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Peersdatter and Jorgensdatter’s Eventyr . Such was childhood. Yet their orphanage in the mountains did not come free. There was among the monks a warrior who went by the name Walking Stick. He drilled the children endlessly.
    Now, when I say warrior, you might imagine a fierce-eyed fellow with a spear and roundshield, helmet and byrnie. Or maybe in a more southern style, with plate armor and longsword and a shield like a kite, and if his gaze is fierce, his helmet conceals it. But you would have it wrong. This warrior has no armor, just a robe, and he bears no weapon, and his eyes are serene as tidepools. You laugh. You wouldn’t if you fought him. They say the heathen All-Father bade men always keep a weapon within reach, but this man is his own weapon. His body is as tough as wood and as flexible as grass. He knows hundreds of ways to strike, throw, jump, grapple, trip. He knows the vital breath that flows within each person, and the thirty-six key paralytic points. And he can use his own vital breath to leap walls and walk across treetops.
    Again you laugh! You wouldn’t if you trained with him. He was convinced that Innocence had a great power within him, and a destiny, and that only endless toil would make his fate a good one. As for A-Girl-Is-A-Joy, well, there are those who think women incapable of being warriors. Walking Stick wasn’t one of them. She might have been happier if he had been. Miles on miles of running upon the mountain, hours on hours of hard labor in the temple, and thousands on thousands of mock battles in the gardens. I’m not even going to repeat the lectures! For “the superior person speaks softly and acts boldly,” and “what is done needs no declaration, what is finished needs no protest, what is past needs no blame,” and “life spawns, the seasons pass and return, yet does Heaven say a word?” Perhaps you now have a sense of his speech; I will speak of it no more.
    Save for this, Innocence longed to escape his teacher. And the day came when he met the agent of his escape.
    In a desert city between East and West, a work was fashioned, perhaps as wondrous as the scroll. It was a magic carpet flowing with the colors of the sands and the mountains, with the image of a volcano at its heart. Like others of its kind, it was made to fly, though sometimes it did so badly. Unlike others, it was also made to snatch power away from those who possessed it. The wizard’s apprentice judged its purpose evil, and he stealthily changed its weaving, hoping to alter its fate. Thus the carpet became a divided thing, torn between good and evil. Perhaps that more than anything is why it sought the boy.
    The carpet was attuned to power and sought out Innocence within the scroll. It told him of many things, of the outside world, of monsters and wizards, of armies and kings—of power. And Innocence made a rash decision and left the scroll, flying away upon the carpet.
    How they explored! No boy roaming the countryside beside his dog could have been more eager than this lad wandering the Earthe with his magic carpet. The things they saw! The Moon Pit with its eerie shining minerals, remnants of the lost satellites of past ages. Splendid Amberhorn upon the Midnight Sea, a whole decadent civilization retired to a single city and countryside. Loomsberg with its waterwheels and alchemical engines. It was in the eccentric air of Loomsberg that the pair hit on the plan of exploring the moon—the silver moon, the last moon, place of mountains and gray plains and ice. Why go to the moon? Because forbidding as it was, it looked safer than the sun.
    And so they rose to that strange orb. They had no guarantee that the world’s air extended all the way to the moon, and for a time it seemed they could never reach it. For Innocence, shivering in the great cold of that pale-blue altitude, began to fall unconscious. The carpet made one last effort and found itself in a dark expanse. Fearing it had killed its companion,