—and yellow striped costume. Crazy Kel pulled her veil over her face hastily. «You do well to cover your face, missy,» said Elderwoman Hennin. «Flout village law, if you wish. Break the Blood Day Rule. Dance if the blood comes to you on the eve of Trickster's Hallows. And see what happens. It matters little to me, but just remember this, missy: deviance has its consequences. Step outside village law, and you also step outside its protection.» Elder-woman Hennin smiled here. «You can be sure of one thing about Trickster, missy. He'll offer you no protection of his own. That's not his way. He'll dance you and leave you.» «But Rimble's not like that,» protested the young girl in the black and yellow costume. «He's a Greatkin. He's my friend.» Elderwoman Hennin met her eyes. «Trickster likes his dupes young. Know why? So he can make fools out of you. There's nothing nice about Rimble, missy. There's nothing the least bit nice about The Wasp.» Yafatah pointed dazedly at the Jinnjirri mist. She felt her mother reach for her hand as a gesture of comfort. The touch of her mother's hand hurt her heightened sense of touch, and Yafatah pulled away, huddling alone under her orange blanket. Images of the previous night's dreams presented themselves to the young Tammirring girl for the second time that morning. Yellow and black. Old Jamilla in yellow and black rags, motioning Yafatah to her side. «Go to Speakinghast. Before it's too late.» «Too late for what, Jammy?» asked Yafatah, bewildered. «For me to matter.» Yafatah blinked. «I doon't understand, Jammy.» «Fool,» said the old Mayanabi woman softly. Then, she pulled back her raggedy cowl of yellow and black patches. She had pied eyes. Yafatah stared at the old woman's face. «You be not me friend, Jammy! You be not me friend at all! You be Greatkin Rimble come to prank me!» Yafatah's memory of this portion of her dream became so vivid that she began speaking the words out loud. Fasilla turned to her in alarm. «Doon't get caught in the shift, child. Remember yourself!» Fasilla's Tammirring-born daughter ignored her. Getting to her feet in the wagon, Yafatah wagged a finger at something Fasilla couldn't see and shouted, «I willna' do for you, Trickster! I willna' turn, and I willna' go to Speakinghast! Elderwoman Hennin be right. You be a wasp! And you do be pranking me with blood!» Fasilla stared at Yafatah, her face pale. «Hennin?» she whispered. Yafatah met her mother's eyes with fear. She blinked, feeling very disoriented. Where had all those thoughts come from? She knew no one named Elderwoman Hennin. Yafatah looked around herself frantically. She could sense someone else in the mist. Someone half-mad, someone choosing—
—not to dance for Greatkin Rimble. Sixteen-year-old Kelandris stared at the blood on her hands. «The blood has come on Trickster's Eve,» she whispered softly. «If I dance, I don't know what will happen. Something bad, say the Elders. But I am Rimble's chosen consort. And he is the Greatkin of Deviance. So, I must answer his call. I must be worthy of being his Revel Queen. I must not be afraid of the unexpected. Or the impossible. I must be Trickster's he,» she whispered, her green eyes frightened. «But I don't know what that is. I don't know what that means.» Kelandris swallowed. «Laws are made to help, not hinder. There must be a reason why the Elders say: No Revel Queen shall turn for Trickster on the night of her first blood.» Yafatah frowned. «But this isna' my first blood. It do be me third.» Yafatah looked at the Jinnjirri mist as it swirled around her thighs. «And Speakinghast be too far away. I canna go there alone. I should stay with me Ma—» Crazy Kel blinked. «Stay with my mother?» She laughed bitterly. «Stay with the one who would not speak a single word in my defense at the Ritual of Akindo?» Crazy Kel's expression changed from perplexity to contempt. «Coward,» she hissed at the voice in the mist. «You're not worthy to turn for Greatkin Rimble. Only women of courage are worthy. Only women of spirit. And such women do not stay home with their mothers.» «I have spirit,» said Yafatah indignantly. «It be just that I love me Ma. And I be all she has.» «Excuses,» muttered Kelandris. «Break the Blood Day Rule. It's the right of the Trickster's he!» «But I'm the Crossroads Child,» cried Yafatah. «I'm not the—» Fasilla glanced sharply at her daughter. «Doon't forget yourself, Ya! This be shadows, Ya. This be not real. And it will pass, child. Let it go. Let it pass over you. Don't get caught—» Yafatah clawed the air with her fingers. Six hundred feet away, Crazy Kel clawed the air with her fingers. The identities of the two Tammirring merged, their psyches tangling. Crazy Kel sat up abruptly, her mind clear for the first time in sixteen years. Yafatah stared wide-eyed at her mother. Then she announced, «I draw the Jinn-mist round about! That's my way to keep Trickster out!» Before Fasilla could wonder about her daughter's sudden drop of accent, Yafatah added in yet another voice, «Shifttime! Jinnaeon! End of the world! Big changes! Big doings!» Yafatah broke into wild peals of laughter. Fasilla forced the roan mares into a trot. They splashed through the shallow river and up the bank into Jinnjirri. Fasilla urged the horses into a canter, glancing at her Tammirring child whenever she could afford to take her eyes off the dirt road. Yafatah was sitting on the edge of the seat, kicking the air with her feet like a small child. Yafatah caught her mother's worried eye and winked. Fasilla said nothing, driving the mares northeast toward the house of the Jinnjirri healer. Without realizing that she was doing so, Fasilla now drove her daughter to the edge of sanity as well. This was a strange borderland of the psyche. Trickster territory. Unpredictable and fertile. Yafatah shivered as the Jinnjirri landdraw pried away her Tammirring defenses and set her adrift in space and time. Single identity ceased to exist for Yafatah. Guideless, she felt as if she were drowning. Yafatah's Trickster smile suddenly faded. «Help,» she whispered. «Help—» Kelandris stood up slowly, feeling herself and yet not herself. She was not aware of Yafatah or Yafatah's distress directly. However, she did notice a queer sensation of having been psychically buttressed in some unexpected fashion. She tested the strength of it and found it worthy. She was just about to laugh for joy when she saw the flash of something black and yellow off to her left. Kelandris crossed her arms over her chest. She grunted under her veil. «Don't expect me to welcome you with open arms, Rimble,» she muttered at the little four-feet-seven Greatkin peeking at her from behind a nearby tree. «You're a stinking sonofabitch.» «Charming sentiments,» he retorted. «And after all this time.» Kelandris scowled. «I should never have danced for you.»