"Michael! What's happened to you?" She reached up and touched her fingers solicitously to his face.

 

 

"I'm leaving the Crane Women," he said. "I want to live in town. I thought you might be able to help me find a place."

 

 

"Maybe. Maybe Savarin can help you."

 

 

"I thought." He was too numb to consider finesse. "I thought maybe I could stay here."

 

 

"Oh, I don't think so," Helena said, smiling broadly. She patted him on the shoulder. "Come on. Let's find Savarin."

 

 

At the hotel, Risky told them the scholar was teaching classes. "Why did you decide to leave?" Helena asked as they walked through the streets.

 

 

"Sick of it," he said. "I just want to find some way to go home."

 

 

"So do we all," Helena said ruefully. "But most of us have learned to accept that there's no going back."

 

 

"Someone could send us back."

 

 

"That hasn't happened yet. What did they do to your face?"

 

 

"They took me out on a hike and left me on a trod. I was almost killed. That's part of the training."

 

 

Helena shook her head sympathetically.

 

 

The school was in worse repair than most of the buildings in town. There were no windows in the brick frames and the door hung askew, allowing Savarin's dulcet tones to escape across the clear sunny morning.

 

 

They waited for Savarin's lecture - conducted mostly in French - to end. The five townsfolk sitting on the brick pews got up and shuffled out, their expressions resigned. Savarin lifted his arms in greeting. "My flock," he said, pointing to the backs of the departing five. "Enthusiasm incarnate."

 

 

"Michael needs a place to stay," Helena said.

 

 

"Why? You have your place outside Halftown."

 

 

"I don't want to be there," Michael said. "I'm leaving the Crane Women."

 

 

Savarin frowned. "That's not good," he said. "I'm afraid there's no place in town for you. You don't have a job, and jobs are important. Outsiders are few and the accommodations are slim even for those living here."

 

 

"I'll work at something."

 

 

"You don't understand." Savarin sat on the end of a pew and spread his hands. "Lamia ordered you to the Crane Women. The townsfolk are in awe of Lamia, no matter how irreverent they may seem. If you displease her, you have no place here. Go back."

 

 

Michael shook his head.

 

 

"Savarin is right," Helena said. "I mean, I've only been here for a short time, and I have to accept things as they are. Getting along, doing things the accepted way."

 

 

"Can't I share your room? Michael asked, glancing from one to the other. Helena's sympathetic smile was weaker this time.

 

 

"You're young," Savarin said. Michael turned away, unable to bear the thought of another lecture.

 

 

"Look," he said, "I know I'm young, I'm stupid, I'm clumsy. So what? I need a place to stay. I need some freedom."

 

 

Savarin laughed bitterly. "Freedom? Show me a human in the Realm who has any freedom. Why should you be different?"

 

 

"I didn't want to come here! Music didn't bring me here."

 

 

"No," Savarin said. "You walked here, on your own volition. You knew you were going someplace. You tried harder to get here than we did. So you are a little less free. There's no place for you here in town." He tried to soften his words by adding, "Not that we wouldn't put you up if we could. But things are balanced very delicately now."

 

 

"We can't afford to rock the boat," Helena restated.

 

 

"I might manage to get you some food," Savarin said.

 

 

"Me, too," Helena said. "And maybe some better clothes. Where did you get those?"

 

 

Michael didn't answer. He looked at Helena imploringly, and realized his few hopes had been exploded. Without a word, he turned and left the school.

 

 

"Michael-"

 

 

He ran. Letting the familiar pleasures and pains of exertion fill him, blanking out his worries, he covered most of the distance to Halftown before forcing himself to slow to a walk.

 

 

He didn't even know who he was any more. At one time he had been the young, bright son of well-to-do, talented parents, living in a prosperous neighborhood in a famous city, hoping - trying - to be a poet. Now he was ragged, bruised. yet stronger and swifter, and he had been forced to do something quite wonderful. or die. He didn't know who his friends were. He was angry at Savarin and Helena, but he didn't actually blame them___

 

 

The Realm was a tough place to live.

 

 

He entered the market courtyard in Halftown. The Breeds paid little attention to him; he was none of their concern. But Eleuth saw him from the workshed, where she was wrapping cloth goods for a customer, and her face lit up with a smile. When she saw his bruises, the smile changed to a look of concern. She finished tying the package and handed it to the tall Breed woman, who glanced at Michael sternly in passing.

 

 

"Hello," Michael said.

 

 

"They've been testing you again," Eleuth said, perching on a stool in front of him. Standing, she was a couple of inches taller. On the stool, her face was level with his.

 

 

"How'd you guess?" He smirked, holding out his tattered sleeves.

 

 

"And they won't let you stay in Euterpe."

 

 

"Did you see me going there?"

 

 

She shook her head. "I'm learning. Very slow, very difficult, but just looking at you I can tell a little of what happened. Why did you leave them?"

 

 

"I don't want to die," Michael said. "And I don't think they much care if I do."

 

 

"You could be wrong," Eleuth said. "But stay here. I have to work for a while."

 

 

"I don't have anyplace else to go," Michael said.

 

 

Eleuth smiled. "I mean, stay here with me. You can help. As long as they let you."

 

 

Michael watched her return to her customers. Suddenly, a different kind of panic assailed him. What was he going to do, living with a Breed woman under the same roof?

 

 

What would she expect him to do?

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

 

"I'm closing now," Eleuth told Michael as dusk settled. 'Today seemed shorter than usual, didn't it? Adonna's whim, I suppose."

 

 

She showed him how to pick up the baskets of merchandise from the board tables and where to put them in the shed, away from the elements. He helped her draw a tarp over the displays of heavier merchandise. "Nobody steals anything here?"

 

 

"Certainly," Eleuth said. "But even Breeds can afford a few safeguards." She didn't explain, simply grinned at him as she closed the gate to the market courtyard. "Now. How long has it been since you ate?"

 

 

"About a day and a half," he said. He hadn't noticed, but the reminder awoke his hunger.

 

 

"I have some broth cooking, some Faer dishes. I hope it will be enough. I mean good enough for you."

 

 

The house next to the market square was soon lit with oil lanterns and candles and a fire was kindled in the pit. Eleuth placed bread on the bricks to warm and stirred a pot suspended over a circle of embers. She offered Michael a cup of water from a cloth bag, cooled by evaporation, and asked him to sit on one of the two wooden chairs.

 

 

"How old are you?" Michael asked as she finished gathering utensils and set a wicker table for them.

 

 

"Oh, that's not a definite thing here," she said.

 

 

"Can you guess?"

 

 

"Not much older than you, by the looks."

 

 

"But I'm sixteen, and you're. bigger."

 

 

"That's natural for those with Sidhe blood. We grow up very fast."

 

 

"Your father was half Sidhe?"

 

 

Eleuth nodded. "My mother was human. She died long ago. I don't remember her very well. Now if I were full Sidhe, I'd either remember everything, or nothing. Depending on what I choose."

 

 

"I feel so stupid, living in the Realm," Michael said quietly. Eleuth handed him a ceramic bowl filled with vegetable broth. It smelled spicy and was; his tongue was aflame after a few swallows.

 

 

"Bread?" she offered. He tried to hide his discomfort by chewing on the durable, brown-crusted bread. "We all learn here, all the time," she continued, sitting across from him. "Isn't that true on Earth? I mean, mortals have finite lives; they must spend all their short years thinking themselves to be very ignorant."

 

 

"I guess." A few more swallows and he seemed to get used to the spiciness. The warmth passed up his neck and into his head. His scalp was sweating.

 

 

"As for me, I'm not terribly bright, even for a Breed. By Sidhe standards, I'm very slow. My father was a fine parent, but I think I was a disappointment to him."

 

 

"He'd rather have had a son?"

 

 

"Oh, no!" Eleuth laughed. "Sidhe always prefer daughters. Magic is more powerful in a family with daughters. But in my case, I inherited very little."

 

 

"What can you do with magic?" Michael asked "I've seen some things, but." He trailed off.

 

 

"We probably shouldn't talk about it," Eleuth said. She took his empty bowl and filled it again. "You're not a Breed. I'm not sure why you're here or why they tolerate you. Do you know?"

 

 

Michael shook his head. "I wish 1 did. I mean, I think I wish I knew. Maybe I don't want to know."

 

 

"You must know eventually," Eleuth said. They ate in silence for a while. Then she picked up their empty bowls and stuck them in a pot of sand. She spun the pot on its pedestal and plucked the bowls out, clean.

 

 

"You can sleep next to the hearth," she said. She took a rug down from its bar and laid it on the floor, then produced two blankets and a robe. "This was Lirg's," she said, handing the robe to him. "I'll sleep now. In the morning, you can pick out some other clothes. Good night."

 

 

He lay on the rug and pulled the blankets over him. Eleuth put out the fire in the pit and pulled the screen over it, then slipped behind another hanging into her room.

 

 

He lay in the ember-lit dark for a few minutes, his mind turbulent but blank. His eyes shut.

 

 

Sleep without dreams occupied no time at all. He came awake to the sound of weeping. It was Eleuth. Groggy, uncertain what to do, he sat up on the floor and listened for a minute, chin on his knees. Finally he stood, the old clothes binding him where he had twisted in his sleep. He approached the hanging.

 

 

"Eleuth?"

 

 

The sobbing became softer. "Eleuth, what's wrong?"

 

 

"I'll be quiet," she said, her voice muffled.

 

 

"No, what's wrong?"

 

 

He pulled aside the hanging and saw her lying on a wooden pallet, blankets pulled up around her neck. Her face was streaked with tears which glinted in the light of the room's single candle.

 

 

"I can't remember all the transactions," she said. "No matter how hard I try, I can't keep the accounts in my head."

 

 

Michael leaned sleepily against the wall. "Then use paper."

 

 

"Oh. no!" Eleuth said, shuddering as she wept. "We do not write anything down. That is.wrong. Lirg would be very disappointed in me." She wiped her face with her hands.

 

 

"So you're different. Everybody's different."

 

 

"I'll be all right," she said. "Go back to sleep now." She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. He let the hanging slip back.

 

 

"Michael?"

 

 

He stopped at the edge of his bedclothes. "What?"

 

 

"Are you afraid of Breeds? I mean, do you hate us?"

 

 

"No," he said. "They're no worse than humans. Better than Sidhe. as near as I can tell."

 

 

He heard her bare feet on the floor. She pulled back the hanging and stared out at him. Nothing was said for a time, then she motioned for him to come join her.

 

 

"I'm mostly human," she said as she held back the blankets for him. He started to clnb in with his clothes still on, but she made a face and pushed him gently back. "Not with those," she said, undoing the strings which belted his pants. "Take off that shirt. You deserve much better."

 

 

He felt very strange, excited but sleepy, afraid but calm. She smiled at his underclothes as he untied the fabric and let it hang in front of him. She took his hand and pulled him down beside her, then kissed his forehead.

 

 

"You're tired," she said. 'Tonight we sleep."

 

 

"I don't want to sleep just yet," he said. He put his arms around her, bunching the coarse, pliant fabric of her gown in one fist. He nuzzled her neck and she lifted her chin, closing her eyes. Then he kissed her. She tasted slightly electric, as if he were licking a dime. With one hand he undid the ties on the upper portion of her gown, revealing her breasts. They were dotted with pearly-gray freckles and her sternum rippled in the hollow between. He touched her skin gently with one finger, then rubbed his cheek against her breasts, feeling her warmth. She held his head and squeezed him closer, kissing his hair.

 

 

"Sweet," she said. "Sana, dosa, sona"

 

 

"What do I do now?" he asked, looking up at her, eyes half-closed.

 

 

"Sleep, Michael," she crooned, stroking his brow. She nestled down beside him and he felt the bare stretch of her leg against his. He moved instinctively, but she restrained him. "Sleep," she repeated, but he didn't hear her finish the word.

 

 

The morning began as a patch of gray light shining on the floor. Michael opened his eyes and looked at the light from where his head lolled over the side of the bed. He rolled on his back and saw Eleuth leaning on her elbow next to him, hair concealing her hand. She smiled and bent to kiss him. "You kept me very warm," she said. She ran her hand down his arm, tickling the hairs.

 

 

They made love. It was the most wonderful thing, and the most silly thing. It had nothing of lust in it, only necessity. They lay holding each other and he secretly surveyed her breasts and stomach, and she secretly enjoyed him looking at her.

 

 

Eleuth got out of bed, climbing over him with her hand cupped between her legs. She dipped a white cloth in a ceramic jar full of water and cleaned him off, then slipped on her pants and shirt. "No market this day," she said. "But I have a few things to do."

 

 

He lay on the cot, half-covered with blankets, watching as the gray light became yellow.

 

 

It was one of the most - no, the single most wonderful thing that had happened to him. He was pretty convinced of that. He couldn't remember anything finer, and yet.

 

 

It had its drawbacks. In all the time he had spent here, there had always been some hope that it was all a dream, some long-play fantasy. But throughout his few pubescent years, he had never been able to have a fantasy so real or vivid as what had happened this morning.

 

 

Ergo, he was not fantasizing. He had more than suspected as much. The drawback was that it was now proven.

 

 

And yet.

 

 

A certain hollowness remained. He was relaxed, as if a knot had been untied between his legs, a knot he had hardly realized was there until now. He had acquitted himself well; Eleuth had enjoyed him, and he sensed the knot flex and tighten as he remembered her enjoyment. His pleasure had been real but unspectacular, sure to get better with practice. Hers had been real and prolonged.

 

 

So what about the hollowness? He couldn't put his finger on it. Like everything else in Sidhedark, the accomplishment (and that seemed a truthful but ridiculous word to use) came with a little hard gnarl of unease, of impending disaster.

 

 

Michael realized that even if he made it back to Earth, he would still have that gnarl buried inside of him.

 

 

Maybe that was part of growing up. Oddly enough, making love didn't make him feel any more adult. It was perhaps the most childish part of being grown-up.

 

 

He was dozing when Eleuth entered, carrying three pieces of fruit. She handed him two of them and he smiled at her.

 

 

"There's a legend on Earth, saying that if I eat this, I have to stay here forever."

 

 

"I wouldn't object," Eleuth said, sitting on the bed beside him. "Bui you've already eaten fruit here, haven't you?"

 

 

He nodded. "Could you teach me to speak Sidhe?"

 

 

She shook her head slowly. "It's more difficult than a human language. Lirg tried teaching my mother. Only the Sidhe have a real knack. Sometimes, it's not even a language in your sense."

 

 

"But I've been able to make out words."

 

 

"Yes. Sometimes we use different words to mean the same things - - -And when we communicate, we in-speak. You allow me to speak your language. I in-speak. look into your mind, and find the words. I wish Lirg were here to explain it to you." Her eyes moistened again and he reached out to touch her shoulder. She lay down beside him. "What will you do today?"

 

 

"Go to Savarin, I think," Michael said. "He didn't help me yesterday, but there are still things I need to know."

 

 

"I'll teach you what I know," Eleuth said.

 

 

"I'm grateful for that, but he may be able to explain things more clearly. He's a teacher."

 

 

"Oh." They ate their fruit. "Can you help me here?"

 

 

"Sure," Michael said. "Why don't you tell me what you need done before I go to Euterpe?"

 

 

Together they counted rolls of fabric and pots. Eleuth brought out pants and shirts for him to try on, and he found a pair that fit reasonably well. Shoes were more difficult. Sidhe and Breed l

 

 

feet were longer and narrower than human feet. Michael found a pair made out of canvas-like material that didn't actually pinch his toes, and Eleuth watched him with her vague puzzled expression as he stamped about, trying to get them to fit. i

 

 

"They'll never believe it back on Earth," he said. "Faeries wear t tennis shoes." Then he laughed at the thought of trying to explain things at home. It was the first time he remembered laughing in the Realm. Eleuth smiled.

 

 

She sewed a pocket into his shirt to hold the book and as'

 

 

she cut the thread with her teeth and tied it off, she said, 'This afternoon I'm expecting a shipment. Could you be back by then to help?"

 

 

"Sure. I thought everything just appeared out of nowhere," he teased. He pointed at the covered racks of merchandise in the storage room.

 

 

"Oh, no," Eleuth said, her long face betraying distress. "I'm not not nearly that skilled."

 

 

He left when the sun was just below zenith and walked the distance to the human town at a leisurely pace. Something had loosened in him; he could observe things without the nervous tightness that had prevailed before. It seemed he now had the time to put everything in perspective.

 

 

He also confronted the fact that he would soon have to tell Eleuth he couldn't stay forever, that he didn't love her. He

 

 

wasn't sure what he felt for her; gratitude, affection.

 

 

But there was one image he couldn't erase from his mind: that of the Crane Women - immortal, but because of their human blood, changing with age. How long would it take for Eleuth to change?

 

 

A few Breeds - a male and two females, all of that cast of features that indicated they were older than Eleuth, but how how much older he couldn't tell - were directing a horse cart along the road. They passed Michael without acknowledging his presence, holding their long heads high, their dull brown clothes rippling like fur beneath an unwanted touch. He turned to watch the cart, noting the wood-spoke wheels, the well-fitted but unornamented frame, the simplicity of the harness.

 

 

At the inn, Brecker greeted him civilly while sweeping out the small lobby and told him Savarin was indeed back in his room. Michael climbed the stairs. Behind the wicker door, he heard Savarin humming to himself. Michael knocked on the wicker. "It's me."

 

 

Savarin swung the door wide and smiled at him. "You've forgiven us, I hope?"

 

 

"Yeah," Michael said. "I found a place in Halftown."

 

 

Savarin invited him in and looked down the hall to see if anyone followed. "We want you to understand, it's not you we're afraid of."?

 

 

"I know," Michael said. He didn't want to discuss it, but he knew Savarin would air the issue for a while. He sat on the edge of the washstand, lightly so as not to crush it.

 

 

"It's just that we have to be careful. We stand between Lamia and the Sidhe, between rules that change from day to day. Have you had any trouble from the Crane Women?"

 

 

Michael shook his head. "I haven't seen them. I came here-"

 

 

"You still have to be careful. Where are you staying in Halftown?"

 

 

"That isn't important," Michael said. "I want you to tell me what you know about Sidhe language. I can't get anywhere if I can't understand what they're saying."

 

 

Savarin cocked his head to one side and lifted his eyebrows. "Tall order. You have to be largely Sidhe to pick up on all of the tongues. I'd say the resemblances between Sidhe and human languages are strong, but the syntax and methods of understanding are quite different. For example, the Sidhe use a metalanguage. a language of contexts. And Cascar is like a hundred languages thrown together. They never run out of words that mean the same thing, or very nearly. I can't speak it well. I can sometimes make myself understood, but."

 

 

"I understood it for a time," Michael said. "During the Kaeli. One of the Crane Women touched my head, and I understood everything they said."

 

 

"And what was that like?"

 

 

Michael thought back. "Like listening to music. Each word seemed to be the equivalent of a note. Notes are always the same in music, but place them next to each other and they sound different. or lengthen the notes, shorten them. Use the same word in a different context, and it means something else. sounds different."

 

 

"Perhaps you should be educating me," Savarin said.

 

 

"But it didn't last. I don't remember anything from that night, except what they said. and even that's fuzzy. They were singing, but not singing. I need to know so-" He stopped himself. "I just need to know."

 

 

"Because you still plan on leaving the Realm," Savarin said.

 

 

Michael turned his eyes away and pointed his index fingers together.

 

 

"I don't recommend that. First of all, Alyons will hunt you. No human can escape his coursers. Second, Lamia will resent even the attempt - and, as I've said before, I wouldn't want to cross her. I don't know what the Crane Women will do."

 

 

"I haven't thought much about that," Michael said. "I'm just struggling. I don't want to be anyone's responsibility."

 

 

"Just thank the stars you are," Savarin said. "I've known people to come here, Alyons takes them - and we never see them again - despite the Pact! We dare not object. To what end does he take them? Nobody knows. But you! You seem to be protected. He has not taken you. even though he's tried." He put his hand on Michael's knee and stared at him earnestly. "Go back. Keep up the training. It's for a purpose, I'm sure."

 

 

"I don't see it that way," Michael said. Savarin shrugged.

 

 

"Then we'll discuss Cascar and Nerb. Do you know the difference?"

 

 

"No."

 

 

Savarin explained that Cascar was a younger, less formal language. He believed it had arisen after the Sidhe returned to Earth, and that it was the proto-language out of which had arisen several of the major human language groups, the most familiar of them, for Savarin, belonging to the Indo-European branch. "Certainly the words sound familiar," he said. "Their word for us - a word which never changes, you notice? - is antros. Sometimes they call us males - wires, as in virile, no? - or female, geen, and the latter they apply to their females as well - but as a kind, we are always antros. A spit-word, so to speak.

 

 

"As for Nerb, not many Breeds speak it, and none of the Sidhe I've encountered."

 

 

"I haven't heard much about it, if anything. So say something to me in Cascar."

 

 

"Pir na? Bed antros lingas ta rup la pistr."

 

 

"What's that mean?"

 

 

"'Why? Humans talk as if they have stone tongues.' It's something a Breed once told me. Lingas means both language and speaking and tongue. Context is important, and pitch, as in Chinese. There are other Cascar words for language, meaning eating with the tongue, spitting with the tongue, magic with the tongue. Calling birds with the tongue. All different."

 

 

"How do they learn it?"

 

 

'They're Sidhe," Savarin said laconically. "It comes naturally to them. Nearly every Sidhe and Breed I've met knows how to speak the human languages I'm familiar with. Do they suck the knowledge out of my mind? I don't know. But they only speak Cascar to us when they don't want us to understand, or when they wish to be belligerent." He paused, looking almost sad. "There's another language I've heard hinted at. I know almost nothing about it but mat it exists. One of its many names is Kesh. An unspoken language, used during the star-marches. Not, as you might suspect, a kind of ESP, but something different.

 

 

"And to make things even more confusing, I'm tracking down evidence that the Sidhe picked up words from humans - words from tinker's cant, Celtic languages, etc.; picked them up during their last centuries on Earth. There is a section in 'Hudibras' by Samuel Butler - if I can remember." He screwed up his face in concentration and peered at the ceiling."'But when he pleased to shew't, his speech/ In loftiness of sound was rich;

 

 

A Babylonish dialect

 

 

Which learned pedants much affect;

 

 

It was a party coloured dress

 

 

Of patch'd and py-ball'd languages;

 

 

Twas (Irish) cut on Greek and Latin

 

 

Like fustian heretofore on sattin.

 

 

It had an odd promiscuous tone,

 

 

As if h' had talk'd three parts in one;

 

 

Which made some think, when he did gabble,

 

 

Th' had heard three labourers of Babel;

 

 

Or Cerberus himself pronounce

 

 

A leash of languages at once.'"

 

 

"We're like little babies here," Michael said, sighing.

 

 

Savarin nodded. "Now perhaps you can tell me why they simply haven't slaughtered us all?"

 

 

"Do they hate us that much?"

 

 

Savarin's expression brightened "Can you tell me anything about the Council of Eleu? Does that sound familiar?"

 

 

Michael couldn't remember hearing anything about it.

 

 

"Then listen closely. You're going to be associating with Breed and Sidhe more and more, whatever your personal wishes may be. Just listen for it. 'Council of Eleu.' And if you find out anything, tell me immediately! To answer your question, no, not all of them hate us. And the Council of Eleu has something to do with those who tolerate us."

 

 

Something flashed into Michael's head and he struggled to keep it, to clarify it. A group of tall, pale figures talking about him. Something about his room in the house on Earth. but it was gone before he could grasp it. "I'll let you know if I hear anything," he said. "How's Helena?"

 

 

"Well," Savarin said. "She worries we gave you the wrong impression, that you hate us, hate her."

 

 

"I don't hate anybody," Michael said. "I'd like to talk to her some more."

 

 

"Certainly. She's working now, I'm sure, but we could walk over later-"

 

 

"No. I'll go myself. I have to ask her some things."

 

 

"Certainly," Savarin said. His lips normally carried a slight sardonic smile; now the expression took on significance. "I believe there is something you must know, very soon."

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"Human sex is dangerous here."

 

 

"Why?"

 

 

"Such things are closely regulated. We do not want children. The Sidhe and Breeds can have young - we cannot."

 

 

Michael just looked at him.

 

 

"The people who have been here longest, and the Breeds, say it is because there are no seedling souls in the Realm. A human child is bom empty. A Sidhe or Breed child is expected to be that way, and already has an internal. how would we say. compensation. But human children are vessels waiting to be filled. They are filled by creatures from the Blasted Plain - Adonna's own aborted children, some say." He set his lips and waved off any further inquiry. 'Talk about it is considered obscene. No more."

 

 

"There's just one other thing," Michael said. "I'm a young fellow - everyone keeps saying that - but why do humans put up with all this crap?"

 

 

"What else can we do?" Savarin scrutinized him intensely, as if looking for something hidden in his face. Then the perpetual half-smile returned and the scholar leaned back, folding his hands in front of him and cracking his knuckles. "You'll learn soon enough," he said in a low voice. "Why not go and talk with Helena now. She should be done with her work."

 

 

Michael didn't expect to be dismissed, but Savarin was obviously thinking about other things. Michael stood and held out his hand. Savarin grasped it and shook it loosely, then fluttered his fingers in the direction of the doorway. "Go on," he said. "And thank you for coming back. We thought we'd lost you when you ran away."

 

 

Michael nodded and shut the wicker door behind him. Savarin resumed humming, keeping it low enough so it couldn't be heard more than a few feet outside.

 

 

He snapped his fingers while he walked, caught himself, and stuffed his thumb into the fabric tie of his pants. It was early afternoon and the town was slowing down; shops were closing, people were strolling in pairs down the narrow streets, some heading for the ramshackle school, others just walking, talking. Michael saw an oriental man and woman speaking what sounded like Chinese.

 

 

His last question - and Savarin's subsequent expression - kept echoing in his mind. Resistance seemed only natural when somebody oppressed you. Michael's father had often talked about his student days at UCLA - talk which had bored Michael slightly, but came back to him now as a model of how Americans, at least, behaved when they thought something was wrong. Michael wondered if the humans in the Realm could organize a protest, maybe set up a blockade. Keep Sidhe out of Euterpe at least. passive resistance.

 

 

He grinned at how silly it sounded. Alyons would handle a blockade in short order. Some people would probably get killed. Maybe he'd be the first.

 

 

He still found it hard to believe that he could die in the Realm. Death had been a difficult enough concept on Earth, but here, with everything topsy-turvy and so many fantastic phenomena, how could anyone actually die? So what if it wasn't a dream, he told himself. It wasn't exactly reality either.

 

 

His reverie carried him to the steps below Helena's doorway.

 

 

He walked up slowly, apprehensive. He nibbed his chin to check the length of peach-fuzz. A few of the real whiskers he had started were getting quite long now; he hadn't thought about them until this moment, but he wished he had a mirror and a pair of scissors to snip them off.

 

 

He had a panicky moment just before knocking, when he told himself it would be best just to run away, head out across the -

 

 

Helena opened the door.

 

 

"Hi," he said, dropping his hand from his chin.

 

 

"Hi yourself. I heard you breathing."

 

 

"Yeah," Michael said. "I wanted to apologize for running away like that."

 

 

"No apology needed," Helena said. She seemed subdued. She opened the door wider and invited him in, then left the door open and blocked it with a brick. "It must be rough on you. Confusing."

 

 

"I guess. Anyway, that's no excuse to act like a little kid. To be rude, I mean."

 

 

"I'm glad you came back," she said, standing a few feet away. "Would you like to sit?" They sat and Helena bit on a thumbnail, watching him but not really seeing him.

 

 

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

 

 

She seemed to reach a decision and leaned forward, staring at him earnestly. "Michael, will you swear something for me? Double swear? Because I'm taking a big risk."

 

 

"What risk?"

 

 

"Will you swear?"

 

 

"Swear to what, Helena?"

 

 

She stood nervously and paced in front of him, waving her arms as she spoke. "You're a sweet fellow, but you didn't understand what we meant yesterday. You know how strange you are, being taken care of by Breeds and so on."

 

 

"I guess," Michael said.

 

 

"Don't guess. Do you know?"

 

 

"It's strange to me, that's for sure."

 

 

"Well, it's even stranger for us. Nobody from here - I mean humans - has ever been given that treatment before. So it makes us wonder, are you a double agent or what? A Sidhe who just looks human?"

 

 

"I'm not a Sidhe," Michael said, laughing.

 

 

"No, I don't think you are. You sweat when you're nervous." She giggled and placed her hand reassuringly on his shoulder, letting the fingers linger, gripping him. "So you have to swear to me, you're not a double agent, you're not a plant or whatever put here to catch us."

 

 

"I swear," Michael said.

 

 

"Your eyes look so human," Helena said. "Such a nice green color. What's happened to you since yesterday?"

 

 

Michael blinked at the change in subject. "I found a place to live in Halftown."

 

 

"Oh, where?"

 

 

"You wanted me to swear. I did. So what next?"

 

 

Helena kneeled down before him. "You know Savarin. He's a scholar. There are other people you haven't met, except one of them came to see you that night they gave the dinner. When you came to town. A short, heavy fellow with black hair."

 

 

Michael didn't remember him.

 

 

"Well, anyway, he saw you, and th6ught sometime we'd have to decide whether to contact you."

 

 

A bell rang in the town plaza. Michael went to the window to listen.

 

 

"So you're contacting me," he said.

 

 

Helena stepped up beside him. "That's the warning bell," she said, her voice quavering. "Alyons is here, or some of his riders. So I'll tell you quickly. We found a cache of Sidhe metal. Never mind where. Some people here are keeping it, making it into. things. A piano, for one. What I wouldn't give to hear a piano again! But they won't let us play it, of course, until after-" She stopped abruptly, her face paling. Hoof steps sounded in the narrow alleyway. "Michael!"

 

 

"What?"

 

 

"Are they after you, or did you bring them here?"

 

 

"I'm not one of them," Michael said. She grasped his arm.

 

 

"They're outside!"

 

 

Alyons and two of his coursers paced at leisure on horseback toward the door at the end of the alleyway. Alyons glanced up and spotted Michael in the window. Michael pulled back.

 

 

"Antros! Your presence is requested!"

 

 

"They do want you," Helena said.

 

 

"It looks that way."

 

 

"Oh, don't tell them anything. I'm so frightened. Where will they take you?"

 

 

"I don't know," Michael said. He stepped out into the hall and looked the opposite way. If he could only get back into that mindset again - - He turned to Helena and took her hand clumsily in his, having to grasp it twice before holding it firm. He had a crazy urge to laugh. "A piano, eh?"

 

 

"Shh!"

 

 

"That's not what I had in mind, but I guess that's pretty subversive."

 

 

"Man-child!" Alyons called.

 

 

He kissed her hand and felt a flush of pride mix with his fear. A Sidhe appeared in the door at the bottom of the stairs. Michael unceremoniously pushed Helena back into her room and shut the door. He stood at the top of the steps, looking down on the courser with what he hoped passed for imperious disdain. "What do you want?"

 

 

The courser began climbing, giving no answer. Michael looked to either side of the Sidhe, wondering if he could play the uncertain flower down the stairs. There was only one way to find out. With all his speed and concentration, he dashed down the steps, trying to send a shadow to one side and swerve himself to the other. The courser grabbed him without hesitation and placed him under one arm as easily as if he carried a trussed pig, then turned and marched out the door, presenting him to the Wickmaster.

 

 

They exchanged a few words in Cascar and Michael looked directly at Alyons.

 

 

"So you're learning from the Crane Women," the Wick-master said. "But not too well."

 

 

The courser spoke again and they laughed. "Never make a shadow when there are only two ways to send it," Alyons advised. He hefted his wick and motioned for Michael to be tied behind his horse. They skillfully reversed the horses in the narrow alley and left with Michael in tow. He looked over his shoulder and saw Helena at the window, her face pale. His hands were tied by the trailing rope; he could do nothing. For a moment, he had feared the Sidhe would take her, as well.

 

 

They pulled him out of town, walking their horses just fast enough to keep him half-running. They joined another group of four, making a total of seven Sidhe, and jerked Michael down the road to the Isomage's mansion.

 

 

Chapter Nineteen

 

 

The troop led Michael up the path to the Isomage's house, jerking sharply on his rope as he fell back. Alyons dismounted and went inside while the others waited, silent and aloof even from each other.

 

 

After some minutes, Alyons emerged and took the end of Michael's rope. He reeled it in until he stood just two feet from Michael, towering over him. "She wants to speak with you, man-child." His expression was stony and his eyes seemed fixed in their sockets as he turned away, pulling Michael by his tied and outstretched hands. Alyons seemed to be in a state of controlled rage, which perversely made Michael more optimistic; if the circumstances weren't to Alyons' liking, perhaps he wasn't in as much trouble as he'd thought.

 

 

The interior of the house was as he remembered, only darker and cooler. The sun was now on the horizon. The day had been particularly short.

 

 

The staircase led up into brighter light from the narrow windows along the entry way. Lamia stood on the balcony, her tiny, finely molded hands gripping the railing.

 

 

"Is he down there?" she asked.

 

 

"As you requested," Alyons said, his tone dripping contempt.

 

 

"Send him up to me."

 

 

The Wickmaster took his time undoing the rope, his long corded fingers cool against Michael's arms. "Go," he said. He gave Michael an unnecessarily hard push and pointed up the stairs. Michael ascended, rubbing his reddened wrists and watching the daylight grow dull in the upper reaches. He didn't fancy staying in the house after dark, but even less did he fancy traveling with the coursers at night, or walking back to the town alone. He met Lamia on the landing.

 

 

A change had come over her. He could see it even in the fading light. Her skin was waxen, her face tighter, as if she wore a restraining mask. Around her eyes, scaly patches had started to flake away and her hands were criss-crossed with tiny thin wrinkles like cracks in bread dough. He stopped five paces from her. Lamia made no move toward him, instead regarding him with a wavering gaze. She seemed deadly tired.

 

 

"You grieve me, boy," she said softly. "I set you a task and you run from it."

 

 

"I don't like being a slave," he said.

 

 

"You're. no. slave." Her voice carried bitter humor. "You're freer than I am, freer than Alyons down there." She gestured with a trembling hand and immediately returned it to the railing to support herself. Michael stared down into the lower floor's gloom. Alyons stood at the foot of the stairs, head bowed, twisting the rope and coiling it in his fingers.

 

 

"They keep trying to kill me," Michael said.

 

 

"Who, the Crane Women?" Lamia tittered, a dead dry sound of rolling pebbles. She motioned for him to come closer. He hesitated and she made as if to reach out with one hand and strangle him. "Closer!" she growled.

 

 

He moved one stride. She edged a few inches along the railing, making it creak beneath her weight. Her arms bounced in slow, oily waves beneath the fabric of her gown. "They are teaching you how to stay alive."

 

 

"I can stay alive on my own, in Euterpe with all the others."

 

 

"You will not stay in the town. The town is for fools, cowards too afraid to make their own way."

 

 

"I'm not too afraid."

 

 

"You're too stupid to succeed, then." She lowered her voice and pushed back from the railing, tottering for one awful moment. "You require tempering." Michael retreated two steps in case she fell; he saw her as a poorly balanced sack of venomous fluids, about to topple and burst. But Lamia kept her balance. "Come with me," she said. "We have to talk alone."

 

 

She wobbled and thumped through a doorway leading to a second floor hallway. This part of the house seemed in better condition than the ground floor; as far as he could tell in the twilight, the walls were unmarked, and the floor was carpeted, muffling her ponderous steps. She reached out with her left hand and pushed wide a door, motioning for Michael to enter first. He sidled past her and stood in a broad empty room. Lighted candles were placed high on all four walls in sconces at intervals of several feet. The floor was hardwood, brilliantly polished. A second Lamia labored upside down in the depths of the wood as she followed him. She closed the door and leaned against it, breathing heavily.

 

 

"Are you sick?" he asked.

 

 

She shook her head. Her small eyes, enclosed in scaly flesh, saddened as she looked beyond him at the empty room.

 

 

"You have a duty, boy," she said distantly. "Have you learned more about this house, about the Realm?"

 

 

"A little," Michael said. "Not nearly enough."

 

 

"You know that the Isomage lived here?"

 

 

He nodded, "I don't know who he was....Was he David Clarkham?"

 

 

"Is, boy. He is." Her lips formed an upward-tilting curve suggesting a smile. To each side, the skin of her cheeks separated in fine cracks. "You know that he wishes to save us?"

 

 

Michael shook his head. "Why isn't he here, then?"

 

 

'He was driven off by his enemies. I told you. The battle that destroyed this entire plain. They forced all the humans in their control to live here afterward, in desolation and pain. I've never been to the town; I cannot leave this house. But from this house I have a. small influence. In my cursed condition, I can help. Do you understand?"

 

 

"No." There was pleasant defiance in his ignorance. It warmed him.

 

 

She rolled her hips and dragged her legs to the middle of the room. He caught a whiff of her odor, unpleasant and dead sweet, like decaying flowers. "You must not defy the plan," she said. "The Sidhe opposed to us simply wait for their chance to." She shook her head and the skin of her neck crackled.

 

 

"Then why do they give you any power at all?" Michael asked.

 

 

"They cannot hurt me more than they already have. There is a treaty over this land, over the plain. We suffer our punishment, but if they make any further moves against us, the treaty crumbles. and a power buried deep in the land is unleashed against the transgressors. There is a stalemate. To the Sidhe, it seems we are defeated. Perhaps we are. and perhaps not. But should humans break the treaty." Her voice trailed off again.

 

 

"Why am I so important?"

 

 

"Important?" She spat on the floor, then walked to the spot where her spittle beaded on the polished surface and with infinite pains, bent down to wipe it with the hem of her gown. Her skin crackled again as she returned to her upright posture. "You are not crucial. You are simply a messenger. But to help at all, you must survive. You must continue to train with the Crane Women."

 

 

"Do I have any choice?"

 

 

Lamia turned her back on him. "I have some influence over the Wickmaster; but only some. If you do not return to the Crane Women, he will take charge of you. What he'll do with you, I don't know."

 

 

"No choice, then."

 

 

She swiveled slowly, in grotesque parody of a pirouette. Michael looked at the far wall and saw a long, horizontal bar mounted beneath the candles - a practice bar for dancers. "May you never know how cruel life is," she said. "Or what can be lost. and yet remain alive. Go back to the Crane Women. Resume your training."

 

 

Michael stood silent in the candlelight, then turned and left the room. He descended the stairs and stopped before Alyons, who let the rope fall free from one hand.

 

 

"Jakap?" the Wickmaster asked. The rope unwound like a struggling snake.

 

 

"Lamia orders me to go back to the Crane Women."

 

 

"She orders nothing," Alyons said. "I am Wickmaster."

 

 

"You can't hurt me," Michael said.

 

 

The Sidhe leaned over, bringing his face level with Michael's. "You are right, man-child. 1 can't hurt you if you do as she wishes. But step out of line, just once."

 

 

"Wickmaster!" Lamia stood by the balustrade, limned by the faint glow from the dancing room. "Obey the Pact."

 

 

Michael dodged the Sidhe's grasping hand and walked out the door. "I'll ride back," he said, trying to conceal the tremble of anger and fear in his voice.

 

 

"On which horse?" Alyons asked, closing the front door with a solid thump. "Where is your horse?"

 

 

"Your horse," Michael said.

 

 

Behind him, Alyons barked a short laugh. "My horse. Such a beautiful and golden horse, such a temptation, my horse. even for humans. Mount then, Antros, show us your skill."

 

 

Michael touched the golden Sidhe horse delicately, then mounted as he had been instructed. He wondered idly if it were possible to steal the horse, and decided that would be very unwise. But his feet kicked out of their own volition, gouging the animal in the flanks.

 

 

The landscape, locked in long, gray twilight, suddenly blurred around him. The horse's flesh became like flowing steel under the saddle and between his calves, and Michael felt an incredible pulse of power as they streaked along the road. His body seemed to melt and he grasped the horse with his arms and legs in sheer terror, shouting for it to stop. His words were drowned in the wind.

 

 

Michael had an impression the coursers were right behind him, but when he tried to turn and look, the landscape made such bizarre gyrations that he closed his eyes.

 

 

Suddenly, everything settled. He clung to the back of the horse to keep from sliding off. They stood on the mound, the horse's breathing shallow and steady. It jerked its head and shivered. He slid from the saddle and barely managed to land on his feet.

 

 

Alyons' mount rejoined the coursers standing around the Crane Women's hut. The horses' skins gleamed in the furnace glow from the window; the Wickmaster's cape reflected the myriad tiny glimmers in the dirt of the mound as he dismounted from a borrowed animal. The courser without a horse ran gracefully and swiftly over the road and across the creek, stopping at the edge of the mound.

 

 

Banners of dark glided up from the horizon, announcing night.

 

 

Spart emerged from the hut, glanced at Michael without comment, and turned to Alyons. They spoke in Cascar for several minutes. Michael shivered in the river of cool air flowing from the south. The coursers murmured among themselves.

 

 

Nare called to him from the window. He walked unsteadily to the hut. The Crane Woman's luxuriant hair was animated by a current of warm air flowing through the window and caught the inner glow, forming a golden nimbus around her face.

 

 

"To Lamia?" she asked. Michael nodded. "Is she different?"

 

 

"She's sick, I think. Her skin's all patchy." He was relieved. Apparently he was not going to be chided for running away. "I didn't want to come back," he said, the words tumbling out all at once.

 

 

"Of course," she said. She closed the window.

 

 

Alyons glided aboard his horse and the coursers moved off slowly into the dark. For a moment, Michael stood by the hut, then returned to his own shelter. Biri was nowhere to be seen. There was no one to talk to, not even a target for defiance.

 

 

He thought of Eleuth and Helena. He hoped Helena wasn't worried - and then hoped she was. He pondered his own neutral feelings. All emotion seemed to have drained out of him.

 

 

"Wait and see," he said again and again until sleep overtook him.

 

 

That night, before sleep, the darkness behind his eyelids roiled with thoughts of home, the Isomage's mansion, the flaking rims of Lamia's eyes. He awoke before dawn and listened to the humming sky. As the humming faded, he peered out his door to see a pale band of gray on the horizon. Clouds had moved in during the night, and though the air wasn't exceptionally cold, flakes of snow were falling. The flakes melted as soon as they touched the dirt.

 

 

Eleuth came from Halftown about an hour later, wrapped in a light shawl and wearing knee-high boots. She carried four buckets of milk, as on the day Michael had first seen her. He stood in front of his hut but she barely looked at him as she walked past. Biri watched both of them from his door. When the buckets had been deposited outside the Crane Women's hut, she began her return trip.

 

 

"Eleuth," Michael said. She stopped, still not looking at him. "I couldn't come yesterday."

 

 

"So I heard."

 

 

"I want to thank you." Those words sounded particularly callous, as if his need to say them belied their meaning.

 

 

"Are you all right?" she asked. "I heard Alyons took you from the human town."

 

 

"I'm fine. I'll try to see you today."

 

 

She finally turned to him and nodded. Biri regarded her with seeming disinterest. To Michael's surprise, a flash of hatred crossed Eleuth's face. She ran across the stream.

 

 

Spart stood beside him, holding a cup of milk.

 

 

"Where does the milk come from?" he asked, sipping.

 

 

"Always questions."

 

 

"Always."

 

 

"From herds of horses beyond the Blasted Plain. It is brought into Halftown and Euterpe twice each month. It keeps well, and it nourishes." She sighed. "But I remember the fine milk of Earth, rich and full of the taste of the plants cows and goats ate." She smacked her lips and took the empty cup. "You kept the Breed woman company?"

 

 

Michael nodded. He wasn't embarrassed; he saw no reason to worry about appearances in front of the Crane Women.

 

 

"The Sidhe never eat meat?" Michael asked. The question had waited for weeks. Spart jerked and turned slowly to look at Bin's hut. The door cover was drawn and all was silent within. "No," she said. "Even in-speaking the thought is painful. Never eat flesh. Only humans eat meat. It is the sign of their defeat."

 

 

"All Sidhe are vegetarians?"

 

 

Spart looked him firmly in the eye. "Always and ever. That is why we have magic and you do not."

 

 

"Never?" Michael pursued, sensing something unsaid.

 

 

Spart moved away, shaking her head. "The subject is not fit for discussion."

 

 

"What do they sacrifice to Adonna?" He thought of Lirg.

 

 

Spart turned on him and advanced until her nose was close to his chin. "Always forbidden, on occasion mandatory," she said. "Do you know that law?"

 

 

"I don't think so."

 

 

Spart glanced at Bin's hut once more, then walked back to her own.

 

 

"Can't we even hold a discussion longer than four sentences?" Michael called out after her. "Jesus." Out of habit, he began his warm-up exercises. Tiring soon of that, wondering when his training would continue, he entered his hut and lay on the reed mats, clearing a space to reveal bare dirt. He picked up one of the pieces of wood he hadn't fitted properly into the framework and drew a line in the dust. "I'm a poet," he said to himself, quiet but firm. "I'm not a soldier. I'm not a God damn jock. I'm a poet." He closed his eyes and tried to think of something. Surely he could write about what was happening to him. About Helena, Eleuth. About what Bin had told him.

 

 

But it was all a tangle. Their faces came and went, bringing no words with them, not even suggesting. Instead, he began to recall things about Earth. The sadness almost overwhelmed him. His missed his father and mother, the school - he even missed the ridicule and being a dreamy kid in a world of jocks and New Wave robots. He felt like crying. He was being asked - no, forced - to think and behave like an adult, to make life-and-death decisions, to choose, and he was not at all sure he was ready to give up childhood.

 

 

Michael had always been mature, in the sense of being able to think things out for himself. Given time enough, and equanimity, he could puzzle through most things and reach a conclusion others might regard as advanced for his age. But confronted with love, violence, sex - miscegenation - what could he conclude?

 

 

Only that home was better. Safer. How could one ask for more than warmth, food, peace and quiet, a chance to learn and work?

 

 

"There's no place like home," he murmured, and snickered. He tapped his heels together. Oz was a National Park compared with Sidhedark. He had never read much fantasy, outside of what he found in poetry, but the Realm was like nothing he had ever heard of. It was something out of a history lesson, not fairy tales - something out of World War II. Internment camps - the Pact Lands. The Blasted Plain, like some bizarre crater from an even more bizarre bomb, filled with mutated monsters. The Crane Women - drill sergeants. Surely he could write about that.

 

 

The stick began to move. He applied it to the dirt and was pleased with the old, familiar feeling of tapping Death's Radio, the source of poetry. In Orphee, a film he had first seen at age thirteen, Death had come for the modern beat poet Orpheus in the form of a woman in a large black limousine. The limousine's radio played nothing but provocative nonsense phrases. which impressed Orpheus with their purity and poetic essence. Michael sometimes felt he was tuned in to Death's Radio when the poetry came pure and clean.

 

 

Here she comes

 

 

Bottle in hand

 

 

To the mike

 

 

Swaying now

 

 

Gravel voice

 

 

Filmy gown

 

 

She will die

 

 

Her singing

 

 

Will kill her

 

 

We will all

 

 

Listen, her

 

 

Blood and boozy breath

 

 

On our savage ears.

 

 

The wood came to a halt and he tapped it on the final period, the tiny hole in the dirt which concluded the poem. He had written a similar poem a year ago, after seeing Ricky Lee Jones in concert. But that poem had been flowery and melancholy-sweet, like bad Wordsworth, and this version was lean, essential - almost too spare for his tastes. No masterpiece, but a rugger. He frowned.

 

 

Sometimes he had the impression that he wasn't really the author of a poem, that Death's Radio allocated poems by queue number and not personality. But this was a particularly strong sensation. He hadn't written this poem. Somebody, somewhere, had heard his in-speaking and transformed it for him.

 

 

His hand reached out and scrawled Just ask beneath the poem. Ask what?

 

 

Gnomisms. Puzzlements.

 

 

Names are but the robes of fools,

 

 

And words the death of thought.

 

 

Your realm lies not in matter's tools

 

 

But in what song has wrought.

 

 

He dropped the wood. The letters had gathered all the dirt's sparkles into their tiny valleys and banks. They blazed in the hut's gloom. He hadn't written them; it was more as if he had been conversing with someone.

 

 

"Man-child!"

 

 

He left the burning words in the dirt and backed away from the bare space. He pulled open the reed door-cover. Spart stood before his hut. "Yes?"

 

 

"You will not be trained today," she said.

 

 

He stood with the chill draft circulating around him. "So?"

 

 

"You are not a prisoner. Just don't attract Lamia's attention again, and don't say you plan to run away. The Wickmaster has enough chores." Her face briefly pruned up into a grin. "When you are not training, you are free to leave the mound. Without our company." She paused and looked around meaningfully. "After all, where will you go? Not far. Not far."

 

 

"I could cross the Blasted Plain, like when we went to meet Biri," he said. She laughed.

 

 

"I think you are too smart to try that. Not yet."

 

 

That was certainly true enough. "What will you do with Biri today?"

 

 

Spart shook her head and held her finger to her lips. "Not for humans to know." She walked off and he dropped the door cover, then looked back at the words in the dirt, now dark. He reached out with his foot to erase them, but thought better of it and pulled the book from its hiding place under the rafters. It opened in his hands to Keats' long poem, "Lamia," which he had first read a few years before and forgotten. It didn't illuminate his situation, nor did it shed much light on Lamia; it did, however, raise his curiosity as to why she was called that. No part of her was serpentine.

 

 

Except that she was shedding her skin. He closed the book and put it in his new-sewn pocket. Outside, the mound seemed deserted. For a second he had a crazy notion to search for the Crane Women and Biri, observe them secretly - but that was as unlikely as escaping across the Blasted Plain alone.

 

 

He set out for Halftown.

 

 

As he approached the market square he heard a commotion. Three tall Breed males - including the guard who had first met Savarin and Michael on the outskirts of Halftown - stood at the gates to the market, glaring at a small crowd gathered around. The discussion was in Cascar and it sounded heated.

 

 

Eleuth stood to one side, head bowed. Michael walked up to her. "What's going on?"

 

 

"The market is no longer mine to manage," she said. She tried to smile but her lips wouldn't cooperate. "Since Lirg was taken away, I haven't been running it at all well. So the Breed Council claims."

 

 

Michael looked at the guards and the crowds and felt his face redden. "What will you do now?"

 

 

"They'll assign me a new house and find a new manager. I'll move."

 

 

"Can't you fight it?"

 

 

She shook her head as if shocked by the idea. "No! The council's decisions are final."

 

 

"Who's in charge of the council?"

 

 

"Haldan. But he takes direction from Alyons, who oversees everything in the Pact Lands, especially in Halftown."

 

 

"Is there anything I can do?"

 

 

She touched his cheek appreciatively. "No. I will be assigned another job, one better suited to my abilities."

 

 

He felt a surge of guilt as she stroked his cheek.

 

 

"I'm learning more rapidly," she said, her voice distant. "Soon I'll be able to do things a young Sidhe can do."

 

 

"Magic, you mean."

 

 

"Yes. Michael, we could go away today." The look of misery in her face, the desperation, was more than he could stand. "To the river. It looks like it will be warmer. perhaps we could swim."

 

 

Michael grimaced and shook his head. "I'm not sure I'll ever swim again."

 

 

"Oh, the Riverines are seldom a problem in the daytime. Besides, I can see them long before they reach us."

 

 

That hardly reassured him. Why not spend a day with her, though? It wasn't an unpleasant prospect. But his distance from her had grown now that it was obvious she needed someone, needed to lean on him. "I can't help anybody now," he said. She looked down at the ground.

 

 

Finally the guilt - and a basic desire which made him feel worse - drove him to agree. "What about the market?" he asked as they left.

 

 

"It is taken care of now. Come."

 

 

The sun had reappeared, driving away most of the clouds. The afternoon was pleasantly warm. The river flowed broad and slow and was also warm - which would have surprised Michael, had they been on Earth. The water was clear enough to see long silver fish gliding in the depths, just above ghostly reeds. Eleuth lay naked on the bank and Michael lay on his side, facing away from her, his head supported in one hand. "How is the novice Sidhe doing?" Eleuth asked.

 

 

He couldn't read her tone, so he turned away from the river to look at her. "Fine, I guess. I don't know what it takes to be a priest here - a priest of Adonna."

 

 

"It takes compromises, my father said once. He once tried to worship Adonna like a Sidhe, but it wasn't productive. All the Sidhe have compromised. They worship Adonna, Adonna lets them live here."

 

 

"How can worship be coerced?"

 

 

"Some Sidhe are very dedicated to Adonna. They feel a kinship."

 

 

"What kind of kinship?"

 

 

"Adonna is like the Sidhe, Lirg said once. 'We deserve each other, we and our God; we are both incomplete and lost.' What is the God on Earth like?"

 

 

"I'm an atheist," Michael said. "I don't believe there's a God on Earth."

 

 

"Do you believe Adonna exists?"

 

 

That took him aback. He hadn't really questioned the idea.

 

 

This was a fantasy world, however grim, so of course gods could exist here. Earth was real, practical; no gods there. "I've never met him." Michael said.

 

 

"II," Eleuth corrected. "Adonna boasts of no gender. And be glad that you haven't met it. Lirg says - said-" She suddenly fell quiet. "Does it bother you when I talk too much about Lirg?" she asked after some seconds had passed.

 

 

"No. Why should it?"

 

 

"Humans might wish the talk to center on themselves. Not on others. That's what I've heard."

 

 

"I'm not an egotist," Michael said firmly. He looked at her long limbs, so lovely and pale and silky, and reached out to touch her thigh. She moved toward him, but the movement was too automatic, too acquiescing. He flashed on an image of Spart; what Eleuth would someday become.

 

 

"I'm confused," he said, removing his hand and rolling on his back. Eleuth gently lay her chin on his chest, staring up at him with large eyes gone golden in the low-angled sunlight.

 

 

"Why confused?"

 

 

"Don't know what I should do."

 

 

"Then you are free, perhaps."

 

 

"I don't think so. Not free. Just stupid. I don't know what's right."

 

 

"I am right when I love," Eleuth said. "I must be. There is no other way."

 

 

"But why love me?"

 

 

"Did I say I love you?" she asked. Again he was taken aback. He paused another minute before saying, "Whether you do or not," which was certainly witless enough.

 

 

"Yes," Eleuth said. "I love you." She sat up, the muscles on her back sleek like a seal's, her spine a chain of rounded bumps. The sun almost touched the horizon, orange in the haze of the Blasted Plain. Her skin looked like molten silver mixed with gold, warm and yellow-white. "On Earth, do humans choose those they love?"

 

 

"Sometimes," Michael said, but he thought not. He never had. His crushes had always been involuntary and fierce.

 

 

"A pure Sidhe male does not love," Eleuth said. "He attaches, but it is not the same as love. Male Sidhe are not passionate; neither are most Breeds. Liaisons between Breed males and females are usually short. Lirg was different. He was passionate, devoted to my mother." She sounded regretful. "Sidhe women are passionate, desiring, far more often. They are seldom fulfilled." She turned to face him. "That is why there are Breeds in the first place. Sidhe females and human males - almost never the reverse. Why are you confused?"

 

 

"I told you," he said.

 

 

"Not really. You don't love me? That confuses you?"

 

 

He said nothing, but finally nodded. "I like you. I'm grateful."

 

 

Eleuth smiled. "Does it matter, your not loving me?"

 

 

"It doesn't feel right, making love and not reciprocating everything. Feeling everything."

 

 

"Yet for all time, Sidhe males have not loved their geen. And we have survived. It is the way."

 

 

Her resignation didn't help at all. It twisted the perverse knot a little tighter, however, and the only way he could see to forestall the discussion was to kiss her. Soon they were making love and his confusion intensified everything, made everything worse. and better.

 

 

As dusk settled, they walked back to Halftown, Michael trailing his shirt in one hand. Eleuth held on to his arm, smiling as if at some inner joke.

 

 

Chapter Twenty

 

 

The market courtyard was empty when they returned. Eleuth entered the house and began to stack her belongings in one comer. When she came to a brown rug, rolled and tied with twine, she paused and smiled, then undid the twine. "Do you have to go back right away?" she asked.

 

 

"No," Michael said.

 

 

"Then perhaps I can show you some of what I've learned." She lay the brown rug on the floor, smoothing out all the wrinkles, going from corner to corner on her hands and knees. "They'll leave me here for tonight, but tomorrow I must be gone. Lirg would be pleased with how far I've come; if I practice one more night here, it's almost like having him present." She kneeled on the rug and motioned for him to sit at one comer. "Lirg says the reason Breeds have a harder time with magic is because they're more like humans. They have more than one person inside them. but no soul."

 

 

Michael opened his mouth to express doubts about that, but decided he wasn't the one to judge.

 

 

"I'm not sure what he means. meant by that. But I feel the truth in it. Whenever I do magic, and I'm one person, it works. Sometimes my thoughts just split up, and many people talk in my head, and the magic fades. For a Sidhe, there is only one voice in the head, one discipline. So it's easier for a Sidhe to concentrate."

 

 

"Maybe that's what he meant - just concentration."

 

 

"No, it's deeper than that. Lirg said." She sighed and sat up on her knees. "A Sidhe would be very upset to talk about his parents all the tune. Breeds like to think they're Sidhe. but I'm mostly human. Anyway, when you bring it all down to one person willing one thing, magic just flows. The next hardest thing is controlling it. Now little magic is easy to control. For a split second you tie up the Realm with your head and there it is, what you want done is done. The Realm flows for you. It's almost automatic, like walking. But big magic. that's very complicated. Shall I explain more?"

 

 

Michael nodded. His mouth was a little dry. Eleuth lay on the rug, staring at him steadily with her large dark eyes, her straight hair falling down around her shoulders and curling over one breast.

 

 

"The Sidhe part of a Breed knows instinctively that any world is just a song of addings and takings away. To do grand magic, you must be completely in tune with the world - adding when the world adds, taking away when the world takes away. Then it becomes possible to turn the song around, and make the world be in tune with you, for a few moments, at least. A world is just one long, difficult song. The difference between the Realm and your home, that's just the difference between one song and another." She closed her eyes and chanted. "Toh kelih ondulya, med not ondulya trasn spaan not kod."

 

 

"What does that mean?"

 

 

"It means something like, 'All is waves, with nothing waving across no distance at all.'"

 

 

Michael gave a low whistle and shook his head. "And you feel all that?"

 

 

"When it works," she said. "Now sit farther back, on the edge of the blanket. I won't be able to talk to you for a while, because I can't listen to you in-speak. Understand?"

 

 

"Yes." Maybe.

 

 

She stood in the middle of the blanket and held out her arms, then swung them to point at opposite comers, as if doing slow exercises. Michael looked at the corner on his left and saw a curl of darkness, as tiny as a thumbnail, seem to screw the rug to the floor. The rug tensed under his knees as if alive.

 

 

She held her arms down at her side and closed her eyes, lifting her chin. Her fingers straightened.

 

 

For the merest instant, four glowing pillars rose from each corner and passed through the roof as if it weren't there, into a greater darkness high above. She held out her hand, fingers clenched into a fist, and spun once. Her eyes flashed just as he blinked and in the moment his lids were closed, the room seemed bright enough to be seen clearly through the skin.

 

 

She knelt in front of him, held out her fist and uncurled it. A beetle lay in the middle of her palm, like a scarab but deep metallic green, with velvety green wing cases. It moved slowly, turning as if confused.

 

 

"That's very nice," Michael said, not sure whether to be impressed or not.

 

 

"It was a cold night, with clouds and the sky filled with light," she said."It was a kind of road, hard and black, with white lines and golden dots and grass imprisoned in rock on each side, and trees in the grass." She pointed to the beetle. "This was. there. So I brought it back."

 

 

Michael blinked. "I-"

 

 

"I brought it for you from your home," Eleuth said. "You live in a very strange place."

 

 

The beetle crawled a half inch across her palm, then stopped and rolled over. Its legs kicked feebly and it was still. Eleuth looked down on it with concern and touched it gently with one finger. Drops of water glistened on the finger, as if.

 

 

As if it had searched through wet grass.

 

 

"Is it dead?" Michael asked.

 

 

Tears brimmed in Eleuth's eyes. "I think so. I have so much to learn."

 

 

It was dark and very cold when he returned to the mound. The windows of the Crane Women's hut glowed brightly. Spart waited for him between the huts, standing on one leg. She crooked a finger at him, lowered her leg, and strode to his hut. He followed. She gestured for him to pull back the cover and he complied. She snapped her fingers and the letters of the poem in the dirt glowed. "Where did that come from?

 

 

"I'm a poet," he said, resenting her intrusion. "I write poetry. There's no paper here, so I write it in the dirt."

 

 

"Yes, but where does it come from?"

 

 

"How should I know? It's poetry."

 

 

"Do you know how old this poem is?" she asked, pointing to the last few lines. "In its Cascar version?"

 

 

Michael shook his head. "I just wrote it."

 

 

"It is dangerous to write such things. Your play with the Breed girl is making you a very interesting student." She walked away, her long limbs carrying her like a two-legged spider.

 

 

"It's my poem," he called after her. He heard a scratching noise behind him and saw Nare peering around the door into the hut's inner darkness. She mouthed a few words, her eyes focused on the glowing scrawls. "Tonn's Kaeli," she said, grinning at Michael. She straightened and followed Spart.

 

 

The air smelled of dust and electricity, though the night sky was cloudless. He lay on the grass reeds, shivering, and thought briefly of Eleuth and what she had done, then more lingeringly of Helena. He wondered what Helena was doing, and when he would get to see her again. and he wondered if she could ever be as affectionate as Eleuth.

 

 

(What Eleuth had done.)

 

 

It seemed almost too much to hope for.

 

 

Chapter Twenty-One

 

 

The few times Michael saw the Crane Women training Bin, they spoke Cascar and he couldn't understand precisely what was happening. They continued to work with Michael, and as the days passed and the weather grew colder, Nare finally devoted a day to teaching him how to harness hyloka, or draw-ing-of-heat-from-the-center. He was just beginning to get the hang of the discipline when she abandoned him, and, for a week, they concentrated on Bin from dawn to dusk.

 

 

On a bitterly cold morning, Michael came out of his hut and saw Bin in the middle of the mound with the Crane Women. They surrounded him with linked hands, their eyes closed and faces upturned to the cool blue sky. Snow fell around them in lazy, sauntering flakes. Michael sat cross-legged on the dirt before his hut door.

 

 

For hours, the group simply stood, doing nothing. Michael wrote poems in the hardening dirt and scratched them out, peering up now and then to see if anything had changed. He tried to recapture the sensation of an inner, separate voice, but failed.

 

 

Finally, Bin collapsed between them and the crane Women broke away, backing up, crouched over like birds of prey, their eyes wide and lips pressed tightly together. They went to their hut and left Bin where he lay. Michael went to him and bent over, feeling his forehead.

 

 

"Are you all right?"

 

 

"Go away," Bin said, eyes scrunched shut.

 

 

"Just asking," Michael said. Spart came running from the house, arms swinging.

 

 

"Go!" she screeched. "Leave him alone! Get out of here!"

 

 

"Forever, you mean?" he asked resentfully, running ahead of her shooing hands.

 

 

"Come back at dusk." She looked down on Bin, who hadn't moved.

 

 

"Is he all right?"

 

 

"No. Go now."

 

 

Michael walked across the stream, glancing over his shoulder at the frozen tableau of Spart and the prostrate Sidhe. He frowned and kicked at small rocks on the road to Euterpe.

 

 

The snow fell more heavily, forming speckled caps on the bushes and grass clumps by the roadside. He practiced hyloka as he walked, and felt a gradual spreading of warmth from the pit of his stomach.

 

 

How many days had he been in the Realm? His concentration was broken by the question and he became cold rapidly. He had lost count of the days; perhaps two months, perhaps two and a half or three. Everything had merged into training, running, casting shadows, with highlights of terror, of Eleuth's affection, and thoughts of Helena.

 

 

He frowned and bore down on hyloka again, feeling new heat rise in his chest and spread down his arms. He smiled and swung his arms experimentally. The chill was dispelled. When Euterpe was in sight, he quickened his pace. His face was flushed and his fingers tingled.

 

 

He thought of Biri lying on the ground in apparent agony and was very glad he wasn't a Sidhe. He felt almost giddy with relief that he was Michael Perrin. He was even glad to be in the Realm, because otherwise he wouldn't be so warm, standing in the snow; so warm and comfortable. He kicked his legs and didn't notice the thin trickle of smoke.

 

 

Michael was dancing by the time he reached the outskirts of Euterpe. He jigged past the outer houses, grinning and humming. He wondered vaguely why he was so happy, and turned up the street to Helena's alley.

 

 

A thin coat of ice crusted the cobbles in the central gutter. As he danced, his feet didn't so much crack the ice as melt it. They left steaming tracks. He leaped and ran around the corner of the alley, hollering as he passed between the blank stone walls. In his ecstasy, he seemed to find the inner voice again, and was about to chant a snatch of poetry when he came to the bottom of the stairs. He stopped, somewhat daunted. He didn't want to be less than dignified around Helena.

 

 

Michael's feet hissed on the steps. He stood by Helena's doorway, knocking on the frame. Something was burning. He looked around, puzzled, hoping it was only a cooking fire and not the building. The smell grew stronger. He lifted his arm to scratch his nose.

 

 

The sleeve of his shirt smoked. He stared at it for a moment, dumbfounded. Heat radiated from his skin. Flames curled from the edge of the fabric, small and dull at first; then the entire sleeve ignited. He clawed and tugged his way out of the shirt, casting it to the floor, where it sent up volumes of gray smoke. He dropped to his knees and pulled the book from its pocket, dropping it as his fingers scorched the binding.

 

 

The pants caught next and he kicked out of them, brushing bits of char and smoking fragments from his legs.