the forest had stood only minutes before. Already she could see grasses and shrubs beginning to emerge and fill in the space, converting the former prison into a scrubby plain.
"I'd say it's impossible," Ember declared, "except that everything I ever knew about that place was impossible already."
"Our vines!" Edeline said, "They're withering away."
It was true, the living ivy that had clothed their bodies for so long was already turning brown and loosening its hold on them. In only a few moments, the two stood nude as the plants faded and then vanished.
"At least it's warm out here," Ember said. Her tiny form was already as nut brown as her shoulder-length hair and her almond-shell eyes. The green of the ivy had been the only contrast in her appearance. Now she looked as if she might blend in with a stick or a small log like a chameleon or a squirrel.
"Don't worry about it," Soma said, "we'll get you some proper clothes at the station. We should get going there now. It isn't that far, but I have to warn you. Time and space out here are not the same as what you're used to."
She started to walk away, and Edeline and Ember hurried to catch up after a few more moments staring and trying to comprehend the unnatural disaster they had just witnessed unfold.
"What happened to everybody else?" Edeline queried as she strode alongside Soma.
"And everything else?" Ember added, thinking of the birds, and the trees, and the other living beings who'd made their home in the forest.
"All gone," was Soma's response.
"Just like that?"
"Just like that."
"Wait a minute," Ember stopped and stood with her arms crossed. Edeline and Soma turned towards her.
"This Law of Five," Ember said once she had Soma's full attention. "First there were you and Squee and Bombarda, right? And that was three. So you're saying that only two more could ever get out?"
"Right," Soma snapped, and started to walk away again but Ember wasn't budging.
"So why us? Why me? Why Edeline? There must have been hundreds of others in there. And now they're just poof? After all that? Did they even know what was happening?"
"I don't think they suffered, if that's what you're worried about," Soma said. "It was quick, like you saw. Dust to dust, you know. In record time," she added in a lower voice.
"And speaking of time," she laid, louder again, "like I keep telling you, we don't have much of that. We have to get to the station, to Red Cliff, before your own changing begins."
"It would help if we had any idea what you're talking about," Ember said.
"I've been trying to explain," Soma said, "but we have to go. Now."
This time when she turned around and started walking, she did not stop. Edeline hesitated, stuck between wanting to keep up with Soma and not willing to leave Ember behind. It was Ember, after all, who had not only shown her the ropes from the very beginning, but Ember who had been her companion and friend ever since, throughout the ages, never once faltering in trust or kindness or reliability. Fortunately, Ember relented, and went along with them again.
They walked for what seemed like hours, in the heat of a sun more scorching than any they'd been used to, and both Edeline and Ember soon became parched and began begging for water, but Soma had none to offer, and only kept promising that the sooner they got to the station, the sooner they'd be relieved, not only of their thirst but also of their nakedness and weariness. The ocean soon lost its novelty and even some of its beauty in Edeline's eyes, and the hot white sand became more of a nuisance than a revelation. It hurt their feet, and the absence of any tracks or other markings was depressing. To Edeline it seemed they had come upon a wasteland where nothing lived or could ever live. There was only the pale blue cloudless sky, the bright sun which hardly seemed to change its position, the sand, the sea, and the three of them, struggling to move quickly across the endless beach. Ember had remained silent for quite a while.
Ember was not happy. Of course, she never was especially happy. She rarely smiled, even more rarely laughed. She'd kept her mind busy with attempts at ultra-attention, trying to translate the languages of breezes and leaves and insects and roots. She often felt on the verge of a great epiphany, that she was meant for a higher functioning, one that seemed perpetually on the tip of her mind. Now she was without familiar bearings. She felt no wind, heard no rustling. The silence of that crazy beach was maddening to her. Even the sound of the waves mildly crashing on the shore seemed muted and dull. She would have to start all over again, learn everything all over again. All that she knew was useless now, pertaining to a world, an environment that not only did not exist but would never exist again. She had seen it collapse and disappear with her own eyes. And now this. Edeline and others had spoken to her of oceans and dunes and waves but those had always been stories of beauty and joy, not of infinity and the emptiness she was sensing from it now. She concentrated, straining her ears to hear the other noises she knew must be out there, at the highest ranges, or maybe at the lowest. Her auditory senses were acute, but so far she was picking up only hints. She would have to try harder.
Edeline was still puzzling over their own selection. Soma had told them nothing, really, about this Coalition or why she and Ember had been selected for rescue. The stuff she had said about machines and information and time running out was not making sense to her. Ember knew nothing about machines, not even as little as Edeline did. She herself knew a little about engineering, but what she had known about was scheduling and running meetings. She'd been a program manager in her worldly life, forever "herding cats", as they called it, trying to get the brainier people to agree on when they'd get their work done. She'd been pretty good at that, able to keep the work humming along while not disgruntling anyone more than anybody else. The marketing people would present some written plans for what they wanted. Then she'd ask the software people to come up with estimates for the time it would take to implement the requirements and test that the product would work as designed. They all lied to her. No one had any idea how long anything would take! It wasn't like building a house, where the time for a slab of cement to be poured and dry was a known mathematical commodity. When it came to software it was anybody's guess, and it was her job to keep all the lies in the air like juggling balls.
She couldn't imagine how such a skill set could possibly come in handy now. As for why they wanted Ember, Edeline was willing to concede that the child was far more capable at almost everything than she herself was. Edeline admired Ember perhaps more than any other person she had ever known. There was something about the girl, a sense of competence, but more than that, a quality of mastery. She believed that Ember was capable of accomplishing anything, so maybe she was chosen solely to assist Ember, or because she was Ember's friend. That made enough sense that she finally decided to stop thinking about it, at least for the moment.
Soma was glad to be left alone at last. They still had a bit of a journey ahead of them, and her two companions' continual questioning was draining her spirits. She recalled the day her own changing began, when Kai had taunted her with what now seemed more like a threat than a promise. That day she had been the one annoying him, and he teased her for being so full of questions.
"That's for me to know, and you to find out," he'd said when refusing to answer any more of her queries. She found out, all right. She found out plenty, far more than she'd ever wanted to know, and here she was, stuck with all that knowledge and the little good it was doing her.
"I should have thought about water," she scolded herself, not that she needed any, but the two she'd brought out of the inner prison did. It had not even occurred to her. She had brought nothing other than her own physical self, and there was nothing between the forest and the coastal station where she was leading them. It could be dark by the time they got there. It was impossible to tell. Here the sun didn't follow a straight line in any predictable manner. In the meantime, they weren't even anywhere near a river or a stream and the ocean of course was undrinkable
. Their bodies would adapt, but not soon enough. They would need water, and as soon as possible. All she could do was hurry and drag them along. That task grew harder by the minute. Ember and Edeline were not out of shape, but they were unused to the heat, and the air was different too, thinner and more difficult to breathe for those not yet conditioned to it. The sand was not easy to walk on, and their feet were tired and sore.
They were sweating and uncomfortable and anxious as well. Ember did not want to admit it, but she was feeling homesick. She didn't know that it had been more than seven hundred earth years since her initial incarceration, but she did know that the forest was the only place she knew in the whole world. She had been a small child, after all, when she was arrested and deported along with her grandmother. She remembered nothing at all of that previous life, but she knew the forest world inside and out, knew every tree and every branch, every berry and every root. She knew every angle of light and the direction of every breeze. She knew all the stars in the night time sky although she didn't know that none of them were real. They were only lights. It was all just a bubble, a dome, a fake and a fraud. The way it had sunk and vanished so easily left her nervous and frightened, as if she also might disintegrate entirely at any moment, as if everything around her might too. After so long with hardly any change whatsoever, the impact of that sudden transformation had been powerful and profound. She walked uneasily, even unsteadily, behind the two larger females, thinking all the while how odd it was that Soma and Edeline were now about the same age, biologically, when only so recently Soma had been just like herself, forever eight. How long had she said it had been? Two weeks? Two weeks and three days?
"That would mean," Ember thought, "She's been growing at something like two years a day, every day, if it even works like that. Or did it happen all at once?" She needed to know and she caught up to Soma and asked her that very question. Soma nodded.
"That sounds about right," she agreed, "although it isn't precise like that. But more or less, yes. Once the changing begins, you grow every day. Of course only until you reach your full size. Like me."
She eyed Edeline closely.
"You won't grow," she told her. "Except older. You'll just grow older."
"Two years every day?" Edeline asked. She was also doing a rough calculation in her mind, and the results were not pleasing.
"So in two weeks I'll be sixty?"
"Two weeks after the changing begins," Soma nodded. "I'll probably be ahead of you by then, because you have three days, including today, before it starts."
"And I'll be like you are now," Ember said.
"Like I told you," Soma said. "We don't have much time."
"I didn't know you meant it like that," Edeline said, thinking about how probable it was that she'd be dead and gone in a matter of days. The thought was new to her. She wasn't sure she didn't like it.
"Come on," Soma said. "The station's not far up ahead. We'll want to get there before dark."
"The sun is still pretty high," Ember observed.
"Remember the trees?" Soma said. "That's how the sun goes down around here too. Just like that. And then it doesn't even go down all at once, but kind of bounces around the horizon a bit like a ball hitting the ground. Then when it's dark it's completely dark all at once."
They set off again, but had hardly gone a few steps when they heard a whirring sound, followed by a whooshing in the air above their heads. Edeline looked up and saw a shiny, silvery metallic disk-shaped object zipping and zooming, diving and climbing as quickly as a hummingbird.
"Think you can catch that?" Soma
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