The Darrell Schweitzer MEGAPACK ®. Darrell Schweitzer

      I stood up. I ran my fingers slowly through his hair.

      “Nor do I.”

      We stood in silence for a time, looking out over the fertile earth. “I am not your father anymore,” I said after a while. “Pankere is one of many names meaning ‘tiller-of-the-field.’ How very appropriate for such a man as your father. But my name means ‘clutter’ or ‘forgetting’ or ‘accumulation’ or perhaps ‘many dreams.’ All these, too, fit. My name has many meanings, like hidden rooms. It changes like foaming water, utterly different and yet the same from one instant to the next. It contains everything and nothing. It is not so simple as ‘Pankere’.”

      He shook his head. His wide eyes gleamed in the moonlight. Tears streaked his muddy cheeks. “What shall I do…Father?”

      I lifted him up. He didn’t resist. I marveled at how light he was, like a bundle of sticks. Gently, I lowered him down over the porch railing, until his toes touched the newly deposited mud. He sank almost to his knees, clinging to the railing, gazing up at me.

      “I want you to go back home,” I said, “and tell everyone what you have seen.”

      “Yes, Father. I will.”

      “Khamire, do you know who I really am?”

      He did not answer me, but turned away and waded through the mud, his feet making sucking sounds as he struggled toward higher ground. I shouted my true name after him. I told him who I was, once, twice, three times, as loud as I could. The third time only, he looked back at me and screamed like a lunatic, then hurried on with renewed desperation. At last, I saw him in the distance, running in the moonlight, wheeling his arms.

      When he was gone, I went back into my house, climbed a spiral staircase I had never seen before, of beaten silver, then emerged onto an unfamiliar balcony, and surveyed what might have been almost the same landscape, but now a ploughed and planted field. Brilliant stars gleamed in a moonless night sky.

      Near at hand, a few reeds clustered along an irrigation channel. Someone was hiding there.

      “Pankere, I know you are out there,” I said, “for I am Evoragdou, and I remember.”