Once, and once only, Xantcha saw a bush and veered off her straight path to examine it. The bush was shoulder-high and sprawling. Its leaves were tiny but intensely green-the first green she'd found on this sunset-colored world. Pale berries clustered on inner branches. Xantcha considered picking a handful, then noticed the thorns, too, a lot of them and each as long as her thumb.
The stranger had been appalled when she'd mentioned hunting for her food, as if nothing here needed anything more than air to survive. But if that were true, then why the thorns, and why were there berries only on the inner branches? The stranger had spoken of a Lady and of creation and perfection. Someone somewhere was telling lies.
Xantcha left the berries alone. She rejoined her trail through the grass. If there were predators, they'd have no trouble finding her. The golden grass was ripe and brittle. She'd left a wake of broken stalks and wished she still had her sword or at least a knife. Aside from the stranger, Xantcha had seen nothing living that wasn't also rooted in the ground, no birds or animals, not even insects. A place that had berries should have insects.
Even Phyrexia had insects.
Xantcha walked until her body told her it was time to sleep. How long she'd walked or how far were unanswerable questions. She made herself a grass mattress beside another
rock, because habit said a rock provided more shelter than open grass. If the stranger could be believed, night never fell, the air wouldn't turn cold, and there was no reason not to sleep soundly, but Xantcha didn't trust the stranger. She couldn't keep her eyes closed long enough for the grass beneath her to make impressions in her skin and after a handful of failed naps, she started walking again.
If walking and fitful napping were a day, then Xantcha walked for three days before she came upon a familiar stranger waiting beside a weathered rock. Even remembering that she, herself, had been one of several thousand identical newts, Xantcha was sure it was the same stranger. The rock was the same, and a wake of broken grass began nearby.
The stranger had moved. She was sitting rather than standing, and she was aware that Xantcha had returned, following her closely with her gray eyes, but she didn't speak. Silence reigned until Xantcha couldn't bear it.
"You said there were others. Where? How can I find them?" "You can't."
"Why not? How big is this world? What happened to me? Did I trick myself into walking in a circle? Answer me! Answer my questions! Is this some sort of punishment?" Manners be damned, Xantcha threatened the seated woman with her fists. "Is this Phyrexia? Are you some new kind of priest?"
The woman's expression froze between shock and disdain. She blinked, but her gray eyes didn't become flashing jewels as Urza's would have done. Nor did she raise any other defense, yet Xantcha backed away, lowered her arms, and unclenched her hands.
"So, you can control yourself. Can you learn? Can you sit and wait?"
Xantcha had learned harder lessons than sitting opposite an enigmatic stranger, though few that seemed more useless. Other than the slowly shifting cloud layers, the occasionally rippling grass and the gray-eyed woman, there was nothing to look at, nothing to occupy Xantcha's thoughts. And if the goal were self-reflection ...
"Urza says that I have no imagination," Xantcha explained when her legs had begun to twitch so badly she'd had to get up and walk around the rock a few times. "My mind is empty. I can't see myself without a mirror. It's because I'm Phyrexian." "Lies," the stranger said without looking up.
"Lies!" Xantcha retorted, ready for an argument, ready for anything that would cut the boredom. "You're a fine one to complain about lies!"
But the stranger didn't take Xantcha's bait, and Xantcha returned to her chosen place. Days were longer beside the rock. Sitting was less strenuous than walking and despite her suspicions, Xantcha slept soundly with the stranger nearby. They had a conversational breakthrough on the fourth day of unrelenting boredom when a line of black dots appeared beneath the lowest cloud layer.
"The others?" Xantcha asked. She would have soared off in the sphere days earlier and over her companion's objections, if the cyst weren't still churning and awkward in her gut.
The stranger stood up, a first since Xantcha had
returned from her walk. Gray eyes rapt on the moving specks, she walked into the unbroken grass. She reached out toward them with both arms stretched to the fingertips. But the specks moved on, her arms fell, and she returned to Xantcha, all sagging shoulders and weariness.
In this world without night, it finally dawned on Xantcha that she might have leapt to the wrong conclusions. "How long have you been here?" A friend's concern rather than a prisoner's accusation.
"I came with you."
Still a circular answer, but the tone had been less aloof. Xantcha persisted. "How long ago was that? How much time has passed since we've both been here?"
"Time is. Time cannot be cut and measured."
"As long as we've been sitting here, was I lying under the rock longer than that, or not as long?"
The stranger's brow furrowed. She looked at her hands. "Longer. Yes, much longer."
"Longer than you expected?"
"Very much longer."
"The air sustains us, but otherwise we've been forgotten?"
More furrowed brows, more silence, but the language implanted in her mind had words for time and forgetting. Meaning came before words. The stranger had to understand the question.
"Why are we both here, beside this rock and forgotten? What happened?"
"The angels found you and another-"
"Urza? I was with Urza?"
"With another not like you. His eyes see everything."
Xantcha slouched back against the rock. Raw fear drained down her spine. "Urza." She'd been found with Urza. Everything would be resolved; it was only a matter of time. "What happened to Urza?"
"The angels brought you both to the Lady's palace. The Lady held onto Urza. But you, you are not like Urza. She said she could do nothing with you, and you would die. The Lady does not look upon death."
"I was stuck out here to die, and you were put here to watch me until I did. But I didn't, and so we're both stuck here. Is that it?"
"We will wait."
"For what?"
"The palace."
Xantcha pressed her hands over her mouth, lest her temper escape. A newt, she told herself. The gray-eyed stranger was a newt. She listened, she obeyed, she had no imagination and didn't know how to leap from one thought to another. Xantcha herself had been like that until Gix had come to the First Sphere, probing her mind, making her defend herself, changing her forever. Xantcha had no intention of invading the stranger's privacy. She didn't have the ability, even if she'd had the intention. All she wanted was the answers that would reunite her with Urza.
And if her questions changed the stranger, did that make Xantcha herself another Gix? No, she decided and lowered her hands. She would not have poured acid down the fumarole to Gix's grave if he'd done nothing more than awaken her self-awareness.
"What if we didn't wait," Xantcha asked with all the enthusiasm of a conspirator in pursuit of a partner. "What if we went to the palace ourselves."
"We can't."
"Why not? Urza gave me a gift once. If you could tell me where the palace is, it could take us both there."
"No. Impossible. We shouldn't be speaking of this. I shouldn't be speaking with you at all. The Lady herself could do nothing with you. Enough. We will wait... in perfect silence."