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Baroom, his snore answered. Buroom.

Bats squeaked overhead, flitting over the hot stars.

“How can he be one of us?” the lion said, his voice so much deeper than usual. I could not tell if he spoke in his sleep or knew I stood there listening. “He has never loved anyone but God. What kind of man is that?”

“I did, though,” I whispered, in the truth-trance that deep night brings. “I loved a boy named Kostas, and he loved me. I should not call him a boy. But his face was so narrow and youthful I could never think of him as quite grown. In the end I suppose he was only a few years younger than I. It was simple—love is service, and he served me. Love is nourishment—and I fed him. Love is knowledge—we taught each other. I gave him his letters, he gave me all the secret places of his city.”

“Love is love,” hummed the great lion, and as he spoke his voice went lower and lower, and his language became the language of dreaming, more and more like that of a child. “That’s all. I love Hagia; she loves me. I don’t have to love her forever. I love her now. I love many others, too. My mother was so good at loving that other cats would come to her and beg her to teach them her devotions, the rituals and practice of her loving, so that they could become magi. Her eyes shone golden and spun like mandalas as she told them what she knew. She said: Love is hungry and severe. Love is not unselfish or bashful or servile or gentle. Love demands everything. Love is not serene, and it keeps no records. Love sometimes gives up, loses faith, even hope, and it cannot endure everything. Love, sometimes, ends. But its memory lasts forever, and forever it may come again. Love is not a mountain, it is a wheel. No harsher praxis exists in this world. There are three things that will beggar the heart and make it crawl—faith, hope, and love—and the cruelest of these is love.”

I blinked, recognizing a bizarre inversion of psalms I knew by heart. The lion went on, as though speaking to someone else in his dreaming, someone he trusted, someone he loved. “At my mother’s breast I learned best of all. I was still a cub when a tensevete came to her, and his name went: Tajala. The cub that was me was afraid of his icy face, like a crag chipped off a mountain, flat and violet like frostbite, and his whole head bigger than his chest. Tajala wept; his lover didn’t want him anymore. When he loved her, they melted together until they became a lavender pool under the moon, and there was no ending to them. I shuddered, hearing this private thing. The Abir came, and his lover drew an emerald with a red flaw out of the bronze barrel, and that meant: Go to the plains of Aamra and cultivate the green mango, learn the significance of its five-petalled blossom, of its leaves changing from rosy to red to green, of its hairy, hidden seed. Take ecstasy in weeping onto their roots, so that they may be watered. Do this with Rasaala, not Tajala, and be happy. Bedeck yourself in mango blossoms, count your wealth in pits sticky with rind. I felt glad for her, since I loved mangoes. Tajala drew a black stone with no flaw, and this meant: Go to the Axle of Heaven, and spin wool from the fur of the very stubborn musk-ox who love to munch the blue poppies there. Do this with no mate, learn the psalms of solitude. I was glad also for him, as musk-oxen are funny, and make us laugh.

Tajala said: She will not look at me as if she knows me. She melts with Rasaala now. She could leave him and we could be lovers in our new lives, I could spin covers for her trees to keep the frost off, but she won’t. I want to die.

Mother said: The Abir is difficult.

Tajala said: I want to die.

Mother said: Do not die. Instead, love me.

And she licked him like a cub, like me. She licked him all over, all his cheeks (and they were very big) and his eyelids and his forehead and his ears (and they were very long) and all the time Tajala cried and all the time Mother purred, and then Tajala was a pool below her, lavender. Mother