“I’ll drive you tomorrow, as far as you like,” he offered. Her expression betokened reluctance. He grew clever. “Yes, you want to be near the land. Well, here’s a family in it you’ve nay met. Our home, our manners, they should interest you, they’re unusual, I swear; we’re no Swedes or British or-Please! You’d make us hurrah. We’d never forget.”
“We-eu. . . .” She eased, smiled, moved closer, fluttered her lashes the least bit. “It’s too kind you are, Elias Daukantas, and sure I’d be of a good evening, stayed I there. So if you are certain that himself will not object-”
A whirr loudened. Turning, they saw a small car approach. Its air cushion threw dust right and left like the foam at the bow of a speeding boat.
It reached them and braked in a roar. Tripods slammed down. The bubble top dilated. A big man tumbled out. “Caitlin!” he bawled.
She dropped her sonador. “Dan, oh, Dan!” She sped to him.
They grabbed each other. After a while his mouth left hers and sought her ear. “Listen, macushla,” he whispered. “I’m on the run. Hunted. My name is Dan Smith. Okay?”
“Okay,” she breathed back. He felt the elastic slimness of her, smelled sunlit odors of hair and warmer odors of flesh. “What is your wish, my heart?”
“Get the devil out of here, to some safe hiding place. Then we’ll talk.”
Brodersen had all he could do to stay wary, rather than cast her down and him above.
The same effort shuddered in her, stronger than his. She pulled free, wrenched herself around, and said waveringly to the gaping farmer: “Elias, dear, it’s a grand surprise I’ve had. Here is my own fianc‚, Daniel Smith. We’d looked not to meet before the festival; he’s been upon the road. But since the gods are so kind- Can you pardon me at all, at all? I’ll be back, the Powers willing, and then I’ll sing for you.”
He and she shook hands and uttered clumsy politeness. Caitlin snatched up her instrument and tugged on Brodersen’s sleeve. He and she scrambled into the car. It leaped onward. Daukantas stood for a long while staring the way it had gone, before he raised his horn and summoned the cattle.
A moon and a half shining, Phoebus not far out of sight, the sky was violet more than black and showed few stars. Of the constellations, only Medea and Ariadne appeared complete. Aphrodite and Zeus, sister planets, stood candle-bright. Three small clouds glowed. Silver washed across treetops and splashed on the ground beneath, which lay in a translucent dusk. Through a break in the forest shimmered Mount Lorn. Torchflies flitted about like tiny lanterns.
Choristers trilled in their tens of thousands, calling from among stalks and leaves for their mates; a starlark chanted; near the cave, a spring flowed forth in crystalline clinking.
Caitlin had guided Brodersen here, down a game trail after he parked the car. He had brought outdoor kit of his own, including a fuel-cell heater which gave the shelter a welcome warmth. Sleeping bags on moffite pads made the floor comfortable. But they two did not sleep. After a while, amidst tender jesting, they cooked and ate dinner. When that was done, they did not sleep either.
Toward dawn, she raised herself on an elbow, the better to regard him.
The cave faced west, and Persephone’s beams were now streaming straight in, so eerily bright that against the whiteness of her he thought he could see how rosy were her nipples. He reached up to cup a heavy softness; it pressed itself around his hand as she leaned down to kiss him, a kiss which lingered.
“My love, my darling, my life,” she nearly sang, “had I words to tell the wonder of you, humans would remember me when Sappho and Catullus lie forgotten. But not Bngit herself commands that magic.”
“Oh, Christ, how I love you,” he said, hoarse from the power of it. “How Side 22
Anderson, Poul – Avatar, The
long for us? Three years?”
“A snippet more. I count months as well, from when first I knew what you were doing to my soul, till the chance came for me to be seizing you.”