In the midst of a dream Naaygi became lucid, aware somehow not only of who she was but of what she was, as if the healing of her body—which, while incomplete, was proceeding rapidly—had at last facilitated the healing of her mind. For she remembered now just who she had been before the light had carried her into the sky (and redeposited her here on the earth), and that she had become a nomad both before and after the Flashback but had then became something else—an amalgamation of Naaygi and them: a physical being, yes, but also a vessel, a vehicle, eyes and ears and fingers, essentially, for something which could neither see nor hear nor feel. And she remembered, too, as she awakened in her wheelchair in the common room near the infirmary (where she’d fallen asleep while watching the man t
