The Wind From a Burning Woman: Six Stories of Science Fiction by Greg Bear

ropes and pulleys to clear and allow the canvases to fall. I went to my station and cut the remaining ties. Then, as the Cathedral filled with a hollow creaking sound, I followed the shaft back to my viewing post.
    In three minutes the canvases were drooping. I saw Corvus look up, his eyes glazed. The Bishop was with his daughter in the box. He pulled her back into the shadows. In another two minutes the canvases fell onto the upper scaffold with a hideous crash. Their weight was too great for the ends of the structure, and it collapsed, allowing the canvas to cascade to the floor, many yards below. At first the illumination was dim and bluish, filtered perhaps by a passing cloud. Then, from one end of the Cathedral to the other, a burst of light threw my smoky world into clarity. The glory of thousands of pieces of colored glass, hidden for decades and hardly touched by childish vandals, fell upon upper and lower levels at once. `A cry from the crowds nearly tossed me from my post. I slid quickly to the lower level and hid, afraid of what I had done. This was more than simple sunlight. Like the blossoming of flowers, the transept windows fixed all who saw them.
    Eyes accustomed to orangey dark, to smoke and haze and shadow, cannot stare into such glory without drastic effect. I shielded my own face and tried to find a convenient exit.
    But the population was increasing. As the light brightened and more faces rose to be locked, phototropic, the splendor unhinged some people. From their minds poured contents too wondrous to be accurately cataloged. The monsters thus released were not violent, however, and most of the visions were not monstrous.
    The upper and lower naves shimmered with reflected glories, with dream figures and children clothed in baubles of light. Saints and prodigies dominated. A thousand newly created youngsters squatted on the bright floor and began to tell of marvels, of cities in the East, and of times as they had once been. Clowns dressed in fire entertained from the tops of the market stalls. Animals unknown to the Cathedral cavorted between the dwellings, giving friendly advice. Abstract things, glowing balls in nets of gold and ribbons of silk, sang and floated around the upper reaches. The Cathedral became a great vessel of all its citizens bright dreams.
    Slowly, from the lower nave, people of pure flesh climbed to the scaffold and walked the upper nave to see what they couldnt from below. From my hideaway I watched the masked troops of the Bishop carrying his litter up narrow stairs. Constantia walked behind, stumbling, her eyes shut in the new brightness.
    All tried to cover their eyes, but none succeeded for long.
    I wept. Almost blind with tears. I made my way still higher and looked down on the roiling crowds. I saw Corvus, his hands still wrapped in restraining ropes, being led by the old woman. Constantia saw him, too, and they regarded each other like strangers, then joined hands as best they could. She borrowed a knife from one of her fathers soldiers and cut his ropes away. Around them the brightest dreams of all began to swirl, pure white and blood-red and seagreen, coalescing into visions of all the children they would innocently have.
    I gave them a few hours to regain their senses-and to regain my own. Then I stood on the Bishops abandoned podium and shouted over the heads of those on the lowest level.
    The time has come! I cried. We must all unite right now; we must unite-
    At first they ignored me. I was quite eloquent, but their excitement was still too great. So I waited some more, began to speak again, and was shouted down. Bits of fruit and vegetables arced up. Freak! they screamed, and drove me away.
    I crept along the stone stairs, found the narrow crack, and hid in it, burying my beak in my paws, wondering what had gone wrong. It took a surprisingly long time for me to realize that, in my case, it was less the stigma of stone than the ugliness of my shape that doomed my quest