He felt the movement at the edge of the clearing and his heart swelled, though only a slight twitch of his shoulders betrayed his notice. It was them. The watchers. The feeling of their energies was familiar by now, almost a caress. He could, he now knew, reach for them as he’d done back along the trail — even easier now for he knew their feel, their taste. But with the memory of that knowledge had come the realization of how cruel such uninvited communion was. Nor did he look up, half afraid of what would happen if he did. The musk was back, and he felt oddly anxious. Still not looking up, he leaned forward and poured a small mound of salt onto the flat stone he’d made ready.
The sun was a sliver above the trees, shadows deepening and claiming all but the high points. There’d be no fire in the clearing — the grandfather had been specific about that. So he sat cross-legged upon grass in the deepening gloom and hoped he looked relaxed. He heard a sound like running water and recognized it as something he’d been hearing off and on for days, far off. Then the flutter of a flock of small birds, although he felt no such presence. The naked foot, when it finally edged into his view, was small and perfectly formed. Still, he held his gaze low, skin silently crawling. A leg grew above the foot and was joined by another, and then two more. They remained motionless for long moments while the noise of waves washed over him. After a bit, the legs moved back and bent.
He had to fight not to catch his breath as two creatures out of myth settled to their knees across the small stone from him. Obviously and gratuitously female, they would stretch maybe four and a half feet from tumbling tresses to alabaster toenails.
Oversized almond eyes of sky blue and startling green respectively dominated delicate faces, upon which full red lips were drawn into puzzled frowns, nostrils flared with excitement. China dolls of the distinctly adult variety.
Cascades of thick, midnight hair tumbled wildly about those faces, flowing down past soft-looking shoulders and tickling fantasy-full bosoms, brightly flushed.
Between them, they sported possibly three square centimeters of rabbit fur and half a kilo or so of bright baubles to cover all of that silken flesh.
Only their weapons kept him from drowning in the fully displayed charms of his visitors — short swords, or possibly long knives augmented by recurved bows longer than their wielders were tall, and quivers of brightly fletched arrows. It was telling that the weapons belts were the most substantial clothing they wore.
They waited quietly, as though allowing him time to examine them, or perhaps only allowing themselves time to examine him. Whatever their intent, he took advantage, careful not to look full upon them, not only to preserve the letter of the rules of contact.
There was little doubt that these were the followers he’d touched. They were exactly as he’d refused to allow himself to picture them in his mind, brought to full bloom before him. But were they really the old ones the grandfather had talked about?
He felt his pulse racing as their musk began to permeate the clearing, growing stronger by the second. It was becoming harder to think clearly, and harder to remember what he was about as the fullness of their presence filled his brain to overflowing.
Twelve years old was a long time ago, and it was difficult enough to remember the details of how this was supposed to go without having to fight through the fog of arousal that was fast shutting down the reasoning functions of his forebrain.
God, they were beautiful! Beautiful in a way that tore his heart out and spread it open like a well-worn book. The musk was all he could recognize now, and he was as wound up as he’d ever been in his life.
It was crazy, even thinking like this! Whether they were old ones or not, it was pretty clear at this point that they weren’t human. Their hair was thick, but not thick enough to hide the distinctly pointed tips of delicate and very mobile ears.
And even if they had been human, they were strangers without even the bond of a common language, if you could even call what issued from them language. Except that they weren’t.
He wasn’t some horny boot, he told himself, on his first shore leave after sixteen weeks of lonely training — he knew better than to jump astraddle the first female whatever with vaguely compatible parts he happened across. Even if he encountered her in a town. Even with an invitation. Neither of which applied here. Except they did.
Besides, he’d split either of them in two, small as they were. I mean, he rationalized foggily to himself, I’m not some freakishly endowed mutant or anything, but look how tiny they are!
None of that mattered. Something had hold of him... something primal that he couldn’t understand, even with the forgotten memories restored. Tiny though they were, they were gorgeous. They were erotic. They were absolute raw sex walking around on its own, radiating invitation.
But even that wasn’t it. There was something else underlying it. It was as though they weren’t strangers at all. As though he could see right through their skins to the inner lights of their souls. As though he’d known those souls since before forever. As though they were one more crucial part of his life that had been hidden from him until now. He watched them across the stone and couldn’t remember a time without the feel of them in his racing heart.
Blue Eyes’ lips moved, and the sound of a breeze through cattails issued forth, but he kept his eyes downcast. Frowning prettily, she leaned forward, wetting a delicate finger and dipping it into the salt. A sniff, as though she couldn’t believe it to be real, and a tiny pink tongue licked the finger clean. The sound of leaves thrashing in a high wind and Green Eyes leaned eagerly forward, taking salt to her own lips.
The smile Blue Eyes gave him then melted whatever he had left of his sense, and he leaned forward to take some salt on his own finger, looking full upon her for the first time and losing himself in those wide blue eyes.
* * *
Thrush Dancing entered the clearing cautiously, eyes glued to the seated figure on the far side of the way pool. The closer she drew to the strange form, the stronger grew the pull of the song for all that it grew no less ethereal, no less formless, no less distant. The closer she drew, the stronger grew the longing to throw caution to the wind and race forward. But she was the rational sister, and so she forced herself to proceed deliberately, clinging stoutly to that deliberateness, for the longing frightened her.
Tradition told that weapons weren’t used in the waypoints, and the male had placed the strange knife and captured weapons piled with its other gear well clear of where it sat. But she held her hand close to the bow, ready in case her cloudy mind led her to a misstep or misjudgement.
Swallow Courting edged into the waypoint a little farther around the circle, hand actually on the hilt of her sword. Bad manners, but who could blame her?
Thrush approached the shrine first, sidling toward it without shifting her gaze from the creature. Caution, she told herself. Yes, caution. No more than that. She glanced down only when the stone of the shrine bumped the backs of her legs. Her face wrinkled into a puzzled frown as she beheld the complicated sand drawings.
That isn’t right, she thought. The patterns were all wrong. He was a warrior, obviously — she’d have known even without having seen him kill the man soldiers with such ease. But the patterns weren’t those of a warrior, or at least not wholly of a warrior. They were too fluid, too subtle. Nor did they jibe with any other occupation of the people that she could recognize. She reached out a hand, index finger slowly tracing the air above the lines and patches.
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A shaman’s sigil? her finger followed the red sand. And this a protection ward tracking the blue. The yellow never goes in the middle, and only the priesthood uses the orange at all, but he puts it everywhere. There was altogether too much white, and the dark brown whorls that surmounted the pattern made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end like being too close to a lightning strike. She looked up again, regarding his back.
Never an answer with him, only more questions.
The figure hadn’t moved in all this time, and the sisters, with worried glances at one another, slowly, hesitantly, eased toward it, feeling its pull growing with each step.
Thrush Dancing was the first to see the creature’s face close up, and she gasped to see that the silver wasn’t a mask at all, but part of him, as though some of his face had been cut from the blade of a fine sword and molded to match the fleshy part. Light shone from where his right eye should have been within the mask, though she couldn’t feel the form of the magic of it.
The very idea of it frightened her. And yet, overlaying the steel, merging with it, she could swear she beheld the ghostly image of his original features.
He had scraped the fur from the rest of his face and she winced to see the injuries —old and new— thus exposed. His skin was almost the color of ripe wheat straw, lighter where the fur had been.
His broad forehead was draped by a shock of gently curled hair the color of one of the horned plains runners during rut and she caught herself before reaching too far to sweep it back into its proper place. His mouth was wide and strong, his nose longish and straight, though crossed with the pale track of a wickedly thick scar.
His left eye she could not fully see, downcast as it was, its regard focused upon the stone before it.
She shivered at the realization that she was using up far more time than a woman of the people should be in cataloging the features of that strangely enticing, obviously alien face. Upon which she could see absolutely no trace of the haunting melody that still tickled her heart. Was he toying with them? Was this some sort of jest? Did he somehow think them so obtuse they could not determine the source of the song?
She caught herself reaching out again to rearrange the lock of hair and shifted her gaze. But looking at the body was no better. His chest was as broad as a minotaur’s, and nearly as hairy, his arms muscular and well-formed, his shoulders wide as a bower door. At no more than arm’s length, the size and shape of him were near to overpowering even did she ignore the rest.
His musty male smell —not exactly a man smell, but instead a strange, exotic mixture of scents almost sylvan in its bite— felt stinging and hot in her nostrils. Nor did the fit of the too-tight leather breeches, which so clearly proclaimed his maleness and interest, aid her mind along the pathways of clear thought. She edged still closer, ready to bolt and drinking in his odor all at once.
Sighing deeply and somewhat guiltily for the lack of guilt at the time she was spending on him, she lowered her gaze yet further.
She saw the white crystal. He’d been waiting for them all along! And then her muzzy head caught up with her observation. Of course he’d been waiting. Had she bethought herself invisible that he’d not seemed to notice her? Had she— But of course, she hadn’t been thinking, had she? Not of anything but the puzzle and the longing.
What is this thing? she asked herself for the hundredth time, struggling to bring her rational mind to the fore. He was no sylvan of any sort she’d ever seen or heard of. But then nor was he anything else she’d ever seen or heard of. Not with that face. Not with that scent. Not with the traditions of the people in his head and in his heart. Not with that ever so faint, ever so powerful call of longing pouring out from him like smoke from a drowning fire.
This was getting her nowhere. Close up he was as strange as he’d been from far away. Moreover, the closer she got to him, the harder it grew to think, for despite the blocks, despite the wards, despite her insisting to herself that she must fight it, his music was racing along the inner pathways of her, sending shivers along her bones and electric tingles through her skin. Like it had done at the crossroads, and like it had been doing all along the trail.
Here, though, face to face, he sang more deeply, more fully. He projected an aura like firelight on a cold dark night. This close to him, she swam in it. This close to him, she couldn’t help but respond.
Eventually, having circled the stranger completely several times with no further clues as to his nature, she edged even closer, well into his field of vision, hand on the hilt of her sword if only to keep it from shaking. Still no movement from him, although his aroma altered, his skin flushed, and the song took on a smoky tasting basso profondo that had her heart pounding like a war drum. She let her regard flow inward to taste it more fully and reveled, feeling her body respond more profoundly, feeling her knees begin to tremble.
With some great effort, she pulled herself free, shaking her head to clear it. She could smell herself easily now, responding to him. Swallow positively reeked! Still no overt movement of recognition from him.
“I think he’s safe,” she told her sister breathlessly then, voice cracking. “he has to be a person of some sort.”
Swallow Courting joined her confronting the male, nostrils flared, breasts heaving with arousal. Something in Swallow’s eyes — She hears his song too! Thrush found her heart tighten with the faintest twinge of jealousy. How could she—? But then she remembered. He’d touched them both, hadn’t he? He’d changed Swallow as he’d changed her. And why should it be a surprise that he’d sing to them both as well?
This is wrong! How dare he call to us both! But even as she thought it, she recognized the foolishness of the thought and of the jealousy. Why should he, who was mystery personified, conform to anything reasonable, even this? And, then too, when had she ever begrudged Swallow the sharing of anything? Particularly something so grand as this.
Together they knelt, the breathless sylvans, at the proper greeting distance, waiting to see what would happen. Waiting to see what sort of track the mystery would follow now.
Nothing was what happened. He continued to look down at the crystal as though they didn’t exist, although they could feel his regard caressing them like a lover’s trailing fingers, feel the throbbing undercurrent of the song that seemed no longer even inconvenienced by their wards.
When the suspense had become unbearable, Thrush Dancing gave in. “What are you?” she all but sobbed.
Nothing. As though he understood no word she spoke. Exasperated, she leaned forward to complete the ritual.
“City salt!” she informed Swallow Courting.
He waited until Swallow had taken salt before he reached out his own finger, taking a dab of salt upon it and bringing it to his lips, his eyes — the magical and the mundane— finally raising to meet Thrush’s. And they swallowed her up.
“Sister?” Swallow’s voice was husky, but also frightened.
Thrush didn’t even look to her. Barely heard her. She could feel the question in her mind as though it had been screamed, though she couldn’t readily understand it. Her mind was too full. His mundane eye was blue. Darker than her own, but startlingly blue. It filled her vision, filled her mind. Deeper than the sky it was, lonely and hopeful and urgent. It called to her and she no longer even thought to gainsay the call.
“Thrush!” Swallow’s voice rang from behind.
Behind? The song —his song— was ringing in her head full voice now, making Swallow’s voice seem to come from a great distance. It filled her like a cup of honeyed wine, his song, all warm and sweet and thick.
It occurred to her vaguely that she had crawled forward on hands and knees and was now kneeling astraddle his legs and all but in his lap. Her heart was pounding near out of her chest, for he’d also come to her. Without word or comment, he’d come forward to meet her, his rough hands cradling the swell of her hips as he looked down into her eyes from very close. She could feel his breath mingling with hers — feel the heat rolling from his body to curl about her and set her skin afire. She should be repulsed, but she wasn’t. She should be scandalized, but she wasn’t. She should be afraid, but she had no room for any emotion but desire.
“Thrush!” Swallow’s voice, though still faint, sounded closer, deeper.
Thrush opened herself to her sister, feeling her flow within, seeing the faint image of herself and the male through Swallow’s eyes. He was leaning down, head tilting, to drink in her scent, and so she tilted her own head to give him access to the hollow of her neck. She felt his rough cheek scrape along her neck and face as he brought his head slowly back up to gaze once more into her eyes.
“Are you a person?” Thrush panted softly into his mouth. “Or only a clever mimic?”
He brought his great paws up to gently trace the lines of her cheeks, brushing his lips gently along her own, gossamer soft as he explored her face. He gave no other answer. He needed no other.
“No,” she reached out her tongue to touch his lower lip, so close, as it passed. “You have to be a person! I will have it no other way!” She gasped as his tongue tracked softly at the base of her ear and down the hollow behind her jaw, wrapping her arms tightly about him and drawing him closer.
Then he found her mouth and kissed her fully, his arms coming up to envelope her completely. And somehow, with neither effort nor understanding, she was singing back to him, the music pealing out from her swelling center. She felt Swallow join in to become part of the overarching chorus as she slithered unselfconsciously into the embrace.