She had her doll and dog and the other golems for company, but none of them were alive. She did not dare let it be known that the old Adept was gone, for fear of an attack by others, as he had warned her. She didn’t even tell the werewolves, though they were her friends; she pretended she was merely running errands for her master, who was busy making more golems. She managed, but she wasn’t happy.
So it was for a year. She learned to make and handle the golems better, but knew she had more to learn. She longed for living company, but even when she dealt with others, trading golems for food and other staples (in the name of her master), she never got personal. She didn’t dare.
Then the Blue Adept raided her Demesnes. At first she was afraid of him, and tried to drive him out, but he destroyed her defenses with his magic and had her at his mercy. But then he turned out to be a nice person, and helped her. He had somehow thought that she was a bad Adept who had attacked him, because one of the golems had been fashioned in his likeness and tried to take his place. He was a very small man who called himself Stile, and he was even newer as an Adept than she was. He had a small unicorn with him, the first she had met up close, and she was nice too. Her horn sounded like a harmonica, and her music was wonderful.
“And that were the onset o’ our friendship, Neysa,” she said. “Thirty years gone. Much has it meant to me.”
Neysa, grazing, blew an affirmative note. She remembered their meeting, but had never heard it from Brown’s point of view before.
“I were just ten then, but suddenly I knew love,” Brown continued. “I loved the Adept Stile, but kept it secret, knowing it were laughable. He had the Lady Blue.”
“I loved him too,” Neysa said in horn talk. “And I an animal.”
“Child and animal—how could we compete?” Brown asked rhetorically, and Neysa agreed.
Stile went on about his business, in due course, destroying the Red Adept, who had killed his other self. In those days only a person who had lost his otherframe self could cross between the frames; that was why Stile had been able to cross from Proton. Then Stile became a Citizen in Proton, and the Contrary Citizens opposed him, as well as the Adverse Adepts. Brown of course helped him all she could. She would have done anything for him, but he treated her with perfect courtesy like the child she was, never knowing her love. Finally he saved the frames from the depredations of the bad Citizens and Adepts by separating Phaze from Proton. He restored the body of his other self, the original Blue Adept, and made ready to return to Proton and to the robot lady Sheen, who loved him (of course!) but whom he did not love. (How could he love any other, with the Lady Blue? How well they all understood!) Here it was that Brown betrayed him in her fashion. She had temporary access to the great Book of Magic, and made a spell to reverse things so that it was Blue who went to Proton, and Stile who stayed in Phaze, where he longed to be.
There, separated, the frames remained, for about twenty years, until Stile’s son Bane exchanged places with his other self, the robot Mach. That set off a complicated sequence, and renewed the warfare between Citizens and Adepts, as the bad ones tried to grab power. After most of another decade, Stile went the opposite route: he summoned the Adept Clef, and the Platinum Flute, and they merged the frames.
But in the long quiet periods between Adept wars, Brown remained alone. She no longer had to hide the loss of her predecessor, and she mastered the control of the golems, but her life was mostly empty. For now she found that isolation was not just a temporary state; it was standard for Adepts. Those few who were married were extremely fortunate; the others existed in increasing private bitterness, for all normal folk were afraid of them.
With reason. After the third assassination attempt against her, Brown knew better than to trust any stranger even slightly. She associated only with other Adepts, whom she mostly detested, and with the werewolves of the local Pack. They, at least, could be trusted. But that did not mean they were close. They were invariably polite and accommodating, but they had their own lives and commitments, and she realized that she was imposing when she visited them too often.
Then she broke her foot. It was a stupid accident with a golem. She had had it carry her to the Red Adept’s castle—Stile had arranged to install Trool the Troll in those Demesnes, and to her surprise the troll turned out to be an excellent Adept and excellent man—so that they could make arrangements for further exchanges of magic that benefited both. But on her return trip the golem had stumbled and fallen, and her foot had been caught. She had needed healing and assistance, and had to go to the wolves for it.
They had helped, of course. They assigned a bitch to care for her and manage the castle under her direction, until she mended. This was Lycandi, fifteen years old, the same as Brown. The bitch was nice enough, and attractive enough in both her wolf and woman states, but was something of an outcast because she had rejected first mating and never achieved the final syllable of her name. This was probably why she had been assigned to this chore: she would hardly be missed from the pack.
The healing of the foot was slow, but Lycandi was patient. Indeed, it became evident that the bitch liked this assignment, for here there was no pressure on her to do what she chose not to. They talked, and Brown learned the bitch’s concern.
A werewolf was not considered mature until he or she indulged in a first, ritual mating, and exchanged syllables with the partner in that mating: the Promised. Thereafter those two would never mate with each other again; each would find another to pair with. Lycandi had come into her first heat two years before, and had received offers from several wolves, but had turned them down. In the ensuing time she had steadfastly refused to mate, though it locked her into juvenile status.
“But why not, ‘Candi?” Brown asked. “It be a simple thing to do. I were not able to fend off the village boys e’en when a child, while thou—“
“Didst thou like it, when they forced thee?” ‘Candi asked sharply.
“Nay. I hated it. But—“
“I, too.”
“But that were because they were louts. Were it the Adept Stile who sought me, or e’en a handsome wolf in man form—“
“I like not wolves or men, that way.”
“But surely the mating urge, the companionship—“
“Companionship, aye, and mayhap the urge. But not with wolves.”
“Then with a human man. That may count not toward the completion o’ thy name, but I have heard they can be fine temporary lovers.”
“Why didst thou not take such a lover, then?”
“I can trust no human man. Three tried to kill me.”
‘Candi nodded. “Thou hast reason, then. Me, I wish no lover, nor man neither wolf. That be my shame.”
Brown was amazed. “But an thou hast the urge—“
“Any bitch would tear my throat out.”
Brown stared at her. “A bitch...”
She saw the bitch, in her girl form, sitting beside her, suffering. She reached out to comfort her, then drew hastily away lest she be misunderstood, then moved again. Something in her own life was coalescing, a mystery she had not fathomed before.
“Wouldst settle for one who were no bitch?” she whispered.
Lycandi gazed at her, her eyes wet. “Thou—Adept—“
“And woman.” Brown caught her shoulder and drew her in.
Then they were together, kissing, their tears mixing. Brown had never imagined love of this nature, but now she discovered what it offered. The ambushes of the boys had soured her on males in a way she hadn’t fathomed, and the assassination attempts had soured her on adult males. Now she realized that it was more than that. She had loved Stile, in part, because he was unavailable; he would never seek sex with her. The violence of the male, the urgency, the cruel brevity—this was not to her taste. But this, gentle, sensitive, understanding of her nature, with a female...