I have a copy of the Fifth Forbidden Book.

My friend Treyl was very anxious to see it; he did not realize that my people used books. So I led and Treyl followed with his strange ungainly waddle, away from the clevth and northward into the hills. This was in the time of the wet spring winds, when the rimmith bloom for their brief lives and the sun passes the Seam of Heaven in a shower of sparks. The clevth was upwind, and every gust brought the awareness of my people preparing for the time of breeding: young females ready to mate and drop their eggs in the shallows, half-year-olds anxious to pick up the beginnings of their coats, adolescents ready for a last taste of the ancestral waters before entering their final forms. The night was alive with sensation, alive in a way that made Treyl and the Fifth Forbidden Book so much more exciting.

With Treyl watching I carefully took the Book from its wrapping--cured membranes of the large jarief flsh--and cradled it in my three forward hands. My copy of the Fifth Forbidden Book is a heavy thing, with leaves made from pressed plantfibers and separated by more membranes. As I held it, my hands detected its ancient holiness, and I caught a wisp of the long-ago scribe who had lovingly transferred the words of the original Book to this copy. I opened the Book to its first leaf, raised it to my face and caressed it with my antennae. Just as he had deposited them so long ago, I felt the thoughts of Ep-Naph the Great Warrior, thoughts that he had left to be preserved by the brotherhood for those of his descendants who could comprehend them.

Treyl leaned forward, looking naked without a coat of star-shaped pled by their hundreds, looking ready to fall over as he balanced on an amazing two limbs while reaching for me with the only other two he possessed. When I first met Treyl, I closed my mind against the onslaught of pain that had to emanate from one so crippled--only later I learned that his people are naturally malformed.

His backpack spoke: a combination of the soundless speech of my people, and the noisy chitters and clicks of the secret tongue of the brotherhood. "May I see it, Dleef?"

"It is old and fragile, my friend Treyl. Please take care as you would handling a newborn."

He left me holding the Book, removed an antenna from his backpack and brushed it lightly over the surface of the leaf. "Amazing. That chemical traces could be so exact. That your sensory apparatus can pick them up. That they convey so much information."

"The Book is old," I told him, "and was but a copy to begin with. Many passages have faded and are hard to read."

"My backpack can read them all. Possibly it can duplicate the chemicals and make those passages easier to read. Would you like me to do that?"

I regarded him well, this odd small creature from nowhere. The rest of the clevth bore him the usual disregard for a stranger who does not smell right; why did I trust him? Was it that other thing, which made me a part of the brotherhood and brought me the enmity of my people? Whatever, I knew that I did trust Treyl, trusted him with something in me that went beyond his smell and his strangeness. "The clevth leaves with morning, and although I do not wish to go south right now I shall accompany them. You may work your magics on the Book until daylight."

"Until daylight." He pressed one of his hands against mine, gently, to avoid hurting himself on my pled coat. And through the interstices and the living bodies of my pled seeped a measure of his alien feel, and once again I wondered about him.

About myself.

Treyl read, and the night deepened. The winds bore taste of my sleeping clevth, and of oh so much more: bands of hunting jrill on far-off plains, the scent of other clevths, and always the life-bearing fragrance of the sea.

The first of the great moons rose presently, its tiny half-disc swimming amid the glittery fish that live on the Seam of Heaven. Every night there is a gap in the Seam, a gap that slowly works its way from east to west--the brotherhood says it has been there since Ep-Naph died and shattered the world as it was. More is told of this in the Second Forbidden Book, which I have never seen.

Treyl says that the gap is the shadow of the world. The rest of my people do not think about it. Nor, most of the time, do I.

But there are times, times when a feeling comes that is at once different and familiar: when one looks at something one has known all her life, like the Gap or a rimmith blossom, like the summer winds or the tiny bodies and shells of one's own pled--and one begins to muse, to wonder.

It comes and it goes, this feeling, and even the brotherhood (the creator of speech) has no word for it. None is needed, for without the feeling there are no words; there is merely the language of the air and the land and the water, there is only the unknowing twitch of antennae, there is only snorting and growling and baying at the moons.

The night deepened, and in me that feeling ebbed.

The moon.

The taste of the clevth, and the far-off smell of hunting jrill.

The night winds caressed me, and I knew their messages without knowing, dozed without knowing I slept, awakened without awareness of what it means to wake. Most of my people live always this way, never tasting for a moment the terror and the joy of that feeling which the brotherhood does not name.

Treyl read.

When morning came, the Seam of Heaven announced the sun's arrival half a limb early, becoming a red arch across half the sky. And the winds told me that the clevth was awake, awake and ready to set out for the sea. Gone was all trace of my resolve to remain, to go north--now I responded by turning for the clevth and the sea.

Treyl wrapped the Fifth Forbidden Book, reverently, and without considering, I took it from his hands and tucked it under my pled coat in front, where the pled shells have grown and not anchored themselves to my thorax plate. I think Treyl's backpack spoke to me in the language of the brotherhood, but all I could hear was the voice of the winds, all I could do was answer them.

His backpack's long antenna touched me smelling of question, and I reassured him that all was right, that we were to join the clevth on its march south, that I knew of his presence and I approved.

Clevth.

Clevth is not a place, although place is important and the very soil of the clevth carries a part of its life and its memories. Clevth is people, yet people may leave and enter the clevth without altering its quality. Clevth is the animals that serve us and live with us, it is the houses in which we dwell and the spaces through which we move. Clevth is people, and it is much more: It is the smells, the feelings, the tastes of one's home. Clevth is a process, something always growing, always changing and never complete. The trace of all of us is in the clevth, and each adds to its structure.

For all that my clevth distrusts me and would at times have me gone, it is my clevth and it is what stands between me and ... and something which I cannot name, but which I fear beyond terror.