As she descended, she shifted smoothly, her appearance changing almost from step to step. As soon as I realized what was occurring I relaxed my own efforts and reversed their small effects. I had commenced changing the moment I had seen her, and presumably she had done the same on viewing me. I hadn’t thought she’d go to that extent to humor me, a second time, here on her own turf.
The shift was completed just as she reached the bottommost stair, becoming a lovely woman in black trousers and red shirt with flared sleeves. She looked at me again and smiled, moved toward me, embraced me.
It would have been gauche to say that I’d intended shifting but had forgotten. Or any other remark on the matter.
She pushed me out to arm’s distance, lowered her gaze and raised it, shook her head.
“Do you sleep in your clothes before or after violent exercise?” she asked me.
“That’s unkind,” I said. “I stopped to sightsee on the way over and ran into a few problems.” ‘
“That is why you are late?”
“No. I’m late because I stopped in our gallery and took longer than I’d intended. And I’m not very late.” She took hold of my arm and turned me.
“I will forgive you,” she said, steering me toward the rose and green and gold-flecked pillar of ways, set in the mirrored alcove across the room to the right.
I didn’t feel that called for a response, so I didn’t make one. I watched with interest as we entered the alcove, to see whether she would conduct me in a clock- wise direction or its opposite about the pillar.
The opposite, it turned out. Interesting.
We were reflected and re-reflected from the three sides. So was the room we had quitted. And with each circuit we made of the pillar it became a different room.
I watched it change, kaleidoscopically, until she halted me before the crystal grotto beside the underground sea. “It’s been a long time since I thought of this place,”
I said, stepping forth upon the pure white sand into the crystal-cast light, variously reminiscent of bonfires, solar reflections, candelabra, and LED displays, functions of size and distancing perhaps, laying occasional pieces of rainbow upon the shore, the walls, the black water.
She took my hand and led me toward a raised and railed platform some small distance off to the right. A table stood full set upon it. A collection of covered trays occupied a larger serving table inland of it. We mounted a small stair, and I seated her and moved to check out the goodies next door.
“Do sit down, Merlin,” she said. “I’ll serve you.”
“That’s all right,” I answered, raising a lid. “I’m already here. I’ll do the first round.”
She was on her feet.
“Buffet style then,” she said.
“Sure.”
We filled our plates and moved to the table. Seconds after we had seated ourselves a brilliant flash of light came to us across the water, illuminating the arching dome of the cavern vault like the ribbed interior of some massive beast that was digesting us.
“You needn’t look so apprehensive. You know they can’t come in this far.”
“Waiting for a thunderclap puts my appetite on hold,” I said.
She laughed just as a distant roll of thunder reached us.
“And that makes everything all right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I replied, raising my fork.
“Strange, the relatives life gives us,” she said.
I looked at her, tried to read her expression, couldn’t.
So, “Yes,” I said.
She studied me for a moment, but I wasn’t giving anything away either.
So, “When you were a child you went monosyllabic as a sign of petulance,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
We began eating. There were more flashes out over the still, dark sea.
By light of the last one I thought I caught sight of a distant ship, black sails full-rigged and bellied.
“You kept your engagement with Mandor earlier?”
“Yes.”
“How is he?”
“Fine.”
“Something bothering you, Merlin?”
“Many things.”
“Tell Mother?”
“What if she’s a part of it?”
“I would be disappointed if I were not. Still, how long will you hold the business of the ty’iga against me? I did what I thought was right. I still think it was.”