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confused. Very, very confused. And angry. Yes."
"With whom are you angry?"
"Not at you. You've never done me anything but good."
She smiled radiantly and took his hand. "I would want everything I do to be
good for you, to be love for you."
He felt even more miserable. What if he never did go home, would it matter
much? Could he make a life here in the Realm, even in the Pact Lands? Others
had lived in worse conditions and been happy, or at least not miserable.
Eleuth sensed some of his mental peregrinations and gripped his hand all the
tighter.
"It could be a good life here," she said. Her hopeful tone was like a dart in
his temple.
"How?" he asked, shaking her hand loose. "I don't belong here! I'm human, and
you're " He pounded his hand against the wall. "And she's human, and that's
the problem, isn't it?"
"The woman in Euterpe?" Eleuth asked, staring at the back of his head.
"Helena," he said. He imagined it to be the most vicious thing he could say:
the name of the woman toward whom he felt as Eleuth deserved to have Mm feel
toward her. As Eleuth wanted him to feel.
"Humans have many more troubles than Breeds, actually," Eleuth said. She
didn't sound upset or jealous.
He turned toward her. Her face was composed, half-caught in the afternoon
light from a high window, eyes large and deep and calm.
"Please," Michael said.
"You could love her, and be with me," Eleuth said.
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Tears began to flow down his cheeks. He was furious, every thought part of a
turbulent, rising whirl.
"Don't say any more. Please, no more."
"No," Eleuth said, standing and reaching for his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I don't
understand. I cannot be& jealous. Sidhe women are not jealous. Who can be
jealous of males who cannot love, cannot attach?"
Michael sat on a bench and nibbed his eyes with his palms. None of the
calmness exercises would work now. He couldn't bring down his level of misery,
or control its effects on his body, the tension in his neck and arms.
"I could love you while you loved her," Eleuth said. Michael didn't seem to
hear. She sat beside him and put her head on his shoulder. "I could do many
things for love, and what I cannot do, I will learn." She stroked his back
with one hand. "It is all a Sidhe women ever expects."
He stayed with her that night and the next morning returned to the Crane
Women's mound. The huts were
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empty. He entered his own hut and stashed the book in the rafters, then sat on
the mats and tried to think of a poem. Not even an opening line would come.
His head was empty of words. Full of turmoil;
empty of expression.
By late morning, he made his resolution. He would search for the sani
. He didn't know right from wrong himself; perhaps Helena and Savarin did.
In Bin's empty hut, the plaited mats were neatly folded in one corner. He
looked everywhere in the hut and found no sign of the powder.
He crossed to the Crane Women's hut and stood by the door. Peering through the
windows, he saw only darkness within. He tried to pry the door open with his
fingers, but it seemed latched. He pushed, hoping it would open. It didn't.
Then he pushed harder and something wooden clicked within. The door swung
outward slowly.
The Crane Women obviously didn't feel the need of locks. So what if
anything, or anyone did they have guarding the hut? The thought didn't give
him much pause; he was beyond practical concerns.
The sunward window cast a shaft across the room, illuminating shelves stacked
with bottles. The contents of one of the bottles wriggled pinkly in the beam.
His eyes adjusted slowly to the gloomy corners. In the center of the room was
a cylindrical brick oven, reaching almost to the roof, with four mouths
opening around its circumference. A ceramic platform surrounded the oven,
shiny white and indented with a regular series of pestles. A few mortars lay
on the table, and small piles of powder of differing colors and roughness. The
fire was out, but the oven still retained heat; he could feel it on his face
and outstretched palm.
Across the room from each other were two sets of shelves, both packed tight
with bottles full of teeth and small fragments of bones. Other bottles
contained roots and vegetable matter. A bottle with a forked root had been the
first to catch his eye; even now, the root squirmed.
Yet another shelf was devoted to bottles of dusts. None of the containers were
labeled. If they had discernible uses, only the Crane Women knew what they
were.
Beyond the closest set of shelves was a partition made of wooden boards, on
which thin sheets of tough, pearly tissue had been stretched between pegs to
dry. Below the sheets hung the skeletal forearm of a small clawed animal. The
claws appeared to be made of gold.
On the other side of the room, partly hidden behind a drape of gray cloth, a
glass box sat on a table. In the box were pieces of frosty crystal finely
carved into abstract shapes. Each crystal had a single clear facet like a
peephole. Michael pulled the drape aside with forefinger and thumb and opened
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the lid of the box.
The temptation was too great; he removed a crystal and held it up to his eye.
Like a slide viewer, the crystal contained an image. Green rolling hills and a
wonderfully vivid sky appeared to Michael. He was about to put it down and
pick up another when a woman walked over the hills. With a shock, he realized
she was a much younger Coom. Her name, the crystal informed him in no obvious
way, was Ecooma.
She smiled and swung her arms, her long, shapely legs outlined beneath a
wind-blown red dress. Her face resembled Eleuth's, but was even more comely.
She passed out of range of the crystal eye, prompting him to turn with it to
follow her, but to no result. The crystal maintained one steady point of view.
A second crystal showed a high mountain pass. Swift clouds threw shadows on a
snow-covered slope beyond. The naked female standing on a rock, undaunted by
the obvious cold, was called Elanare. She stretched her arms out to the wind,
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