Now that one who is dead was, in her own way, more a child of trees and horizons than Thrakia’s followers. She was so much at home in the open that she had no need to put off clothes or cleanliness, reason or gentleness, when we sickened of the cities and went forth beyond them. From this trait I got many of the names I bestowed on her, such as Wood’s Colt or Fallow Hind or, from
my prowlings among ancient books, Dryad and Elven. (She liked me to choose her names, and this pleasure had no end, because she was inexhaustible.)
I let my harpstring ring into silence. Turning about, I say to Thrakia, “I wasn’t singing for you. Not for anyone. Leave me alone.”
She draws a breath. The wind ruffles her hair and brings me an odor of her:
not female sweetness, but fear. She clenches her fists and says, “You’re crazy.”
“Wherever did you find a meaningful word like that?” I gibe; for my own pain and—to be truthful—my own fear must strike out at something, and here she stands. “Aren’t you content any longer with ‘untranquil’ or ‘disequilibrated’?”
“I got it from you,” she says defiantly, “you and your damned archaic songs. There’s another word, ‘damned.’ And how it suits you! When are you going to stop this morbidity?”
“And commit myself to a clinic and have my brain laundered nice and sanitary? Not soon, darling.” I use that last word aforethought, but she cannot know what scorn and sadness are in it for me, who know that once it could also have been a name for my girl. The official grammar and pronunciation of language is as frozen as every other aspect of our civilization, thanks to electronic recording and neuronic teaching; but meanings shift and glide about like subtle serpents. (0 adder that stung my Foalfoot!)
I shrug and say in my driest, most city-technological voice, “Actually, I’m the practical, nonmorbid one. Instead of running away from my emotions—via drugs, or neuroadjustment, or playing at savagery like you, for that matter—I’m about to implement a concrete plan for getting back the person who made me happy.”
“By disturbing Her on Her way home?”
“Anyone has the right to petition the dark Queen while she’s abroad on earth.”
“But this is past the proper time—”
“No law’s involved, just custom. People are afraid to meet Her outside a crowd, a town, bright flat lights. They won’t admit it, but they arc. So I came here precisely not to be part of a queue. I don’t want to speak into a recorder for subsequent computer analysis of my words. How could I be sure She was listening? I want to meet Her as myself, a unique being, and look in Her eyes while I make my prayer.”
Thrakia chokes a little. “She’ll be angry.”
“Is She able to be angry, anymore?”
“I. . . I don’t know. What you mean to ask for is so impossible, though. So absurd. That SUM should give you back your girl. You know It never makes exceptions.”
“Isn’t She Herself an exception?”
“That’s different. You’re being silly. SUM has to have a, well, a direct human liaison. Emotional and cultural feedback, as well as statistics. How else can It govern rationally? And She must have been chosen out of the whole world. Your girl, what was she? Nobody!”
“To me, she was everybody.”
“You—” Thrakia catches her lip in her teeth. One hand reaches out and closes on my bare forearm, a hard hot touch, the grimy fingernails biting. When I make no response, she lets go and stares at the ground. A V of outbound geese passes overhead. Their cries come shrill through the wind, which is loudening in the forest.
“Well,” she says, “you are special. You always were. You went to space and came back, with the Great Captain. You’re maybe the only man alive who Un-
derstands about the ancients. And your singing, yes, you don’t really entertain, your songs trouble people and can’t be forgotten. So maybe She will listen to you. But SUM won’t. It can’t give special resurrections. Once that was done, a single time, wouldn’t it have to be done for everybody? The dead would overrun the living.”