Misha had older brothers; she wasn't blind; she knew about such things.
One day as they wandered in the forest, when he was fifteen and she something less than a year younger, they'd come across a plum tree. It was late in the season and the fruits were very ripe. Lifting her up until she could reach the shining, purple plums, Nathan had been more than ever aware of her thighs swelling into firm, rounded, still boyish buttocks, and conscious of the buds of her breasts where she strained her arms upwards. So that after she had picked several of the fruits, and he relaxed his grip to let her slide down between his hands -
— He'd marvelled at the sight of her brown legs, revealed where her dress rode up about her waist. She had seen his eyes on her and felt him against her where she stretched her toes for the forest's floor; and she'd told him, however breathlessly, impulsively:
'Ah, see! Your little man is jumping again.. '
And when he'd turned away, embarrassed and reddening:
'Nathan, wait!' she had taken his elbow. 'It's all right. I understand. There's no harm in him. He jumps for joy — for the joy of me!'
For her brothers had girlfriends, too, and Misha knew how they dealt with their frustrations, how they gained relief from the overabundance of their emotions. 'You should let him out,' she told Nathan then, still clinging to him, 'before he bursts!'
And in the secrecy of the long grass under the plum tree, she had whisperingly, wonderingly compared the purple of his swollen glans to the tightly stretched skins of ripe plums, and stroked him to orgasm. Since when and for three long years, she had satisfied him in this way, and allowed him to return this most tender compliment. But wise beyond her years, she had not once let him into her.
'Ah, no!' she would say when his flesh seemed most insistent. 'For when my children come along I must be able to teach them, which I can't do while I've still so much to learn. Also, I have not made up my mind. I may love you, Nathan, but I can't be sure. What if I discover someone else to love, but too late? If I let your flesh into mine now, this very minute, it might decide me against my will.'
And finally, just a year ago, walking in the twilight before the night, when they paused to fondle a while on a grassy bank and she'd held him throbbing in her hand, and Nathan had told her:
'H-h-he wants to k-kiss you, too. Where only my f-fingers have kissed you.'
And again on impulse she'd taken him deep into her mouth to draw his sting, and afterwards told him:
'There. Flesh is flesh, Nathan, but this way makes no new flesh.' And putting her finger to his lips, she'd added, 'Shh! Say nothing, make no protest! We are grown up now. Give me just another year, and then — I shall make up my mind. But it won't be easy. My father and brothers see many men in Settlement, and they see you. Oh, I know — I know you are more different than even they suspect — but harder far to convince them of that. And anyway, there could be someone else.'
The only 'someone else' there could be was Nestor and Nathan knew it, but he'd said nothing. Except… he had wondered. For there had also been times when Nestor and Misha were alone together, too, and who could say but that — ?
— But no, for Nestor chased after the other girls of the village, while Nathan had no one but Misha. Surely that must make a difference?
Now that his brother had entered his dream, Nathan moved on, moved forward, to the present. And now Misha was no longer a slip of a girl but a young woman, sitting there in his mother's house, like some warm wild flower in the light of lamps and the glow of the fire.
Small but long-legged — elfish as the creatures of Szgany myth, which were said to inhabit the deep forests — Misha Zanesti was the focus of Nathan's fascination; indeed, she was his only fascination in the world! So that it was hard to concentrate on what they were saying, she and his mother, when all he really wanted to do was look at Misha. Even now, dreaming, he couldn't remember what had been said, but he certainly remembered the way Misha had looked: Her hair dark as the night, velvet, the darkest Nathan had ever seen, which in the light of the sun shone black as a raven's wing. Her eyes — so huge and deeply brown under black, expressive, arching eyebrows that they, too, looked black — all moist and attentive where she listened to Nana Kiklu's warm low voice, and now and then nodded her understanding and agreement. Her mouth: small, straight and sweet under a tip-tilted nose which, for all that it flared occasionally in true Gypsy fashion (indeed, a great deal like her father's) had nothing hawkish or severe about it. Her ears, a little pointed, pale against the velvet of her hair where it fell in ringlets to her shoulders.
She might be less wild, voluble, deliberately voluptuous — less enticing and far more retiring — than certain of Settlement's Szgany girls, but she was in no way less than them. Misha lacked nothing of fire, Nathan knew, but kept it subdued and burning within. So that he alone (and perhaps Nestor, too?) saw its light blazing out from her in all directions, like the white of her perfectly formed teeth when they smiled into the sun. Ah, but he'd also seen those teeth snarl and knew of several village youths who'd felt the lash of her tongue when they sought to be too familiar! Well, they'd been lucky, those lads, for they might have felt a lot more than that if he… if Nathan… but that wasn't his way. Or it hadn't been, not then.
In any case, Misha could look after herself and had her own philosophy. He remembered her words: 'If a girl flaunts herself and acts the slut, she can only expect to be treated as such. I do not and will not!' But with Nathan she'd always acted as the mood took her. For which he was glad…
His mother and Misha faded from Nathan's dream and were replaced by Nestor. Nestor striding in the streets of Settlement, admired by the girls and adored by his friends even as the stuttering Nathan was shunned. Nestor proud, strong — arrogant? — but never the bully. Not until that night, last night, when he would have used his physical strength to bend another to his will. Nestor who had cared for and protected Nathan through all the years of their childhood, and cared for Misha, too, until he'd seen how closely she and Nathan were drawn together.
Nestor gone, taken, stolen by a Wamphyri flyer into Starside.
No.' said a voice in Nathan's dream, one which he recognized at once. For it was a mind-voice, and telepathic voices — even the whispers of the dead — are not unlike their more physical counterparts; they 'sound' the same as if spoken. But this was no dead person speaking, not even a 'person', though Nathan had always considered him as such. And: No, the mental voice came again, like a snarl, a cough, a bark in Nathan's dreaming mind. Your brother — our uncle — has not been stolen away into Starside. The flying creature which took him crashed to earth in the east, on Sunside.
Nathan pictured the speaker. He had his own name for him: Blaze, after the diagonal white stripe across his flat forehead, from his left eyebrow to his right ear, as if the fur there was marked with frost. Blaze, whose eyes were the brown of dark wild honey in the twilight, and feral yellow at night. Lean but not skinny, all muscle, sure-footed as a mountain goat and fleeter far. And intelligent? — oh, far beyond the average intelligence of the pack! He admired and respected him, and knew that it was mutual. Why else should the wild wolves of the barrier mountains call Nathan their 'uncle', and come to him in his dreams as they sometimes came to him in his waking hours?
The grey brother read Nathan's thoughts, which were focused now beyond the scope of casual dreaming. Because you are our uncle! he insisted. Mine, and likewise the ones you call 'Dock' and 'Grinner', my brothers from the same litter. And because you and we are of one blood and mind, we are curious about you and consider your welfare. Our father would have wished it, we think… (A mental shrug, the twitch of a grey-furred ear.) You are not of our kind, but you are of our kin, after all. You are our uncle, as is Nestor. But you are the one who understands us. You, Nathan, of all the Szgany, translate our thoughts and answer them.