Текст книги "The Journeyer"

Автор книги: Gary Jennings

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Our slave Nostril was there, with a stranger, one of the gorgeous young Kashan men. Perhaps my conversation with the maidservant Sitarè had made me temporarily impervious to disgust, for I did not make violent outcry or retreat from the scene. I looked on as indifferently as did the camels, which only shuffled and mumbled and munched. Both of the men were naked, and the stranger was on his hands and knees in the straw, and our slave was hunched over his backside, bucking like a camel in rut. The lewdly coupling Sodomites turned their heads when I entered, but only grinned at me and kept on with their indecency.

The young man had a body that was as handsome to look upon as his face was. But Nostril, even when fully clothed, was of a repellent appearance, as I have already described. I can only say further that his paunchy torso and pimply buttocks and spindly limbs, when totally exposed, were a sight to make most onlookers retch up their most recent meal. I was amazed that such a revolting creature could have persuaded anyone the least bit less revolting to play al-mafa‘ul to his al-fa’il.

Nostril’s fa’il implement was invisible to me, being inserted where it was, but the young man’s organ was visible below his belly, and stiffened into its candelòto aspect. I thought that somewhat odd, since neither he nor Nostril was manipulating it in any way. And it seemed even more odd, when he and Nostril finally groaned and writhed together, to see his candelòto—still without benefit of touch or fondling—squirt spruzzo into the straw on the floor.

After they had briefly rested and panted, Nostril heaved his sweat-shiny bulk off the young man’s back. Without dipping a wash of water from the camel trough, without even wadding some straw to wipe his extremely wee little organ, he began putting his clothes back on, and humming a merry tune as he did so. The young stranger more indolently and slowly began to get dressed, as if he frankly enjoyed displaying his nude body even under such disgraceful circumstances.

Leaning against a stall partition, I said to our slave, as if we had all the while been chatting companionably, “You know something, Nostril? There are many rascals and scamps portrayed in song and story—characters like Encolpios and Renart the Fox. They live a gay vagabond life, and they live by their foxy wits, but somehow they are never guilty of crime or sin. They commit only pranks and jests. They steal from none but thieves, their amatory exploits are never sordid, they drink and carouse without ever getting drunk or foolish, their swordplay never causes more than a flesh wound. They have winning ways and twinkling eyes and a ready laugh, even on the scaffold, for they never hang. Whatever the adventure, those adventurous scoundrels are always charming and dashing, clever and amusing. Such stories make one want to meet such a brave, bold, lovable rascal.”

“And now you have,” said Nostril. He twinkled his piggy eyes and smiled to show his stubble teeth and struck a pose that he probably thought was dashing.

“Now I have,” I said. “And there is nothing lovable or admirable about you. If you are the typical rascal, then all the stories are lies, and a rascal is a swine. You are filthy of person and of habit, loathsome in appearance and character, cloacal in your proclivities. You are altogether deserving of that seething oil vat from which I too indulgently argued for your rescue.”

The handsome stranger laughed coarsely at that. Nostril sniffled and muttered, “Master Marco, as a devout Muslim I must object to being likened to a swine.”

“I hope you would also balk at coupling with a sow,” I said. “But I doubt it.”

“Please, young master. I am devoutly keeping Ramazan, which prohibits intercourse between Muslim men and women. I must also admit that, even in the permissible months, women are sometimes hard for me to come by, ever since my pretty face was disfigured by my nose’s misfortune.”

“Oh, do not exaggerate,” I said. “There is always somewhere a woman desperate enough for anything. In my lifetime, I have seen a Slavic woman couple with a black man and an Arab woman couple with an actual ape.”

Nostril said loftily, “I hope you do not suppose that I would condescend to a woman as ugly as I am. Ah, but Jafar here—Jafar is as comely as the comeliest woman.”

I growled, “Tell your comely wretch to hurry with his dressing and get out of here, or I will feed him to the camels.”

The comely wretch glared at me, then gave a melting look of entreaty to Nostril, who immediately insulted me with an impertinent question: “You would not like to try him yourself, Master Marco? The experience might broaden your mind.”

“I will broaden your one nose-hole!” I snarled, taking the dagger from my belt. “I will open it all the way around your ugly head! How dare you speak so to a master? What do you take me for?”

“For a young man with much yet to learn,” he said. “You are a journeyer now, Master Marco, and before you get home again you will have traveled much farther yet, and seen and experienced much more. When you do arrive home at last, you will be rightfully scornful of men there who call mountains high and swamps deep, without their ever having scaled a mountain or plumbed a swamp—men who have never ventured beyond their narrow streets and their commonplace routines and their cautious pastimes and their pinched little lives.”

“Perhaps so. But what has that to do with your galineta whore?”

“There are other journeys that can take a man beyond the ordinary, Master Marco, not in distance of travel but in breadth of understanding. Consider. You have reviled this young man as a whore, when he is only what he was bred and developed and trained and expected to be.”

“A Sodomite, then, if you prefer. To a Christian, that is a sinful thing to be—a sinner and a sin to be abhorred.”

“I ask you, Master Marco, to make only a short journey into the world of this young man.” Before I could object, he said, “Jafar, tell the foreigner of your upbringing.”

Still clutching his lower garment in his hand, and glancing uneasily at me, Jafar began. “Oh, young Mirza, reflection of the light of Allah—”

“Never mind that,” said Nostril. “Just tell of your body’s preparation for sexual commerce.”

“Oh, blessing of the world,” Jafar began again. “From the earliest years I can remember, always while I slept I wore inserted into my nether aperture a golulè, which is an implement made of kashi ceramic, a sort of small tapered cone. Every time my bedtime toilet was completed, the golulè was put into me, well greased with some drug to stimulate the development of my badàm. My mother or nurse would at intervals ease it farther inside me, and when I could accommodate it all, a larger golulè was substituted. Thus my opening gradually grew more ample, but without impairing the muscle of closure which surrounds it.”

“Thank you for the story,” I said to him, but coldly, and to Nostril I said, “Born so or made so, a Sodomite is still an abomination.”

“I think his story is not finished,” said Nostril. “Bear with the journey only a little farther.”

“When I was perhaps five or six years old,” Jafar went on, “I was relieved of having to wear the golulè, and instead my next older brother was encouraged to use me whenever he had an urge and an erected organ.”

“Adrìo de vu!” I gasped, compassion getting the better of my revulsion. “What a horrible childhood!”

“It could have been worse,” said Nostril. “When a bandit or slave-taker captures a boy, and that boy has not been thus carefully prepared, the captor brutally impales him there with a tent peg, to make the opening fit for subsequent use. But that tears the encircling muscle, and the boy can never thereafter contain himself, but excretes incontinently. Also, he cannot thereafter utilize that muscle to give pleasurable contractions during the act. Go on, Jafar.”

“When I had got accustomed to that brother’s usage, my next older and better-equipped brother helped my further development. And when my badàm was mature enough to let me begin to enjoy the act, then my father …”

“Adrìo de vu!” I exclaimed again. But now curiosity had got the better of both my revulsion and my compassion. “What do you mean about the badàm?” I could not comprehend that detail, for the word badàm means an almond.

“You did not know of it?” said Nostril with surprise. “Why, you have one yourself. Every male does. We call it the almond because of its shape and size, but physicians sometimes refer to it as the third testicle. It is situated behind the other two, not in the bag, but hidden up inside your groin. A finger or, ahem, any other object inserted far enough into your anus rubs against that almond and stimulates it to a pleasurable excitement.”

“Ah,” I said, enlightened. “So that is why, just now, Jafar made spruzzo seemingly without any caress or provocation.”

“We call that spurt the almond milk,” Nostril said primly. He added, “Some women of talent and experience know of that invisible male gland. In one way or another, they tickle it while they are coupling with a man, so that when he ejaculates the almond milk his enjoyment is blissfully heightened.”

I wagged my head wonderingly, and said, “You are right, Nostril. A man can learn new things from journeying.” I slid my dagger back into its sheath. “This time at least, I forgive the brash way you spoke to me.”

He replied smugly, “A good slave puts utility before humility. And now, Master Marco, perhaps you would like to slip your other weapon into another sheath? Observe Jafar’s splendid scabbard—”

“Scagaròn!” I snapped. “I may tolerate such customs of others while I am in these regions, but I will not partake of them. Even if Sodomy were not a vile sin, I should still prefer the love of women.”

“Love, master?” echoed Nostril, and Jafar laughed in his coarse way, and one of the camels belched. “No one spoke of love. The love between a man and a man is another thing entirely, and I believe that only we warmhearted warrior Muslims can know that most sublime of all emotions. I doubt that any cold-blooded and peace-preaching Christian could be capable of that love. No, master, I was suggesting merely a matter of convenient release and relief and satisfaction. For that, what difference what sex?”

I snorted like a supercilious camel. “Easy for you to say, slave, since to you it makes no difference what animal.As for me, I am happy to say that as long as there are women in the world I shall have no yearning for men to couple with. I am a man myself, and I am too familiar with my own body to have the least interest in that of any other male. But women—ah, women! They are so magnificently different from me, and each so exquisitely different from another—I can never value them enough!”

“Value them, master?” He sounded amused.

“Yes.” I paused, then said with due solemnity, “I once killed a man, Nostril, but I could never bring myself to kill a woman.”

“You are young yet.”

“Now, Jafar,” I said to the young man, “put on the rest of your clothes and go, before my father and uncle get back here.”

“I saw them arrive just now, Master Marco,” said Nostril. “They went with the Almauna Esther into her house.”

So I went over there, too, and was again waylaid by the maidservant Sitarè, as she let me in the door. I would have gone on by her unheeding, but she took me by the arm and whispered, “Do not speak loudly.”

I said, not whispering, “I have nothing to speak to you about.”

“Hush. The mistress is inside, and your father and uncle are with her. So do not let them hear, but answer me. My brother Aziz and I have discussed the matter of you and—”

“I am not a matter!” I said testily. “I do not much like my being discussed.”

“Oh, do please hush. Are you aware that the day after tomorrow is the Eid-al-Fitr?”

“No. I do not even know what that is.”

“Tomorrow at sundown Ramazan ends. At that moment begins the month of Shawal, and its first day is the Feast of Fast-Broken, when we Muslims are released from abstinence and restriction. Any time after sundown tomorrow, you and I can licitly make zina.”

“Except that you are a virgin,” I reminded her. “And must stay that way, for your brother’s sake.”

“That is what Aziz and I discussed. We have a small favor to ask of you, Mirza Marco. If you will consent to it, I will consent—and I have my brother’s consent—to make zina with you. Of course, you can have him too, if you like.”

I said suspiciously, “Your offer sounds like a considerable return for a small favor. And your beloved brother sounds brotherly indeed. I can hardly wait to meet this pimping and simpering lout.”

“You have met him. He is the kitchen scullion, with hair dark red like mine, and—”

“I do not remember.” But I could imagine him: the twin to Nostril’s stable mate Jafar, a muscular and handsome hulk of a man, with the orifice of a woman, the wits of a camel and the morals of a jack weasel.

“When I say a small favor,” Sitarè went on, “I mean a small one for me and Aziz. For yourself it will be a greater favor, since you will profit by it. Actually earn money from it.”

Here was a beautiful chestnut-haired maiden, offering me herself and her maidenhead and a monetary return as well—plus, if I wanted him, her reputedly even more beautiful brother into the bargain. Naturally this brought to my recollection the phrase I had several times heard, “the bloodthirstiness of beauty.” And naturally that made me cautious, but not so cautious that I would flatly refuse the offer without hearing more.

“Tell me more,” I said.

“Not now. Here comes your uncle. Hush.”

“Well, well!” boomed Uncle Mafìo, approaching us from the darker interior of the house. “Collecting fiame,are we?” And his black beard split in a bright white grin, as he shouldered past us and went out the door toward the stable.

The remark was a play on the word fiame, since in Venice “flames” can mean—in addition to fire—either red-headed persons or secret lovers. So I assumed that my uncle was jocosely twitting what he took to be a boy-and-girl flirtation.

As soon as he was out of hearing, Sitarè said to me, “Tomorrow. At the kitchen door, where I let you in before. At this same hour.” And then she too was gone, somewhere into the back parts of the house.

I strolled on along the front passage, into the room from which I heard the voices of my father and the Widow Esther. As I entered, he was saying, in a muted and serious tone, “I know it was your good heart that proposed it. I only wish you had asked me first, and me alone.”

“I never would have suspected,” she said, also in a hushed tone. “And if, as you say, he has nobly exerted himself to reform, I would not wish to be the provocation of a relapse.”

“No, no,” said my father. “No blame can be laid to you, even if the good deed should turn out ill. We will talk it over, and I will ask flatly whether this would be an irresistible temptation, and on that basis we will decide.”

Then they noticed my presence, and abruptly dropped whatever it was they were privily discussing, and my father said, “Yes, it was as well that we stopped these few days. There are several items we need which are unobtainable in the bazàr during this holy month. When the month ends tomorrow, they will be purchasable, and by then the lame camel will be healed, and we will aim at departure the day after. We cannot thank you enough for the hospitality you have shown us during our stay.”

“Which reminds me,” she said. “I have your evening meal almost done. I will bring it out to your quarters as soon as it is.”

My father and I went together to the hayloft, where we found Uncle Mafio perusing the pages of our Kitab. He looked up from it and said, “Our next destination, Mashhad, is no easy one to get to. Desert all the way, and the very widest extent of that desert. We will be dried and shriveled like a bacalà.” He broke off to scratch vigorously at the inside of his left elbow. “Some damned bug has bitten me, and I itch.”

I said, “The widow told me that this city is infested with scorpions.”

My uncle gave me a scornful look. “If you ever get stung by one, asenazzo, you will learn that scorpions do not bite. No, this was a tiny fly, perfectly triangular in shape. It was so tiny that I cannot believe this tormenting itch it left.”

The Widow Esther made several crossings of the yard, bringing out the dishes of our meal, and we three ate while bent together over the Kitab. Nostril ate apart, in the stable below, among the camels, but he ate almost as audibly as a camel eats. I tried to disregard his noises and concentrate on the maps.

“You are right, Mafio,” said my father. “The broadest part of the desert to cross. God send us good.”

“Still, an easy route to keep to. Mashhad is just a little north of east from here. At this season, we will only have to take aim at the sunrise each morning.”

“And I,” I put in, “will frequently verify our course with our kamàl.”

“I notice,” said my father, “that al-Idrisi shows not a single well or oasis or karwansarai in that desert.”

“But some such things must exist. It is a trade route, after all. Mashhad, like Baghdad, is a major stop on the Silk Road.”

“And as big a city as Kashan, the widow told me. Also, thank God, it is in the cool mountains.”

“But beyond it, we will come to genuinely cold ones. We shall probably have to lay up for the winter somewhere.”

“Well, we cannot expect to go through the world with the wind always astern.”

“And we will not be on territory familiar to you and me, Nico, until we get all the way to Kashgar, in Kithai itself.”

“Distant from the eye, Mafio, is distant from the heart. Sufficient the evils of the day, and all that. For the time being, let us not plan or worry beyond Mashhad.”

3

THE next day, the last day of Ramazan, we spent mostly in just lazing about the widow’s property. I think I have neglected to mention that, in Muslim countries, a day’s beginning is not counted from dawn, as one might expect, or from the midnight hour, as it is in civilized countries, but from the moment of the sun’s setting. Anyway, there was no point in our haunting the Kashan bazàr, as my father had remarked, until it should be again fully stocked with goods for purchase. We had no other tasks except to feed and water the camels and shovel their manure out of the stable. Of course, Nostril attended to that—and at the widow’s request he spread the manure on her herb garden. Now and again, I or my father or uncle would go out for a stroll in the streets. And so did Nostril, in the intervals between his chores, and in the process, I have no doubt, managed to consummate some more of his nasty liaisons.

When I went walking out into the city in the late afternoon, I found a crowd of people standing at a corner where two streets intersected. Most of them were young—good-looking males and nondescript females. I would have assumed that they were merely engaged in the favorite occupation of the East, which is standing and staring—or, in the case of Eastern men, standing and staring and scratching their crotches—except that I heard a droning voice proceeding from the center of the group. So I stopped and joined the audience, and gradually worked my way through them until I could see the object of their attention.

It was an old man seated cross-legged on the ground: a sha‘ir, or poet, and he was entertaining the people by telling a story. From time to time, evidently whenever he spoke an especially poetic and felicitous phrase, one of the bystanders would drop a coin into the begging bowl on the ground beside the old man. My grasp of Farsi was not good enough to enable me to appreciate anything of that sort, but it was good enough at least to follow the thread of the tale, and it was an interesting tale, so I stood and listened. The sha’ir was telling how dreams came to be.

In the Beginning, he said, among all the kinds of spirits which exist—the jinn and the afarit and the peri and so on—there was a spirit named Sleep. He had charge then, as he has now, of that dormant condition in all living creatures. Now, Sleep had a whole swarm of children, who were called Dreams, but in that far-off time neither Sleep nor his children had ever thought of the Dreams getting inside people’s heads. But one day, it being a nice day, and Sleep not having much to do during the daytime, that good spirit decided to take all his boys and girls for a holiday at the seashore. And there he let them get into a little boat they found, and fondly watched as they paddled out upon the water a short way.

Unfortunately, said the old poet, the spirit Sleep had earlier done something to offend the mighty spirit called Storm, and Storm had been waiting an opportunity for revenge. So when Sleep’s little Dreams ventured upon the sea, the malevolent Storm whipped the sea into a frothing fury, and blew a driving wind, and washed the frail boat far out into the ocean and wrecked it on the rocky reefs of a desert island called Boredom.

Ever since that time, said the sha‘ir, all the Dream boys and girls have been marooned on that bleak island. (And you know, he said, how restless children become when subjected to idleness in Boredom.) During the days, the poor Dreams must endure that monotonous exile from the living world. But every night—al-hamdo-lillah!—the spirit Storm must wane in power, because the kindlier spirit Moon has charge of the night. So that is when the Dream children can most easily escape for a while from their Boredom. And they do. That is when they leave the island and go about the world and occupy themselves by entering the heads of sleeping men and women. That is why, said the sha’ir, on any night, any sleeper may be entertained or instructed or warned or frightened by a Dream, depending on whether that particular Dream on that particular night is a beneficent little-girl Dream or a mischievous little-boy Dream, and depending on his or her mood that night.

The listeners all made gratified noises at the tale’s conclusion, and fairly showered coins into the old man’s bowl. I tossed in a copper shahi myself, having found the story amusing—and not incredible, like so many of the more foolish Eastern myths. I found quite logical the poet’s notion of innumerable Dream children of both sexes and mercurial temperaments and meddlesome ways. That notion could even suggest an acceptable explanation of certain phenomena frequently occurring in the West, and well attested but never before explicable. I mean the dreaded nighttime visitations of the ìncubo which seduces otherwise chaste women and the sùccubo which seduces otherwise chaste priests.

When sundown marked the close of Ramazan, I was at the back door of the Widow Esther’s house, and Sitarè let me into the kitchen. She and I were its only occupants, and she seemed in a state of barely suppressed excitement: her eyes sparkled and her hands fluttered. She was dressed in what must have been her very best garments, and she had put al-kohl around her eyelids and berry juice on her lips, but the pink flush on her cheeks had not come out of a cosmetic jar.

“You are attired for the feast day,” I said.

“Yes, but to please you, too. I will not dissemble, Mirza Marco. I said I was glad to be the object of your ardor, and I truly am. Look, I have spread a pallet for us yonder in the corner. And I have made sure that the mistress and the other servants are all occupied elsewhere, so we will not be interrupted. I am frankly eager for our—”

“Now wait,” I said, but feebly. “I have acceded to no bargain. You are a beauty to make a man’s mouth water, and mine does, but I must know first. What is this favor for which you wish to trade yourself?”

“Indulge me only for a moment, then I will tell you. I should like to set you a riddle beforehand.”

“Is this another local custom?”

“Just sit on this bench here. Keep your hands at your sides—hold onto the bench—so you are not tempted to touch me. Now close your eyes. Tight. And keep them closed until I tell you.”

I shrugged, and did as I was bidden, and heard her briefly moving about. Then she kissed me on my lips, in a shy and inexpert and maidenly way, but most deliciously, and for a long time. It so stimulated me that I was made quite dizzy. If I had not been holding onto the bench, I might actually have rocked from side to side. I waited for her to speak. Instead, she kissed me again, and as if practice was making her enjoy it more, and for even a longer time. There was another pause, and I waited for another kiss, but now she said, “Open your eyes.”

I did, and smiled at her. She was standing directly before me, and the flush of her cheeks had suffused her whole face, and her eyes were bright, and her rosebud lips were merry, and she asked, “Could you tell the kisses apart?”

“Apart? Why, no,” I said gallantly. I added, in what I imagined might be the style of a Persian poet, “How can a man say, of equally sweet perfumes or equally intoxicating flavors, that one is better than another? He simply wants more. And I do, I do!”

“And more you shall have. But of me? It was I who kissed you first. Or of Aziz, who kissed you next?”

At that, I did rock upon my bench. Then she reached a hand around behind her and drew him into my view, and I wobbled even more unsteadily.

“He is only a child!”

“He is my little brother Aziz.”

No wonder I had failed to notice him among the household servants. He could have been no older than eight or nine, and was small even for his age. But, once noticed, Aziz would have been hard to overlook again. Like all the local boy-children I had seen, he was an Alexandrian Cupid, but even more beautiful than the Kashan standard, just as his sister was superior to all the other Kashan girls I had seen. Ìncubo and sùccubo, I thought wildly.

I being still seated on the low bench, my eyes and his were at the same level. And his blue eyes were clear and solemn, seeming, in his small face, even bigger and more luminous than his sister’s. His mouth was a rosebud identical to hers. His body was perfectly formed, right down to his tapering tiny fingers. His hair was the same deep chestnut-red as his sister’s, and his skin the same ivory. The boy’s beauty was further adorned by an application of al-kohl around the eyelids and berry juice on his lips. I thought them unnecessary additions, but, before I could say so, Sitarè spoke.

“Whenever, in my hours off from attendance on the mistress, I am allowed to wear cosmetics”—she talked rapidly, as if to ward off my saying anything—“I like to do the same decoration of Aziz.” Again forestalling my comment, she said, “Here, let me show you something, Mirza Marco.” With hurried and fumbling fingers, she undid and took off the blouse her brother wore. “Being a boy, of course he has no breasts, but regard his delicately shaped and prominent nipples.” I stared at them, for they were tinted bright red with hinna. Sitarè said, “Are they not very similar to my own?” My eyes widened further, for she had whipped off her own upper garment, and was presenting her hinna-nippled bosom for my comparison. “See? His get aroused and erect, just like my own.”

Still she chattered on, though I was already incapable of interrupting. “Also, being a boy, Aziz of course has something I do not have.” She undid the string of his pai-jamah, and let the garment fall to the floor, and knelt beside him. “Is it not a perfect zab in miniature? And watch, when I stroke. Just like a little man’s. Now look at this.” She turned the boy around, and with her hands spread his dimpled pink buttocks apart. “Our mother always was punctilious about using the golulè, and after she died so was I, and you see the superb result.” In another quick movement, and without any maidenly coyness, she let drop her own pai-jamah. She turned and bent far over, so that I could observe the under part of her that was not veiled by dark-red fluff. “Mine is two or three fingers’ breadth farther forward, but could you truly distinguish between my mihrab and his—?”

“Stop this!” I managed at last to say. “You are trying to importune me into sin with this boy-child!”

She did not deny it, but the boy-child did. Aziz turned to face me again and spoke for the first time. His voice was the musical small voice of a songbird, but firm. “No, Mirza Marco. My sister does not importune, nor do I. Do you really think I would ever have to?”

Taken aback by the direct question, I had to say, “No.” But then I rallied my Christian principles and said accusingly, “Flaunting is as reprehensible as importuning. When I was your age, child, I barely knew the normalpurposes that my parts were for. God forbid I should have exposed them so consciously and wickedly and—and vulnerably. Just standing there like that, you are a sin!”

Aziz looked as hurt as if I had slapped him, and knit his feathery brows in seeming perplexity. “I am still very young, Mirza Marco, and perhaps ignorant, for no one has yet taught me how to be a sin. Only how to be al-fa‘il or al-mafa’ul, as the occasion requires.”

I sighed, “Alas, I was again forgetting the local customs.” So I momentarily dismissed my principles in favor of honesty, and said, “As the doer or the done-to, you probably could make a man forget it is a sin. And if to you it is not, then I apologize for castigating you unjustly.”

He gave me such a radiant smile that his whole naked little body seemed to glow in the darkening room.

I added, “I apologize also for having thought other unjust things about you, Aziz, without knowing you. Beyond a doubt, you are the most bewitchingly beautiful child I have ever seen, of either sex, and more tantalizing than many grown women I have seen. You are like one of the Dream children of whom I have recently heard. You would be a temptation even to a Christian, in the absence of your sister here. Alongside her desirability, you understand, you must take only second place.”

“I understand,” the boy said, still smiling. “And I agree.”

Sitarè, also a figure of glowing alabaster in the twilight, regarded me with some amazement. She breathed almost unbelievingly, “You still want me?”