Noon came and passed. Dusk fell. With darkness all his old terrors came creeping upon him. That he had eaten nothing since daybreak, the meat having been abandoned with the boat, was no great matter; for it often happened that he went for days without food and suffered no harm. By now he had forgotten his pursuers, remembering only the wild beasts of the forest, and the still wilder demons. He remembered Bikkoo and began chattering prayers at him. ‘Very good friends, Bikkoo. Don’t be angry with me. Don’t hate me. Don’t follow me. Go away. Very good friends.’ He hoped that Bikkoo might be cajoled into good humour by this repetition of his own favourite phrase. For a long while he dared not abandon his body to sleep, lest, while it lay empty, the soul being away on its wanderings, it should be entered and possessed by the homeless spirit of the dead man; for there is no end to the malice and cunning of demons. But at length for very weariness he crawled into the deep obscurity of the undergrowth and made himself a nest for the night. By great good luck he had come upon a stream, whose voice, cool and clear like the voice of a small warbling bird, reached him still where he lay curled up on a bed of bracken. He slept lightly, easily, with ears awake, and rising at the first beginning of day resumed his eager aimless journeying. He drank deep of the stream and felt fresh and strong, but hunger sent him searching for food until he found a nest of mice. That was good eating indeed, and a handful of fungus went well with it. He made a good meal.
And now a kind of panic possessed him, driving him on and on: not the panic of being pursued by murderous faces, but a driving desire for humankind. He began to hope again for the sight and company of a strange people. At noon that day he saw a woman, idle and listless, sauntering inadvertently towards him. Not till he was within a few strides of her did she notice his step and look up. Taken unawares she gave one glance, and ran. She had uttered no word or cry. Fear was quick in her. She was small and nimble; her grace and fleetness made his pulse leap joyfully. The pursuit was brief and silent. He caught her by the shoulder, and she turned and flung herself at him. Her nails tore at his face, and her teeth drew blood from his fingers, but the trivial pain of these injuries did not for an instant distract him from his purpose. Soon she was powerless in his grasp, her bosom heaving, her nostrils dilated. To feel the life that moved in her made him mad. He bore her to the ground. Her resistance was at an end. The terror that spoke in her eyes edged his desire, but when he had had his will of her another and a strange feeling woke in his heart. She was shaking with sobs, and her sobs hurt him. He knelt at her side and gazed down with puzzled eyes, unaware that it was not she, but the mystery of his own compassion, that puzzled him. He was all bewilderment, his first proud sense of triumph and fulfilment having dwindled away. This girl by some magic was putting her pain into him. He wanted to comfort her, but he did not know that he wanted it. His tenderness was dumb: he could only stare stupidly, and wait till her grief should have spent itself. From time to time he grunted interrogatively. ‘Ugh? Ugh?’ His questions availed nothing, and at last, unable to bear his pity any longer, he lifted his hand to strike her. She, with a little moan, flung out her own hand to meet it. Her clinging fingers constrained him downwards till his face lay close to her own; her arms came round his neck. She lay moaning, her terror unsubdued. And now Ogo, in sympathy, moaned with her. But this queer terror of hers disconcerted him, so that he was very ready to be angry again. Its persistence thwarted him of a triumph more subtle than that of physical possession, a triumph whose nature he could not even dimly conceive, though he felt the lack of it: he was unaware that until he could know himself pleasing to this woman of whom he had had pleasure, his heart must remain unsatisfied of its deepest desire. But in time she became quieter, and finally she was silent and still. He spoke to her; grinned; searched her face for an answer.
‘We are sib,’ she said. Her voice was harsh with despair.
He leaped to his feet. He stared down at her with fear and sudden loathing. ‘It is not.’
‘It is so,’ she answered coldly. ‘We are sib.’
He beat his breast, raving aloud. ‘Who are you?’
‘I am called Wooma. I am the daughter of the daughter of Koor. And you are a son of Koor.’
‘I don’t know you.’ Ogo, fiercely calm again, fought against the fact and the curse that confronted him. ‘I’ve never seen you.’
‘I have seen you, but I have kept my face to the ground as a woman must.’
‘It is not,’ said Ogo. ‘You are not a daughter of Koor. You are a strange woman, and you have magic that tells you these things.’ But he did not believe what he said, and seeing her unmoved by his accusation he fell into despair. ‘We are sib?’ he asked.
‘It is so.’
‘Then I shall kill you.’
He snatched up his axe, which lay on the ground attached to his discarded belt; and if the girl had moved to escape he would have given chase and killed her in hot blood. But her movement was one not of escape but of willing acquiescence. Supporting herself on her long supple arms, she raised her body towards him, offering, with head flung back, the full pointed breasts and the living throat. He was checked, and again puzzled. He uttered an inarticulate noise, half question, half menace; and watched for her to shrink, writhe out of reach, and run. She did not move. They stayed so, mute and motionless, like sculpture, till, dropping the axe, with a low growl he straddled across her, seized the lithe column of her body in his arms, and set his teeth amorously in the soft flesh of her shoulder. She screamed briefly. Her arms enfolded him. He raised his head and looked long into her wild eyes.
‘I shall not kill you,’ he said. ‘You are my woman.’
Her eyes filled with glory. ‘Lord, I am you,’ she answered.
The wedding was intimate and radiant, fire with fire. Having broken the sacred law, they were accurst, and lay naked to the vengeance of gods and men. But, since nothing could alter that, since there was no avoiding the doom, the shame that might have divided them was a bond drawing them closer together. In the tragic isolation of this shame they were made indissolubly one; for each to the other was the sole refuge in a world grown suddenly hostile. In their fancy the sun eyed them with burning accusation and the air shrank from the infection of their sin. Danger was all about them; destruction was certain; and their delight in each other was the sharper because it must be brief, a snatched instant of eternity. It was not long before the cloud of terror came back into Ogo’s eyes. He was thinking perhaps of the story of Strong, another of the friends and followers of Hawkon: Strong the hunter who, being pursued and tempted in the forest by a forbidden woman, had driven his spear through her throat, so preserving his virtue and winning the applause of all the tribe. A shining example, but one that it was too late for Ogo to think of following. His glance returning to Wooma, he was surprised again by a feeling he could neither understand nor express. His hand touched her. They bared their teeth at each other and gazed with bright eyes.