There were others, people and cats, coming out of the buildings toward us, greeting and shouting; one was an old woman, taller by a head than I, striding ahead of the others, a huge tiger cat rubbing herself against her skirts. Her long arms used a staff, but she walked as though she didn't need it; she motioned Once a Day to her and wrapped her in her long arms with a laugh. Once a Day hugged her and said a name like a sigh: Thinsinura. The old woman's eyes fell on me, and she raised her staff to indicate me. "And where did you find him?" she said to Once a Day tucked under her arm. "Or did Olive Grayhair send him to us, to tell us we're all dead?" Once a Day snuggled laughing within her arms and said nothing.
"I came to stay," I said.
"What? What?"
"I came to stay," I said loudly. "And Olive's dead many lives herself."
She laughed at that. "You're carrying," she said. "Bread, is it? Come, put it down; we'll taste it. If I were dark now, I'd question you. Staying is one thing, but… anyway, welcome to Service City." She raised her stick and swept it around to indicate the buildings that stood on the stone plaza. "Well. Come, warren boy; we'll think awhile, and see."
She put an arm around me as strong as the bearded man's who had taken me in the forest, and we walked together toward the black hole in the wall that Once a Day had called way-wall. Zhinsinura's long strides took us directly toward it, and though I tried to make us turn away, she gripped me and we kept on till it loomed above us, making me dizzy with its unseeable no-place. I had a moment to feel limitless fear, that if we walked into it we would be lost in its blackness, blind, and we struck it. Or didn't strike: there was a moment that felt like a cracked knuckle all through me - and we were inside, not in darkness but in the hugest indoors I had ever been in, vast, glittering with light; as though there were a raindrop on my glasses, there was an odd shimmer and sense of refraction everywhere and nowhere. I looked back at the black wall I had passed through and was looking outside. The light that lit this place fell through that wall. Way-wall!
And the place that black wall lit, the house that housed Dr. Boots's List: I stood still in wonder at it. Zhinsinura walked away with Once a Day across the black and white tiles that made the vast floor, and their heels clacked and their voices echoed, for the place went up, up, up to the metal ribs that made the roof's curve. In that huge echoey space, so different from the warren's hivelike insides, there were enough people it seemed to fill a city. At the back of the place a great shelf jutted out and made a second floor, reached by a wide sweep of stairs cable-flown from the ceiling; people sat on the shelf's lip and on the stairs with legs dangling and called down to those below; the travelers piled up their goods and sat on them, talking to friends who embraced them, and children ran with drink for them across the tiles. Clouds of bread-smoke arose from groups visiting, and the big cats sniffed the air and mewed. The whole place hummed and buzzed with the purr of the List's ancient speech (though some fell silent as they turned to see me) and none seemed surprised in the slightest to have stepped through Night and fallen into a treasure house of the angels.
For that's what it was. Once a Day ran across the floor to me, skipping away from friends who reached out hands to her, and came to take me in amid it all.
All along the long, long sides of that place were bins and chests and cases, angel-made; some were waist-high to me and made of glossy white plastic, others were tall, with hinged doors of glass and made all, all of angel silver - there were so many of these there that the dull glow of them seemed to lower the heat in the place and make it cool. Some of the open low bins had mirrors above them, slanted in such a way as to make what was inside seem twice as much as it really was - only the angels would have thought of that.
Once a Day ran from one of these cases to another, showing me things kept in them which she had told me about while we walked - "and here's this that I told you about and here's that that I told you about," and her eyes were wide and bright and she was light and I loved her intensely. She took me by the hand to see the huge pictures fixed all along the sides above the bins; though they were so large I couldn't have missed them, she felt I must be shown, and stood pointing them out. The colors of them seemed as bright as the day the angels made them: one was carrots, beets, and beans; another had eggs and white bottles; one was a cow, with a smile like a man's, which was ridiculous. As she stood solemnly pointing to the cow, she saw someone, and said softly, "Zher."
It was a name. A boy, pale blond and with a pink tint of sunburn on his shoulders and nose, sat in a circle of people, mostly older, who seemed to keep a distance from him, though they smiled at him, and occasionally one reached out to stroke his arm or touch him. Once a Day went over to them. The boy Zher looked up at her, who was known to him, and at me, who was a stranger, and his look was the same. Once a Day went through the circle and knelt before the boy; he looked at her, his eyes searching her but seeming to look for nothing. She touched his face and hands, and kissed his cheek, and without a word came back and sat with me.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Zher," she said. "Just this year come of age, and got his first letter from Dr. Boots today."
"What's that?"
"It's a letter. And it's from Dr. Boots."
"Why is he naked?"
"Because he wants to be."
Zher smiled a little, and then more; a laugh seemed to be within him, and those around him smiled too, and looked at each other and at him, and he did laugh, and they laughed with him. Somewhere someone dropped something with a clang, and the cats' ears all rose, and Zher's head snapped around with eyes wide.
"Have you had this letter from Dr. Boots?" I asked.
"Yes. Every May month since I was his age; the first, the summer after I came; and just before I went out to the camp, and met you, this year."
"Was it like that for you when you got your letter?"
"Yes. Just the same. I felt that way."
"Were you silent? Do you have to be?"
"You don't have to be. You just are, especially after the first. You don't have anything to say. It's all done. It's all like it will be. Talking, after that, is just - just for fun. Just something to do."
"When you talk to me - is it like that?"
She brushed her black hair with her hand and said nothing, and I didn't dare talk more about it. Evening was falling in the room; the blue daytime shimmer turning dusty gold.
"Doesn't he look beautiful?" she said.
"Yes."
"Beautiful."
"Yes."
As the sun set, the singing began, low and quiet, touched off by the purring of some cat, Brom or Zhinsinura's tiger, and taken up by one group of them, and then by another, a low sweet chuckle and drone and growl, each voice finding room in the medley to purr; and, as night came on, left off, voice by voice, Once a Day's high sad sound nearly the last, until they were all silent. And the Lights were let out.
Perhaps the angels knew a way to make the cool globes dark in the day; the List just keeps them in black bags, and lets them out at night. There were many there, but still in that great place there were pockets and vague places of darkness. No one around Zher moved to bring a Light near him, and in the gloom I could see his fair body glowing as though a lamp were lit within him.