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Yoncalla said, "You fear another mad immortal?"
Jedra looked at him. Even in a dwarf body, the immortal looked smug. The wild look in his eyes made him appear a little crazy yet, too.
"You learn to fear everything in this world," Jedra said. He fingered the crystal around his neck. "Even the other worlds within it."
Yoncalla laughed. "The storage crystals follow the rules of their creators," he said. "This one may be completely different from the ones you have visited before."
"That's encouraging," Jedra said. He lay down on the ground so his body wouldn't topple over when he lost conscious control of it, and he concentrated on the crystal. He tried to mindlink with it, pushing at the barrier between himself and Kayan until it eventually gave way.
* * *
He found himself in a brightly lit forest. Not
as bright as Yoncalla's world, but the sunlight streaming through the wide leaves was brighter than the reddish glow that fell on Athas. It made yellow streaks in the mist that rose from the damp ground, ground on which a thick carpet of deep green moss grew. Jedra took a couple steps and felt it compress beneath his feet, giving him a springy, almost jaunty gait that made him smile even though he still held himself alert for trouble.
He heard water flowing nearby. Water, and a voice raised in song. Kayan's voice. Jedra walked toward her beneath the trees, bouncing with each step, until he came to the edge of the stream. He stood atop a short cliff above a wide pool; it was maybe ten feet straight down to the water. And in that pool, glowing in the unfiltered sunlight, floated Kayan. The water was perfectly clear; Jedra could see the surface only by the waves Kayan made as she swept her arms out in front of her and scissored her legs lazily, pulling herself slowly through it. Her armor and underclothing lay in a pile on a flat rock a few feet upstream from Jedra.
"Hello!" he called to her, surprised that he could speak with such a sight before him.
She flinched, sending a big ripple out in a ring around her. Then she looked up and said, "You came for me."
"I did."
"Come on the rest of the way," she said, grinning mischievously.
"Into the water?" Jedra looked for a path down to the edge of the pool, but he saw none. The pool itself looked far deeper than he was tall; Kayan seemed to be floating just fine in it, but he had no assurance that he would fare as well. "I'll come to the edge for you," he said. "How do I get down there?"
"Jump," she said. "It's all or nothing in this world."
"Oh? You've explored it?"
"I did better than that. I made it."
"You made it? How?"
She leaned back in the water and pushed herself along with her hands. Swirls of light and shadow played across her body as she moved. "It was empty when I got here," she said. "Dark, with nothing to stand on. So I wished for a sun, and ground, and when I got that I wished for the rest. Do you like it?"
Jedra pulled his eyes away from her long enough to take in the stream flowing over the rocks at the head of the pool, the trees with their long branches full of wide, parasol leaves, and now that he looked for them, the birds flitting from branch to branch. "like it?" he asked. "It's beautiful. I can't believe I'm wearing this whole thing around my neck."
He looked back at Kayan, who had turned over and now pushed herself along on her stomach with gentle kicks of her legs. "Me, either," she said.
Jedra felt uncomfortable watching her suspended in the clear water, with so much seeming emptiness below. "Aren't you afraid of falling to the bottom?" he asked her.
She laughed. "The water holds me up. I don't know if this is something I made up too, or if I could do this out in the real world, but either way it's fun. Come on, try it." She stopped pushing herself through the water and beckoned to him with both hands.
Just in time for Kayan to splash another face-full of water on him.
"Hey!" he yelled, windmilling his arms in an attempt to stay afloat. The water was cool against his bare skin.
"Hey, yourself," she said, giggling and splashing him again.
She was doing it on purpose. Well, two could play that game. Jedra could hardly see through his wet eyes, but he slapped the water in her direction and was rewarded with a scream of surprise. She splashed him again, but he protected his eyes with his arm this time. She was close; when he saw a white leg shimmer beneath the water he held his breath while he ducked under and caught it, then tugged her under with him.
They both bobbed to the surface again, but this time Jedra reached up and took her in his arms, drawing her close to him. They eyed one another from inches away, both grinning now, and Jedra said, "Kiss me or I'll pull you under again."
"If you don't kick your legs, you'll-yeow!" They bobbed back beneath the surface before she could finish, but Jedra got the idea. He let her go and began to scissor his legs and move his arms back and forth the way he'd seen her do, and this time when they bobbed back to the surface, their heads stayed above water.
Kayan leaned forward and kissed him anyway. "I love you," she murmured.
