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Darkstar's deft deflection helped to keep the rest of the dinner conversation away from me personally, yet the conversation didn't seem the least bit stilted. I had the impression that my hosts felt that they had made me uncomfortable and, as one, they found ways to take me out of the limelight and into a more balanced (and, as far as I was concerned, more interesting) discussion of topics ranging from books and films to music and wonderfully bad jokes. I hadn't enjoyed such a free-for-all of ideas and views in a very long time. My mind, as well as my belly, was well fed.

When all of us had finished, Oaknail said to me, "You've had quite a day, Max, and we don't wish to overtire you. We have a guest room for you to stay in tonight, and you're welcome to retire whenever you wish. I will admit a selfish desire to keep chatting, if you're up for it."

"Seems rude to leave such good company," I smiled, momentarily forgetting that I was there under false pretenses as it was. I managed to add, "I'd like to learn more about Timewind, too, if that's all right."

"Glad to oblige," Moonsong affirmed. "We love talking about ourselves!"

Amid general laughter, the tables were quickly cleared, with Oray and Starshine gathering the bowls and utensils, Rainmist looking after what was left of her stew, and Darkstar going off to look after our laundry. Heartsinger took it upon himself to guide me to the den while the rest tended to a few things before their promised return in just a few minutes.

The tall, lean white wolf led me to the large pit before the fireplace, suggesting a chair where I might get a good view of whoever else might join us. For himself, he flowed onto one of the bean-bag seats, folding himself cross-legged in a single motion, like a magic trick. His golden eyes regarded me warmly and his lips curled into a gentle smile. "I hope we don't seem too nosy," he confided, his voice soft, inviting. "I can assure you that our intentions are good, if that counts."

"I think it does, and thank you. I guess I'm not very good at talking about myself."

"You did well, I think. We know a bit about what you like in books and movies. I hadn't heard of the film _Country_before; I think I'd like to go have a look for it. I like a well-told story."

"It's a good one," I agreed, once more feeling lame. "I apologize if I'm staring..." I began.

"Are you wondering about my breed?" he grinned a little. "Many do."

"Again, I apologize..."

"No need. Curiosity is encouraged here. My father is an arctic wolf, with a lineage reaching back to the Western Steppe, down from the Urals. My mother is Borzoi, with familial roots in Ukraine." He pronounced it oo-KRY-ee-na, and it took me a moment to process it. "The combination became known as 'Borzhvolk,' although Borzoi lineage already has wolf blood in it."

"Russian wolfhound, if that term isn't offensive somehow."

"Do you mean it to be offensive?" he asked simply.

"No."

"Then I'm not offended." Smiling, the wolfhound added, "Thank you for being concerned. I try not to take offense first. I think that's where the idea of 'political correctness' originally came from. It's good to be sensitive to someone else's ideas and perceptions; being oversensitive, though, seems to cause more trouble than it solves."

I nodded, a soft smile on my lips. "I imagine that's not a popular opinion."

"I suppose it depends on who you ask." He looked up, smiling, as others began to filter in and find places to sit. "It's been part of previous conversations here."

"What has?" Rainmist asked, choosing a seat neither too near nor too far from me, giving me a sly wink as she settled in.

Heartsinger brought her up to speed quickly, and the topic gained some happily-bantered traction as, eventually, everyone joined us. Darkstar padded up closely to whisper in my ear that the clothes were in the dryer, that my jacket appeared to be drying out just fine, and all would be well. I thanked him quietly and waited for a break in the conversation.

"I just wanted to thank everyone for dinner." I cast a glance back to Rainmist. "It was really delicious."

"You're very welcome, good fur," she nodded graciously to me, "but I must imagine you to be the victim of frozen dinners; it was hardly a gourmet recipe."

"If not," I said, "it was certainly carried out with a gourmet's flair."

I have no idea where that came from. Perhaps just being in this atmosphere of camaraderie and good feeling had somehow loosened my tongue a bit.

"Tell me," I tried, "more about Timewind. I know almost nothing, save for some angry local press, years ago."

"Ooo, some torrid scandal from the distant past?" Oray piped up.

"Yes," Moonsong drawled, "long years before you were conceived, yowen. Things did happen before the turn of this century!"

The firefox held up peacemaking forepaws, chuckling his surrender. His raccoon lover gave him a low growl, looking unsure if she wanted to tickle him or bite his ear. I tried not to imagine which would actually be a punishment. Maybe neither.

Oaknail smiled at me from the comfort of the loveseat that he and Moonsong snuggled up in. "What flavor of horror did you read, Max? The overtaking of government, the threat of total anarchy, the radical attack on family values, or the poisoning of young minds with our dangerous ideas?"

"Oh, I probably had the whole buffet. I was a kind of news junkie, in my distant youth." In for a penny... "I even found a copy of the manifesto you put together in comb binding."

The bear groaned, as did his mate. "That old relic! I beg you not to judge us by that. It was a first attempt and, truth told, a foul one." He managed a chuckle as he looked at me, a wry look on his face. "We were so eager to get our message out that we garbled it up entirely. We've had lots of time to edit and clean it up since then."

"We, meaning 'the founders'?"

"Nine of us, to start," Moonsong put in. "Unicorn and Rainmist are the only others to stay here; the remaining five have found lives elsewhere."

Or deaths. I felt the vague presence of a shade in the room. "You seem to have grown well over the past years... how long has it been?"

"Depends on how you measure it," Rainmist considered. "We came together in the early spring of 1994, as a band of latter-day dreamers who read about the 1960s, all the manifestos, the history, and wondered why we couldn't dream like that again. We couldn't understand why dreams should have to die."

Oaknail nodded, taking his mate's forepaw into his own. "We found this property in the late summer of that year and discovered that there was a way to acquire it through payment of taxes that were owed on it. 'Fallen into escheat' is the legal phrase. It seemed providential, at the time, and the actual price paid was incredibly low. We asked friends, family, everyone we could; we got the money together, bought the property on..." He shook his head, smiling at the memory. "We claim November 8, 1994, as our official founding day. Election Day, no less! We had created a legal thingummy to buy it, something like an LLC... it's a long, boring legal trail, never mind. Anyway, that legal thingummy needed a name, and that's when 'Timewind' was born, one week prior. The metaphorical ink was still wet."

"Why that name?" I asked.

"I blame my predecessors," Darkstar chuckled. "I'm considered the author/editor for the tribe, these days, but I've heard the stories about the use of the word 'Zeitenwende,' which can have the meaning of 'a turning point in time,' or 'turn of an era.' Most literally, it's used to refer to year zero of the Christian calendar, but it also has that idea of great change, sweeping change."

"I was heavily into the electronic music of Klaus Schulze at that time," Moonsong admitted, a sense of blush rising under her brown cheek fur. "It's the title of one of his albums. I thought it was close to 'Zeitenwende' but easier to pronounce."

"Good idea," I chuckled. "So you came together here and started the commune on this land?"

"More or less," Oaknail agreed, "although I'm going to pick a nit. We're more a community than a commune. It might be splitting philosophical hairs, but we thought from the beginning that we should make the difference. Communism, as a way of living, rests largely on the idea that all that the commune has belongs to everyone, with no individual property. We were all raised in a country that prizes personal ownership and individual expression; there's no way to change that, and no need to. We avoided jealousy over property, money, even other people, simply by letting each be himself, have his own things, his own space, his own privacy."

"We're more like family," Rainmist said, shifting herself upward in her chair. "We share freely, asking, helping where we can, with money, chores, a friendly ear. We sometimes bicker like family, too, but that's only to be expected."

"And all this." I looked around me at the huge house. "I don't imagine this was waiting for you when you arrived."

Everyone laughed at this, with the three founders present braying loudest. "Amazing what you can accomplish in not-quite 30 years, ain't it?" Oaknail laughed. "Our first work was to establish the perimeter, just to get the lay of the land. We knew that we wanted to move onto the land as soon as we could, if only to stop spending money on apartments and such. We banded together to keep one rental house, the largest of our places, so that we had a place to retreat to from time to time. Through the winter, we put up some temporary structures here, and we worked as best we could to make plans for better ones."

I found myself thinking of the squatters on that piece of land that Glover had visited before his death, and I wondered what he had seen, what memories it had brought up for him. "Tents and port-a-potties, maybe?"

"Oh, the good old days," Rainmist groaned. "It was a long process, to put in a proper road, decide how we wanted to make space for structures, gardens, livestock eventually... Oh, the many nights of talk and planning. You'd be amazed how comfortably we managed to outfit some basic storage sheds!"

"Aren't those expensive?"

"They weren't cheap, but something about three meters on a side cost less than one month's rent on an apartment. We swapped one vice for another, for a while."

"We did finally break ground for a general purpose sort of building, one that included showers, storage, and a space that actually had electricity." Moonsong smiled at the memory. "In some ways, a nightmare; in others, some of the best times of our lives. Spring and summer of 1995 were amazing. A lot of sleeping outside, careful campfires, and the slow growth of our tribe."

In less than a year, they had structures to live in, plans made, actual work done. Dedication was the word that came to mind. Obsession hopped hobo-like onto that train of thought, and I couldn't understand where it had come from.

"I notice the use of the word 'tribe' when you speak of yourselves," I observed. "I think there was an uproar about your falsely claiming status as aboriginals."

Oaknail laughed easily. "The only such claims were by those claiming we were making those claims! We asked no special recognition from the government nor any indigenous tribes." With a grin, he nodded toward Darkstar. "I'll let the wordsmythe explain it better."

The lynx chuckled at the acknowledgement. "The term can be used for a group having a common interest, occupation, character... it's just not used as often as it might be. It has a warmer sense to it than, say, 'consortium' or 'association.' I haven't heard tell of a tribe of lawyers yet, although," he added quickly, raising a proper forefinger in the air, smiling, "we do have a tribal lawyer, so anything Is possible!"

The ghost, or memory, of Thomas Glover whispered at my ear, a sense of icy air down my neck. Chuckling softly, I tried to shake off the feeling, admitting, "I don't wish to offend the attorney not here to defend himself, but it's easy to make jokes about lawyers who... well, this atmosphere of caring and benevolence wouldn't fit with the popular opinion of attorneys."

"Unicorn would actually agree with you!" Lightwing piped up, after having been quiet for so long. Her beautiful ice blue eyes held me as surely as they had before. "It's part of why he chose that name: A fair, honest lawyer and a unicorn..."

"Both mythical creatures?"

"Got it first time," the Husky nodded, grinning. "He told me once that he's glad that he doesn't practice 'courtroom law,' because he might not be able to keep a civil tongue in his maw. There are good attorneys, of course, but the bad ones get all the headlines."

"And the money," I agreed, a little too heartily. I hesitated, feeling that I was slipping on the ice a bit. My eyes cut nervously from face to face, yet I saw only welcoming eyes. "I'm way out of bounds here... You've just come so far from tents and sheds, and I have no idea how you could...?"

"it's no secret at all, Max," Oaknail explained softly. "Everything starts slowly and builds. The land provided some income from trees, taken down to make space for buildings or crops. We found a good land manager who helped us save the best trees, clearing carefully, which is partly why the road to Starhold is long. We invested some of that sale into repayments, more into our building plans..."

"And then came Sunrider," Moonsong chimed in, grinning. "He discovered us quite accidentally, unless you believe in fate. We did some street-level campaigning and fundraising in 1996, for the elections. Along with quite proper campaign materials, we had some copies of the Three Steps to Becoming. We kept the two things entirely separate but, if someone asked about what group we were with, that sort of thing, the whole idea of Timewind came up. The lively fennec fox who became Sunrider joined up with us in February 1997, after he had graduated the previous December with his degree in finance freshly in paw."

"That's the thing about the tribe," Heartsinger put in. "It expands slowly, finding what it needs, as an entity, almost by magic. Each of us brings something special to the tribe, and the tribe gives us something special in return. It's..." The Borzhvolk hesitated, the blush easy to see on his cheeks. "It's a little like falling in love."

"Falling in love with a dream?" I asked, then shook my head. "I'm sorry. Forgive my cynicism. I must sound insulting to you. I don't mean to be."

"I think I know what you mean, Max." Frank spoke up from his place on the floor, where he lay comfortably with his head resting in his lover's lap. The mountain lion looked softly at me. "It really is a dream, isn't it? And yes, I'm falling in love with it as much as I'm falling in love with this lovely female."

The panther leaned down to bestow a perfectly sweet kiss to his lips. I could have sworn that I caught the soft rumbling of two gentle purrs. The ghost, the memory, the idea (Idea?) of Glover tried to mask the sound.

As the female raised her head, Frank returned his gaze to me. "I'm learning what it means to be a part of this tribe. I want to take it seriously, to make a commitment."

Rainmist drew my attention with a wave of her paw. "No, Max. We don't have entrance exams or rites of passage. It's different for everyone. We've had a very few who decided not to stick around for more than a few weeks; some are part of us yet far away; some have joined us after a long period of wondering; some are close yet never joined."

"There's a lot to think about," Frank mused.

His lover spoke softly. "As a tribe, we work together to make each other brilliant. Do you know of the Three Steps to Becoming?"

"You'd mentioned it before," I temporized, glancing at Moonsong. "I may have seen something about it in that comb-bound booklet I found."

"It's been slightly modified since then," Oaknail observed, "but the central idea is the same. First, make of yourself all that you can be. Because that's a lifelong quest, the second step is to ask help of others as you create yourself, as well as help others -- as best you can -- when they ask you for help in their own creation. Third, take all that you have made of yourself and make it your gift to the world."

"It sounds like an oath of fealty."

"To oneself," the bear noted softly, "and then to everyone else."

"The tribe?"

"The world."

I considered this for a long moment. The whispering tried to be louder, and it interfered with my considerations. It was Frank who drew me back out.

"You can see why I say that I want to think about it more before making the commitment." The mountain lion took his lover's forepaw into his, grinning. "I guess it's a little like marriage. It's about marrying myself, though. About really striving."

"You hadn't done that before now?"

"Kinda sorta," the cat chuckled. "You can have my life story, if you want it, but you've probably heard variations, and I'm not the best storyteller."

The black panther (what was her name again?) tapped Frank's nose with a tender forefinger. "Wanna rephrase that?" she grinned at him.

"Okay, I did say that I wasn't the _best_storyteller." He grinned back up at her, then at me. "I'm trying to learn other ways to say things, to stop making less of myself."

"Words have power," Darkstar murmured.

Thinking for a moment, the mountain lion returned with, "I still feel uncomfortable telling stories, because I worry that I might be boring or burdening someone."

"And he's asked for help with that," the panther said with a touch of pride. "I've asked for help with my own self-doubts. Before I made my commitment to Timewind, I had no idea what asking for help looked like. I didn't know how to feel when someone asked for help, either. It was... eye-opening."

"Heart-opening," Frank murmured, giving her forepaw a squeeze.

The silence that followed was both warming and uncomfortable. This was not expected, not in any form, and I began to feel vaguely threatened. All this really did sound like a cult, like some Manson-family reboot with a bigger budget. I began building up excuses to get to the room they'd prepared for me, wondering if I'd need to barricade the door.

"You're safe."

All eyes, including mine, turned toward the doe at the periphery of the group. She had been almost hidden behind Lightwing, as if using her as a shield against... me? Even now, she huddled close to the Husky, as if for strength. The larger female put an arm around the doe's shoulders, gently, not for restraint but for support. I couldn't speak, her eyes having a strange glow in the black depths of her large pupils, holding my own eyes with a gaze as tender as it was inescapable.

"This is new." The doe's voice was barely above a whisper, yet clear. "You're not familiar with this. Trust that you're safe. The rest is... for tomorrow."

I flicked a glance at Darkstar, who seemed as surprised as I was. Had she learned who I was?

"If we shadows have offended," Oray offered with gentle flair, "think but this, and all is mended -- that you have but slumbered here while these visions did appear." The firefox smiled. "I made a decent Robin Goodfellow, back in school."

"It's not midsummer," his raccoon lover observed, "but it's still a dream, if you want it to be."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Let's pretend." She smiled at me, quite benevolently. "It's how I think of it sometimes. Imagine the best world that you can, then pretend it's real. How did it get that way? The same way that it got the way it is now: Slowly, with small things adding up to bigger things. Then imagine what small thing you can do, and see what changes. For me, that's the story of the tribe. It's a good story, and I want to keep telling it."

"And every time we tell it," Oray added, "the story gets better. That's how really good stories are built, how they last. Isn't that right, Darkstar?"

"I think you've stolen my playbook," the lynx chuckled.

"Max," Lightwing offered quietly, "you look a little overwhelmed. Was it something we said, something we did?"

I tried to chuckle, and it came out like... something else, whatever it was. The smile on my muzzle felt wooden. The Idea that had ridden in my passenger seat, all the way from my home and my work to this unusual place, had found its way from the car to somewhere just over my shoulder, and I fought the urge to turn my head to look at it squarely, to let it save me from these insane beings who were talking about dreams as if they were creating them. Who does that? How could they, and why? I shouldn't be here. I had to run. I was...

"Maybe a little," I admitted, not entirely sure that I was speaking. "It's a lot to take in. All of this is... well, dreams and all, and all this..." I wave a vague paw at my surroundings.

Rainmist rearranged herself in her chair, as if wanting to reach out to me, then stopping herself. She smiled, that rather sweet, coquettish smile that had warmed me before. I wanted so much for it to work, yet the eyes that I cast on her were still worried. "Max, may I ask you if you found, in those newspaper articles, the word 'cult'?"

I swallowed, more embarrassed than afraid. "I really don't think--"

"Yes, you do." Her voice stayed soft, her eyes as nonpredatory as she could make them. "We sound hypnotized, maybe stoned. I promise you that there was nothing in the stew beyond the usual cooking-type herbs. We do have some homemade sangria, if you want it, but even that is for flavor more than alcohol; the way we make it, it's about six to ten proof. Warming, not actually intoxicating."

"From the outside, any group can look like a cult." Darkstar also spoke softly, his yellow-gold eyes mellowed into something more grayish in the low lights of the den. "A druidic coven gets more bad press than Freemasons, but they have similarities. The Catholic church is a cult, by strict definition, as are Mormons, the Amish, any religious group. Survivalists, the Manson family, any group who slavishly exalts and venerates an individual or ideal. In that sense, Timewind is a cult."

He paused, shifting a little. "Perhaps the negative connotation of the word 'cult' arises when the group isolates, insulates from the world, protects itself, seeing anything outside of itself as evil, degenerate, perhaps even a direct threat. The outsiders tell lies, especially about us, and whatever proof they claim to have must be falsified. To reinforce that, to make it 'fact,' all that is not part of the cult must be assimilated or destroyed."

Frowning, I asked, "How does that jibe with the Christian church?"

"Ask the pagans, or the indigenous furs around the world." The lynx shook his head sadly. "Please understand. We can point to good things done by the church. We must also acknowledge the bad, the horrors of assimilation, the crusades of death and destruction, so that it can be redressed, prevented in future."

"None of us is perfect," Lightwing noted. " That's what our Three Steps tries to address. Our goal is not to be perfect; it's to keep trying."

"And to keep dreaming." Frank's panther lover spoke up. "Perhaps that's why I took the name Dreamweaver." She grinned at me. "That, and my skills in textiles. It seemed to fit."

I felt myself nodding a little. The Idea at my shoulder whispered a warning about falling for the shiny-pretties when they so often held such disappointment. Go with the proven thing,_it told me. _Think of the failures. Think of the squatters. Think of Glover. Think of all that's impossible. That's the best bet, isn't it? The surest bet? The proven return? All the things that reaffirm your experience that it's all only going to get worse? Listen to all those who have given up before you...

"Listen to us."

The young doe once again held my gaze with hers. I had the feeling that she was seeing more than she was telling.

"Listen to our stories," she said. "I promise that they're all true."

Oaknail leaned forward, looking at me carefully. "Max, I hope I don't stick my hindpaws in it... There's a look in your eyes that tells me we really have overstepped. I know we did during dinner, and I'm sorry for that. Is there anything we can do?"

"It's okay, really, I'm okay, it's just stress maybe..." The words bubbled and babbled from me, and I didn't know why. This made no sense. There was no threat here, nothing here to hate, nothing to be afraid of, nothing, just the Idea trying to make me scared, that was--

"Do you want to go rest?" Darkstar asked softly, starting to rise.

"Maybe that's--"

Something broke in my head. I flinched slightly, sure that I felt Glover's brain matter splatter onto my face, felt my own face disintegrating into a gory spray, one good reason cops have guns...

"--a good idea..."

I felt the young doe's eyes on me, then to something over my shoulder, back to me, then I realized that Oaknail stood before me, helping me onto my hindpaws. I moved under my own power, although I felt the bear's reassuring forepaw on my shoulder. To my other side, Darkstar padded along with us, opening the door to a guestroom the size of a master bedroom, helping me inside. The covers of the large bed were turned back. I heard soft words around me, pointing out the ensuite, the house phone with a list of numbers, call on any of us, anytime, we're here to help...

I was put carefully, gently, to bed. I remember Darkstar staying for a few moments. Lynx are famous for their enigmatic smiles. He did not smile, neither did his eyes conceal anything. I could see them asking if he could help, wondering why the cop was crying, wondering if he had somehow caused it. Words had already left me, and I was tenderly drowning in something I had no words for anyway. Darkstar left me to my silence and, with a ghost, or an echo, or an Idea my only remaining companion, I gulped a last breath and found the prey's mercy of oblivion.