Free The Infinity Concerto by Greg Bear

listened. The land all around was silent, but from the sky came a low humming, like wind stroking telephone wires. When the darkness was complete, the humming went away.

    Then, starting in the east and progressing westward across the sky, the stars steadied, as if precipitating out of solution and pasting themselves against the bowl of the heavens.

    There were stars in the dirt, as well. He pulled his feet up on the boulders and looked down. Things sparkled and glinted between the few blades of grass. Soon these glows faded and the land settled into night with a breezy sigh, as if all the Realm were a woman lying back on a pillow.

    No, indeed, Michael thought; this is not Earth, whatever its outward resemblance.

    He sat on the rocks for some time before he heard the voices. They came from the creek, but he couldn't see who was speaking; there was no light but the stars and the now-faint glow from the hut's windows. Concentrating on the source, forcing his pupils to their maximum dilation, he discerned a low-slung boat-shadow gliding down the creek, as well as a few figures standing on the prow. The boat nudged the bank and he heard footsteps coming toward him.

    He stood up on the rocks. "Who's that?" he called out.

    The hut door swung open. Spart stood silhouetted against the swirling, furnace-orange light. The approaching shadows passed through the shaft of light from the door and were outlined briefly. There were four, brownish-green in color - or perhaps solid green - and they were naked. Three were male, one female. They were obviously Sidhe, with the same elongated features and spectral grace, and each carried a broad, stubby log.

    They surrounded Michael and at a signal, simultaneously dropped the logs from their shoulders into the dirt.

    "Dura," said the female. The beauty of her voice made Michael shudder.

    "Your wood, boy," the Crane Woman said from the hut door.

    He turned and cried out. "What do I do with it?". But the hut door closed and the naked Sidhe walked away. The female glanced back at him with some sympathy, he thought, but she said nothing more. They were absorbed in the blackness.

    He remained standing on the boulder awhile, then sat. The four logs rested on their ends, each about a foot and a half wide and a yard tall. He was no carpenter like his father; he couldn't calculate how many board-feet there were in the logs, or how much of a house he could build with them.

    Not a very large one.

    He leaned back and closed his eyes again.

    "Whose boy are you?"

    He thought he was dreaming. He wiped his nose reflexively.

    "Hoy ac! Whose house?"

    Michael spun around on the boulders and looked in the voice's direction. There was only a log.

    "Rup antros, jan wiros," said the voice, like that of the Sidhe woman but with a fuzzy quality. "Quos maza."

    "Where are you?" Michael asked softly. The night air was quite chilly now.

    "All around, antros. It's true. Your words are Anglo-Saxon and Norman and mixes from the misty north and the warm south. Ah, I knew those tongues once, at their very roots. affrighted many a Goth and Frank and Jute."

    "Who are you? Who?"

    There was silence for a moment, then the voice, much weaker, said, "Maza sed more kay rup antros. It's strange to be broken for a human's house. Why so privileged? Still, all wood is passing; the imprint, must fade."

    The voice did indeed fade. Though it was still and quiet thereafter, Michael got no sleep that night.

    Chapter Six

    He was almost as cold as the rocks he sat on when the dew settled around him in the early dawn. The sky turned from black to gray and mist slid over the mound and creek in glutinous layers. Narrow vapor trails four or five feet in length shot through the mist with quiet hissing noises. Michael was too chilled to care.

    He twisted his stiff neck around and noticed the logs were no longer standing around the boulders. Sometime during the night, they had fallen into jumbles of neatly cut beams and boards. The