Perkar considered. "Not long. I'll leave in the morning, I think."
Ghaj clucked her disapproval. "You must be in a big hurry to leave that soon. You're in no shape to travel."
"I have something to do," he told her. "Something I want to get finished as soon as I can, so I can go on with other things."
"I didn't ask for your life story," Ghaj chastened sourly. "I only wanted to know how long I have to put you up for."
Perkar finished off the soup and set the bowl down. Without hesitation, Otter Boy nosed down into it, tongue slurping. "I thought you just said…"
"Let them talk," Ghaj decided. "It'll only be out of jealousy anyway. Strangers don't stop here—they either stop in Wun or go on to Nhol, and the overland routes are nowhere near here."
"There is a path to Nhol, though?"
"A path, not much more. Most people go by boat."
"I lost my boat," he explained.
Ghaj grinned broadly, with genuine amusement. "So I guessed," she said, gesturing with the back of her hand at his still-damp and muddy clothing. "You know," she mused, "some of my husband's old clothes might fit you."
As it turned out, the shirt fit loosely and the kilt needed taking in. He accepted them gratefully, though he didn't much care for the kilt. How could one ride a horse in such a garment?
Ghaj was quick to suggest ways he could repay her kindness. She was low on firewood for cooking; two of her crawfish traps needed repair, and a new trash pit needed digging. He saw to all of these things, with the often dubious aid of Win. These chores he completed by evening, and when Ghaj served the late meal— River rice and steamed crawfish—he ate it with gusto. His muscles were beginning to ache, but to Perkar it was a delicious soreness, earned by doing something real and worthwhile. It reminded him of long days in his father's pasture, cutting hay and thatching it together for the winter, of hard work on a neighbor's damakuta and then a heavy meal and woti afterward. He had experienced pain enough, aching muscles to last a lifetime in the past few months—but that soreness had never brought him satisfaction.
"Tell me," Win begged. "Tell me more about your adventures."
"There isn't so much to tell about me," he told the boy. "But I can tell you some of the things I saw, coming down the River. I can tell you about the old Mang man I met."
"Tell me!" Win exclaimed delightedly. "Did you have to kill him with your sword?"
"No, he was very nice to me. He had a dog, too…"
He went on for a while, speaking of the vast open plains, gradually becoming desert, the occasional distant mountains, the night that lightning had raged silently on every horizon without ever a thunderclap or a raindrop. As he did so, a peculiar thing happened. Remembering these things with his voice, he suddenly marveled at them. When those sights had been laid out, actually there for him to see, he had absorbed them with the eyes of a corpse, indifferent. Wonder, long dormant, now quickened, and he felt like both laughing and crying. Instead he talked on, until Win's little eyes, fluttering closed and frantically opening again, finally drooped still and stayed that way. Ghaj carried him up to his loft bedroom.
"Let me show you where you will stay," Ghaj said when she returned. She led him inside the house and motioned to a quilted pallet on the floor. Perkar glanced around, puzzled.
"Where will you sleep?"
Ghaj grinned crookedly with her wide mouth. "The reason people say those things about widows," she confided, "is because they are true." He stood dumbly as she reached to her hem and shucked her dress up over her head. "Besides," she added. "It's not likely I'll meet another one like you anytime soon, and I can't resist seeing how you're put together."
"I…" He felt a familiar shame, one almost forgotten in the past months. How could he explain to her, about the goddess, about his problems?
He was still searching for a way to tell her when she stepped closer, reached out, and touched his cheek. "What's wrong?" she asked. "I may not be as beautiful as you might like, I know…"
Her hand was warm, smelled of garlic and crawfish. Her eyes were kind and just a little hungry, with disappointment already threatening at the edges. Despite himself, despite what he knew, he looked at her, took in her naked body with his eyes. Indeed, she was like no woman he had ever dreamed of having. Her features were broad and thick, lips everted, cheekbones flat, angular. Her body was thick, too, in every dimension, and she was not young. The slightly swelling belly and the curve of her hips were stippled with pale stretch marks, as were her breasts, otherwise generous, enormous nipples charcoal in the moonlight. She was as much a Human woman as anyone could be, nothing like a goddess at all. He gasped aloud, closed his eyes at the sudden rush of blood in his body, at the fierce urge that overtook him then. Ghaj sighed with delight (and perhaps relief) as he sagged forward, embraced her, buried his head in the juncture of her neck and clavicle. She was salty, hot, her skin was a luxury like none he had imagined. He nearly sobbed with ecstasy as her lips closed around the lobe of his ear, as she pushed her hands up under his kilt.
"I…" he gasped as she took control of the situation, gently pushed him back onto the pallet.
"I know," she whispered. "It's been a long time since you were with a woman. It's been a long time for me, too. We have to try and be quiet, though. If we wake Win, we'll have less time for each other."
That made good sense to Perkar, but there were many times that night when he wondered how anyone in the entire world could still be asleep.
Later, when they were both exhausted, they held one another until limbs began to go numb and then settled for nestling. Perkar felt his quickening sense of wonder rise above him like a halo. Ghaj was now a beautiful woman, and he gazed at her through the night, noticed that her thick features had become sensual, her stubby hard fingers tender and evocative. The moon was set, sight replaced by touch and memory, when exhaustion drew up over his joy and hope like a warm comforter and settled him into dreams.
At Ghaj's earnest urging, he stayed another day and night, recovering his strength and enjoying Human company. He spent the day doing more chores and making Win a little bow and arrow so he could be like the great Ngangata of Perkar's stories.
That night, he and Ghaj made love again, and it was even nicer without the weirdness and uncertainty of the first time. He had never imagined that passion and comfort could be combined. After all, one could not be comfortable around a goddess.
He awoke to Ghaj's steady gaze, her dark skin buttered gold by the morning, her hair hanging mussed in her face. She was tracing her finger lightly over his chest, brushing the white mass of scar tissue where the lion had cut him open, the stiff ridge of it where the Huntress' spear had driven through him. When she noticed him awake, she smiled faintly. "So young, to have all these," she said, and lightly kissed the spear wound.
"Thank you," he said a bit later, as they were getting dressed.
"For what?"
"Everything. I know you don't understand, but this has been important for me. I've never…"
"You aren't going to tell me you were a virgin," she teased. "You were clumsy now and then, but not that clumsy."
"No," Perkar admitted, embarrassed. "No, not exactly. But it was important."
Ghaj walked over, gathered him in for a hug. "It was very nice," she said. "I enjoyed our time together. Come back through and if I'm not remarried, we'll enjoy each other again." She took his chin in her fingers, kissed him lightly. "You do know I could never ask you to stay? I like you, despite your foreign weirdness, but as a husband you wouldn't do me much good around here. Despite what I said, I do care what people say."
"I know. I'm flattered that it even crossed your mind, Ghaj."