For a little she made all she could of this most beguiling of scenes, bringing to it every scrap of invention at her command. She had been naked often enough for Sencho. She had been naked for Kembri, for Elvair-ka-Virrion, for Eud-Ecachlon, for Randronoth of Lapan; but never before
for the delectation of eighty men and women at once. Under the bravado which she had assumed to Fordil and his drummers she had been very nervous, but had thrust the fear away by telling herself (as might a soldier) that it had simply got to be done and that was all there was to it. Now that it was here, however, she was delighting in it. Intermittently, glancing up through the splashed water and her own wet hair, she glimpsed, on the edge of the surrounding lamplight, the fascinated eyes of watchers, and felt her power over them. "I am Lespa," she thought. "I am Lespa of the inmost heart." Her nakedness was no mere matter of tantalizing young men like Shend-Lador. It was the revelation of womanhood by the goddess. Not to be naked now would have been irreverent and impious.
Ah, but it was heady stuff, this! And here she might have remained, displaying herself in the pool, and well content would they have been to watch on, even until she had dishonored the goddess with her selfish vanity. Some girls did, and so she had been warned. But against this the good Fordil stood her friend. Oh, but one moment, Fordil! Just one more plunge, turning on my back and sliding upward to the bank! I do it so well! But no-she must obey him, must obey the goddess, obey the story and the music. For here, broken loose, straying aimlessly one might suppose, never a care, no harm in the world, down through the wood and grazing as he wandered, came the goat Shak-karn. Oh, but such a goat, the music said, such a goat as no lout of a farmer ever held on a chain; milk-white, silky-coated, his great, curving horns like the frame of a lyre, his hooves shining smooth as bronze. From the pool Lespa stared in wonder, her eyes following the goat rambling here and there as he cropped the green leaves. Then, as he hesitantly, almost timidly, approached to drink, she rested her two hands on the bank, drew herself out of the water and sat close by him in the sunshine.
Everyone in the hall could see the magnificent creature-not merely because his likeness was carved on the walls of temples all over the empire, not only because he lay in their minds and their dreams as surely as doomsday or the flood, but above all because he was real to the girl sitting beside him, her body seeming to glisten with water-drops as she gently stretched out one hand to touch him, to stroke his back as he stood docile on the margin of the
pool. She put her arms round his neck and rubbed her cheek against his ear.
Then followed the slow dawning in Lespa's mind that this paragon of beasts was indeed male: and that she herself-ah! Round-eyed, open-mouthed, she sprang up, fleeing a little way in hot shame: yet still her companion made no move and showed no impatience as the inmost secret stirred in her, revealing to her that she herself, she too-And here Maia stood for long moments down-glancing, trembling, bewildered. At last a little smile came to her lips and she took one single tentative step to return to him whom she herself had summoned unaware.
The mounting excitement as Lespa, of her own accord, began their love-play was conveyed by Maia, as Occula had taught her, shamelessly, in the sense that shame had been discarded, a thing of no meaning to the consort of a god (" 'cos you can be sure of one thing, banzi-whatever goddesses have, jfs not shame: else they'd be liars"). As at length he seemed to draw back, tantalized beyond endurance by the touch of her hands, only next moment to press himself yet more eagerly upon her; and as she rose, laughing, inviting him to go with her into the recesses of the wood, more than one couple followed her example and slipped away out of the hall on their own business.
And now Maia, once again out of sight in the darkness, found herself faced with a dilemma, unforeseen in her agitation at being so suddenly called upon to dance. Now she had to become the prying old woman-and here she was, naked and costumeless, without even a dresser to help her. Fordil himself had not anticipated or remembered this. Whatever was she to do? At all costs things must not go wrong now! In desperation she beat her fist on the wall; and as she did so felt the smooth texture of one of Sarget's panels of green cloth.
The panels, side by side and slightly overlapping, had been hung one above another in two rows. Each woven piece measured about seven or eight feet square, with loops at the upper corners by which it was hung on nails driven between the stones. Standing on tiptoe, she lifted down a square of fabric, wrapped herself in it from head to foot and drew up one corner as a hood. Then, as the zhuas began the comic, shuffling rhythm of the old woman's gait-boom da-da-da, boom da-da-da-she came hobbling once more into the light.
The peering, prurient curiosity of the old woman, her outrage at what she saw, her envious disgust, her hurry-scurry back to the village, her jabbering to her cronies and their setting forth in a body to put paid to the shameless hussy up in the wood-these things Maia rattled through, playing them very broadly, Meerzat festival-fashion, a peasant making fun of peasants. Perhaps, indeed, she overdid it a little, for the old woman in her haste need not really have trodden in a cow-pat and gone hopping about; but it got a laugh. Off they all hurried to the forest, and in the emptiness left behind, the two hinnaris began the reppa-the universally-known song of Shakkarn, hymn of Lespa's humility and acceptance of the inmost longing revealed. The audience began a low clapping to the rocking, thrusting rhythm-for it was impossible not to reciprocate-and all eyes were turned once more towards the dim glade whither Lespa had stolen away with her divine companion.
But Maia was not where they had expected. Exercising the privilege of the frissoor, she had taken possession of the dais behind their backs; and here she was lying on the great table, all among the scattered flower-garlands, her parted legs, bent at the knees, clasped about her invisible lover as Lespa writhed in her joy. No one saw her until, she gave a swift, inarticulate cry of pleasure-the only sound she had uttered all through the story-they turned in surprise, pressing forward, all of them consumed to look at her once again as she lay striving in the half-light, head flung back and hair streaming.
So now they themselves had involuntarily assumed the part of the villagers-the mean-minded louts and harridans come to besmirch her bliss, to rub the butterfly's wings between their dirty fingers and thumbs. Lespa, suddenly aware of them, buried her face in her hands, rolled quickly over and dropped off the table into the shadow beneath.
Following the tradition of the senguela, the climax of the reppa-the apotheosis of Lespa through the celestial love of Shakkarn-could be represented in various ways, according to the resources of the occasion and the temperament of the dancer. Sometimes, when her surroundings made this practicable, the girl would pace, divine and unheeding, straight through the audience, ascend a staircase and so be gone; or again, she might be escorted by children dressed as cherubs to a goat-horned throne set
among clouds and stars. But no such help was available to Maia. Neither could Fordil help her. Yet on the music went, an audible expression of that ineffable harmony forever sounding in the ears of the gods, and on she must go with it. Slowly she stood up, her face radiant (and goodness knows I got something to be happy about, she thought, else I'm very much mistook), and began, on the level floor of the dais, to climb easily upward, her limbs unhindered by the least weight from her body-for had she not become a goddess?-first through the trees (she parted their branches before her), then through the clouds and at last among the glittering aisles of the stars. Once or twice she stretched out a hand-the graceful, sturdy girl-to that of her divine lover, manifest now as the god Shakkarn, he whose animal nature she had accepted in herself and embraced in her erstwhile humanity. He ascended with her until, among the last whisperings of the hinnaris and the lightest breathings of the flutes, she stood motionless, arms outspread, head down-bent in blessing, to take up her eternal, nightly task of scattering truth in dreams to all the dwellers upon earth. And thus she remained, aloft upon the table and gazing gravely downward as the music at last died away and ceased.