tune.
Ilaloa’s fingers tightened around his. “You are with grief,
Sean.”
“It’s this damned, bloody planet,” he answered. “It’s
all so unnecessaryl”
She looked steadily at him, and her voice was serious. “You have been long shut away from life,” she said. “You have forgotten the sweetness of rain and summer nigbts. There is a hollowness in your breast, Sean.”
“What has that got to do with this?”
“This is life around us,” she said. “You have forgotten how it can be hot and dark and cruel. You burn your dead in fire and forget that flesh molders into earth. The land should be strong with your bones and blossom where you died. You would have it forever day, not remembering night and storm. You live with ghosts and dreams in your own darkness. That is wrong, Sean.”
“But this-!”
“Oh, it is hard and angry here, but it lives in the now. Are you afraid of the riving and screaming in childbirth? Do you fear to remember the hunter by moorilight, how she
strikes down life to feed her young? Do you know the lust of killing and ruling?”
“You d-don’t think that’s right, do you?”
‘No. But it is. Oh, Sean, you cannot love life till you are life, all of it, not as it should be, but as it is, laughter and grief, cruelty and kindness, beyond yourself-No, you do not understands
They walked on. After a moment, she said gently, “Oh, the real can be made better. There is no need for this endless strife and suffering. But it is still more-right-tban that which is in the city Stellamont.”
“You mean,” he asked, “that reason is wrong? That instinct-”
She laughed, though it had a wistful tone. “You are kind, but your kindness is so far away.” Suddenly she almost cried aloud. “Oh, Sean, if we could have children-”
He drew her close to him, forgetting the cat-stares around, and kissed her. Somehow, he felt lightened. They had tried to know each other, and even the failure was a kind of victory.
After lunch, the thoroughfares emptied as city folk retired for a siesta. They wandered into a labyrinth of crooked streets and blind alleys and were lost. That wasn’t serious; they need only go in the general direction of the castle to spot it from some open plaza.
Sean peered up a street, a narrow tunnel under crazily leaning houses, wondering if it might lead somewhere. “Shall we try this?”
There was no reply. He hadn’t expected it; Ilaloa left half his questions hanging. But when he turned around, he was shocked.
He bad seen love in her face,, merriment, alarm, grief, loneliness, disgust, timidity, and the blankness of withch-awal. But he had never before seen her really frightened.
“‘Lo-wh,@it’s wrong?” He whispered it, and Ms gun seemed to slide of itself from the holster.
Her eyes sought his, strickenly. One hand covered her
opened mouth as if to fend off a shriek. “Amuriho,” she
gasped. “Hu@ni amuriho.”
He drew her behind him, against the wall, and faced
out into the street. It was empty.
“A thought. A thought from-no, Seanl”
He didn’t look at her. His eyes hunted up and down the road where nothing stirred. “X,” he said.
“It was not of man and not of Erulan,” she breathed sbakingly. “It was cruel and a hollow night filled with stars.
And cold, 6oldl”
“Where?”
“Near this place. Behind some wall.”
“We’re getting out of here!”
“Again-there it is again!” She clawed at his body, thrusting close. Her face was buried against him and he felt
her shiver.
‘C-can you read the mind?” be stammered.
“Darkness,” she gulped. “Darkness and emptiness, full of stars, a picture of stars like a sickle around a shining
field.”
The gun butt was slippery in his hand. “Can they sense us?”
“I do not know.” The whisper was raw, there in the bloody twilight. “It thinks of stars beyond stars, but always that picture of a sickle reaping shiningness. There is seem and mastery in it, like steel and-” Her voice trailed off.
“It is gone again now,” she said in a small and childlike
tone. “I cannot feel it any more.”