Sylvan said hopefully, “I’ll come back with you.”
“No,” she said, looking him in the eyes, her mouth stern. “I want you to go with them, Sylvan. I said this to you before. I came to Grass for a reason, an important reason. The more I find out, the more important that reason becomes, but I keep getting sidetracked—by you, by Rigo, by Stella, by disappearances and alarms, cluttering up everything. All you do is distract me and bother me.”
“Mother.” said Tony. “Leaving you here—“
“Go, Tony. Stella is alive. I’m joyful about that, but we mustn’t forget all the others. There is plague out there, and people dying of it. The foxen know things. Someone must find out what they know.
Brother Mainoa is old and tired, and Father James may need my help. I’ll stay and find out what I can.”
“After Stella’s cared for, I’ll come back,” Tony said. “Yes. Do. Either you or Rillibee. And let your father know what’s happened if you can.”
She turned and reached out in the direction of the foxen, thinking of Commons, across the forest. She pictured Tony going there, Tony and Stella and Sylvan and Rillibee. The picture solidified in her mind, became real, as clear as though she were seeing it, and she had a sudden headache. A purring sound came from the grasses. Foxen drew near. People were drawn upon broad backs once more, fished up like wreckage from the deep, Rillibee dragging Stella’s limp body up with him while she whimpered like some small, hurt animal.
An uncertain number of foxen moved into the forest and disappeared. Marjorie felt herself summoned, and she climbed upon His back once again with a strange mixture of feelings: relief, grief, anger all mushed up together like an emotional goulash. Into her mind came both the picture and the feel of stroking hands. She leaned forward upon the endless expanse of hide and cried while the stroking went on. After a time the stroking changed into a firm patting, the feeling was of someone telling her to straighten up, behave herself. Marjorie felt herself saying, “Yes, Mother,” in her mind. Laughter. At least amusement.
“Yes, Father,” she amended, slightly amused despite herself. Beneath her His shoulders moved gently. Male. Indisputably male. Prancing, prowling. The gait, male. Head moving, so, so. Male. Claws sliding in their sheaths, fingers touching, delicate as needles. Male. She saw multitudes of shapes, not quite clearly, most of them male. The males were violet and plum and mauve and deep wine red. The females were smaller, more softly blue, though she could not see them, either. Male, he told her. I. “First.” Male.
Yes, she assented. He was male. He had thought “First” at her with quotation marks around it. Not his name, then. Merely something Mainoa called him. In his own mind the symbol of his name had movement and color—a purple wildness, full of scarlet lightning, veiled with gray-blue cloud. Himself.
Pictures moved in her mind. She saw Mainoa, stout and green-clad, walking soberly among the foxen shapes. Around him an aura bloomed, a shadow gathered, pale light on a dark ground, the light growing dimmer. Still he walked, indomitable, his feet a counterpoint to the movement beneath her.
Mainoa, she thought. I like him, too.
A new vision. Marjorie among the multitude of foxen. Not herself, precisely, but an idealized Marjorie who danced on low turf amid a gathering of foxen, creatures without shape or limitation and yet indisputably themselves. They were dancing with their shadows as the sun either rose or set, the long shadows seeming to stretch almost to the horizon. Sinuous shadows. Sensuous shadows. She, Marjorie, among sinuous, sensuous shadows, dancing with the foxen.
They danced in pairs, male and female, weaving their shadows together, letting their shadows touch. Shadows, and minds, touching. The others danced in pairs. Marjorie danced with First, the sleeves of her shirt growing wide, like wings, flowing like a tail, her hair loose in a silky mane. A female. Dancing. She still could not see His vision of Himself, but she could see His vision of her.
You. Marjorie. Female. Gait. Motion. Color. Smell.
Perilous, she whispered inside herself.Dangerous.