'Are you... Are you sad?'

- No.

'But your... Your songs are sad...'

- My songs are of time and distance. The sadness is in you. Watch my arms. There is only the dance. These things you treasure are shells.

'I... I knew that. Once.'

But now the sounds were sounds only, no forest of voices behind them to speak as one voice, and she watched the perfect globes of her tears spin out to join forgotten human memories in the dome of the Boxmaker.

'I understand,' she said, some time later, knowing that she spoke now for the comfort of hearing her own voice. She spoke quietly, unwilling to wake that bounce and ripple of sound. 'You are someone's else collage. Your maker is the true artist. Was it the mad daughter? It doesn't matter. Someone brought the machine here, welded it to the dome, and wired it to the traces of memory. And spilled, somehow, all the worn sad evidence of a family's humanity, and left it all to be stirred, to be sorted by a poet. To be sealed away in boxes. I know of no more extraordinary work than this. No more complex gesture...'