"What do you mean, Nova was a freak?"
"The only child in the Coven with a brother. Guilt by association with me, the great sinner." She sighed. "Aren't people wonderful?"
"They're about the same everywhere."
Cirocco said nothing for a while. Robin had an odd thought. Where was Adam? Cirocco had been carrying him when they started out. Now she was carrying her, and it took both hands.
She didn't worry about it. She did trust Cirocco.
"She was also suspiciously tall. That didn't matter when we were riding high. Later on, there were whispers of acts better not described. And there was love."
"Love?"
"She loves me. She doesn't show it much these days, but she does."
"I could see that."
"She loves you, too. In a quite different way."
"I see that, too."
Cirocco finally set her down. Robin's senses were deliriously sharp. She felt soft, damp soil under her bare feet. (What had happened to her shoes? It didn't matter.) There was an aromatic vapor in the air. She felt a trickle of sweat run down her back. She stood there in the dark and waited. Cirocco's voice came from in front of her.
"You can sit down now, Robin, and open your eyes."
Robin did. She saw Cirocco kneeling in front of her. Her eyes were deep, fascinating pools. She glanced to her left and saw Chris, also kneeling, holding Adam wrapped in his pink blanket. He smiled at her, then Cirocco touched her chin with a fingertip and turned Robin's head forward.
"Don't look at him. Look at me."
"All right."
"I want you to go a little deeper. You can keep your eyes open if you want to, but don't pay any attention to what you see. The sound of my voice is the only important thing."
"All right."
"How deep are you?"
Robin thought it over earnestly.
"About three feet."
"Give it another foot."
Robin did. Her eyes were open. All she really noticed were swirling clouds of steam. Cirocco was no longer in front of her, but she couldn't have said just what was out there. She felt a light pressure on the top of her head. It was Cirocco's hand.
"Why did you let Adam live, Robin?"
She heard her own voice come from far away. She had a brief glimpse of the three of them, seen from above: a big, half-hairy man, a strong woman; a tiny, helpless, pitiful ...
That thought was shut off quickly.
"I had a dream."
"What was the dream about?"
"Adam." Smiling. Pink. Delicate tiny toes. The smell of her own milk and his wet diaper. "Gaby." Black and peeling. Crispy skin. A ruined eye. A sweet smell.
"You dreamed of Gaby?"
"She sat with me. She helped deliver him. She held him up, all bloody and awful. Then she kissed me and I cried."
"In the dream?"
"Yes." Robin frowned. "No. She was better. Not burned."
"In the dream?"
"No. Yes... I don't remember waking up. I remember ... going to sleep after the dream. Adam was nursing."
"What did Gaby say?"
"She said I must find it in my heart to keep him. She said the world was going to be destroyed. The Earth, the Coven ... maybe Gaea. She said he was important. I had to bring him here. She said Chris was his father. I said two virgin births was one too many. She said Gaea had done it, Gaea had used magic to ... keep a part of Chris inside me. Tiny time capsules, she called them. Then she went away."
"She vanished?"
Robin was surprised. "No, she went out the door."
Cirocco didn't say anything for a while, and Robin didn't mind. She was waiting for more questions. Instead, the pressure of Cirocco's hand on her head went away, then came back. This time it wasn't her palm, but the heel of her fist. It touched lightly, but Robin felt she could almost read the ridges and whorls through her scalp. There was a tiny voice.
"Let go of me, you ancient cunt."
Robin had never heard anyone speak to Cirocco that way. The voice went on in that vein for a time. Robin felt the fist tense, and the little voice squealed.
"I'll report you to the fucking SPCA, you vomit bag. I'll fuck you in your big hairy ears, and I've got syphilis, I've got things they haven't even named yet, I'll-"
Again the squeeze, followed by a sharper scream.
"I command you to speak," Cirocco said. Robin said nothing. Somehow she knew the command wasn't for her.
"Gaea's gonna piss kerosene and shit napalm when she hears-"
"Speak!"
"I know my rights, I want a goddam LAAAAAWYER! I want-"
"Speak!"
"Aaaaaaah! Aaah! Okay, okay, okay, I'll speak!"
"Is the hand of Gaea on this child? I command you to answer."
"I can't, I can't, I can't see ... see ... I think maybe-"
"Speak!"
"No, no, no! Gaea touched her long ago. Gaea knows she is here. Gaea planned the child's family, but did not touch them. Gaea's hand is not on this child."
And suddenly, neither was Cirocco's. Robin sat, blinking, feeling somehow that a terrible weight had been lifted from her head.
"You can come up now, Robin. Slow and easy. Everything's all right."
Robin did come up. She felt refreshed, took a deep breath, blinked again, and turned around. Cirocco was stowing a bottle in a knapsack. In one hand she held a familiar object: an old Colt .45 automatic. Cirocco handed it to her. Robin turned it over in her hand. The safety was off. She put it back on, and looked up.
"This is my gun."
"I took it from you before Cirocco woke you up," Chris said.
"What was that?" Robin gestured to the pack.
"My demon." Her eyes bored into Robin's. "Can you keep a secret?"
Robin returned the gaze, and finally nodded.
"If that's the way you want it."
Cirocco nodded, and relaxed a little. "I can tell you only that it was something that had to be done. I used to have another method. It wasn't as reliable, and not nearly so easy." For a moment there was terrible pain in her eyes. She looked away, then back. "Ask Conal about it sometime. Wait till he's got a little wine in him."
"You thought I was a spy for Gaea?"
"I had to assume you could be. Could you be sure you weren't?"
Robin was about to deliver an indignant of course I could, but stopped herself. She thought about tiny time capsules, virgin births. Gaea touched her long ago. Gaea planned her family.
"She can do anything at all, can't she?"
"She'd like you to believe that. But, yes, just about. You have no idea yet just how bad that can be."
"Would you have killed me?"
"Yes."
Robin thought she should be angry about that, but she wasn't. She was oddly comforted. If Gaea had laid a slimy trap in her body, she would rather be dead.
"What about Nova?" she said, suddenly.
"Now you're starting to be properly paranoid," Cirocco said, nodding. "But you've got a long way to go to catch up with me. I examined Nova hours ago. I thought it wise... considering her temperament, that she not remember it. I told her to forget, and she will."
"And Adam?"
"Innocent as a baby," Chris said, and smiled at her. She smiled back, suddenly remembering how warmly she had liked him, many years ago. She was even willing to forgive him his hair, at least for now. Then she looked at her surroundings for the first time, and frowned.
"What is this place?" she asked.
"The fountain of youth," Cirocco said.
There had once been twelve fountains in Gaea. The one in Oceanus had been destroyed in the Rebellion. The one in Thea was deep beneath the ice and the ones in Mnemosyne and Tethys were buried in sand. Of the remaining eight, seven had been abruptly shut down one day twenty years ago, a day that had also seen the death of the first incarnation of Gaea and a rain of cathedrals from Heaven.