"We will see. If the Fireflower leads you to share our fate, you will be able to judge for yourself what kind of immortality our gift gives to us."

The great bowl of meadow surrounded by hills seemed to grow darker still, as if a storm rushed in overhead, but in truth the mixed skies had not changed. "And this place? If I'm not dead, this isn't Heaven."

The swan stretched her beautiful neck. "It is not-although names are at best troublesome in these lands. It is another place. One that I could not be certain you would cross, or even reach, as you began to slip away from the places of the living-there is much I do not know about your people. But it was the only place I could have found you before it was too late, and the only place where I could be strong enough to hold you until you could make your own choice to return to the world or not."

Suddenly, as if a door had been thrown open, letting light in, he remembered. "It was the voices-all the… the things I knew. The Fireflower. And it felt like I was knowing more every moment…!" He felt his four feet restless beneath him suddenly, his entire body tensed to run.

"Of course," she said, and for the first time since he had first heard it he found her voice soothing. "Of course. It is difficult enough for one of our kind-how much stranger and more painful for one of your folk. That is why we are seeking help for you." A flicker of spread wing, a sunbeam of white blazing before his eyes, and she was off again. "So follow! We will go where mortals do not venture, except for those rare few that can dream a path. Those travelers pay for their journey with their happiness and their rest. Who knows what those like us, we who have neither rest nor happiness, will be asked to pay?"

Up into the hills he ran, following the dim form of the swan as it darted low over the grass ahead of him. The trees snapped past him like arrows and his legs drove him tirelessly as he ran from twilight into true darkness.