His fondness for the animal made Farr seem even younger than his twelve years — a third of Dura’s age — and he clung to the piglet as if clinging to childhood itself. Well, Dura thought, the Mantle was huge and empty, but there was precious little room in it for childhood. Farr was having to grow up fast.

He was so like their father, Logue.

Dura, still misty with sleep, felt a surge of affection and concern for the boy and reached out to stroke his cheek, to run gentle fingers around the quiet brown rims of his eyes.

She smiled at her brother. “Hello, Farr.”

“Sorry for waking you.”

“You didn’t. The Star was kind enough to wake me, long before you got around to it. Another Glitch?”

“The worst one yet, Adda says.”

“Never mind what Adda says,” Dura said, stroking his floating hair; the hollow tubes were, as always, tangled and grubby. “We’ll get by. We always do, don’t we? You get back to your father. And tell him I’m coming.”

“All right.” Farr smiled at her again, twisted stiffly, and, with his Air-pig’s fin still clutched tight, he began to Wave awkwardly across the Magfield’s invisible flux paths toward the Net. Dura watched him recede, his slim form diminished by the shimmering, world-filling vortex lines beyond him.

Dura straightened to her full length and stretched, pressing against the Magfield. She kept her mouth wide open as she worked stiffness out of her limbs and back. She felt the feathery ripple of the Air as it poured through her throat to her lungs and heart, rushing through superleak capillaries and filling her muscles; her body seemed to tingle with its freshness.