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for her contemplation.”
    “So,” Firekeeper said, “you do not think Truth will find her way back from this madness.”
    “No,” Plik replied for both himself and Powerful Tenderness.
    Firekeeper stretched, rising with the motion. Blind Seer rose beside her.
    “Very well,” the wolf-woman said. “Then we have two choices. We can do our best to open this door to which Truth has led us and hope she is the only thing that comes out, or we can give up.”
    “Wolves,” Blind Seer added, “find it difficult to give up on a pack member. Truth may not be a wolf, but she has been if not a friend, at least an ally.”
    “So you wish to proceed?” Plik said.
    “We do,” Firekeeper said. “I could not sleep well knowing I left Truth trapped.”
    “Besides,” Blind Seer said pragmatically, “we do not know if we can open this door. If we do open the door, we do not have to remove anything from the space behind but Truth.”
    Plik wished he was as certain they would have the choice. He only had to look at his own reflection to be reminded that even well-laid plans did not end as those who made them might wish.
    Sometimes, they created monsters.

IV
     
     
     
    FIREKEEPER DECIDED SHE DID NOT LIKE POLISHING silver one bit. Even after Bitter returned from Center Island bearing with him a compound that made the task easier, the job remained filthy, repetitive, and boring.
    However, neither Blind Seer nor Rascal could help, for they lacked hands. Plik and Powerful Tenderness took turns, but there was room for only two at a time in the trench. Worse, Firekeeper was the only one supple enough to polish the lower portions of the silver door. As everyone—even she—had agreed that a wholly polished surface was probably necessary, she could not slip away and leave the work to others.
    So she polished. That night, while she was trying to wash away the scent of tarnished metal in the cool waters of the bay, she wondered if the moon so high above was laughing at her.
    When they were not taking a turn polishing, Plik and Powerful Tenderness experimented with a variety of mirrors, seeing which caught light best, learning how to cup the glow and send it elsewhere. Later, when Lovable returned from Center Island bearing a small sack of polished lenses, they worked on using these rounded pieces of glass to intensify the light.
    By the night of the full moon, the two maimalodalum had worked out some possible ways to reflect moonlight “Back, then back, then back, then back,” as the verse demanded. Firekeeper had her own ideas about what might be needed, but she kept these to herself, not sharing them even with Blind Seer. Magic made her uncomfortable, and her growing understanding of how the art might have worked made her even more so.
    On the night of the full moon, they gathered in the vicinity of the door. The fill dirt that remained in the cellar had settled now, the edges tamped down and shored up so they were less likely to cave in. Powerful Tenderness and Plik were down in the trench. Firekeeper waited above, standing on the packed dirt. Truth, still leashed and harnessed, sat beside her. The jaguar had needed to be carried to her position, her body as limp as that of a doll and nearly as lifeless.
    Blind Seer and Rascal flanked the edges of the excavation, ready if needed to spring on Truth, or chase down anything that might get away from the pair of beast-souled and into the night. No one really expected any trouble of the sort, though. The oral history they had gathered from the Wise Beasts agreed that the building that had once been here had been razed before Divine Retribution had driven away the Old Country rulers. If anything alive had been imprisoned behind the silver door, it was unlikely that it had survived well over a hundred years.
     
     
     
    PLIK CRANED HIS NECK BACK so he could watch as the moon rose. Last night and the night before they had calculated the arc it would travel through the sky, and he knew