Snow fell on Findel but not on Vah. An invisible division separated them, Vah within a lush landscape, and Findel alone with Isecan's body, snow swirling around them. Beyond Findel, the bodies of a score of quth lay still. Half a dozen horned-ones also lay twisted, broken, or impaled by branches of dark red wood. None of their people came from the tir—no doubt obeying Findel's command to stay in the trees. Isecan's companions had fled beyond sight, riding among a herd of horned-ones.

Vah could not stand nor even sit in his prison of branches. All he could do was lay there and weep until an exhausted numbness crept over him. At last, Findel arose, lifting Isecan in his arms and taking halting steps. He stumbled over a root and nearly fell. Steadying himself, he crossed the transition from barren snow to green grass.

Findel's face was both monstrous and beautiful, crusted with color, growths projecting as if he was seeking to root in the world around him. His whole body had changed. His deep blue hair hung limply down to the ground, the ice and snow in it already beginning to melt. Findel looked down at Vah, and the roots of the prison drew away. Pushing himself up onto his hands and knees, Vah searched for his staff. He saw it a few yards away, but it too was changed. It had twisted and grown knobs of new spiral-grained red wood, and the top had branched and budded. He crawled to it and used it to help himself rise. Findel was already part way to the tir with Isecan.

Vah hobbled to follow after as Findel entered the trees. There were gasps and murmurs from above, but no one descended from the branches. Findel began the climb up the tir, as someone wailed. Scores of voices took up the keening cry. Findel carried Isecan to the very top of the tir.

Bleeding and in pain, Vah managed to reach the tir top to find that Findel had laid Isecan's body there upon the ground. His hands were outstretched, his voice raised in song, and a tree was growing, sprouting from the thin soil, its roots splitting the rock. The tree that Findel willed there overshadowed all the rest, its roots splitting the tir-top and encasing Isecan as it grew. Its spreading umbrage covered the tir and its towering top spired above the landscape.

Vah stayed atop the tir all that night and the following day, fasting. After growing the tree, Findel had gone, and no one else climbed to the tir-top, leaving Vah to his solitude. At the end of the second day, he drifted to sleep for a few hours, awaking in the night. The top of Isecan's tree rose above Findel's Embrace, its upper branches battered by winds. Vibrations from the buffeting traveled down to Vah in shivers and groans deep in the trunk. The sounds bothered Vah—and the thought of his brother's body encased below, feeling the wind far above. . .

Vah climbed to his feet with the aid of his staff and left the tir, hardly knowing he'd made the decision. He walked west through the woods toward the Wellspring. Findel had raised trees all around the rim of the vale, but the ground around the Wellspring itself was open. Grass grew where there was enough soil to sustain it. The open sward was empty. Vah had expected to find Findel there.

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Ripples flowed out from the center, the water quietly churning as it bubbled up from far, far below. He hated it. If only they had never found it. It might have been better to die of starvation or to stay and let the quth take him in the woods far to the south.

He thought of his people sleeping in the trees around the tir, and he didn't know whether to be ashamed of his wish or to wish it even more. He did not want ill for them, but they were slaves to his brother who had killed his brother. By that stroke Vah had lost both of them. He had lost all of them.

Vah hadn't stopped it. What more could he have done? Should he have fought Findel, somehow? Should he have resorted to violence so that greater violence never came? Should he do it even now, to free their people? Or would someone else simply take Findel's place?

From somewhere deep below this cursed water came to both save their lives and blight them. The stars shone down overhead, their reflections moving with the ripples. Vah sat down at the edge and threw a stone. The splash sprayed across the surface.

"Why not me?" he asked. It wasn't that he wanted to grasp the Current—not anymore. He wanted to know why he was different than all the rest of his people. Was he not truly one of his people? Yet those who hadn't made it would hardly recognize the others, while he looked the same, but for his injuries. Why had the curse not fallen on him?

"Vah."

He turned. Findel stood behind. The growths even altered his silhouette in the night.

"Vah, I did not mean to," his brother said.

Vah didn't respond. He turned his back to his brother and stared at the pool. The wild idea of urinating in it occurred to him, right there in front of his brother, but somehow he felt too tired to stand. But what would that mean? The waters had saved his people as well as cursed them.

"Please, Vah, say something."

"Why?"

"They attacked me. Us."

No, not us, Vah thought, but he said nothing. Findel went on:

"I never meant to harm him. I'm sorry. I am not a quth," he said. I am not a monster.

"Free the people," Vah said. "Isecan gave his life for it."

"You saw what can happen if the people reach for the Current. You saw how they were marked. How they attacked one of their own—without even talking to me!"

"What do you want from me?" Vah asked. "Do you want my approval? Do you want me to say it's alright that you killed Isecan? That you have bound our people's will? Is my word so important?"

"More than anyone else's," Findel answered.

"Because I am the only one you cannot force to agree?"

"Because you are my brother."

"So was Isecan."

Vah stared at the water, his back still to Findel. The only sound was the pool's quiet burbling. After a time, Vah realized Findel had not replied. He turned to look, but his brother was gone.

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