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Father.”
    â€œAnd I’ve missed you. I’ve been worried about you. Seeing you safe, I feel like I’m back at the castle.” Kiff stared at Kairn with a heavy expression and sorrowful eyes. Then with a soft sigh, he said, “Son, they say that besides the Mystics and Aughra herself, no creature on Thra is more prudent, more reasonable, more level-headed than a Gelfling. That is what they say of Gelfling.”
    â€œBut what have you found?” Kairn said, knowing that his father wanted him to ask just that.
    â€œFickle slaves to rumor and emotion.”
    They both sipped from their cups and stared at the torch’s roaring flame. Kairn was glad to see his father but felt uncomfortable; Kiff was not himself. “When are you returning to the castle?” he asked—certain that his father was not returning to the castle.
    â€œThe journey isn’t safe—you haven’t been to the village, obviously. Have you faced any trouble in your travels?”
    â€œThere were strange accusations from some drunk Podlings last night in Greggan.”
    â€œIt’s not Podlings you have to worry about,” Kiff hissed. The proud warrior’s spirit flared out from the shrinking Gelfling in dull, scratched armor. “You have to worry about the Woodland clan and about our own village. If the reports are true, you must even worry about Queen Silva. We are no longer the pride of the Gelfling, Kairn. We are outcasts.”
    â€œFather, I don’t understand.”
    â€œAnd I don’t know how I could explain to you. We must dreamfast.”
    â€œAre you sure?” Kairn asked. His father, once the greatest Gelfling warrior of his generation, now slunk around bare caverns beneath anonymous lands. Kairn worried that learning whatever drove his father to this point would devastate him, too.
    Kiff nodded and softly took his wrist. Their forefingers touched. Kairn shook. He hadn’t dreamfasted in at least a trine: the Skeksis did not have the ability, and he never knew any of the other Gelfling he had met well enough. In any case, regardless of how many times a Gelfling dreamfasted, each time still surprised him. Kairn’s chest pounded. He shut his eyes so tightly that he thought his eyelids would slip over each other. A current ran through him, somehow both coming and going at the same time. He was no longer just in the cavern. And he was no longer just himself. It had begun.

Chapter Four
    They were—rather, Kiff was—in Hallis. The Gelfling there lived in a ring of caves around a grassy common. Kairn instantly felt nostalgic when he saw Hallis through his father’s eyes, but Kiff’s fear and resentment quashed Kairn’s nostalgia. It seemed that every Gelfling of Hallis was in the common. Kairn scanned the crowd for Soli, his beloved and the daughter of Hallis’s matriarch, Saffa. Kiff, however, was not searching for Soli, and so Kairn yielded to his father’s vision.
    The crowd formed a tight circle around a Gelfling whom Kairn did not know, but his dark-green blouse and well-worn leather pants indicated that he was from the Woodland clan. The Woodland Gelfling fancied themselves great warriors, though none of them could best a member of Kairn’s line in a fair fight. Kairn did not recognize him as one of the castle guards, even though he was of the proper age. The crowd swayed as the Gelfling of Hallis jostled each other to see this Woodland visitor.
    Soven, Saffa’s husband and Kiff’s sometime rival, was speaking to the Woodlander. “You have made enough of a commotion in this village with your rumors. Now, from the beginning, tell us your tale. Be concise. Don’t prattle on like a Podling or speak in riddles like they say the Mystics do.”
    â€œThank you, Soven. I am Radix, a Gelfling of the Woodland clan, from the village of Ashton.”
    â€œThere’s your problem there!” Kiff shouted. The other warriors