They hadn't even touched one another, for God's sake, and she was shaking. The bed between her legs was soaked. Her breaths were shallow and fast.
"You were telling me…" she said.
"Jerusha…"
"… lying on her back, waiting for the river god…"
"She looked up-"
"Yes."
"-it was strange to see him coming between the trees the way he did, with every step an effort, a terrible effort, that made his head sink lower and lower."
"Did she wish she'd never asked him?" Rachel whispered.
"No," Galilee replied. "She was too excited for regrets. She wanted him to see her more than she'd wanted anything in her life.
' 'And as he came toward her, there were times when he passed through a shaft of sunlight, and rainbows sprang from him, rising up into the trees.
"She was about to ask him if he liked what he saw when she heard the whirring of wings, and a beetle-about as big as a hummingbird, but dark and ugly-came circling over her. She remembered what the man in the river had said-"
"Poisonous things," Rachel said. "Things that have been eating corpses."
"This beetle was the worst of the worst. It ate onfy the bodies of people who'd died of disease. It carried every kind of contagion."
Rachel made a disgusted sound. "Can't you make it fly away?" she said.
"I told you before: you can finish it if you like."
She shook her head. "No," she said. "I want to hear it from you."
"Then the beetle has to circle… and suddenly it dropped down onto her body."
"Where?"
"Shall I show you?" Galilee said, and without waiting for a reply he went to the bottom of the bed and reached between her legs. She wanted him to touch her labia, but instead his fingers nipped the inside of her thigh between finger and thumb, "ft bit her," he said. "Hard."
She cried out.
"She cried out, more with surprise than pain, and killed the beetle with one blow, squashing its body against her white skin."
He withdrew his hand. Rachel could feel the beetle's ooze running down her leg; she reached up as if to wipe it away, and then reached further, to catch hold of Galilee's fingers.
"Don't go yet," she said.
"I have not finished telling you what happened," he murmured, and eased his fingers from her grip. Instinc lively she pulled the sheet back over her nakedness. The story was souring. If Galilee noticed what she'd done, he made no sign of it. He simply kept talking.
"It was as if the beetle's bite had broken a trance," he said. "Jerusha looked down at herself in horror. What was she doing lying here this way? She started to get up, tears stinging her eyes.
" 'Where are you going?' she heard somebody ask her, and looked round to see that the man from the river was standing just a few yards from her.
' 'He-looked wasted. His body, which had been shiny and strong when he was sitting in the water, was thinner now. His teeth were chattering. His eyes were rolling in their sockets. How could she ever have thought he was beautiful, she wondered?
"Then she turned her back on him and started to make her way home."
"Did he follow her?"
"No. He was too confused. He hadn 't seen the beetle, you see. He just assumed she'd changed her mind; decided he was too strange for her after all. It wasn't the first time a woman had rejected him. He went back to the river, and sank from sight."
"What happened to Jerusha?"
"Terrible things.
"Almost as soon as she got back into her father's house she started to sicken. The beetle had put so much poison into her she was barely conscious by sunset. Of course her father sent for his doctors but none of them looked between her legs, because they didn 't dare, not with their patron standing over them, telling them what a good, pure child she was. They did what they could to bring down her fever-cold compresses, leeches, the usual rigmarole-but none of it worked. Hour by hour through the night she grew hotter and sicker, until blisters started to appear on her neck and face and breasts as the poisons showed themselves.
"Finally, Jerusha's father lost patience with the doctors and sent them away. Then, once he was alone with her, lying on the bed, he started to talk to her, whispering close to her ear.
" 'Can you hear me, child?' he asked her. 'Please, my sweet
Jerusha, if you can hear me, tell me what happened to you, so I can find somebody to heal you.'
"At first she said nothing. He wasn't even sure she'd even heard him. But he was persistent. He kept talking to her as daylight approached. And finally, just as dawn was breaking, she said one word…"
"River," Rachel whispered.
"Yes. She said river."
"Her father instantly sent for his majordomo, and told him to take all the maids and footmen and cooks and to comb the banks of the river until they discovered what had happened to his beloved Jerusha.
"The majordomo immediately roused the whole house, even to the smallest boy who dusted the ashes from the hearth, and they all went down through the woods to the river. Jerusha and her father were the only ones left in the great house, as the light crept through it room by room.
"He wept, and he waited, holding his daughter's hand all the while, rocking her in his arms sometimes, telling her how much he loved her, then-forgetting all his rational principles, going down on his knees and praying to God for a miracle. It was the first prayer he'd spoken since he was a little boy and he'd been made to pray over his mother's casket, and thought to himself: if you don't wake her up God, then I'm never going to believe in you ever again. Of course his mother had remained dead in her casket, and the boy had become a rationalist.
"But now all his faith in reason failed him, and he prayed with more passion than the Pope, begging God to bring a miracle.
"Down by the river, the servants were praying too, sobbing as they searched the bank.
"It was the smallest boy, the one who brushed away the ashes from the hearth, who saw the man in the river first. He started yelling for everyone to come and see, come and see.
"By the time the majordomo got to where the boy was standing a figure had risen out of the river, and the morning sun, striking him crossways, pierced him, and emerged again as beams of pure color. Nobody knew whether to be terrified or ecstatic, so they
simply stood rooted to the spot while the creature emerged from the water. Some of the women averted their eyes when they saw his naked state, but most just stared, the tears they'd been shedding forgotten.
" 'I heard somebody praying for my Jerusha,' the nverman said. 'Is she sick?'
" 'To the death,' said the boy.
" 'Will you lead me to her?', the nverman asked the child.
"The boy simply took the creature's hand, and off they went between the trees."
"Nobody tried to stop them?" Rachel said.
"It crossed the major-dome's mind. But he wasn't a superstitious man. He shared his lord's belief that there was nothing in this world that was not finally natural, that one day science would explain. So he followed the boy and the nverman at a little distance, without interfering.