But now — now—
For weeks now, Lakkamai had been staring at her oddly. That quiet, intense, remote man: what was on his mind? No one had ever stared at her like that. His gray eyes were marked with flecks of lustrous green, which made him appear mysterious, unfathomable. He seemed to be trying to see deep inside her soul.
Whenever she glanced around suddenly, there was Lakkamai, peering toward her out of the distance. Hastily looking away, pretending he was busy with something, with anything. Sometimes she smiled at him. Sometimes she simply turned away; and when she turned toward him again, five or ten minutes later, there he was peering at her again.
She began to understand.
She found herself often looking at Lakkamai to see if he was looking at her. And then she found herself looking at Lakkamai for the sake of looking at Lakkamai, even when his back was turned to her. He was sleek and graceful and he looked strong: not strong in the thick-bodied manner of Harruel, but with a wiry, resilient power to him that reminded her of that poor Helmet Man who had died while he was being questioned by Koshmar and Hresh. Lakkamai was one of the older men of the tribe, a senior warrior, but his fur, a deep purple-brown, had not yet begun to show any gray. His face was long and sharp of chin and muzzle, his eyes were deep-set. Throughout all his days he had said very little. Small as the tribe was, intimate as life in the cocoon had been, Torlyri nevertheless had the feeling that she hardly knew him.
One night she dreamed that she was coupling with him.
It took her by surprise. In actuality she was lying with Koshmar. As it happened, they had twined that evening, for the first time in many weeks. Her mind should have been full of Koshmar while she slept. Instead Lakkamai came to her and stood silently over her, studying her intently. She beckoned to him and drew him down — he seemed to float to her side — and Koshmar disappeared and there were only the two of them on the sleeping-mat, and Lakkamai was inside her, and she felt sudden heat within her womb and knew that he had fathered a child upon her.
She gasped and woke, sitting up, trembling.
“What is it?” Koshmar asked at once. “A dream, was it?”
Torlyri shook her head. “A passing chill,” she said. “The winter air brushing across my face.”
She had never lied to Koshmar before.
But she had never desired a man before, either.
The next day, when Torlyri saw Lakkamai outside the temple, she could not bear to meet his eyes, so powerful was her feeling that she actually had coupled with him the night before. If the dream had been so vivid for her, he must also have felt it. It seemed to her that he must already know everything about her, the feel of her breasts in his hands, the taste of her mouth, the scent of her breath; and, old as she was, Torlyri felt suddenly like a girl, and a foolish girl at that.
That night she dreamed of Lakkamai again. She gasped and moaned and throbbed in his arms, and when she awoke Koshmar was staring at her, eyes bright in the darkness, as though she thought Torlyri was losing her mind.
On the third night the dream came again, even more real. She did things with Lakkamai that she had never seen others do while coupling, that she had never even imagined anyone would think of doing; and they gave her delight of the deepest and most intense kind.
She could not bear this any longer.
In the morning the rains that had been pelting the city for many weeks finally halted, and the bright blue winter sky burst through the clouds with the force of a trumpet-blast. Torlyri performed the sunrise-offering as she always did; and then, in utter calmness, she went to the house where the unmated warriors lived. There was a cage hanging on the porch at the corner of the building, with three small harsh-eyed black creatures in it that the warriors had caught, running around and around and crying out in angry, piercing, high-pitched tones. Torlyri gave them a sad compassionate smile.
Lakkamai was waiting outside as though expecting her. Silent as ever, seemingly at ease, he leaned back against the wall and watched her draw near. His eyes, cool and solemn, held no trace now of that fierce probing stare that he had so often turned on her of late. But the corner of his mouth was moving repeatedly in a quick short tic that betrayed inner tension. He appeared unaware of that.
“Come,” Torlyri said softly. “Walk with me. The rains have relented.”
Lakkamai nodded. They started off side by side, keeping so far apart that burly Harruel would have had room easily to walk between them. Past the houses of the tribe, past the entrance to the six-sided tower of purple stone that was the temple, past the garden of shrubs and flowering plants that Boldirinthe and Galihine and some of the others now maintained with such care, past the sparkling pool of pink radiance that once had given pleasure to the sapphire-eyes. Neither of them spoke. They looked straight ahead. It seemed to Torlyri that she caught sidewise glimpses of Hresh, of Konya, of Taniane, even perhaps of Koshmar, as she walked. But no one called to her and she did not turn her head to see anyone more clearly.
Beyond the garden of the women and the light-pool of the sapphire-eyes there was a second garden, a wild one, where tangled vines and crook-armed trees and strange swollen-bellied black-leaved shrubs grew in crazy profusion above a thick carpet of dense bluish moss. Here Torlyri entered, Lakkamai walking beside her, but closer now. Still neither spoke. They went inward perhaps two dozen paces, to a place where there was an opening, almost a bower, in the undergrowth. Torlyri turned now to Lakkamai and smiled; and he put his hands to her shoulders, as if to pull her downward with him to the moss, but no pulling was necessary. They descended together.
She could not say whether it was he who entered her, or she who enfolded him; but suddenly they were pressed close upon each other with their bodies joined. From the moss beneath them came a faint sighing sound. It was heavy with the stored moisture of the many days of rain, and as they moved Torlyri imagined that they were squeezing it out into the shallow declivity in which they lay, so that it was forming a pool around them. She welcomed that. Gladly would she submerge herself in that gentle warmth.
Lakkamai moved within her. She clung to him, clasping the ridged muscles beneath the thick fur of his back.
It was not quite as it had been in her dream. But it was not at all as she remembered its having been with Samnibolon and Binigav and Moarn, either. The communion was nowhere nearly as deep or as full as was twining — how could it have been? — but it was far more profound than she had ever known coupling could be. Holding tight to Lakkamai, Torlyri thought in wonder and surprise that this went beyond coupling: this must be in fact what mating is like. And in that moment of astonished realization there arose a discordant voice within her that asked, What have I done? What will Koshmar say?
Torlyri let the question go unanswered, and it was not repeated. She lost herself in the wondrous silence that was the soul of Lakkamai. After a time she moved free of him, and they lay a short distance apart, only their fingertips touching.
She thought of touching him with the tip of her sensing-organ, but no, no, that would be too much like twining. That would be twining. Koshmar, not Lakkamai, was her twining-partner. But Lakkamai was her mate.
Torlyri turned that thought over and over in her mind.
Lakkamai is my mate. Lakkamai is my mate.
She was thirty-two years old and had been the offering-woman of the tribe for a dozen years, and now, suddenly, after so long a time, she had a mate. How strange. How very strange.