He had had as much reason to come here with her as she had with him. She had been looking for the Megaplayers; he had been looking for his alternate. His expression of diffidence had been only a cover.
Now she knew his question, and she trusted him with the answer. She glanced around, and spied a dry stem of grass. She picked it up. “I will give you an illusion,” she said. In her hand it became a rose, its hue matching her dress, its bud just opening. She handed it to him.
He took it by the stem and brought it to his nose, pretending to smell its perfume. Then he froze, for just a moment. He brought it closer and actually touched his nose to it. A subtle shudder went through him; had she not been sitting on him she would not have known. She had answered his question.
For it really did smell like a rose. Because it was a rose, not a mere illusion. She had transformed it: sight, feel, smell. But he knew the difference between the semblance of a rose and a real one, for he could not nullify it.
He handed it back to her. She flipped it away, and it became the grass again, reverting in the manner of illusion when it left the hand of its creator. She had changed it back; had she not done so, the rose would have remained.
Stave drew her close again. He was shivering, though the day was warm. “How may I help you, my sister?” he whispered.
She took her turn at his ear. “Date me again. Let me dance with the Players. I must find them if I can. Tell no one.”
“I will tell others I touched your body,” he breathed back in due course. “I will touch it more each time.” He put his hand on her leg again, at the exact place it had been before, just above the knee. There remained some distance to go before such touches got serious.
She nodded. They would have to appear to be getting quite intimate, so that no spy could doubt the nature of their interest in each other. It would be a perfect cover, much better with his cooperation. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Then they kissed once more, and she protested that it was getting late, and he protested that there was still plenty of time in the day, and she pointed to the storm which was expanding toward them, and he suggested that they could take off their tunics and roll them up to keep them dry, and she suggested that he take off his head and roll it up instead, and he finally agreed that they would return to the village. He evinced silent disappointment that he had not been able to make more progress with her, and she evinced silent relief that she had managed to restrict his ambition, this time.
Yet behind the act was something else. They had found a bond, and they were in a manner brother and sister. But they were not related, and they did like each other. The romance they were pretending was not fully pretense. She had come to understand, in the course of their close contact, that he really was interested in her body as well as her nature, and she was becoming interested in his interest.
IN the following month they came many times to associate near the instruments. Nona would dance and Stave would watch, and then they would get together and become increasingly affectionate. Sometimes there were other couples there. It didn’t matter. Stave and Nona were now known as a couple, and it was thought they might marry.
Indeed, the notion of marrying Stave was growing in her.
She wondered whether her destiny could be truly worth it, if it took her away from him. She liked his kisses, and the touches of his hands on her body. When he reached the permissible limits, she took his hand and guided it to more intimate regions than she would have tolerated had she not had control of it. It was both game and not-game, at the verge of loss of control. She wanted to stop teasing him and being teased by him, and to let nature take its course beyond. But that would be tantamount to commitment, and she couldn’t afford it. Never before this series of dates had she truly understood how a girl could actually come to desire what it seemed every young man did.
Meanwhile she was definitely getting closer to the Megaplayers. She felt them more perfectly each time she danced. But they remained distant. Their music was there, capable of being evoked in her mind, and the beat of it grew stronger, but that was all. The Players themselves were somewhere else.
How was she to reach them? She had only one more month before her birthday. Then she would have to marry Stave, or risk the alternative. They discussed this openly, for it was independent of her quest.
“If we go to work for the despots,” he said, “I will become a carpenter like my father and build shelves. That is my training. But though you are trained in music, you may not be sent to teach it. You are too beautiful.”
“I know,” she agreed.
“If we marry, I will still be a carpenter, but you will not be the plaything of your employer. They will let you teach music.”
“Until I begin having children,” she finished. There was the crux of it. When she began bearing babies, her magic would diminish, and her chance to find the Megaplayers would be gone. She had to find them now—and was not succeeding.
There had to be some way to reach them. Dancing wasn’t enough; it only verified the presence of their lingering magic. But what else could she do?
There had to be a way! Tomorrow she would find it. Somehow. Her magic sense was tingling; she could not actually foresee the future, but she could tell when something important was about to happen.
THE day was much like the one when she and Stave had first come here, except that there was no storm forming in the distance. There were no other couples, but Cougar came along, as gladly as ever. The dog still seemed to hope that their control would snap, and they would get into a tangle of arms and legs that rolled helplessly down the hillside, leaving their clothing stranded at the top of the slope, as was reported to have happened on occasion to other couples.
She danced at the brink, taken by the glory of the ancient music, but still she could not reach the Players. Then something else came, something weird and wonderful and alarming. What could it be, if not the Players?
She broke step, retreating to make way. But she saw nothing. It must have been her own desire manifesting as a kind of illusion.
Exhilarated but disappointed, she turned to join Stave. She remained unwilling to admit it, but she enjoyed her sessions of pseudo-love with him as much as the dancing now. It would be so easy just to forget her destiny and take the safe way. In fact, recently he had been firmer about this than she; he did want her, but he wanted her destiny to be realized first. He did not want to divert her from it. That was part of what she had come to appreciate in him.
But he was gone. Perplexed she looked around—and spied him far to the side, with the dog. Cougar had run after something, evidently, and Stave had gone to investigate. They would return in a moment.
Then Nona felt something strange again. She heard the music, though she was not dancing. In fact it had not stopped; she had merely been distracted from it for a moment. The Megaplayers—could they be coming after all? She turned to face the cliff—and there was a shimmering there at the verge where she had just danced. She had tuned in to something!
Four figures appeared. They did not walk in from the land, or fly down from the sky, or climb up the cliff. They just were there, an instant after there had been nothing but her feeling. They must be the Players!
But they were small—on her own scale, not giants who could wield the mighty stone instruments. There was a man, and an old woman, and a girl, and a horse. The man was looking down toward the sea, evidently appraising the monstrous dulcimer. The girl was looking right this way.