They named places no map had named: the Long Water, the Quiet Hill, the Second House. "Why the Second House?" Emma asked. "Because the first one must be somewhere," Marek said. Hana laughed. They ate when hungry, slept when sleep still meant something, walked alone, returned together. Outside, machines fed the bodies they'd left behind. Inside, Emma woke hungry. Sometimes the world they came from entered without a door. David. Geneviève. Aurora. Aurélia, John, Caroline. Marek thought of Anna and Daniel. Hana named no one. Not because there was no one. She kept some rooms even the Garden did not enter. It did it again. Rain hung above the Long Water, each drop waiting. Emma walked through it. The pattern moved around her. Hana changed direction. Marek kept walking. "Wait until we understand it." "We've been waiting three months." Hana laughed again. They returned to the Quiet Hill. The hill was where they'd left it. The valley wasn't. No one had watched it change or dreamed it aloud. Emma compared their memories. Hana searched for a precedent. Marek looked down. "So it changes when we're not looking." "Apparently." "That's inconvenient." No answer came. The valley stayed new. They found stairs beneath a wall and went down. Five minutes. Ten. Twenty. Down—until they stepped out where they'd begun. Emma traced the angles. Hana retraced the path. "Any theory?" Marek looked back. "No." The private room still had no door. Aymeric had written a rule: one person, no eyes outside, only the pulse returned. He had not written this. Emma walked around a wall and somehow was inside. Inside, no path could bring the others in. Later she said, "The room still has no door." "You've been using it for two months." "It still has no door." Even Marek laughed. They became ordinary there. Emma dreamed of David and woke with love still hurting. Marek sometimes disappeared toward the water. Hana sometimes wanted silence. They disagreed. They grew tired. They left food unfinished. A glance could still become desire. Desire did not have to become a promise. They learned when not to ask, when to come back. Sometimes they were happy. That frightened Emma less than she thought it would. Then the forest changed its distances. Not the trees. The space between them. A stone struck the valley floor—and only afterward left Marek's hand. For once, he said nothing. Beyond the ridge a city appeared. Windows. Towers. Streets. Beautiful. Almost familiar. They walked toward it. It never came closer. Emma stopped. "We try another route." Hana nodded. "Change one variable." Marek looked at the horizon. "Why are we trying to reach it?" "Because it's there." "Is it?" They turned around. The city was gone. At first Hana had comparisons. A century and a half gave her many. Systems. Experiments. Cities. Things humanity had tried and forgotten. Then she began saying less. Not because she understood. Because she didn't. And that was why she'd come. One evening Emma remembered the rain before the stairs. Hana remembered the stairs before the rain. Marek couldn't place either first. Three months had passed outside. Inside, they had stopped having a word for it. Then nothing impossible happened. Grass. A low wall. Wind over a slope. Ordinary light. Beside the stones, a flower. Small. A species Emma didn't know. She stopped. Hana kept walking. Marek almost did. Emma whispered, "I've seen this before." Hana turned. "One like it?" "No." Emma looked closer. "This one." Marek said nothing. Emma had spoken first. Suggestion was possible. So they separated. No questions. No descriptions. Three minds alone with the same small thing. Then they returned. Marek looked at Emma. "I know it." Hana knelt beside the flower. A hundred and fifty years passed behind her eyes. No place. No person. No day. Nothing she could retrieve. "I know it too." They had seen rain refuse to fall. They had walked down and arrived above. They had heard a sound before its cause. They had chased a city that wasn't there. Hana looked at the flower. "We've seen stranger things." Emma didn't move. "Not inside us." Memory contamination. Suggestion. A shared signal. Something generated between them. Every answer remained possible. None contained a memory. The flower did nothing. The light did not change. The Garden gave them nothing back. "Whose memory is it?" Silence. Emma looked across the slope. "Who was here?" Marek waited. "Maybe that's the wrong question." Hana looked at the flower. "What was here?"
