?" before smiling and kissing me, and it seemed from that time that a coolness grew between us, that Jason lacked the concern and pleasure that my other pregnancies had brought him. The winter seemed to pass in his absence, and when we were together he chattered of his plans for Haven, the progress of the building, and, most of all, the lives of his new friends, their sayings, thoughts, quirks, desires, tempers. I came to realize that Jason was far less solitary a person than I, and that he viewed the Aerans with the same insatiable glee with which a child views a pile of presents on GiftDay. It annoyed me, but I told myself to be patient, that the wonder would wear itself into a commonplace acceptance, with time. That Jason would bring his energy back to me. I was sick in the mornings, and vomited at the smell of fish.

Then, toward the end of winter, Jason came home one evening full of new plans and new adventures. They had started building a boat that day, and when spring came he and his friends planned to sail to To'an Betes, our sister island, to explore. He bubbled and crowed and drew plans on the dining table with a wet fork.

"What about the spring planting?" I asked.

"Oh, you can look after that," he said. He dipped his finger in his glass and drew a wet hull around his dinner plate.

"The baby will be due then."

But he was busy with his fork, tracing beams and planks on the moist tabletop. I broke a small branch from the halaea and kept it by my bed.

A month later, when his plans showed no signs of changing, I made my slow and awkward way to the barn and stood by him as he crouched in the hay, tinkering with the hull of the boat.

"I don't see why you have to go," I said.

"I want to see if there's farmland over there," he replied through a mouthful of nails. "Our population's going to grow, you know, and we'll need more space." He gave my belly a fond pat as he reached for a hammer.

"There's plenty of space here. You can go exploring next year, or this summer, after the fields are planted." After my baby's born, I thought, but he seemed to have forgotten how to touch my mind. He shrugged and positioned a nail.

"Better in the spring," he said, and drove the nail into the wood.

"Weather's better then."

"Go next spring ... or the spring after. I need you here."

"There're plenty of people [bang] to do the plowing and planting [bang]. You'll get along just fine. [Bang.] And Hoku will be here [bang], so you won't have to worry."

Bang.

I don't want Hoku, I thought bitterly. I want you. Jason continued his pounding and planning, and I left the barn, walked to the halaea, and stood holding its trunk.

Jason left on the first day of Pel ke'Biant, taking with him Ved Hirem the lawyer, Ped Kohl the brewer, Medi Lount the sculptor, and a miscellaneous assortment of younger people, all of them stuffed to the brim with expectations and the sense of adventure. I stood by the shore, holding my belly where the baby kicked, while provisions were dumped into the makeshift boat. I was sure that the broad-beamed, awkward tub would sink as soon as it touched the water of the strait, burdened as it was with ten idiots and their gear, but it remained afloat and Jason waved as the oars flailed the light spring air and eventually bit into the waves in something approaching unison.

I waved back, furious, and left before the boat was out of sight. He had promised to be back within two weeks, well before the baby was due. I didn't know whether to believe him.

One week later three of the younger people returned with the boat to tell us that the expedition was going well and that they would be back later than expected. Four more people left for To'an Betes with them. Twelve days after that another messenger returned, picked up provisions, told me that the explorers were still busy and everyone was well, and departed, again with new recruits. I made bitter pictures in my mind of Jason and his argonauts busy looking for harpies to slay and fleece to steal, and my initial worry festered into a bickering, nagging, unpleasant anger, which I lavished on the world around me. The children avoided me, Laur left me alone, and Mim stared at me from corners and nooks, probably wondering what type of maniac had employed her. I woke each morning expecting the slow pulse of contractions in my abdomen, rose to eat the huge breakfast of fish and early fruits on which Hoku insisted, and which I invariably vomited up during the morning. My back hurt.

I dragged myself to fields or barn or town, listening to disputes, quelling tempers, trying to turn two hundred-odd city dwellers into farmers before the planting season ended and we faced another lean winter.

The Aerans distrusted the kasirene, despite the winter's kindnesses, and would not let them work the fields. The drayclones which Hetch had sold us on credit were not yet fully grown, and the Aerans complained about pulling their own plows. Everyone, it seemed, felt slighted by the apportioning of the fields. They complained about their neighbors, their houses, their work, their children, the weather, the kasirene, the seeds, the land, the plowing, the food, until it seemed that the very air I breathed was a lamentation. I grew snappish, out of temper, grim, and they in turn grew ever more sullen and dissatisfied. I knew the cycle, saw its progression, yet could not break free of it. The world lacked solace, and I had lost my childhood knack of comforting myself.

Tabor had declined the offer to go a-roving and remained at Tor Kennerin, taking care of the children, helping Laur, doing as much as he could of the myriad small things that I could no longer handle and that Jason was not there to do. During the spring he graduated from crutches to cane, and I listened for the triple tapping of his progress around the house or barn. In the evening he sat before the fire, teaching Jes to play the flute, while I lay sprawled and tired in the only comfortable chair and considered with bewilderment the person I felt myself becoming. After Jes went up to bed, Tabor would play complicated, delicate melodies while I listened and hovered at the edge of sleep. He would put his hand on my shoulder to wake me, to start me up the stairs to bed, and I believe these were the only times during that spring that I smiled.

Four weeks after Jason left, Hoku grabbed me as I finished a bitter argument with one of the Aerans, marched me to Tor Kennerin, examined me in her usual brusque manner, and forbade me the farmlands or Haven.

"But exercise," she dictated as she snapped her case closed, "upstairs, downstairs. Take a walk. Do some cooking. Jump fences. But no going into Haven, understand? You're turning into a raving lunatic, and I won't have it."

"But who's to watch the planting, who'll make sure it gets done?"

"Laur," said Hoku with immense practicality. I considered the awesome spectacle of Laur na-Kennerin, beetle-browed and creaking with dignity, descending on the unsuspecting Aerans, and I laughed.

"That's better," Hoku said, and granted me one of her rare, tight smiles.

So I stayed home. Quilla helped with the housework, Mim supervised the cooks, and Laur browbeat the Aerans. Despite my initial misgivings, it seemed to work well. I moved about the house, swollen and awkward, trying to do this or that and getting in the way. Tabor took me on long walks, his limp and my slowness keeping us at the same pace. He moved about the house setting things to rights, rubbed my back when it hurt, mediated the children's quarrels. He prepared food for me that stayed in my stomach, and made sure that I took the medicines Hoku prescribed. And he spent the evenings with me, letting the music of his flute create a shell of peace and comfort.

The week of rest did much to restore me to my right mind. The day the baby was born, I woke smiling at the residue of a silly, spirited dream. The halaea outside my window etched itself against a pale sky puffed with clouds, and as I watched the sun rose and the blue overhead deepened. A vermilion fourbird perched in the tree, hopping on one foot and stopping every so often to warble out of key, or to fluff and straighten its assortment of feathers and wings. I performed the contortions that got me and my belly out of bed and upright, pulled on a robe, and stood before my mirror, brushing my hair into order again, clucking at the increasing strands of gray, peering at the lines around my eyes, counting the creases on my forehead, and enjoying myself. The pinched look had gone from me, and I felt as full and fresh as the spring.

The doorknob rattled, and when I called an entrance Quilla came in, balancing a tray in her hands.

"I can't," I said. "Also, I refuse, and I won't do it."

Quilla loved to scold and nag me into eating, and stand vigilant over me until I had finished every bite. But this morning she did not reply. I glanced at her face. Her eyes were dark with misery, her mouth pinched down at the corners.

"Is something wrong, Quilla?" But my daughter was silent. She set the tray on a table by the window and turned to leave. I caught her arm.

"Quilla, what is it, love? What's wrong?"

"I wish I was dead!" Quilla wailed. "Leave me alone!" She broke free and ran from the room. I stared after her with amazement. The door of her room slammed shut. I contemplated going after her, then shrugged it aside. Quilla had been behaving oddly all winter, though not so oddly as I, and I thought it was growing pains, or the advent of the Aerans. She would get over it.

The house silent. I tied my robe around me, ignored breakfast, and crept down the stairs. As I reached the landing I felt the first gentle contraction building within me, and I stopped and waited until it was over. If this labor was like the others, there would be plenty of time yet. I continued toward the kitchen.