By the time he was seven years old he understood that he belonged to Herr Koenig. He lived with ten other children in East Berlin, in an old house with bars on the windows and wire around the top of the garden wall. There were three older women who looked after them, and always several young scientists who came and went. And once or twice a month, Herr Koenig visited.

Then they were all scrubbed and put in very clean clothes, even Kurt, whose tail was something of a problem without special pants. They were marched out in a line, like Young Pioneers, and Herr Koenig reviewed them. The oldest was twelve, the youngest still a toddler in diapers.

Kurt did not remember ever being anywhere else.

Herr Koenig would choose one or two, and they would go in the lab with the scientists. Sometimes it was Kurt. They would do things - ask him to work puzzles or crawl through tubes with electrode pads on. Sometimes they would shock him. It wasn't enough to be really bad, just enough to hurt. And they measured environmental changes, temperature and humidity and other things he didn't understand. There never were any. Herr Koenig and the scientists would watch and scribble things on their clipboards, frowning. And Kurt would be sent back to the other children.

Once Rudolph, the oldest of the children, broke the wide glass windows in the lab. Herr Koenig was very pleased. Rudolph went away with him and never came back.

Otherwise, Kurt was happy. There was plenty of plain good food, and they had lessons in math and reading. He liked reading. And the other kids were friends. It was like a family, he thought. What a family would be like.

Once, he asked Anneke, who was three years older than he was, if she knew what a real family was like. She told him all about the family she used to have, how she had a mother and a father and an older sister. Her sister was thirteen when she began moving things with her mind. Then they came and took her sister somewhere, and brought her here, to see what she would be able to do when she was older. She wondered what her parents thought, and if they missed her.

Kurt had never had any parents. He supposed that, like Henni, who was only sixteen months old, he had come here before he could remember.

The winter he was seven something changed. One morning there was a great deal of fuss and bother, and one of the young scientists arrived out of breath and not wearing an overcoat, even though it was cold. The women bustled them all into coats and hats, and they were hurried into cars. Kurt and Anneke and Henni were in one car, with the scientist driving and one of the women holding Henni. Kurt had a red stocking cap pulled down over his blue ears. They drove very fast.

"Where are we going?" Kurt asked.

"To another house," the woman said.

Kurt looked out the window. It was gray and cold and very early in the morning. They pulled up at a guard post so the young scientist could talk to someone. Kurt craned his neck. Beyond the guard post was a warehouse, but it looked like it had been in a war. Bricks were scattered across the street, and the elevator lay a little ways from the building, all twisted steel covered in morning frost. The tall chain fences were crumpled and torn like paper.

The thought came unbidden: they were looking for someone. It gave him a secret thrill for some reason he didn't understand, like it was a coded message just for him. They were looking for someone.

The car drove on to another house in another part of town, very like the first. But Herr Koenig never came back. It was two months before Kurt heard that he was dead.

After that, the young scientists came and they did the tests, but none of the children ever went away again. Three years later the scientists all did. The women cried, and explained that the program had been cancelled. The government needed money, and they were very expensive to keep, special children who never did anything.

Kurt was sent to an orphanage in Donau. Anneke was the only one of the others who went there too. It wasn't as nice in Kurt's opinion. There were a hundred children, and there was never enough to eat or enough warm clothes. At first people made fun of his blue skin and his tail, but they got tired of it quickly. Then he made friends. He understood that people were scared of him until they got used to him.

Sometimes he missed Frau Burkhardt, the nicest of the women, and Henni, who had laughed and played with his tail. But there were other kids his age here, and the school had more books.

At Donau he learned to teleport.

He tripped on the stairs to the first floor. One minute he was falling, and then he was sitting on the floor of his room. And Kurt knew this was what Herr Koenig had wanted. He was thirteen. It was six years since Herr Koenig had tried to get something to happen.

Kurt kept it secret. He didn't want to leave Donau. He practiced a little in private, going from one bathroom stall to another, from one empty classroom to another. He got better. At first, it didn't always work. Then it did.

Anneke was sitting with him at dinner. She was sixteen now, and treated him like a little brother. He understood brothers and sisters now - there were several sets of orphaned siblings at Donau.

"I wonder if I have brothers or sisters," Kurt said. "I might. You never know."

Anneke took a forkfull of potato. "If you were the youngest you might not remember."

"I don't remember," he said.

"If you could pick locks you could get into the office and see your file," she said. "There's a big cabinet with folders on each of us. But they keep the door locked except when the Director is in there."

Locked doors don't stop a teleporter.

He found a reason to go by the office and ask a question during the day. All he needed was to see where the furniture was so that he didn't miscalculate and teleport into a desk. Then, at night, he slipped down to the hall and teleported three feet inside the door.

His file was neatly labeled Kurt Wagner, under the W's. Quickly, he paged back to the beginning. There were his school records from Berlin, height and weight charts filled out neatly in pen twice yearly. The first pages were his initial medical exam. Baby Boy 147 was born in the General Hospital of Leipzig, 1:28 a.m., October 15, 1975. He weighed 3.1 kg and was 47 cm long, not including the tail. There were no parents names listed, no birth certificate. He arrived in Berlin where he lived his whole life on October 16, 1975. He was one day old.

Kurt closed the file, and put it away neatly. No one would ever know he had been in the office.

He was from Leipzig. The mystery began there.

It was seven years before he could go to Leipzig. When he was fourteen the Berlin Wall came down. The government crumbled like so much aging concrete. At the orphanage things were strange. The old staff went away. New people came. Then there was no money. Kurt understood that it had something to do with the currency deflating, but what it meant to him was that there wasn't a lot of food for a few weeks. Then four Italian nuns and an old doctor arrived. They were with some charitable order, and had come to take care of the children. They did not have to be paid. They were nuns. The old doctor was fascinated by Kurt, in a kind and abstracted way. His name was Dr. Bertucci, and he talked to him quietly in the office.

When they had talked a while the doctor stood up and put his hand on Kurt's head. "It is unfathomable to me why Our Lord placed such a sweet and trusting soul in a body that causes so much fear. Perhaps it is to teach us all to look beyond the face to the heart within. I don't know. His ways are ineffable."

His kindness made Kurt bold. "Doctor, do you think you could help me find my family?"

Dr. Bertucci smiled sadly. "I will try, son. But I don't have much hope. I don't imagine...." He let the sentence trail off, but Kurt knew what he meant. He didn't think they would want him.

Three days later he was sitting with Anneke in the big dining room when she stopped suddenly, a fork of eggs halfway to her mouth. A tall, craggy man and a woman in a dark blue coat were standing in the doorway with Dr. Bertucci, looking around the room full of children. Anneke went pale. The fork dropped from her hand. The man's eyes met hers. Her chair hit the floor with a clatter as she jumped up and ran across the room. His arms went around her, and the woman touched her hair almost disbelievingly, silent tears running down her face.

Kurt understood. Anneke was going home.

It was almost three years before he left Donau. He was seventeen. He was a man now, and it was time he found a job. No one was looking for him. No one would know where to look. Baby Boy 147 left no paper trail, unless it was in the aging records of a hospital in Leipzig.

He did not get there until 1995. Kurt Wagner aka the Amazing Nightcrawler was twenty when the Munich Circus went to Leipzig.

On a warm spring day he found the hospital. It was plain functional red brick, post-war utilitarian, but around the concrete sign someone had planted dozens of red tulips. They were curious, and barely polite. There were no records from 1975. No, the hospital administrator could not speak with him. Besides, the current administrator had only been there two years. There were no records before 1986, when they went on their current system. They were very sorry, but they could not help him.

The Amazing Nightcrawler went away. He would not know. He would never know. That night, as always, he prayed for his parents.

She was twenty-three when she came to Berlin, and she knew that she was a traitor. She had heard about Berlin her entire life, but Katerina knew that the city her grandfather talked about didn't really exist anymore. She didn't care. Those were his dreams, not hers. Her dreams were all shiny and sleek, images from television and action movies. Old meant used, shabby and dull, like the town she had grown up in, like her life.

She had hoped for a modern high-rise, all steel and glass. Instead, Erik's apartment was on the second floor of an old row house. There were two rooms, and a corner that might charitably be called a kitchen. The living room was furnished in cheap, modern stuff with an incredibly uncomfortable looking naugahide couch, the bedroom in furniture that must have been nice fifty years ago. Neither looked like his taste; he must have rented the flat furnished. But then, perhaps it was. She had known him two days.

"I'm afraid it isn't much," he said from the bedroom.

The bath was clean, the bathmat hanging from the shower rail, the lid up.

"It's wonderful."

The burning-wool smell was the heat coming on. It was cold in the apartment. She took off her coat and flung it over the back of the chair and kicked off her wedges. Her stockings were damp from the snow.

"You really need some boots," he said with a frown, coming back into the main room.

"If you'd like to buy some," she said. "Do you have anything to drink?"

He looked a little startled. "Nothing but gin."

Katerina shrugged. "Gin will do."

She wandered into the bedroom. Of course there was one double bed. She opened the closet. His clothes were hanging neatly, three pairs of shoes lined up precisely below. On the dressing table was an expensive stereo. That wasn't the landlord's, she was certain.

Erik came in and handed her a glass with two fingers of gin, and a bottle of sparkling water. He eyed the bed too. "Chivalry," he said, "is dead. You can have the couch, or share."

"I think anything's better than that couch," she said. She poured the water and walked to the window, looking out. Night was coming swiftly this close to the end of the year. All across West Berlin windows were glowing, casting patterns of golden light out onto the snow.

He came and stood beside her, his glass in his hand, but he didn't touch her. She heard the clink of ice as he drank.

A car moved by in the street, tires crunching as the streets refroze. Erik didn't say anything.

After a few minutes she looked at him sideways, dark sweater over a white shirt, dark hair just beginning to gray, eyes shadowed in the dim light. She moved closer, her hands on the window in front of him, close enough that he must feel the warmth of her body.

With a wave, he turned the stereo on and went into the main room.

Katerina leaned her head against the window. Under the streetlights she could see the faint trace of precipitation. It was beginning to snow again. Her grandfather had thought this was the most beautiful city in the world. But the city he had loved was rubble. "Idiot," she said, and went in the other room.

Dinner was soup and potato chips. He hadn't been expecting company, and with the snow going out seemed like too much trouble. They could get groceries tomorrow.

Katerina sat with her back against the naugahide couch, eating potato chips. Erik was sitting in the equally unattractive naugahide chair, listening to Vivaldi on the stereo and watching her.

Katerina licked the salt off her fingers and plunged back in the bag. "They're very good."

"I'm glad you like them. Are you planning to eat the whole bag?" He sounded amused.

"Maybe." She looked up. "It's hard to stop. You eat one potato chip and then a dozen more. You can't get them in the East."

"Why not?"

Katerina shrugged. "Decadent western vices? I don't know. You're not supposed to have the strangest things in the East. Blue jeans. Shoes with wedges. I suppose the government thinks it will collapse from the pressure of fashion." She stuffed another chip. "The Bee Gees will inspire us to have Prague Summer in Leipzig."

"And they won't?" Erik asked.

"No." Katerina leaned back against the couch. "We're not like the Czechs or the Poles with Solidarity, ready to rebel at a moment's notice. We've got too much collective guilt." She stretched her feet out toward the radiator. "Like my mother. She thinks I'm a mutant because it's God's punishment on our family for our sins. Because when she was a child she went on vacations to the Baltic in the summer and got a nice fur coat when she was thirteen." She looked up at him, but his expression hadn't changed. "So she thinks God decided to punish her for all that by sending me as an affliction. She threw me out when I was twelve."

"What did you do?"

Katerina shrugged and ate another potato chip. "These are really good, you know? I think I'll sleep with them under my pillow."

He smiled. "That sounds unnecessary. No one else is going to eat them."

"Yes, but you never know, you know? My grandfather took me in. I stayed until it was clear I was too much of a disappointment."

"Because you're a mutant?"

Katerina laughed. "Because I'm a whore. Nothing could have pleased him more than me being a mutant. He was delighted. Evidence the master race was among us! Thus spake Zarathustra and all that stuff. I would do my bit and be the proud mother of a dozen little mutants, all ready to purge the world of inferiors." She stopped, looked up at him, her voice dropping. "How can you even stand to be near me, knowing what I am, that I'm German?"

Erik looked at her over the rim of his glass. "My dear, you're only twenty-three. You aren't responsible for things that happened before you were born."

"As simple as that?" she asked.

"Yes," he said, and looked away.

Katerina bit her lip. "I shouldn't...."

"Bring it up?" he said.

"No. I was going to say, I shouldn't steal from you. I took money out of your wallet last night. It's in the suitcase."

He leaned forward, one hand brushing her hair. "It's rather pointless. But feel free, if you find it comforting. You can put the potato chips under the bed too, if you like."

She leaned back against his hand with a sigh. "I don't know why."

"Perhaps because you don't know when you'll eat again, or have the opportunity to get into my wallet. It will pass in a few years, when you're used to having enough."

She looked up. He looked older than he was, only in his mid-forties. She knew why. "Did you ever steal food?"

"Yes." His hand moved quietly on her hair, as though she were a nervous animal to be gentled.

"Did you ever steal money?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever turn tricks?"

"I think that's rather a personal question," he said. His hand didn't lose rhythm on her hair.

"It is," she said. Katerina leaned back against his leg.

"You don't have to sleep with me, you know. That's not part of the bargain. It's your extraordinary talent I'm interested in."

She looked up. "Entirely?"

Erik smiled ruefully. "Mostly."

Katerina laughed. "I should hope I have some effect on you."

"Yes," he said, lifting her hair off the back of her neck in a gesture that should have been flirtatious, except that desire never reached his eyes, and his breath was slow and even. She wondered if this restraint was to be kind to her, or to prove that he was the perfect master of himself.

That night they lay a foot apart in the double bed that had been new before she was born, when he was a child with no expectation of what would come. She felt the presence of the past between them under the sheets. Outside the snow whispered against the windows. They did not touch at any point. His back was to her and her back to him. He faced the wall, and she faced the window. The city was silent under the snow.

She wanted music, the kind that banishes night. She thought about poems, and the fierce stories she had loved to hear when she was five, about Valkyries waiting in the fire and birds who circle speaking fate.

"Is there something I should call you? Katerina? Mareile?" he asked. "What's your real name?"

"Raven," she said.

If he thought that was unlikely, he didn't say so.

Professor Xavier asked, of course. It is only natural, Kurt thought, to ask where someone with so extreme a mutation came from.

Kurt sat in a blue brocade chair in front of the Professor's desk. He had not been in the office before. He supposed that either it had been spared the fighting in the school, or that Scott or someone had helped the Professor tidy it already.

The Professor steepled his hands on the desk. "How did you come to be in the Munich Circus?"

He told him about Donau and about the orphanage. It was raining, and behind the Professor, Kurt could look out over the sodden garden. He looked everywhere except at the Professor, at the potted plant in the blue and white pot on the credenza beside the window, at the pens and pencils neatly arranged in a white ceramic cup, at the rows of books on the tall bookcases. Most were scientific, but there were two shelves of literature that he taught his classes. On the end of the shelf above there was a bright blue cloth spine decorated with gold. "Fire From Heaven." Kurt wondered what it was about.

When he had finished, the Professor folded his hands again. "Kurt, I have said this before, but I want to repeat it. You are welcome to stay here as long as you like. For some this is a place to rest and learn. For others it's a permanent home."

Perhaps it was that his gentle questions and kind manner reminded him of Dr. Bertucci. Perhaps it was that which caused Kurt to dream.

In his dream he was not in the mansion in Westchester, New York. He was not sleeping in a clean nice room on the third floor, with white sheets washed in Downy. He was back in the house in Berlin, the first house, where he had lived until he was seven years old. Anneke was ten. They were playing in the garden behind the high wall with wire along the top, and it was a cold day when their breath hung clouded in the air. It started snowing. They were playing in the snow. The door opened and the young scientist came out. Dr. Grey was with him, wearing a white lab coat over a red dress. She was taking notes on a clipboard.

Dr. Grey looked up at the sky. "Storm's coming," she said.

There was a roar like thunder and the jet swept overhead, its fuselage torn by shrapnel, one engine flaming out. While he watched, the metal skin began to heal itself again.

He was back in the plane, Marie clasped in his arms, while it dove in a sickening spin toward green earth, Ororo and Jean fighting the controls. Over his head the metal began knitting itself back together.

"It's unfathomable to me," Dr. Bertucci said from the chair behind him. Only he was sitting in the Professor's wheelchair.

He was in the garden at the house and it was winter. The bricks of the walls were scattered on the street, barbed wire tangled and crushed. A small boy left off playing and looked up at him, red stocking cap pulled down around his blue ears. "They were looking for someone," he said.

Dr. Grey took careful notes on her clipboard. "It's all in the files," she said. "It's in the office in the medical file."

The plane rushed toward earth. He clasped Marie as the canopy reformed over their heads. Before they hit the ground he woke up.

The next day he went to talk to Professor Xavier. The Professor looked ragged. He had probably been up late again. Kurt had heard the soft whirr of the wheelchair late at night, the chime of the elevator coming up from the basement, Marie's voice in the hall. She had wanted to talk with him.

Kurt had hoped to talk, but he had gone to bed.

So he tried again in daylight.

"Professor, if you have a minute?" He pushed open the office door tentatively.

Professor Xavier looked up from his desk. He looked like he welcomed the interruption. "Of course, Kurt. Come in."

He came in and sat awkwardly in one of the blue chairs. "I was wondering, Professor, if you would help me with something."

"If I can."

"I was wondering if you would help me find my family."

He didn't sigh like Dr. Bertucci, only steepled his hands as though the question were interesting. "I would be glad to help, Kurt. But I'm afraid you haven't given me much to go on. If you've been to the hospital in Leipzig, and they don't have any records, I'm not sure records exist. The East German mutant program certainly didn't leave any public information."

"You know about this program?"

Xavier nodded. "Rumors, really, at the time. In the 70's and 80's many governments had some kind of secret research into mutation. I never met Karl Koenig, of course, but I heard of him."

"What happened to him?" Kurt asked.

"I understand he was assassinated by a Mossad hit squad. That was the rumor at the time, anyway. The government of Israel wanted him badly for war crimes during the Second World War, but couldn't get him out of East Germany. So I heard that they sent a hit squad in and killed him."

"I was there," Kurt said slowly. "I remember. I saw the building. The gates crumpled like paper."

The Professor straightened almost imperceptibly. "Gates?"

Kurt searched for the English words. "There were gates around the building, a wire fence. They were all twisted and flattened. I suppose there were explosives."

"I've never heard of explosives doing that," the Professor said. "I suppose.... Kurt, when was this?"

"In January after I turned seven," Kurt said. "That would be 1983."

"Possible..." the Professor said. His forehead wrinkled. "But I can't imagine...."

"I was wondering if there was something else with the hospital. Something to try. Maybe?"

Professor Xavier looked up. "Yes, of course. There might be. I could call and ask who the local physicians were who delivered there in 1975. Such an unusual birth, it's likely someone remembers it, even if there aren't records at the hospital anymore."

"You will help me with this? You will call?"

"I will." He looked like it was a relief to have something this clear-cut to do, something easy. It made Kurt happy to be able to do something to ease his pain.

That night he dreamed. He was standing in the snow. He was talking to the Professor, who didn't seem to be cold even though the snow was blowing around them. "I was born on October 15, 1975," he said.

"I know." The Professor was gone, and it was the other old man, the one they called Magneto. "You were born in Leipzig."

Dr. Grey came walking out of the snowstorm, a white lab coat over her red dress. "Dr. Lehnsherr, you should come inside. It's too cold here."

Magneto smiled at her. "Kurt needs you to read his mind and tell him where he's been."

"Some mutations aren't viable," she said.

His smile faded. The expression was almost like pain. "I know that."

"It's all in the file," she said. "I put it in the file when I got back from Boston."

"You found me in Boston," Kurt said. "But you never came back. You never came back to the school."

And he woke up.

He found Ororo after breakfast, alone in the kitchen. She was loading the dishwasher. She didn't have a class first period.

"Ororo," he asked, "Do you believe in angels?"

She turned, a plate in her hand, the sunlight through the window finding her pale hair. It was lighter in the kitchen in winter than in summer, when the trees shaded the windows and cast a green light. "I don't know, Kurt. I haven't really thought about it much. Why do you ask?"

"Do you think that it is possible for people who are dead to talk to us? To watch over us?"

Ororo put the plate neatly in the dishwasher. "I'm not sure. I know a lot of people believe that it's possible. But I don't really know. Why?"

"I keep dreaming that I am talking with Dr. Jean, and she keeps telling me something that doesn't make sense to me. So I wonder why I dream this, and if she is trying to help me."

The dishes clattered. Ororo did not look up. "I dream about talking to Jean too. I think it's natural when someone dies to try and find some kind of resolution." Kurt could hear the pain in her voice. Jean had been her best friend for years.

Kurt's voice was very gentle. "Does she make sense when she talks to you?" he asked.

She didn't turn around. "Yes. We talk, just like we used to. She comes and sits on the side of my bed, and we just talk. That's all I dream."

"I dream other things," he said. "I do not understand what she is telling me."

"What does she tell you?"

Kurt sat down on one of the kitchen chairs. "She tells me that the answer is in my medical file, that she put it there. But that is not possible. I did not have a record here until after we came back from Alkali Lake. So I do not know why I dream this."

"The answer to what?" Ororo straightened and turned on the dishwasher.

"To where I came from. To why I am what I am."

Ororo touched his shoulder gently. "Kurt, none of us know that."

"I do not even know my mother's name. I do not know ..." he halted, then began again more slowly. "I do not know if she wanted me."

"Does it matter? It was a long time ago. You're here now."

Kurt nodded. "It matters to me. And Dr. Jean, she keeps telling me it is in the medical file. Twice I have dreamed this now."

Ororo sighed, the winter sunlight glancing on her hair in a way Kurt thought was beautiful indeed. "Would it make you feel better to go down and look at your medical file? I know the Professor made a couple of entries, and you have the right to see everything about you."

"It would."

They went down together, through the great metal doors that slid open with a strange elegance. Ororo sat in front of the computer and called up the information. There was very little, only the Professor's terse entries right after Alkali Lake, detailing the healing of the gunshot wound in his arm, stitches removed, antibiotics given. Nothing that he did not expect. Nothing that helped.

He had expected something. Something else.

Ororo let him page up and down with the mouse. He was sitting very close to her to reach it. She smelled like vanilla and jasmine.

"There is nothing," he said at last.

"I'm sorry, Kurt," she said. "I wish I could have helped."

"It was just a dream, I suppose," he said. "It was not reasonable to think that there was something here."

That night before dinner Marie came up to Kurt in the TV room. "Kurt, the Professor sent me to get you. He's on an international call, and he wants you to come in the office quietly."

Kurt teleported.

The Professor looked up from the telephone, not even mildly surprised. "A moment, Frau Klein." He pushed the button for the speakerphone. His German was quite good.

Kurt sank down on one of the uncomfortable chairs in front of the desk.

"You were telling me about the night "the blue boy" was born," he prompted.

"Oh yes." Her voice was old. "I was a maternity nurse then. It was the most amazing baby I'd ever seen. Solid blue, every inch of him. A little on the small side, but crying perfectly normally."

"Who were his parents?" the Professor asked.

"I never knew there was a father. It was one of those teenage unwed mothers. There weren't as many of them then, but we were starting to get them. A lot of them were addicted to heroin."

"What was her name?" the Professor asked.

"Oh, I don't remember after so long," Frau Klein replied. "Something ordinary, like Schmidt or Sholtz. Pretty little thing, with long black hair and green eyes. You don't see that much, hair board-straight and black as a raven's wing. She wasn't very old. And there was nobody with her. I wasn't disposed to think much of those teenage mothers then. That was before HIV, but a lot of them had syphilis."

The Professor held up a hand to ward off Kurt's question. "Was there anything unusual about her?"

"You mean anything that would have made us expect the baby to be blue? Not a thing. And that was the curious thing. Usually when a baby is as severely deformed as that, the mother is just as happy to let it go. But when the doctors took it she screamed and cried and tried to get to him. She just kept screaming "I want my baby!" until we sedated her. She wasn't a bit afraid even though he looked like that. She struggled until she went under, crying and calling for him."

Kurt buried his face in his hands.

"What happened to her?" the Professor asked.

"Well, the government men arrived for the baby the next day, important men with papers. I don't know what happened to him. She stayed until the day after. Then one of the day shift nurses found her missing from her hospital room. She just ran away. I have no idea what happened to her. I suppose she went home, wherever that was."

Kurt was crying. The Professor held the mute button to give him a moment. He shook his head, and went out in the hall. He did not want her to hear him.

He leaned against the elegant paneling, still scarred from Logan's claws. She had cried and screamed. She had tried to get to him. He could not expect that she would have succeeded. She was a child, like Marie. But she had wanted him.

After a few minutes, Kurt went back in.

The Professor was still on the phone, but he seemed to be winding up the conversation. "I appreciate your time, Frau Klein. You have an exceptional memory. I wonder if anyone else has tried to locate the child."

Kurt wondered if the Professor had any wine. He felt that some would be appropriate right now.

He was surprised that she answered cheerfully, "Oh yes. I had a call a few years ago, when the Wall came down. A woman was asking about the blue boy."

"His mother?" the Professor asked.

"No," she said. "I don't think so. Different name entirely. She said she was his paternal aunt or something like that. She wanted to know where he had gone, but of course I don't know. Government men don't tell maternity nurses things like that."

"Did she tell you her name?"

"She was in America," Frau Klein said thoughtfully. "Oh, I wrote it all down somewhere. Maybe in my telephone companion or my datebook for 1989. She told me her address and asked me to write if I heard anything. Of course I never did."

"Would you mind finding it?" the Professor asked.

While she puttered away, he held the mute button. "Kurt, I know this is hard." Kurt could feel the mental touch of sympathy, steadying and kind.

"I am very happy," he said. "I am very happy that she...." He didn't trust himself to speak.

After ten long minutes Frau Klein came back. "Here it is. The 1990 datebook. She called in January 1990. She said her name was Katerina Nolte, and she lived at 1100 W. Market Street, #704, Boston, MA. Does that help?"

The Professor's face had gone completely still. The mental touch stopped as abruptly as a faucet turning off. "Yes, it does. Thank you, Frau Klein."

He got off the phone quickly and politely. By the time he put the receiver in his cradle his face had regained its old color.

"Professor, I cannot thank you enough for what you have done...."

"I'm glad I could help, Kurt. I know this must be difficult for you."

"Someone was looking for me," Kurt said. "After the Wall went down."

"Yes."

"An aunt? Or my mother? Maybe my father?"

"That wasn't your father," the Professor said, rather grimly.

"Maybe we could trace the address, yes? The one in Boston? See who lived there in 1990?"

The Professor's voice was heavy. "I know who lived there in 1990. In 1990 that apartment was rented to Erik Lehnsherr."

"Who?" The name was familiar, but he couldn't quite place it.

"Magneto. For some reason he was interested in finding you."

"Why would Magneto be looking for me?"

The Professor spread his hands. "You had been part of the East German mutant program. And you have a very unusual talent. Perhaps he thought that you would be useful to him."

"But I did not have the teleporting until I was at Donau," Kurt said. "How did he know?"

"I don't know, Kurt," Professor Xavier said, "but I do know that he is a very, very dangerous man. And that his interest in you can't have been incidental to your talents."

The day before Christmas Erik went to get groceries, grumpily complaining that the shops would be closed the next day. Raven stayed in, toasting her feet on the radiator and trying to read one of his novels in English. It was about a Persian boy who was gelded and sold when his father was killed for treason against some king. It was rather good, but the English was difficult for her.

The telephone rang. It took her a minute to find it. The telephone hadn't rung in the three days she had been here.

"Hello?" she said.

It was a man's voice, deep and pleasant, bad German with an American accent. "Hello, is this Erik Lehnsherr's number?"

"It is," she said in English. "But he's gone out right now."

"Ah." He paused. There was the faint static of an international call. "I'll call again later."

"Shall I tell him who called?" she asked.

"That's all right. I'll just call later," he said. He hung up.

Erik came in ten minutes later.

"Someone called for you," she said. "A man in America. He didn't leave his name, and he said he'd call back."

Erik paused, groceries in his hands. "Did he? Christmas Eve? How very sentimental." He started putting things away.

She understood. Raven folded the book down and walked into the kitchen on bare feet.

He was reaching up to put cereal in an upper cupboard. She put her arms around him from behind, sliding them under his arms and around his chest. Erik turned, surprised, and she kissed him. She felt him tense, then lean into her, angry and unyielding. He kissed her hard, to prove he missed no one.

Barefooted, he had an inch on her. His mouth explored hers, tasting her. Her arms tightened around him. The kiss was very thorough indeed.

"Why?" he said.

"Why not?"

They left the bread on the counter and made love in the afternoon in the pale light coming through the bedroom window, reflected off the graying snow. They took a very long time, and when they had finished they lay side by side, hands idly roving over each other's skin. He was very fair, with a faint scattering of freckles across his shoulders. She rested her head on his left arm, smiled against his skin.

His hand caressed her thigh. "Is this what you really look like?" he asked.

Raven pushed her hair out of her face. "No. You wouldn't like what I really look like. But if this isn't to your taste, I can be something else." She stretched sensually, shifting as she moved, legs lengthening, hair changing. She looked up, a perfect Nordic beauty, hair the color of honey mead, eyes as blue as cornflowers, with long slim legs and high breasts.

"Not really," he said.

She shrugged and shifted, waist length black hair, green eyes, curving hips.

He was watching avidly. "That's truly amazing."

"Thank you." She turned over, plumping the pillow against her and pulling up the duvet. It was chilly, even with the heater going. He settled against her back, his arm still beneath her head. "I'm better at it than I used to be. Practice makes perfect."

He ran his hand through her hair, feeling the fine silky texture of it. "How much can you change?"

"It depends. There are some limitations. I can't go more than about five inches taller or shorter than I really am. Or too much heavier or lighter. Mass has to go somewhere. I couldn't do a six year old. Or a man seven feet tall."

On the inside of the arm around her she could see the numbers etched in blue on his skin. There is nothing I was supposed to be that I am, she thought. Her hand tightened around his, white fingers entwined with his. The watch on his wrist was cold against her arm.

He laid his face against the top of her head, lips on her hair.

We are the same, she thought. Animals curled together in the dark of the year, warming one another. Shelter against the cold. "We are the same," she said.

"Yes." He was very quiet. "A new species. There are more of us every year, all over the world."

"From every place, every people?"

"Yes. Those differences don't matter beside the larger ones."

"They hate us," she said.

"Yes. Humans always hate people who are different."

She leaned back on his shoulder. "But we don't hate each other. And we're very different. All of us are so different."

Erik shrugged. "I can't explain it. It's the same gene that causes mutation, but how it manifests is different for every individual, even people in the same family. We don't understand how it works yet. We will, in time."

"Even in the same family?"

"As far as we know." He bent to see her face, hearing something strained in her voice.

"I had a son," she said. "When I was sixteen. He looked like me."

His arms tightened around her. "Ah, Raven."

"They took him away. Men from the government. I don't know why."

"The East German government is training mutants for espionage. I don't need to tell you how useful your talent would be to them. If they thought he had special abilities...."

"They would take care of him, wouldn't they?"

"At best...." Erik stopped. "Yes. They would."

"What do you know about it?" She didn't turn. He could not see her face from this angle.

Erik took a breath. "The director is a man named Koenig. He was a Nazi, but he landed on his feet at the end of the war. Now he runs the East German mutant program. I've never met him, but I've heard of him, and I'm certain he's heard of me. He's a pyrokinetic."

"What does that mean?"

"It means he sets things on fire with his mind."

"Oh."

In the main room there was the sound of the phone ringing.

Erik swore.

"Answer it," she said.

Erik got up naked and went to answer it. Raven rolled over into the warm place where he had lain. The bed smelled of their mingled scents. It was comforting, somehow.

She could hear his voice in the next room, though he was talking quietly. "Hello, Charles. Midnight where you are, I see. Brooding around the Christmas tree?"

A silence, then, "I'm glad Jean and Scott stayed."

Raven curled tight around the pillows.

He laughed. "Scott will have to improve his aim! New mailboxes are expensive!"

She tried to imagine what he was responding to and failed.

His voice was almost to low to hear. "Yes. Of course. So where's Moira?" There was a long pause. "Well. I didn't think it would last. Why did she say?" Another long pause. "You are, you know. Did you finally notice?" There was a teasing note on the last question.

How long, Raven wondered. Years? Decades?

"No, Charles. You know it's a bad idea. And what about your children who are staying over Christmas break?" Another long pause. "We've been through this before, if you remember."

The sound of his footsteps, pacing as far as the telephone cord would allow. "Yes, of course. Good night, Charles." The sound of the telephone hanging up, the couch creaking.

After a few minutes Raven got up and wrapped his bathrobe around her. She went to the door. He was sitting on the couch, looking at the phone.

"Erik, it's cold," she said.

He put the telephone down and came back to her. "It is, isn't it?"

The holidays ended. Classes resumed at the university. Erik was teaching again, back in the lab in the afternoons. Raven found a job at a bakery, selling pastries. For a week, things seemed almost normal.

He did not tell her he was looking. If what he found was bad, she would not have to know. She understood this when he told her. "I've talked to people," he said. "Academics. Others. People who hear things. Koenig is in East Berlin. They say there are a group of children, mutant children."

"In East Berlin? So close?"

"I don't know that your son is there," Erik said. "I don't know if there's even a chance."

"There is a chance," she said. Raven looked at him, aware suddenly how much pleasure it gave him to offer her this small hope.

"I'm going to see what I can find out. There's a man who used to work for one of the intelligence services. He may be able to tell me something."

"If you find my son," she said quietly, "I will do whatever you ask of me for the rest of my life. Anything. Under any circumstances."

He took that as it was meant. "If it's possible, I'll find him."

She put her arms around him, wondering if what he most wanted was for her to see him as the hero.

A week later he found what he wanted to know. The man told him that the children were in the basement of a warehouse, only a dozen blocks or so from the Wall.

"The Wall isn't a problem," Erik said.

Raven frowned. "The Wall is absolutely the problem. You have no legitimate reason to be in East Berlin, and I'm an East German citizen who's applied for asylum in America. We can't just walk through a check point."

"No," Erik said, "but we don't need to. There are a few drainage culverts at the base."

"With spotlights and towers. And guards. And in case you hadn't noticed, they're three feet high and have bars on both sides of the wall."

"Not a problem," Erik said. He smiled, and it was not a nice smile. "Are you a Bond girl, or not?"

"Are you Bond?" she asked.

She made him take his watch off. It was shiny and metal. He hated leaving it.

They got as close as possible without doing anything suspicious. As if, Raven thought, approaching the Wall in the dark wearing black turtlenecks and black pants wasn't suspicious to start with. The American guards weren't watching them. Their eyes were on the East.

Erik looked discontented. "I can't see the Russian guards on the tower. We need to get further along."

"Why?"

"I'm still out of range."

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

He didn't answer, just strolled further along, hands in his pockets. Raven looked at the culvert again. Concrete. Iron bars. Three feet tall.

Erik raised his head. There was the sound of gunfire. One of the machine guns on the Eastern side was going crazy, swiveling in its mounting, spraying the concrete with bullets. There was shouting, alarms sounding on the American side, lights turning toward the shots.

Erik was sprinting across the open space to the culvert. The bars melted back in front of him. He ducked into the culvert, looked back at her.

With a deep breath Raven ran, half-expecting the impact of bullets any minute. She threw herself into the culvert. When she turned, the bars were straight again. There was no sign they had ever been moved.

The alarms were still going off, though the gun had stopped. It had taken ten seconds.

Erik gestured to the bars on the Eastern side, and they opened for him. Ahead, the barbed wire flattened to the ground. They ran. Longer this time. When they reached the first building, Raven looked back. The guards on the tower were inspecting the machine guns. The bars were closed, the wire strung precisely.

Erik smiled. "I don't think Bond does that," he said.

That night, when he prayed, he imagined his mother with a face like Marie's, so it did not surprise him that he dreamed he was talking with Marie.

She was sitting at the breakfast table in the kitchen, the warm summer sunshine dappling her hair. He was surprised. The trees should block that window in summer.

"Kurt," she said, "It's complicated." She reached down and poured milk in her coffee from a stainless steel creamer he had never seen before. The ones in the kitchen were white china.

"There is that word again," he said. "The one everyone uses."

Marie smiled. "I know. But Charles tried to help, didn't he?"

"I am very happy he found the nurse," Kurt said. He took a long swallow of coffee with milk. Then he said what he had not wanted to say to the Professor. "But I am angry. She did nothing to help my mother. Nobody did. That is not right. And she talked about me as though I were some deformed thing, not a person at all."

"It's okay to be angry," Marie said. She put sugar in her cup from a stainless steel bowl. The curtains were yellow and white.

"What has happened to the kitchen?" Kurt asked. "It is all different." The refrigerator was white and much smaller.

Marie waved a hand. "This? This is the kitchen the way it was when I first came here."

"A year ago?" Kurt was surprised.

Marie smiled. Her hair looked almost red in the sunlight instead of chocolate brown. "Twenty-five years ago. I was eleven. And you were two." It was Dr. Grey sitting across from him, a white lab coat over her red dress.

"I went and looked in my file," he said. "I believed you and I looked. But there was nothing there."

Dr. Grey smiled and took a drink of her coffee. "You believed me. You're the only one who listens. Scott and Ororo and Charles all think I'm some kind of psychological manifestation of repressed guilt."

"I think you are an angel," Kurt said.

"Not quite," Dr. Grey said.

He was back in the plane, lying on the floor holding Marie from the rush of air, while the metal knitted itself together above him. Dr. Grey was sitting beside him, her clipboard balanced on her knees. "What are you trying to tell yourself? What is it that you need to know?"

"I don't understand!" Kurt shouted above the roar of the wind.

She looked impatient. "I put it all in the file when I got back from Boston."

The wind was tearing his voice away. Above him, the metal groaned. "We never got back from Boston! We went to Alkali Lake!"

He was falling, falling and then he was in the tree. He was hanging upside down above the campfire, somewhere in the woods and mountains, the downed plane behind him. Dr. Grey was sitting by the campfire in her worn black leather suit. She looked up at him, her clipboard on her lap.

Magneto looked up too. Kurt waved, sheepishly. He was not supposed to be listening.

"Come down, Kurt," Dr. Grey said. "We need your help."

"Dr. Grey needs to read your mind and tell you where you've been," Magneto said.

"I was born in Leipzig," Kurt said.

Dr. Grey made a note on her clipboard. "You have your mother's eyes," she said.

Magneto smiled. "He does, doesn't he?"

Straining, he woke up.

Dawn found him in the kitchen, making coffee. The trees were much larger and the curtains were blue, but the table was the same heavy stainless steel, now marked by ricochets. Logan had fought someone in this kitchen.

But it wasn't Logan who came in before the coffee was done. It was Scott. He looked tired.

"You are up early," Kurt observed.

"Yeah." Scott came around the table and got a mug out. "Did Charles help you with what you were looking for?"

"He did. The Professor has been very kind." The coffee smelled wonderful. He poured a cup. The coffeemaker had been different in his dream.

"Great." Scott poured a cup too.

"I was wondering," Kurt said. "If you knew Katerina Nolte."

"Katerina Nolte?" One of Scott's brows rose above his glasses. "The name sounds kind of familiar. Someone you knew in Germany?"

Kurt shook his head. "I think she lived in Boston."

Scott nodded. "That sort of rings a bell. Someone I met with Jean." He looked up. "Right. At a genetics conference a few years ago. There was a plenary session on mutation and it was boring as hell. Afterwards Jean was talking to a bunch of people. And she introduced me to Katerina Nolte. Tall, brown hair, five or ten years older than Jean?"

"She may be. I do not know what she looks like," Kurt said.

"Why do you want to know?" Scott took a sip of coffee.

"She was looking for me," Kurt said. "She called the hospital where I was born in 1990 and wanted to find out about me. She said she was a relative."

"Well, she's probably a mutant," Scott said.

"Why is that?"

Scott shrugged. "She seemed to know Jean pretty well, and she was at a session on mutation. It wasn't visible, like yours and mine, but I figured she probably had a mutation that wasn't immediately obvious. Like the Professor or Bobby Drake."

"I suppose," Kurt said slowly. "Perhaps if she had a mutation like Dr. Jean's she would not have been surprised if a child had one. I had not thought of that."

"Where did you say she was from?" Scott asked.

"Boston," Kurt said. Then it sunk in. He leapt to his feet. "Boston! Scott, where was the meeting?"

"New York," Scott said. "Why?"

"It wasn't in Boston?"

"Nope." Scott frowned. "What does Boston have to do with anything?"

"Did Dr. Jean ever go to Boston?"

"Jean went to Boston lots of times." Scott seemed perplexed. "A couple of times a year at least. So?"

"Do you know if she went to Boston to see Katerina Nolte?"

"No. She might have. She knew a whole bunch of people in Boston. Friends from Columbia. People we went to high school with, alumni from the school. Jean went up fairly frequently and had lunch with lots of people."

"Did she ever treat them as a patient?" Kurt asked.

Scott nodded. "She treated Hank. It's kind of hard to just go to a regular doctor when you're a mutant. Especially since Hank got shot, and the hospital would have wanted to know how that happened. I don't know if she had any other patients in Boston. She had a Hippocratic Oath, you know. Things between her and her patients were confidential. She didn't tell me about them."

"Did she tell the Professor?"

Scott took another long drink of coffee. Kurt did not think it hurt him to talk about Jean, but rather that it was pleasant to talk about her, to remember her in better times. "I think she discussed some cases with him, when they had a genetic component that he could help her with as a physician. But not always, no."

Kurt composed his question carefully, his hands clasped around his mug. "Would she have treated Magneto or a member of the Brotherhood, and would she have told the Professor if she did?"

Scott put his mug down with a clatter. "Is that what this is about? You think Katerina Nolte is Mystique?"

"She is blue," Kurt said. "And they are together."

Scott thought for a minute. Kurt wondered if his eyes were narrowing beneath his glasses. "In that case, yes, she would have treated Magneto or Mystique. And no, she wouldn't have told Charles."

Kurt knew the answer before he asked the question. "Did she write this down anywhere?"

"She kept a private medical file downstairs on her computer."

The file was on the same computer Ororo had accessed. Scott knew the password for the protected files, and typed it with one hand, his body turned so Kurt couldn't see the keyboard. He looked away and only looked back when Scott said, "Son of a bitch!"

"You have found something, yes?"

Scott paged down. "Jean treated Mystique half a dozen times, starting in August 1994. She's got a pretty complete medical history here."

"What did she treat her for?" Kurt asked.

Scott's voice dropped. "The first one was a termination of pregnancy. In 1994. Fourteen weeks with a non-viable mutation. Severe pre-eclampsia, threatened renal failure, a bunch of other problems. This one wasn't a keeper. It looks like it would have killed her long before viability. Her blood pressure was through the roof and her kidneys were shutting down."

Kurt looked at the screen. His knowledge of English made nothing of the complicated medical terms. "This was a terrible accident, yes?"

"Nobody understands mutant genetics very well. And most mutants aren't old enough to have tried to have families of their own." His voice caught, and Kurt did not need to be a telepath to know he was thinking of the children he and Jean would never have. Scott went on. "But there are a lot of problems sometimes when they do. More problems than most people have. It figures, you know? Kids with wings or gills or tails. It causes problems for the mom, sometimes, especially if she has a mutation of her own. Telepaths and telekinetics aren't so bad but the more extreme mutations are harder. It's worse if both parents are mutants. Sometimes it just doesn't work."

Kurt looked over his shoulder. "There are more entries here?"

Scott moved the mouse. "Jean did a couple of follow-up appointments. This wasn't the first time. See that notation? She'd had two miscarriages the previous year."

"She wanted a child, yes?"

Scott nodded. "Pretty clearly. No wonder Jean didn't tell Charles. He would have shit a brick."

Before Kurt could work out what "shit a brick" meant, Scott's hand stopped on the mouse.

"Damn," he said.

"What?"

"And a previous pregnancy carried to term. In 1975."

"Where?"

"There."

Kurt stared where Scott was pointing. The letters wavered in front of his eyes. "She put it in the file when she got back from Boston," he said.

It was too easy. The warehouse wasn't far, ringed by a twelve-foot chain link fence, a few floodlights on poles unlit even in the gathering dark. There was one guard in a traffic control box at the front. "I don't like this," she said.

Erik seemed to be enjoying himself. "Well, what would you like?"

"It's too easy," she said, suddenly feeling more like Princess Leia than a Bond girl.

He wasn't listening. Slowly, the chain links parted, opening the fence without disturbing the wire along the top. He walked through the doorway. "Coming?"

She came. Behind her the fence sealed itself.

Along the wall at the back side of the warehouse there was a plain metal door. He put his hand over it, and she heard the deadbolt click back. He listened, then cracked the door. Concrete steps led down and up, lit very dimly by one bulb on the stairwell above. There was nothing here but a red fire alarm pull and a tattered sign that said No Smoking.

Raven gestured with her chin, up. She slipped up the stairwell. At the top there was a plain metal door, locked. She looked around for Erik to do his thing. He wasn't behind her.

He had gone down. Raven turned around and started back downstairs.

She heard a clatter below her, voices, the sound of a blow, a muffled cry. She pressed herself flat on the stairs, slipped so she could just look over the edge, down the stairwell.

Two soldiers in riot control gear were hauling Erik to his feet. One on each side, they dragged him through the door.

Raven froze. She could leave out the door they came. What could she be expected to do? She couldn't take on a bunch of soldiers. Erik was cocky, and Erik was in trouble.

She closed her eyes. He was here to find her son.

She wasn't a Bond girl. She didn't have a black belt. What could she possibly do?

The fence had mended itself behind her. That was an oddly comforting thought. She couldn't leave without Erik.

What could she do?

They didn't know she was here.

Raven began to take off her clothes.

The transformation was harder. It was an extreme change, the shape of her body, her genitals, her voice. It was hard to do the clothes. Five minutes later another East German soldier stood in the stairwell.

He walked downstairs and opened the door. Voices came from down the corridor. He followed them.

There were six soldiers with plastic riot gear. Erik was shoved up against the wall, his hands tied behind him with rope. A bruise was spreading on the side of his face. It did nothing to touch the hatred in his eyes.

The eighth man was in well-tailored civilian clothes, a tall, elegant man in his sixties with white hair and ice blue eyes. "No metal?" he said. "What a pity. But then, in the last thirty years I've become adept at handling unusual mutations."

Erik said nothing.

"You know, I've waited a long time to meet you, Lehnsherr. I've heard a great deal about you over the years. You would be surprised how long ago I first heard of you." Koenig paced, his face animated with interest. "Shall I tell you what I first heard?"

The seventh soldier edged around the back of the room. No one noticed.

"I heard that there was a boy in one of the camps who could bend metal with his mind. I didn't believe it. Of course there were a few children born with talents like that, but hardly one of you. Those kinds of talents were a final, clear indication that the Master Race was among us. People like me." Koenig smiled.

He waited for Erik to react. Koenig shrugged. "But then I heard about you again. They had put you to work - making ball bearings, wasn't it? You could do interesting things with ball bearings, they said. So I sent for you. I had the authority, and even if you weren't trainable, it would be very interesting to take you apart and see exactly how your talent worked."

Koenig raised an eyebrow. "Isn't this the part where you're supposed to make a witty remark? No? Well, no one ever said you were much of a conversationalist."

The seventh soldier took a breath. Did Erik see?

"But fortune was against me," Koenig said. "The rail line was cut. The Russians were advancing. I decided to have you sent by truck with some other interesting experiments. Unfortunately, the Americans advanced faster than I expected. You were liberated. Berlin fell. The war ended."

Plastic. Concrete. Glass. A wooden desk. Pencils. A red plastic fire pull. A plastic desk chair. Plastic in-box. Paper folders. Hit six soldiers with a plastic chair?

"I heard about you over the years. Your work in Israel. Your doctorate, your 'collaborative projects' at Columbia with Charles Xavier. When I heard you were in West Berlin, I hoped I'd have the chance to finally meet you." He stopped pacing right in front of Erik. "But you know what I've discovered in the end? You're still nothing but a filthy, perverted Jew."

The seventh soldier backed up against the wall, beside the door.

"I think it's time you saw a little demonstration of my talents," Koenig said. The ropes around Erik's wrists began to smolder. "Does that hurt?" he asked in a quiet, scientific voice. "On a scale of one to ten?"

"Fire!" yelled the seventh soldier, pulling the fire alarm and hitting the light switch. The lights went out and the fire alarms cut in, deafening and close.

In the strobe beams of the emergency lights, Koenig and Erik stood out in startling relief, poised in tableau.

Two more soldiers ran in, responding to the alarm. Koenig turned to give an order. The semi-automatics lifted out of the soldiers arms and skittered across the floor. "Idiots!" Koenig yelled.

The seventh soldier dived for one of the guns. No one tried to stop him. He was, after all, a soldier.

Several of the soldiers had headed for the door, for the alarm, or for the stairs.

"The prisoner," Koenig said. The seventh soldier straightened in front of him, attentive and ready, the semi-automatic in his hands. "Shoot him," Koenig said.

The seventh soldier nodded. "You took my baby," she said, and shot Koenig in the chest. He sank with a look of utter disbelief on his face.

The smoking knots dropped off Erik's wrists.

"I think I just killed him," the seventh soldier said. Her voice sounded shaky. "God."

"We have to get out of here," Erik said.

The seventh soldier grabbed him by the wrists and hustled him out the door. The reinforcements running up the corridor didn't stop them. Down the hall there was an elevator, the kind used for heavy cargo. A few seconds of illusion based on body language....

"Stop!" Someone yelled behind them. "Where are you taking him?"

They turned. Two soldiers with AK-47s behind in the corridor, at the juncture with the stairwell.

Suddenly one of the guns twitched up, firing. Ricochets filled the concrete corridor. One of them hit the emergency light. There were only the muzzle flashes in the dark.

Raven hit the ground halfway in the elevator, losing her grip on Erik's wrists, trying to get under the ground if possible.

Screams. Shouts. There had been half a dozen men in the corridor.

She reached out, touched something sticky, jerked her hand back. It was Erik's leg.

"I think I'm hit," he said. "I can't see that many bullets at once."

She dragged him into the elevator.

No more muzzle flashes, only horrible sounds.

Button. There must be a button. She jabbed it but there was no power. "It won't move, Erik!" she said.

The elevator shuddered. It moved jerkily, like no elevator should, like a live thing. It ripped out of its tracks, cables snapping, and jerked upwards. It rose out of the building with the crash of masonry, lifting clear of shaft and roof into the cold night. It landed inside the fence, which twisted and leaped as though a tornado had caught it. The barbed wire screamed and broke.

They ran.

Erik broke the window latch on a church window, in the back and low to the ground. They knelt and climbed in and he locked it again.

"At least," she said, "the snow is gone."

"We're not that stupid," Erik said. Blood soaked his pants leg and shoe. He looked down at it, and seemed to feel it for the first time. He would have fallen if she hadn't grabbed his arm.

Lights swung by in the street. The Raven ducked down. "How bad is it?" she said.

Erik winced. "Not that bad, or I wouldn't have gotten this far."

"Let me see," she said.

"Not here. We can't risk a light."

She scrambled up. "I'm going to look around."

At the end of the small connecting hallway was a storeroom, and a kitchen on the other side, just a place to make tea and wash the vessels after service. The water worked in the sink, and the windows were almost at the ceiling level, narrow rectangles of old glass. A door and stairs led upstairs into the vestry.

She looked at the blood on her hands and sleeves. Raven shivered. The soldier melted into a blond girl in her early twenties, heart-shaped face and a mouth a little too wide for classic beauty. She was naked. Raven scrubbed her hands and arms with dishwashing soap and cold water.

"Clothes," she said. Slowly, a black turtleneck and pants appeared. She went back for Erik.

He was leaning against the wall with his eyes closed.

Raven sat down beside him. "There's a kitchen. The water works."

"I am an idiot," he said. His face was tight with pain. "It was a trap. He baited it with rumors he knew I'd follow."

Raven went cold. "You don't think I....."

"No. If you were working for Koenig, you'd hardly have shot him. You are the only one who was telling the truth."

She slid down against the wall. "He's dead, isn't he? My son. There never were any mutant children in East Berlin. He just wanted you."

"I don't know," Erik said.

She leaned forward, pushed her hair out of her eyes with her cold, damp hands. "Come in the kitchen and let me see your leg. At least I can clean it up. We have to get out of here."

Erik winced as he got to his feet, holding onto her. "I can't go very fast like this. And it's conspicuous. You'd do better to shift into something innocuous and go on."

"Don't be a fool," Raven snapped. "Do you think I'd leave you? Come on. We'll stay here a few hours until the search spreads out, and until daylight. It's Thursday. There shouldn't be anyone in the church until morning. And there may be some food or something."

She hauled him into the kitchen. Some faint light came through the windows from the street, but it was very dark. There was communion wine. She would have preferred vodka. There was a tin of stale cookies in the back of one of the cabinets, napkins and dishwashing cloths. An overcoat and umbrella hung on a hook by the door.

She cleaned up his leg as best she could and bandaged it with napkins. It was long and shallow, as far as she could tell, a glancing shot by a ricochet almost spent. The muscle was torn, and he had lost blood. He needed stitches and antibiotics. Still, it was better than it could have been, much better.

"I don't usually get shot," he said.

"Good. It's a bad habit." She gave him a glass of the communion wine.

Erik looked at it, eyebrows raised.

"Oh, drink it," she said.

Erik leaned against the cabinets. It was dark in the kitchen except for the faint light coming in from the windows near the ceiling. Raven got the old overcoat off the back of the door and draped it around him.

"I don't need that," he said.

"Yes you do," she said. "You're the one who's been shot. And it's freezing in here."

"Come and share, then," he said. He held out his left arm.

Raven scooted in beside him, the coat covering them both, sort of. Her left leg was still out, but it hardly seemed worth mentioning under the circumstances.

They sat there in the dark for a long time.

The next day he went to talk to Professor Xavier. He sat down in the blue chair in front of the desk. "Professor, I think that my mother is Mystique."

The Professor froze. His face was perfectly still and his voice was calm. "Kurt, why do you think that? It may have been Mystique who called the hospital in Leipzig for Magneto, but that doesn't make her your mother."

"Because Dr. Jean treated Mystique, and knew she had a baby in 1975. It is in her file downstairs."

Charles Xavier folded his hands on his desk. "I see," he said. "Why did Jean know that?"

"I suppose she asked about it because she was trying to help her have a baby. She had two miscarriages and then one other that Dr. Jean had to end."

Kurt had seen a man shot who stood without moving for a long minute before he crumpled over. The Professor looked like that. If Kurt had known he would not have told him. He did not understand why.

"I see," the Professor said again.

"I think that baby born in 1975 was me," he said. "I do not know if Magneto is my father."

"No," the Professor said vaguely. "Erik wasn't in Europe in the mid-70's. And he didn't meet Mystique until 82."

Kurt wasn't sure what he had said wrong. He tried to get back on track. "Scott said that you know where Mystique is. That you have used Cerebro to find John."

"I do," he said.

"I would like to go and talk with her."

"I think that is very unwise," the Professor said. He seemed to come back from far away. "Kurt, you have no idea how dangerous Magneto can be. He tried to kill Marie not even a year ago."

"He did not seem so dangerous to me," Kurt said. "He seemed tired and not at all well. He is an old man, and he was not unkind to me when Dr. Jean was helping me remember what Stryker did."

"Not well?"

Kurt looked at the paperweight on the Professor's desk, the appointment book. "He is not gentle, Stryker. I think he gave Stryker more fight than I did. I think he has more will." Kurt's accent was getting heavier. He pulled his sliding syntax back. "I am not afraid to talk with him. I do not think he will hurt me. Will you tell me where to go?"

"How will you get there?" the Professor asked.

Kurt shrugged. "I will find a way. I always do."

The Professor nodded. "Maybe it would be easier to ask Ororo to take you in the jet."

Ororo was not happy. The entire way from Westchester to the Pacific Coast of Mexico she tried to talk Kurt out of just being left in the general vicinity. She suggested waiting somewhere neutral, finding a phone number, or something. Kurt pointed out that the Brotherhood was unlikely to have a listed phone number.

Ororo looked worried when she dropped him off finally, in a canyon five miles or so from the coordinates the Professor had given them. "Just walk west, ok? Charles says it's somewhere along the beach. We saw the town from the air, some houses and a couple of resort hotels. You're really conspicuous, you know."

He was. Blue is always conspicuous. Kurt had dressed for the weather in red and white striped shorts and a T-shirt, with a hooded sweatshirt over it all. He carried a trench coat just in case. "I know. I will be fine. I will call if I need help." He took Ororo's hand. "Thank you, my friend."

For a moment she hesitated, almost leaned in. Kurt wondered if she would kiss him, or if he should kiss her. Then she stepped back, the bright sun glinting off her pale hair. "Just be careful. Please."

Kurt watched her take off and fly away to the northeast. Then he walked to the ocean.

He had never been to Mexico. It was beautiful. He did not know the names of the flowers, but there were so many on the hillsides. He followed a stream down from the canyons to the sea.

This far south of the town there were only a few houses, most of them clinging to the canyon walls not far above the ocean, flights of rickety steps coming down to the beach. A man was fishing. A couple was walking a dog. The houses were expensive and very, very private. He did not know which one to go to. So he walked up the beach.

After a few minutes he stopped the dog walking couple. "Excuse me?" he asked in English. "I am looking for a house with someone blue?"

They edged around him and walked on.

The fisherman was next. Then three men with surfboards. He was gathering a small crowd of curious people. "I am looking for someone blue? Can you help me find her? I am looking for a blue person?"

"Kurt, what are you doing?"

He knew the voice, but did not expect it to be coming from a man wearing gray shorts and a lavender shirt, topped by a straw hat that somehow didn't look ridiculous.

"Ah, Herr Lehnsherr!" Kurt pulled out of the little group he was amassing. "I am glad to see you!"

Magneto looked more annoyed than glad. "What are you doing here? Did Charles send you? If so, it's the most asinine plot he's ever hatched."

"The Professor did not want me to come. He said it was too dangerous. But I have to talk with Mystique."

Magneto's eyebrows rose almost into his hairline. "Why?"

"Because she called the General Hospital of Leipzig looking for a blue boy who was born in 1975."

Magneto took his elbow and steered him away from the curious beachcombers. "Let's get off the beach. Haven't you ever heard of subtlety? Do you always blurt out your business in public places?"

"I wanted to be sure you would speak with me."

"Oh, I'll speak with you. Now come up here." He led Kurt to one of the many staircases. It went straight up the canyon wall, twisting back on itself, all dark metal. Above, Kurt could see the railing of a deck. Below, the surfers were walking on.

They climbed. Kurt was patient and went behind. "She is here now?"

"She is not. Mystique and John have gone to do some...shopping."

The deck was wood, with wooden lounge chairs with dark green covers. There were metal and yellow glass torches with citronella candles. Glass doors gave on what looked like the cliff wall. Kurt looked more closely. The house was inside the cliff, with several bay windows facing toward the sea and patio doors off the deck. He had the suspicion that each glass was backed by a metal door or panel that once closed would be much harder to break. Lavender and yellow flowers grew down the cliff face almost to the top of the windows.

Magneto sat down on a lounge chair. The view of the ocean was magnificent.

Kurt stood by the rail, the wind whipping at his hair. He straightened up. When he didn't slouch he was more than six feet tall. "Will she be back soon?"

"This afternoon," Magneto said.

"I am the child who was born in Leipzig," he said.

"I can see that," he said. "I should have suspected when we met, but I was somewhat preoccupied."

Kurt thought of Luke Skywalker, looking off toward the twin suns setting over Tatooine. "Are you my father?" he asked.

Overhead the gulls screamed and whirled. "No," he said. "I didn't meet Raven until several years later."

"Do you know who was?"

"I think that's Raven's story to tell you," he said, "not mine."

"I will ask her," he said, formally. Kurt turned around. "Is Raven her real name?"

"As real as any other." Magneto was sitting on the lounge chair, his hat on the table. "Did Charles send you?"

"No," Kurt said. "I told you, he did not want me to come. He helped me research and call the hospital, but when he found what I thought he did not want me to come. He was afraid for me."

Magneto turned the hat round in his hands. "I'm not planning to kill you, if that's what you're worried about."

"I was not worried." Kurt sat down on the rail. "I will not tell you what the Professor and the X-Men do, and I will not tell them what you do. I am not a spy. And I will not tell secrets for anyone."

"I believe you mean that," Magneto said. He looked interested.

"I do. I will not do that."

"And how do you intend to prevent Charles from reading your mind?"

"The Professor would not do that," Kurt said.

"Are you certain Charles is so scrupulous? Do you think I can afford to take that risk?"

Kurt shook his head. "The Professor knows that if he ever tried to use me against my mother, I would not forgive it."

"And you think your forgiveness means a great deal to him?" There was a very bitter sound in Magneto's voice.

Kurt shrugged. "I do not know. But I do not wish you to tell me things that I must hide. And if you say to me, Kurt, turn around and do not see this, I will do so."

Magneto nodded. "That will do sufficiently for you to be a guest under this roof. Obviously Charles already knows where we are, or you would not be here."

"He is worried about John," Kurt said.

"Is he really? Perhaps if he had paid a bit more attention to his student when he had him, John would not have sought greener pastures."

Kurt looked out to sea, a bit embarrassed to bring up such an implausible conjecture. "I think he fears that you might take advantage of him in some way."

"Does he really?" Magneto sounded amused. "I don't think that's any of Charles' business, do you?"

"I would not know," Kurt said. "I am sorry that I implied that you...sleep with men."

"Better and better." Magneto leaned back in the lounge chair. "I take it Charles hasn't bothered to tell you that we were lovers?" He watched Kurt's face. "No? I'm certainly not ashamed of it."

"I did not know," Kurt said. A great many things suddenly made sense. Things everyone knew but he did not. Surely, he thought, someone could have told him. Surely Ororo could have managed to explain on a seven hour flight. Surely she could have told him, rather than allow him to wound the professor unwittingly. "I thought you were with my mother," he said.

There was that slight softening around the eyes that accompanied her name. "Raven and I have been together in some sense or another for nearly twenty years."

"But you have not married?"

"Why should we?"

Kurt shook his head. "I do not understand. I think it is that you like to shock me."

Magneto smiled. "Then you mustn't be so easily shocked. Come inside. It's getting too hot out here."

Kurt followed him into the house. It was cool and dark after the bright sun, one large room with chairs and a table separated from the kitchen by a bar. Magneto went into the kitchen while Kurt's eyes adjusted to the change of light.

"Do you prefer milk, lemonade or..." there was a wealth of disgust in his voice, "Dr. Pepper?"

"Lemonade, if it is not trouble," Kurt said. He had stopped beside a metal and glass dining table. On the wall above there was a mirror facing the sea, its wrought iron frame intricately patterned with climbing roses, each iron flower branching from stems replete with iron thorns, each petal and leaf drawn paper thin and delicate in dark metal.

Magneto handed him a glass of lemonade.

"It is beautiful," Kurt said. "I have never seen anything like it."

"I made it for Raven a long time ago." He turned and sat down on the leather couch.

"I did not know you were an artist."

"I made most of this." He gestured to the table and chairs.

It took Kurt a moment to remember where he had seen the brushed stainless steel before, as though someone had drawn feathers across molten metal. The kitchen table at the school, now scarred by bullets. Of course. He had made that too, when Dr. Grey was a child.

"Your work is beautiful," Kurt said sincerely. He ran his hand over the smooth surface. Feathers. He looked up at the stand that held the television and stereo equipment. Dark metal, with an almost invisible mottled finish, like a leopard print. Or scales. Like his lover's skin, captured in metal. "It is like her. It has the beauty of her flesh, and she is very beautiful indeed."

Magneto looked a little surprised, as though he wasn't used to the compliment. "And you have your mother's eyes. She notices details most people miss."

"She would have to," Kurt agreed, "or she would never be able to imitate someone well enough to confuse their associates."

He raised an eyebrow. "Or to impersonate a U.S. Senator on national television?"

"Just so." Kurt shook his head. "But I do not see that well."

"Perhaps you haven't practiced as much as she has."

He heard the sound of a door opening in another room, voices. John came into the kitchen, his arms full of boxes. A tall, lovely brunette in shorts followed, boxes in her arms. Mystique. They stopped when they saw him.

"Kurt?" John said disbelievingly.

"It's all right," Magneto said. He must have seen her sudden swift movement as quickly as Kurt did, preparing to divest herself of boxes and clear the bar. "Kurt has come to pay us a visit. Alone."

Her eyebrows rose.

Magneto came smoothly around the bar. "Pyro, you and I are going for a walk on the beach."

"Why?" John asked.

Magneto pocketed the flip phone on the counter. "I have the phone." He steered John out the deck doors. Kurt could see John's questioning gestures as they went down the steps.

He was left facing her, a glass of lemonade in his hand. With a shrug, she deliberately began unpacking boxes. Of groceries. Kurt couldn't imagine why Magneto had tried to make them sound sinister.

He could see the tension in the way she moved. She thought. But she would not let herself guess.

He took a deep breath. "I was born in Leipzig on October 15, 1975."

She stopped, a jar of tomato paste in her hand. She did not turn to face him.

"You called the hospital there, looking for me."

All at once she flowed back into her own form, turning and straightening as she did. "I did." Yellow eyes like his own searched his face.

"They could not tell you anything by then. I was in Donau. I was not in Berlin any longer."

"You were in Berlin?"

Kurt put the glass down on the steel bar. "For a long time. I was in the mutant program. I do not remember anything before Herr Koenig's house."

For a moment her expression was almost disbelief. She bit her lip and turned away, putting the tomato paste away. Apparantly it belonged in a cabinet full of wineglasses. "Koenig. I thought.... I heard rumors that there were children...."

Berlin, and a cold morning twenty years ago, scattered bricks and twisted metal. Everything clicked into place. "You were looking for me," Kurt said.

For a long moment she said nothing, her back to him. When she spoke again her voice was perfectly even. "We were looking for you," she said. "Erik helped me."

Kurt could not help the joy welling up in him. "You were looking for me," he said. A coded message just for him, written in the cold air. "Tell me," he said.

Early in the morning, there were only a few people out walking, though the sky was clear and the sun bright. Where the Wall cut across a broad avenue near the park, an elderly couple were walking arm in arm. He wore an old overcoat and hat pulled down low, and leaned on his wife's arm with halting steps. Her hands were crabbed and her face seamed, white hair escaping from beneath a light blue scarf. No one paid them any attention.

"Not much farther," Erik said. "I'm almost in range."

She nodded.

On the American side of the wall, a jeep was parked beside the checkpoint. Suddenly the engine roared to life. The soldiers who were standing near jumped back, staring at the empty jeep. The clutch pressed to the floor, the brake released. They jumped back as the jeep put itself in gear and began to roll forward. On the Russian side, boarder guards jumped to attention and alarms began to sound. The jeep rolled forward, hitting the red and white barrier just hard enough to knock the board loose. One of the soldiers had the presence of mind to jump in and pull the parking brake. The jeep stopped, idling normally. On both sides of the border, soldiers stared.

No one noticed that the elderly couple had disappeared.

Twenty-four hours later, she looked in on Erik sleeping. The doctor had been, a discreet doctor who asked no questions but charged a phenomenal amount of money for the antibiotics and painkillers he brought. Raven was good at finding people who would do anything for the right amount of money.

Erik was curled on his side, the pillows rolled up against him like a sleeping person, his back to the wall. He opened his eyes.

"I thought you were sleeping," she said.

"I'm awake."

She came in. "Do you need anything?"

"Come and sit by me."

She sat down on the edge of the bed, put her hand on his forehead. No fever, which the doctor said was a good sign.

"It didn't work," he said.

Raven looked away, out the window at the sunny morning. "You tried. You're the only one who's ever tried to help me. I don't understand."

"Don't you?" He reached for her hand. "You're a mutant, and so is your son. That makes us family. One people."

"You'd risk your life for that?" Her voice was disbelieving.

"There are worse reasons." Erik ran his fingers over hers, his eyes distant, as though there were other hands he imagined, somewhere else. "Mutant children in cages, torn from their parents. Left alive to experiment on, while their parents died. Oh yes, I'd risk my life for that." He looked up, pulling himself back from somewhere. "You know, there are people who don't believe things like this can happen. They don't think it happens already, and they certainly don't believe that it could ever happen to them. Ignorance is bliss. Pity the blissful."

She leaned down and kissed him to drive the expression from his eyes. "I do."

He leaned back on the pillow, his hand entwined with hers. "You're strong."

"Yes."

"Raven."

"Yes?"

"Come with me to America." She raised an eyebrow. He continued. "I don't mean to be with me. You can do that or not as you like. But you're wasted here, selling pastries and shoplifting. With your ability and your mind, you could do anything."

"If I had money."

"Power is better than money, my dear. The power to protect yourself. The power to fight instead of take what happens lying down. Come and see."

She lay down against him, his head on her shoulder. His hair was thick and soft, threaded through with the first streaks of gray. He must have been beautiful, twenty years ago. Thirty years ago.

I am nothing I was meant to be, she thought. I was meant to kill you.

He said nothing, but she felt him relax against her warmth.

I was meant to be a sword, she thought. And perhaps I am. Perhaps there is no escaping from that. The gods have a sense of humor. I will be a sword then, but I will not serve hungry human gods of war. I am the Raven, older than nations, omen and release.

"I'll come," she said. "I choose this."

They were sitting on the deck chairs watching the sunset. Mystique was drinking a blue margarita. She had convinced Kurt to try one, but he didn't like it much, and it was melting into a little puddle of blue curacao under his chair.

"You loved him," Kurt said.

"Not then."

He watched her stretch out in the chair, long blue scaled legs and black toenails, gloriously naked and unselfconscious. "And my father?"

She shrugged. "I was sixteen. I wanted a boy who was dating someone else. I took her shape and went to bed with him. He loved her, not me." Mystique took a sip of her margarita. "I got pregnant. He said it wasn't his, that he'd never been with me. Which, as far as he was concerned, was true. His name was Wilhem Breitmann. He probably repairs trucks in Leipzig now." She looked up. "I would have kept you."

"Your grandfather helped you," Kurt said. The salt wind stirred his hair.

"Yes." Her voice was flat.

"You do not sound as though...."

"My grandfather was a Nazi," she said. "He was a dyed-in-the-wool true believer. Every year he set an extra place at the table and drank a toast on the Fuhrer's birthday. He gave my mother a beautiful fur coat when she turned thirteen. It had someone else's name inside it, a lady who had been killed so girls of the master race could have mink coats and lebensraum. My oldest uncle died a hero on the Russian front. My other uncle was killed defending Berlin from the Russians."

Kurt said nothing. He had always wondered. How could he not?

"I don't know what he did. I never asked. I didn't care when I was a teenager. Now, I do not know, and can't ever know. But he was kind to me."

Kurt looked at the tight lines around her mouth. She took another drink. "Does Dr. Lehnsherr know?"

"Erik knows everything he wants to know."

"It does not matter now," Kurt said.

"The past always matters," she said. "Blood always matters. We pretend it doesn't, we ignore the past, but it doesn't go away. We pretend it's not there, but we're only fooling ourselves. You deserve to know, because it is your right. Violence in your blood, your genes, like blue skin."

"I will not take sides," Kurt said. "You may be right, that there is war coming. But I will not fight."

"Then you'll die," she said, and looked away.

"Mother."

Mystique looked up. He knew no one had ever called her that. Perhaps she had imagined it from the child she had tried to have, but not from a man of twenty-five.

"I won't die," he said. "I'm stronger than that."

She smiled, and the expression was not foreign to him. He had seen it in the mirror. "You are. You get that much from me."

"And your eyes," he said.

"Those too."

Far down the beach he could see Dr. Lehnsherr and John coming back. Perhaps it was a trick of the setting sun, but he thought there was something between them. They walked too close together.

She had followed his gaze, read his expression as easily as a book. "Yes. I don't mind."

"But you and Dr. Lehnsherr...."

"We understand each other."

"But you love him," Kurt said. This was simply beyond his understanding of how people did things.

"Do you think that loving him I would keep him from something he needs?"

"But he is hurting you this way," Kurt said.

"No," she said. Mystique crossed her long legs. "And I've slept with Pyro too."

Kurt was momentarily speechless.

"Does that shock you?" she asked.

"I do not understand."

She sat up, touched his coal black hair tenderly. "You're so innocent. I don't know where you get that. Love is complicated."

"There is that word again. The one Ororo and the Professor use over and over. How can so many things not be wrong?"

"I don't know, Kurt."

They were on the stairs to the deck, John climbing up nimbly, Dr. Lehnsherr following after. Mystique got up and went over to them, the citronella torches streaming in the gathering dark. She kissed Dr. Lehnsherr, slid her arm around John's waist.

John looked pleased, if somewhat surprised. "Hi, Kurt," he said.

"Kurt is my son," Mystique said. She looked at Kurt, one of them on either side. "Will you stay with us a little while?"

Kurt looked at Dr. Lehnsherr. He was looking at Mystique.

"Yes," Kurt said, "for a little while." He did not understand, but he would try.

That night he fell asleep listening to the sound of the ocean. The covers were soft, and any noises in the rest of the house were muffled by distance.

He dreamed he was flying over the ocean, Dr. Grey at the controls of the jet, her red hair coiled at the back of her neck.

"Thank you," he said.

Dr. Grey smiled. "Be happy, Kurt."

"Did you know?" he asked.

"Know what?"

"That she is my mother."

"I wondered," Dr. Grey said. "In Boston. But things happened so fast. I could have done a blood typology when we got back to the school and compared it to her records."

"She will want me to fight," Kurt said. "And the Professor wants me to be an X-Man."

The plane skimmed over the sea like a great bird. Dr. Grey smiled. "Only you know what's right for you to do, Kurt. But I think there is room for people who heal. There are enough injuries."

"I'm not a doctor," he said.

"I don't mean those injuries," she said. "All the wounds of the past."

"There are too many," he said, and bent his head. Crumbled concrete, the professor in his chair looking ruefully at the marks of Logan's claws on the walls, his mother's golden eyes.

Dr. Grey touched his hand, and it seemed that light flowed from her fingers to his. "Not for love," she said. She released the controls into his hands. The jet soared toward a snow-covered shore just visible on the horizon. "Fly, Kurt. Fly."

And he did.