Searching for My Wives

The Indus red with blood. The nephelim are allies underground. Murk causes misery for centuries. Shimmer, Old Shiver, and a third spirit rage across the earth for twenty-nine years. Only the kindly are left alive. Shimmer sleeps. Ahalya visits. Shimmer is taken back past the beginning of the universe. He kneels. De Quincey frets, but Peg has faith.

A cataclysm on Sumatra; half the people of Asia are killed. Simple lives and the legend of the pastoral idyll. The high tower that would not let itself be built. Life with Sita, life with swallows. Murk returns to desecrate the Indus, but nothing can be done, so a life of healing shared with Silver.

Shimmer spends centuries strengthening the natural world to withstand the coming onslaught of Man. Kolkata at the mouth of the Ganges climbs the ladder of accumulation and desire. Shimmer trades in Kashmir and smelts ore in China. He raises ponies in Mongolia and gathers feathers on a high tableland in South America.

Chapter 9. Unlucky Mud decides to chop down a tree. Shimmer faces his misdeeds. Nearly four thousand years after sitting down behind the waterfall, Shimmer stands up; he gradually returns to living as a man, but in quiet, simple lives. A misstep, and a private hell.

Nephelim attack; a being intervenes. Shimmer, limping, goes east, paying his way by making articles of wood. Stepping across valleys, he goes to Turkey, up the Indus, revisits Kurukshetra, goes to the remotest ashram, where he finds Gliff. Shimmer takes a seat in a hollow behind a waterfall.

Teaching in a Chinese grove. Walking east across the north of Africa. Up into Europe to see how people who know only wood and stone live in the coniferous and hardwood jungle. He teaches them how to overwinter in the hills, how to raise a house on stilts. A ravenous search for gems and metals is ignited, which Shimmer cannot quench.

Chapter 8. The aftermath: guilt and overstimulation. Love and death on earth, or a life out among the stars, where he will not have to see Ahalya die again: Shimmer must choose. Interlude with Ahalya. Centuries of sleep. Sita. Shimmer's forgotten weapon cuts apart Murk and his gang when they attack as souls. Back to earth: apparitions and excursions.

The tutor killed, the Blue Prince blames himself. Shimmer steps into him, and the building of the allies' armies recommences. The League is cowed. Old Shiver, Sita, and Ahalya, too, have been moving in this royal family. Round Five. The tramp of boots. The fine souls gather. Open conflict. The Battle of Kurukshetra and the slaughter up against the hills.

Round Three. What if high and low were friends? Shimmer in the prince and in the drover's son. The dark purpose of the hidden league. Murk wins the round, on points. As lovely as the peaceful kingdom was, the spreading rot had torn down more. Round Four. The strategist and general. Wargames. Tutor to princes, one blue, one gold.

The war begins. Round One. A sacrifice throw by Shimmer, slowing Murk. Round Two. The peacemaker tracks Murk from town to town, gathers forces, goes into the forest. Murk's body killed; the round declared a tie.