Meeting by Nina Hoffman Page A

main route. Glowing dots of green and blue made spirals and light trails along the walls and ceilings, with an occasional flash of purple or red. At the end of the short spur corridor, Columba paused at a black door with complicated lines of purple, lilac, and lavender inlay. The symbols there looked like some of the symbols Maya had seen in the floor of the portal room, and the writing she’d stared at in the books written in Kerlinqua, which she couldn’t read yet.
    Columba sang a short phrase of song, repeated it, traced a pattern in the center of the door, and gave it a gentle push. It swung open, letting out soft glowing greenish light and a whoosh of heavy air that smelled like autumn leaves burning.
    Sarutha’s sister, Noona, stood waiting for them on the other side of the door. “Maya-Rimi, Travis,” Noona said, her voice formal. “Please meet Kachik-Vati.”

NINE
    Rimi tightened around Maya, an embrace from many overlapping hands.
    The tea room had softened corners and a low, round, central table. The dark wood of the tabletop glowed with bits of mother-of-pearl inset in a glittering random scatter. The table stood on a thick carpet patterned in swirls of green, purple, and rose. Around the edges of the room were puffy pillows covered in cloth of the same colors, some large and some small. A door in the left wall was ajar.
    Noona stood with her hands clasped in front of her, and beyond her stood someone taller than Maya, taller even than Noona, a person who looked like a stretched pyramid with its base toward the ground and its point toward the ceiling. His skin was the color of bricks, and he had three pale eyes just below the pointed end of the pyramid. He had a lot of arms lying against his body, long, softly furred brown limbs with their hand-ends pointing downward, as though he wore a coat of foxtails. Maya couldn’t see if this person had feet. One of his arms was twice as long as the others, and it was a darker color, too, and almost in the center of what might be his chest.
    The dark arm rose. At its end was a whorl of tentacles. “Greetings,” said the pyramid person from a mouth Maya couldn’t see, and the tentacles whirled one way, then the other, then drew their ends together in the center so that they looked like a flower.
    “Greetings,” Maya said, and gulped. She felt a little dizzy.
    “Hiya, big dude,” said Travis. Maya glanced at him. He had gone pale, but he was smiling. She hadn’t talked to him much about his training to be a giri , a human helper to the people who lived in Janus House and their guests, but she guessed some of it must be about encountering people who weren’t human. Travis was holding up better this time than he had the first time he encountered otherworlders.
    “Greetings to you, smaller dude,” said the pyramid person.
    Rimi, a faint pressure everywhere against Maya’s exposed skin, sent a couple of small jolts into the back of Maya’s neck. Maya recognized the calm Rimi could give her when she felt off balance. Her mind steadied; she let her confusion fade and set her brain on memorize so she’d be able to draw pictures of all this later.
    “I am Kachik,” said the pyramid person, his voice deep and dark. “This is Vati.” The darker arm in the center of his—chest?—made a graceful rippling motion. It didn’t have elbows; it was many-jointed, like a snake. The tentacles at the end spread into a multi-rayed star, then drew back into a flower shape.
    “I’m Maya,” Maya said. She swallowed, straightened her shoulders, and reached for the stability Rimi had given her. She gestured toward her friend. “This is Travis. Rimi is—”
    Rimi rose up, in shadow form, a stretched version of Maya, translucent, a dark stain in the air, still attached at Maya’s feet, but beside her now, a wavery twin.
    “Rimi is here,” Maya said.
    “Oh!” cried Kachik. “Never have I seen such a flower shape!”
    The darker arm, Vati, wound around Kachik, then