"Your vision, your torching, as you quaintly call it—you see where people are in the many paths of their lives. But I am not on the path of time. Nor is my sister. We don't belong anywhere in your prophecies or in the memories of those who know us. Only in the present moment are we here."

"Yet I remember your first word long enough to make sense of the whole sentence," said Peggy.

"Ah," said Becca. "The judge insists on correctness of speech. Boundaries are not so clear, Margaret Larner. You remember perfectly now; but what will you remember in a week from now? What you forget of me, you'll forget so completely that you won't remember that you once knew it. Then my statement will be true, but you'll forget that I said it."

"I think not."

Becca smiled.

"Show me the thread," said Peggy.

"We don't do that."

"What harm can it do? I've already seen all the possible paths of my life."

"But you haven't seen which one you'll choose," said Becca.

"And you have?"

"At this moment, no," said Becca. "But in the moment that contains all moments, yes. I've seen the course of your life. That isn't why you came, though. Not to find out something as stupid as whether you'll marry the boy you've nurtured all these years. You will or you won't. What is that to me?"

"I don't know," said Peggy. "I wonder why you exist at all. You change nothing. You merely see. You weave, but the threads are out of your control. You are meaningless."

"So you say," said Becca.

"And yet you have a life, or had one. You loved Ta-Kumsaw—or Isaac, whatever name you use. So loving some boy, marrying him, that didn't always seem stupid to you."

"So you say," said Becca.

"Or do you include yourself in that? Do you call yourself stupid in having loved and married? You can't pretend to be inhuman when you loved and lost a man."