"It's true!" he cried, in his ordinary voice this time. And all the people crowding beside him on the Temple roof shouted, "It's really true!"

That's the second-to-last line of the story. I ought to know because I wrote it myself. Now you know it too; that's the benefit of hindsight. Everything would be much easier to believe in if we had more of that. And having started at the end, I could now go on and tell you the whole story backwards. It's not unfeasible; it's been done before. But, aside from the fact that it would probably make you seasick, it would also take away the suspense and ruin the whole story. I suppose that's where hindsight falls down.

It was a fine day to spend in the park and it seemed most of the town agreed. It was one of those days where everything merged into perfection; the breeze, the sun, the sky. Only the occasional piece of litter gave any hint that it was not completely manufactured, or that we weren’t living in some talented, terminally benign artist’s rendering of a park at midday. If there is such an artist, I suppose his market would be hotel rooms with the occasional greeting card on the side. I doubt that I’ll every see my work displayed either place; I suspect that most of my stuff ends up at the bottom of drawers or discarded in the trash. Probably that would be the case with the little girl.

“Look,” Melaine called, waving the bunch of meadow flowers she’d just picked. “What’s that thing flying up there? Just above the plum trees. It isn’t a bird, is it?”

A small object was dancing in the dusk-clouded summer sky.

“It’s a heart!” declared Antonia, who always knew everything. “A flying heart. Male, and quite young.”

“It must be the prince’s,” the third girl, Magda, said. She was well-informed about everything the royals did. “He sent his heart on a quest, because he’s looking for a bride. He’ll marry the girl who captures it.”

Click for Part One of May These Stone Give Shelter

Sharra stared at the six unconscious cyborgs. The sedatives Samuel had snuck into the nutrient feed had worked. With her technical expertise and biology experience, Shawn had ordered her to play nurse. He wanted answers without the cyborgs possibly interfering with test results or equipment. Being here made her skin crawl even though she knew they’d tested negative for disease.

For thirty years, the elite forces of the American military had had varying degrees of enhancement. Embedded radio frequency tags carried their medical history. Samuel had a portable scanner that was able to read off their names as they walked past each.