"How not?" BD said. "The Powers are many; and They are One."

Juniper signed agreement; both at once were true, and you couldn't begin to understand Them until you grasped it-not just with your mind, but with heart and gut and bone.

Melissa chuckled. "And sure, we're forgetting something. You have to be careful what you ask, for They have more answers than we can swallow. We should have asked as mothers, not just as… as politicians in fancy dress."

Juniper smiled ruefully. "My Rudi's east of the mountains; with your girls Ritva and Mary, Signe, and your Edain, Melissa. We should ask about them."

"Sumina and I will stand as Guardians," BD said. "But… you don't necessarily get what you ask for; They may give you what you need, not what you want. For if that which you seek, you find not within yourself, you will never find it without- "

Signe smiled agreement, and completed the line: "-for behold: I have been with you from the Beginning, and I am that which is attained at the end of desire."

Then she shook her shoulders; it was a getting-ready-for-a-tough-job gesture that she'd picked up from Mike Havel. Who had been her husband… and who had also fathered Rudi Mackenzie. It gave Juniper a moment's pang to see it.

"We should try," Signe said. "Though… I wish scrying were as reliable as turning on a TV in the old days."

"Well, yes, that would be convenient," Melissa Aylward said, a stout cheerfulness in her tone. "But on the other hand, there was never anything worth watching, anyway, even with a hundred channels on cable."

"There was always CNN."

"If you wanted a long story about a farmer in North Dakota who'd taught his duck to sing."

"Come," Juniper said, her momentary smile dying.

She walked from the circle of oaks to the pool that lay outside it and went down on one knee, leaning on her staff. The others did likewise. The water flowed quietly, dark and clear, reflecting only the stars and moon. Juniper raised the sickle towards the silver light in the sky with the point up, then turned it down over the water, as if pouring the contents of a cup.