"I'm going to dance the whole thing," answered Maia firmly.
"Then Lespa be with you, little saiyett," replied Fordil. "I shall be, anyway."
Maia, leaning over, gave his bristly cheek a kiss. "Thank you, U-Fordil. No one's ever called me 'saiyett' before. I'll remember that."
One of the drummers looked up from tightening the cords round his zhua. "That dress-think it'll fall quick enough?"
Maia nodded again. "It'll fall." Thereupon she rose to her feet, walked a few steps into the middle of the empty floor, turned towards Sarget and stood waiting for the frissoor.
It was customary in Bekla for a dancer or singer to await from her host, initially, a signal of invitation, known as the frissoor. Once this had been received the performer, even if a slave, had the complete right to order everything as she wished-the space about her, the lamps, the music- even, if she insisted, the dismissal of anyone unwelcome to her. Thus, the leader of the Thlela had sought the frissoor from Durakkon at the Rains banquet, and Occula from Elvair-ka-Virrion before her now almost legendary act as the doomed huntress. As soon as Sarget, smiling reassuringly, had extended his left hand and then lowered it to his side, Maia, with the best air of authority she could muster, beckoned to two slaves and, having told them what she wanted, stood impassively while they moved or extinguished sufficient lamps to make one side of the central floor bright and the other shadowy and dim.
The hall seemed to have filled again. Word, it appeared, had got round that she was about to dance, and men and girls had come back, some to their former places, others merely to stand wherever it might suit them-a few near the doors, ready to slip out again if she should prove a disappointment. With a quick smile she gestured to Shend-Lador and a girl with him to move back from the edge of the floor, and felt delighted surprise when they did so at
once. Whoever would have thought it? It worked for her, just as for anyone else who had received the frissoor.
Suddenly she knew that Lespa was with her. Kind, merciful Lespa was looking down from the stars at her servant about to honor her-Lespa of the heart's secrets, Lespa, sender of dreams! A few moments more she stood in silence, offering herself to the goddess. Then she spread her hands; and at once the zhuas began the low, throbbing opening of the selpe.
She was Lespa-mortal Lespa, the prettiest village lass that ever walked the earths-Lespa on her way to the greenwood, tripping through the meadows of spring. The grass was cool at her feet, the flowers were springing-ah! and here was a patch of muddy ground she had to cross. Pouting, she stopped and wiped her feet, one and then the other; then stooped to pick a yellow spear-bud and put it in her hair. Her body was burning with frustrated longing, with desire for her lover, for poor young Baltis gone to the wars.
During this first, opening minute she realized what Ba-yub-Otal had meant in speaking of Fordil. She had never conceived of any accompaniment of this quality. She would not have thought it possible. The quick, pattering notes of the hinnari seemed actually created by her own movements. They did not follow her; they led her on and bore her forward. It was Fordil who was really dancing, except that she, happening to be young and a girl, was acting on his behalf. She was his reflection, and therefore they could not be out of accord.
A kynat, migrant of spring, purple and gold in the sunshine, flashed suddenly out of the distant trees and she stood entranced, shading her eyes to gaze after it as it flew. Then, recalling her errand, she went on up the course of the little brook towards the watercress-edged cattle-wade on the outskirts of the wood.
When dancing for Occula, Maia, throughout this first episode of the selpe, had always felt, above all, the pathos of a girl left forlorn in spring; intensely aware of the mul-tifoliate burgeoning of the new year all about her, yet separated from it by her loneliness. To stress this sense of loneliness, she knew, was important as a contrast to the excitement to follow. She was a girl sad in springtime: this was what she had to express; and now the hinnari, with a
soft sobbing of zhuas beneath, was saying it for her as, in Occula's hands, it had never been able to.
How long should she give it? Not very long, for this was only the prelude to her story. Bending down, she pulled some strands of watercress and nibbled them; then sprawled on the short grass in the sunshine, first picking her teeth with a twig, then rolling quickly over to catch a tiny frog and let it jump off her hand into the water. So clearly did she mime these things and so closely did the drummer follow her, that the frog's leap was represented by a quick, sharp stroke of his thimbled finger on the side of the hollow lek, at which Maia herself, watching the frog, spontaneously gave a little jump. The watchers laughed, not only at the joke but with pleasure in the skill which had enabled them to recognize it. A moment later she got up and, disentangling her skirt from a spray of bramble as she climbed the fence, entered the wood, disappearing into the darkness on the lampless side of the hall.
Almost at once-more quickly than she would have wished, but she guessed that Fordil wanted to forestall any possible outbreak of chatter or restlessness among the audience-the music changed to the quick, light knocking of the two leks, playing alone. Yet she herself must wait a moment; she could not change her role so quickly. This was Shakkarn coming-Shakkarn stolen away in spring from the palace of the gods to wander footloose among the fields and woods of earth. Far off he was as yet, his footsteps faint but coming closer, sending before them the disquiet and apprehension latent in all sounds of approach by someone or something unknown to the hearer. And at this moment, as luck would have it, two of the lamps, their oil exhausted, simultaneously flickered and died. A total silence fell throughout the hall, save for the tapping of the leks answering each other, hoofed footstep and echo, among the rocks high up in the wood.
Occula had told her that sometimes a girl would elect to play Shakkarn masked and horned, and thus disguised as the god would appear in full light as plainly as in the part of Lespa. Yet this was not the true style of the sen-guela, the tonda and the other great traditional dances. "So often, banzi, a pretty girl wants to show off as Lespa, but she only wants to dress up as Shakkarn. That's not real senguela! You've got to be Shakkarn-make them believe you're another person-well, almost." And had
not Maia seen Occula herself perform just such a feat on the night when Ka-Roton had taken phantom knife and stabbed himself?
Here came Shakkam; barely to be seen, a shadow among dark trees; half-brute, peering from side to side, pausing to sniff the air, plunging into the stream and shaking the water from his back as he lurched himself up and out; Shakkam grinning and licking his lips like a hound, pausing to rub himself against the stump of a tree. Then, almost as soon as glimpsed, he had vanished again into the blackness; but it was enough. A noise of running, and on the flutes startled birds flew up in the distance. Something umbral was slinking away, disappearing between the tree-trunks; reemerging for a moment to peer out, round-eyed, slobbering with excitement, kindled by what he had caught sight of in the glade below. Then once again, swift as a lizard, he was gone.
Maia, racing silently round the darkened edge of the hall, reached the opposite side quickly enough to create the effect of surprise she wanted. Hardly, it seemed, had the wanton god been lost to sight in the forest than here came pretty Lespa, gathering sticks, getting together a good, stout faggot to carry home; pausing to listen to the song of a greenbreast from the outskirts of the wood. Still going about her work, she came upon the pool; brown and clear, not too deep and not too cold, for she dabbled one foot in it to try.
As the hinnaris rippled about her in liquid cascades of descending quarter-tones Maia, with a single, swift movement, loosed the halter of the cherry-colored robe, let it fall to her ankles and stepped naked into the pool, giving a quick shudder and clutching her arms about her as she felt the first chill. She was still standing on the floor of the hall, yet now the water was nearly up to her shoulders and her feet were groping on the stones as she waded slowly forward. Cupping her hands, she splashed water into her face, laughed and tossed back her wet hair. She, at all events, knew where she was now; under the falls on the edge of Lake Serrelind.