She began plucking more hairs. She plucked until she was sore, and then wound them together and tied them up into a tiny, golden brush. Pulling on her shirt and pants, she peered out the door. When she was sure she was unobserved she hurried down the hall to Cirocco's room.
Inside, she used the brush to dab tiny spots of powder onto the bedposts and under the pillow. Under the bed she drew a five-sided figure and left a pubic hair in the middle. Then she retreated to the door, leaving an infinitesimal dab every three feet.
Down the hall she went, dabbing her brush in the pan and leaving little dots of powder in a trail to her doorway.
When she closed her door she had to lean against it for a moment. Her heart was pounding and her cheeks were hot. She tore off her clothes and jumped into bed. She used the brush to make a mark between her breasts, then thrust it down between her legs, muttering an invocation. Then she set the pan on the floor near the wall, where Robin would not see it. She pulled the bedclothes up to her neck and took a deep, shuddering breath.
Be still, heart. Your beloved will come.
Then she leaped out of bed and flung herself at the huge, wondrous vanity table with the wavy mirror. She dug into her cosmetics, heedless of the fact that some of them might be irreplaceable. She made up her face with infinite care, applied her best perfume, and jumped back into bed.
What if the perfume covered up the scent of the potion? What if Cirocco didn't care for lipstick? She wore none herself. She didn't wear any cosmetics, and was the most beautiful woman Nova had ever seen.
Sobbing, she flew down the hall to the bathroom. She scrubbed it all off, then was sick in the toilet. She cleaned it up, brushed her teeth, and hurried back to bed.
This must be love; what else could hurt so much?
She wept, she moaned, she thrashed the sheets to ribbons, and still Cirocco did not come.
Eventually, she cried herself to sleep.
SEVEN
In the dream, Cirocco opened her eyes.
She was on her back in the fine black sand. Her head rested on her pack. The sand was quite dry, and so was her body. She spread her arms and dug her fingers into the sand, pointed her toes and felt it shift under her heels, moved her shoulders and hips in a slow, sensuous circle that dug the Cirocco-shaped hole in the sand a few centimeters deeper. She let out a deep breath, and relaxed totally.
She was aware of every muscle and every bone. Her skin was stretched taut, each nerve ending waiting to feel the strange thing again.
It came after a timeless dream-time. A small hand was rubbing her left leg, from the top of her foot to her knee and back down again. She could feel it quite distinctly. Four fingers, a thumb, the heel of the hand. It was not pressing hard, not massaging, but neither was it the touch of a feather. She watched without alarm, in the way of some dreams. She could see the minute changes in texture on her skin where the hand moved.
Her nipples hardened. She closed her eyes (it was not completely dark beneath her eyelids), pressed her head back against the pack, raising her shoulders from the sand and arching her back. The hand moved up to her thigh, and another cupped her breast, moved light fingertips around the curve of it, brushed a thumb over the wrinkled nipple. She sighed, and relaxed back onto the accepting sand.
She opened her eyes again. In the dream.
The land was darker. In a land of unchanging light, dusk seemed to be sweeping over the quiet lake. Cirocco moaned. Her legs were heavy, engorged; she opened them, offering herself to the darkening sky. Her hips seemed to grow from the ground; she thrust them out and up in the most primitive gesture of all, then relaxed again.
Two small footprints appeared in the sand between her legs, one at a time. Then there was the imprint of knees. The sand swarmed, taking on the shape of legs, hollowing out a space for a hip as the phantom knelt and shifted. Both hands were on her thighs now, moving gently up and down.
Cirocco closed her eyes again, and could immediately see better. Ghost images of the lake, the far shore, the sky pulsed against the inside of her eyelids. She lifted herself on her elbows and let her head fall back. Through the thin skin she saw trees converging on a point in the sky. The sky was the color of blood. She bent her legs, her knees up and open. She gasped as the hands explored her. Keeping her eyes closed, she lifted her head.
When she looked straight ahead she could see nothing but the throbbing of her own pulse, the fulgurant and amorphous ephemera of her own retinas. But when she looked to the side-careful to keep her eyes closed-a figure was revealed kneeling between her open legs. It was a Cubist conception, existing from all sides at once, a layered thing with depths her peripheral dream-vision could not reach. It was a thing of colored smoke bound together by moonbeams. Cirocco knew who it was, and she was not afraid.
In the dream, she opened her eyes to almost total darkness.
The shadow knelt there. She felt the hands descend her thighs and spread out over her belly, saw her hyaline lover's face moving down, felt the brush of long hair, felt the tickle of a warm breath, felt the tender kiss, the more insistent kiss, the eager opening of mouth and vulva, the entry of tongue, the hands sliding around to clutch her buttocks and raise her from the yielding sand.
For a moment she was transfixed. She threw her head back, mouth open but unable to make a sound. When finally she was able to sob, to release her breath, the breath became a moan that trailed off into a whispered word.
"... Gaby ... "
It was utterly dark. Cirocco reached down and ran her hands through thick hair, down to Gaby's neck, over her shoulders. She squeezed the smaller woman between her legs, and Gaby kissed Cirocco's belly, her breasts, her neck. Cirocco felt the familiar heavy breasts sliding over her, the wonderful weight pressing down on her. Her hands greedily explored the impossible solidity of Gaby's body. She heard Gaby's breathing next to her ear, smelled the special complex of scent she knew to be Gaby. She wept.
In her dream, Cirocco closed her eyes again. She saw tears in Gaby's eyes, and a smile on her lips. They kissed. Gaby's black hair covered their faces.
She opened her eyes. It was getting light. Gaby still rested on her. They made meaningless noises at each other as a dim twilight stole over the land. Cirocco saw the beloved face. She kissed it. Gaby laughed quietly. Then she put her hands on the sand and lifted herself onto her knees, straddling Cirocco. She held out her hand and got to her feet, pulling Cirocco behind her. The ground clung like flypaper. She had to pull hard to get up. When she was finally standing, Gaby turned her and pointed down. Cirocco saw her own body reclined on the sand, unmoving.
"Am I dead?" she asked. It did not seem an important question.
"No, my beloved. I am not the angel of death. Walk with me." Gaby put her arm around Cirocco and they started up the beach.
In the dream, they spoke to each other. They did not use sentences. A word here and there was enough. Old hurts, old joys were brought out, held up to the yellow sky of Iapetus, cried over and laughed about, and tucked carefully away again. They spoke of things that had happened a century ago, but nothing of the last twenty years. The two decades didn't exist for the old friends.
At last it was time for Gaby to go. Cirocco saw that Gaby's feet no longer touched the sand. She tried to hold her, but the smaller woman kept drifting up into the sky and, in the manner of dreams, all Cirocco's movements were too slow and ineffectual to prevent it. It was a sad time. Cirocco cried for a while when Gaby was gone, standing there in the restored light.