I found myself unable to look at her, unwilling to let my eyes intrude on her shame. So I turned so that I was lying with my face upward, looking into the moonlit sky, as she was.
“I was ten years old,” she said softly. “I was in a strange village and I was frightened. They gave me wine, very strong wine. Then I wasn’t so frightened. And they began to touch me. They told me what I had to do, and when I balked, they gave me more wine. After a time I didn’t know where I was or who I was or what I was doing.”
“No,” I said. It was monstrous. “No one would treat even an animal like that!” Out of embarrassment for her I was still looking upward instead of at her, and as she had done I spoke to the sky, so that we were like two disembodied spirits holding a conversation.
She said, “I was in a strange village. They felt no ties of kinship to me. I had no House. To them all I was was an animal. A female animal, something to be used.” Abruptly there was a frightening edge on her voice. “So they used me. After a time they didn’t bother with the wine. I fought them, I bit them, I kicked them, but it didn’t do any good.”
“This happened more than once?”
“I was in Tipkeyn for four years.”
“Gods! No!”
“Then I escaped. I walked off into the forest, one day when there was a storm and the whole sky was full of lightning and they were all so terrified that they ran and hid. But one of them saw me anyway, and came after me and said he’d kill me if I didn’t come back with him. He had a knife. I smiled at him in the way that they had taught me to do. Put down your knife, I said, and let us make the Changes right here and now, for the storm is ending and I desire you very greatly. So he did. And I took the knife and cut his throat with it. Three women of our village found me wandering in the outer fields, some time later—a few days, a week, a month, I don’t know. I was half crazy from hunger and exhaustion. They brought me home. No one recognized me in my family, because I was a grown woman now and I had been a child when I was stolen. No one wanted me, because of what had happened to me in Tipkeyn. That was the first thing they asked me—did they force you?—and I said yes, yes, they did, many times. Perhaps I should have lied, but how could I hide a thing like that? So they would have cast me out again. But the heads of the Houses came to see me, and your kinsman Meribail was there and he said, ‘What shall we do with her?’ and then the head of my own House said—”
“Which House is that?” I asked. I realized that I had never known.
“Holies,” she said.
“Holies? But—”
“Yes. The Pilgrimage is forbidden to us. But the head of my House said, ‘We should ask the girl what she wants,’ and I said, ‘To be a Pilgrim.’ Because I didn’t belong in our village any more, and I’d kill myself before I went back to Tipkeyn, and where else was there to go but the Wall? My Pilgrimage had already begun, the day the men of Tipkeyn stole me, and everyone knew it. And so it was arranged. My name was stricken from the list of the House of Holies and it was agreed with the Masters of the House of the Wall that I would be among the Pilgrims of my year-group. I would be allowed to go up on Kosa Saag and lose myself there. So when they held the Winnowings, I was always passed over, because the Masters knew that I had been chosen in advance to be a Pilgrim. And so here I am.”
“Gods,” I muttered, over and over again. “Gods, gods, gods!”
In a curious remote voice, thin and light as the sound of an air-flute, she said, “Why am I telling you all this?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t either. I had to tell someone, I suppose.” I was aware of movement beside me, and I looked around to see that she had turned toward me and that the space between us was now no more than a finger’s breadth. She said in that same distant voice, “What I want is to go to the gods at the Summit and be purified by them. I want them to transform me. I want them to turn me into someone else. Or even something else, I don’t care. I don’t want to be who I am any longer. The memories that I carry around are too heavy for me, Poilar. I want to be rid of them.”
“You will have your wish. The gods are waiting for us up there, Hendy, that much I know. And I know also that they’ll make everything right for you when we reach them.”
“You think so? You really do?” She was so eager.
“No,” I said. Like a cracked bell is how I sounded as I uttered the word. But my glib lie had turned sour in my mouth. What did I know of what was waiting for us at the Summit? And Hendy was no child; how could I let myself console her with some sort of sweet fable? I shook my head. “No, in truth I don’t think so, not really, Hendy. I have no idea at all what’s in store for us up there on top. But I hope the gods are there, and that they are gentle gods, and that they’ll take your pain from you. I pray that they will, Hendy.”
“You are very kind. And honest.”
Again there was silence for a time.
She said then, “I often wonder what it is like to choose a lover for the Changes, as others do. To turn to someone and say, ‘You, I like you, come down here beside me, let us make pleasure for each other.’ It seems so simple. But I’ve never been able to bring myself to do it.”
“Because of Tipkeyn.”
“Because of Tipkeyn, yes.”
I looked at her. The flap of the bedroll was turned partway back and by the light of the five moons I could see that she had begun to slide into the female form, that her breasts had appeared and that her skin was glistening with the fine coating of perspiration that meant the Change was going on lower down. That was ordinarily all the invitation any man would need. But if I took it that way and embraced her now, unasked, would she be choosing? Perhaps she was unable to help herself, and was drifting automatically into Changes simply because the two of us were lying close together like this. Perhaps she was desperately fighting it within, frantically trying to force herself back to the neuter state.
My own maleness had emerged and it was all I could do to control myself. But I compelled myself to wait.
The timeless moment of my hesitation went on and on, and nothing happened. We remained as we were, side by side, close but not touching.
At last she broke the tense silence. “You don’t want me,” she said. “Because of Tipkeyn.”
“Why would that matter?”
“They soiled me. They covered me with their filth. They made me into something dirty.”
“They used only your body, Hendy. Your body, not you. You were still you, when they were done with your body. The body can be soiled but not the spirit within.”
She was unconvinced. “If you wanted me, you’d reach toward me. But you haven’t done it.”
“I haven’t been asked. I won’t, without being asked.”
“Is that true?”
“You told me that you had never chosen. I’m trying to let you do it.”
“My body is choosing,” she said. “My body and me both.” She put her hands under her breasts and pushed them upward, toward me. “What do you think these are? Where do you think they came from, and why? Oh, Poilar—Poilar—”
It was enough. I put my hands over hers, and we both cupped her breasts for a moment, and then her hands drew away. My lips grazed against the side of her cheek, and down into the hollow along her throat.
“I’m afraid,” she said in a very small voice.
“Don’t be.”
“But I don’t know how to do it the right way. All I know is how to lie here and be used.”
“You only think you don’t know. Do what feels good, and whatever it is will be right.”
My hand slid down her belly to the warm place between her thighs. She was ready.