"Waste it? What?"
"Time, son. Precious, lovely time. That's all there is, just time. Sweet, flowing time. Animals don't know about time."
As she spoke, a slipping shadow of some wild scene whirled past and through them. It was a great city in flames. It seemed more substantial than the vagrant wisps of countryside or sea scenes that had been ribboning past them as they spoke. The wooden buildings and city towers seemed almost solid enough to crush anything in their path. Flames leaped toward the gray, dead-skin sky; enormous tongues of crackling flame that ate the city's gut and chewed the phantom image, leaving ash. (But even the dead ashes had more life than the grayness through which the vision swirled.)
Ian Ross ducked, frightened. Then it was gone.
"Don't worry about it, son," the old woman said. "Looked a lot like London during the Big Fire. First the Plague, then the Fire. I've seen its
like before. Can't hurt you. None of it can hurt you."
He tried to stand, found himself still weak. "But what is it?"
She shrugged. "No one's ever been able to tell me for sure. Bet there's some around in here who can, though. One day I'll run into one of them. If I find out and we ever meet again I'll be sure to let you know. Bound to happen." But her face grew infinitely sad and there was desolation in her expression. "Maybe. Maybe we'll meet again. Never happens, but it might. Never saw that retarded boy again. But it might happen."
She started to walk away, hobbling awkwardly. Ian got to his feet with difficulty, but as quickly as he could. "Hey wait! Where are you going? Please, lady don't leave me here all alone. I'm scared to be here all alone. I'm scared to be here by myself."
She stopped and turned, tilting oddly on her bad leg. "Got to keep moving. Keep going, you know? If you stay in one place, you don't get anywhere: there's a way out . . . you've just got to keep moving till you find it." She started again, saying, over her shoulder, "I guess I won't be seeing you again: I don't think it's likely."
He ran after her and grabbed her arm. She seemed very startled. As if no one had ever touched her in this place during all the time she had been here.
"Listen, you've got to tell me some things, whatever you know. I'm awfully scared, don't
you understand? You have to have some understanding."
She looked at him carefully. "All right, as much as I can, then you'll let me go?"
He nodded.
"I don't know what happened to me . . . or to you. Did it all fade away and just disappear, and everything that was left was this, just this gray nothing?"
He nodded.
She sighed. "How old are you, son?"
"I'm 37. My name is Ian-"
She waved his name away with an impatient gesture. "That doesn't matter. I can see you don't know any better than I do. So I don't have the time to waste on you. You'll learn that, too. Just keep walking, just keep looking for a way out."
He made fists. "That doesn't tell me anything! What was that burning city, what are these shadows that go past all the time?" As if to mark his question a vagrant filmy phantom caravan of cassowary-like animals drifted through them.
She shrugged and sighed. "I think it's history. I'm not sure . . . I'm guessing, you understand. But I think it's all the bits and pieces of the past, going through on its way somewhere."
He waited. She shrugged again, and her silence indicated-with a kind of helpless appeal to be let go that she could tell him nothing further.
He nodded resignedly. "All right. Thank you."
She turned with her bad leg trembling: she had stood with her weight on it for too long. And she started to walk off into the gray limbo. When she was almost out of sight, he found himself able to speak again, and he said . . . too softly to reach her . . . "Goodbye, lady. Thank you."
