It took her a moment to realize that the creature was speaking. A voice barely audible above a modulated breath, overlaid with its own echo in the fearful silence of the room.

  “You are running in the wrong direction,” the long-necked manta whispered.

  Seluma remembered something else, but perhaps this creature changed its appearance unpredictably. Where exactly was the neck?

  Her mobile eyes at the top of her antennae had no trouble pointing vertically above her head, but more than one groan from those present told her how uncomfortable the position was for everyone else.

  “A corner in time.”

  She left the shadow swirling on the ceiling for a moment to look at Luoth, or rather the back of his head. Her friend's shoulders were shaken by a barely visible tremor. His sparse hair was sticking out in all directions; he had not even straightened it after removing his hat. And usually, he had always been so careful with his appearance, especially in public.

  Seluma was surprised by her sudden impulse to caress him and swayed backwards.

  Unbalanced, she continued dancing involuntarily for a few seconds. She caught an eloquent glance from the neighbor to her right, a look that screamed disgust at that soft, trembling body.

  “A moment in space.”

  Imagine. The Oracle was not answering questions, just reciting mysterious, disjointed phrases that others would try to make sense of. And even if there was meaning in its monologues, Seluma wondered, how could anyone be sure they had anything to do with the present situation, with what the participants wanted to know?

  “It only matters from which direction you look,” it continued.

  There was a long pause and a resounding cough. Dean Massimari stepped forward, his coattails crawling on the floor, his fat neck bent at a very unhealthy angle to look up.

  The light from the globe lamps varied in tone and brightness; now it had taken on a salmon hue that made everyone look purple.

  Thin lips formulated a question.

  “Is this really the end?”

  There followed a silence in which the manta boiled like a thick layer of soup. Matrons and gentlemen disapproved of such frankness on the part of their companion, who had risked breaking the spell to make his own nasal voice heard.

  A bejeweled old woman with a hooked nose directed Massimari with a quick superstitious gesture of her left hand, distancing herself from any potentially disrespectful, not to mention blasphemous, behavior the other might be engaging in.

  “Where are we? Where are we going?” continued Maximari, undaunted. A shiny layer of sweat formed on his limp face. “Is this really the end or a new beginning?”

  Man, what a great sentence. The dean of ceramists had undreamt-of poetic skills.

  Seluma did not remember much about the other time she had been there. A curiosity, a challenge. And certainly, informal company. A kind of joke, really: a small group of brash young people, they had come to speak to the Oracle without any grand questions about the future, had enjoyed its raving words, had laughed at it, and had spent quite some time trying to unravel the supposed prophecies they had received.

  They had not been so quiet, so respectful. Now that she thought about it, she was ashamed. But the manta had not minded, nothing had happened.

  Now the creature had shrunk into a corner, gathering its translucent limbs. It looked much smaller, all compressed in on itself, almost a third of what it had been before. A few people directly below it stirred uneasily, perhaps afraid that the monster would come down and touch them.

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  But it should notice them first, Seluma huffed. Become aware of the presence of all those people in her house. It was not a given. The thing didn't even have eyes.

  “No one ceases to exist. Things come back.”

  The misty shape expanded again, extruding a downward protuberance, a stalk with a rounded top that could be imagined as being a head. Inside, a faint glow of embers shone transparently in sync with the words.

  “This is it.”

  Had anyone really expected a word of comfort or hope from the Oracle?

  A stick woman, wearing a fur cloak with the grace of a robed pole, took courage and followed Massimari's example. She rose from the bench and made herself heard, her voice strained and hysterical from the effort of shouting.

  “You too, Oracle, will be destroyed if you stay. What will you do?”

  She came down suddenly, so violently that people feared she had fallen. Her neighbors on the bench backed away from her.

  “The decision is yours alone, but it has already been made.”

  “We have to resign, is that what you mean?” the dean barked, then stood with his mouth open, gasping for breath.

  “Or that we should have faith and stay in our place?” someone else objected from a niche that remained hidden from Seluma.

  The pseudo-head of the monstrous creature rocked like the clapper of a bell. The spongy uvula of a giant in whose mouth they sat.

  “Nothing will change.”

  Something in that exchange tapped into Seluma's consciousness, like a language utterly unfamiliar but terribly similar to another well-known one, giving the illusion of being just beyond comprehension, reachable with a little effort. All she had to do was push herself one step further...

  Or no, she was doing it wrong. What had she said, the manta itself? The direction you look from. The perspective. Maybe she needed to give the words a different, unusual meaning. Or did she?

  “Then all is lost,” Massimari groaned, too dejected to even make a move to get out of his uncomfortably exposed position.

  Whispers of disappointment and protest raised distorted echoes in the circular room. The manta returned to its bubbling, its churning, a living fluid whose only chance to remain on the same plane of existence as its supplicants was in constant motion. The elongated offshoot had retreated, thinning and shrinking until it disappeared into the uniform, creeping veil. The clatter of shoes as the ladies prepared to rise from the pews was a petulant tapping on the stones of the floor. The Oracle would not answer, they had concluded.

  Either it had not heard, or there was nothing more to say.

  Seluma straightened up, a jerk that startled her neighbor.

  No! Perspective, that was the key. The manta had already spoken.

  Words and sentences overlapped in her head and throat, an indigestible soup...

  “I have answered you many times,” the creature muttered, and with a sigh it became even more transparent and ethereal, merging more and more with the shadows of the ceiling. Even the white protrusions of the false furniture collapsed again, flattening and disappearing.

  And the question she did not know she had asked finally rolled out of her mouth, shattered, filling her with horror.

  “We've been here before, haven't we?”

  Seluma continued to stare at the empty, smooth ceiling as the people who had not understood moved away, oblivious and no more unhappy than before.

  After all, the manta really was an Oracle. It answered questions before they were asked. Did it read them from the minds of the supplicants before they coagulated into coherent words? Did it stimulate them with its answers?

  No, she forced herself to conclude. The explanation was far more complex than that. Infinitely worse, frightening. The whole conversation had been conducted backwards by the creature. As if its perspective, its direction was that way, and the supplicants were the curious little monsters that walked and talked backwards.

  And not for the first time.