When she looked up, Geidranay was gone. The cup was tin again, ancient, battered, as familiar as her:hand.
Feathers brushed across her and her clothing vanished utterly, the laprobe was gone, the dreampattern blanket was gone. She lay on earth and grass. Great wings brushed across her and were gone. Owl walked toward her. It was the Old Man. He stood at her feet and looked down at her. She was ashamed at first because she was naked before him, but she was not afraid. He sank into the earth, slowly slowly. She wanted to laugh when she saw his round stupid face resting on her great toes, then the face slid down and vanished into the earth.
He was reborn from the earth, rising from it as slowly, silently, easily as he went into it. He was covered with red dust, otherwise he was naked and young and beautiful. He put his left foot on her right foot; gently, delicately he moved her leg aside. He put his right foot on her left foot; gently, delicately he moved this leg aside. He knelt between her legs and put his hands on her thighs. She shivered as she felt fire slide into her flesh. He looked at her, smiled. She cried-out with pleasure, as if that smile were hands touching her. He bent over her, his hands moving along her body; they left streams of red dust on her skin.
His hands moved over her, stroking, rubbing, even pinching where the small sharp pains intensified her pleasure. When he finally pushed into her, the pain was briefly terrible, he burned her, wrenched her open, then she was on fire with a pleasure almost too intense to endure. It went on and on until she was exhausted, too weary to feel anything more.
He rose from her. She cried out, desolate. He stood beside her, his broad tender smile warmed her once more. As Geidranay had reached into the air for diamonds, the Old Man Reborn Young reached up and plucked a square of fine linen from the shadowy air. He came back to her and pressed the cloth between her legs, catching the blood that came from the breaking of her. hymen. He sat on his heels and folded the cloth into a small packet, the bloodstains hidden inside. He leaned over her, touched her left hand, laid the packet on her palm. Again he said nothing, but she knew it was very very important that she keep the cloth safe and hidden, that she should never speak of it, not to Shahntien Shere or to Maksim, not even to her brother.
He set his right hand flat on the ground beside her thigh. The dreampattern blanket was under her again. He stepped over her leg and squatted beside her, drew the fingers of his left hand from. her ankles to her waist, drew the fingers of his right hand from her waist to her shoulders and she was dressed again. He snapped the fingers of his left hand, spread his hands; the laprobe hung between them. He laid it over her and smiled a last time, touched her cheek in a tender valediction. And was gone.
She slept. When she woke it was midmorning. The first day and the first night was done.
4
At fast she thought the events of the night were a dream, but when she moved her legs, she found she was still sore. The linen packet fell away when she sat up; she looked at the bloodstains for a long moment, then folded it up again and put it in her rucksack. Feeling more than a little lightheaded, she took the tin cup to the stream and filled it. She drank. The liquid was merely cold water with the acrid green taste common to most mountain streams. She remembered water flavored and scented with diamonds, but that might have been something she did dream. She sipped at the water and thought about sleeping. She wasn’t supposed to sleep, she was supposed to keep vigil. She didn’t feel like worrying about her lapse. After filling the cup once more, she carried it up the gentle slope to her blanket and set it on the grass by her foot. She looked around.
The meadow space, was filled with stippled sun rays, the misty light slanting through the dark needle-bunches on the upslope pines and cedars; there was no wind, the quiet was so thick she could feel it like the laprobe pulled heavy and close against her skin. Her mind was weary; it was hard to tie one word to another and make a phrase of them. She walked about a little, her legs shaky. Her inner thighs felt sticky, the cloth of her trousers clung briefly, broke away, clung again. She grimaced, disgust a mustiness in her mouth. She stripped, dropped her clothing on the blanket and took a twist of grass to the stream. She waded in. The water was knee-high, the cold was shocking. She shivered a moment, then gathered the will and went to her knees. She gasped, then examined her thighs. She’d bled copiously which surprised her, but she didn’t waste time worrying about that either. She splashed water over the stains, began scrubbing at them with the grass. Each move bounced her a little on the gravel lining the streambed, she felt the bumps against her knees and shins, the rubbing, but the cold was so numbing she felt no pain until she climbed out of the water, put her clothes back on and warmed up a little.
She grunted as she tried to fold her legs; the bruises and abrasions she’d acquired in the stream made themsclves apparent, so she crossed her ankles and straightened her back and began feeling her way into further meditation.
Flies came from everywhere and swarmed around her; they settled on her and walked on her hands and on her arms and on her legs, everywhere but her face; they were a mobile armor of jet and mica flakes, buzzing through a slow surging dance up and around and down, black twig feet stomping over every inch of her. She sat and let this happen. When the sun was directly overhead, the armor unwove itself and flew away.
She sat. Something was happening inside her. She didn’t understand anything, but she had fears she didn’t want to think about.
A one-legged woman stood under the trees across the stream. Vines grew out of her shoulders and fell around her. There was emptiness on her left side; the vines swayed parted, unveiling nothing; the vines on her right side grew round and round her single leg. She hopped. Stood still. Hopped again. The vines bounced. Arms outspread, she began jumping up and down on the same spot, turning faster and faster as she hopped. Korimenei heard a whining sound like all the flies singing in unison. The woman went misty and the mist went spinning away into the dim green twilight under the trees.
Korimenei considered this. She slid her hand up under her pullover and touched the place where the amethyst had seeped into her. Her skin was cool and dry; there was nothing to show it had really happened. She pulled her hand out, let it rest on the slight bulge of her belly; it seemed to her she could feel a thing growing in her, growing with a speed that vaguely terrified her. She took her hand away, closed her eyes and began humming to herself. After a while she plucked a song from Harra’s Hoard, an Ow’song, and focused all of herself on it.
Mound midafternoon another woman came slithering from the trees across the stream. She was writhing on her stomach like a great white worm; her legs were all soft from hip to toe; she had no toes, her legs ended in rattles like those on a snake’s tail. She reared up the forward half of her body and danced with her arms and shoulders, shook her rattlefeet to make music for her dance. She had the polished ivory horns of a black buffalo, horns that spread wider than the reach of her arms. Her face was broad, her nose and mouth stuck out like the muzzle of a flat-faced dog. Her ears were pointed and shifted independently, a part of her body-dance. The hair on her head was like black broomstraw and hung stiffly on either side of her face. The hair under her arms was rough and shaggy like seafern; it hung down her sides, lower than the flat breasts that slapped against her ribs. There was a terribleness about her that rolled like smoke away from her, invisible emanations that filled the round meadow and squeezed Korimenei smaller and smaller.