She wondered sometimes whether he was lonely and wanted to play, but she never quite got around to making friends with him. There was too much else to do.
She had the Fire, a lot of it, and pretty soon they were going to send her away to a real school where you learned to do magic with it, instead of just simple body-fixings and under-speech, which were all the Rodmistress down in town would teach her. At the school they'd make her a Rod of her own, and she'd be able to do all kinds of things.
In the meantime, there were lessons and exercises to make the Fire grow, and she was busy with those. In fact, she had
stumbled by herself on one special exercise that gave her the same tingling excitement that the Fire did, though in a slightly different way. When she showed her new method to Welcaen, her mother had laughed and praised her and told her it was fine to enhance the Fire thus, but that she shouldn't forget to be private when she did it. The most private spot she could think of was the hiding place behind the old chicken house, where the willows' branches hung down all around, making a dusky green cave. And that was where she had spent most of that warm spring day, delightedly touching herself in that special secret place — until Nuncle Bal came brushing through the downhanging branches and stopped in surprise, and stood there staring at her. .
Her mother had told her that usually it was not polite to be naked with someone unless you had agreed on it beforehand. Not knowing how Nuncle Bal felt about it, she pulled her smock back down and smiled at him. "Hi," she said.
He smiled back, and all of a sudden she felt really cold inside, because there was something wrong with the way he was smiling. Confused, she put out her underhearing and listened.
What she heard made her so scared that she couldn't pull it back again, couldn't even move. She never heard anything like this before. Her mother and father when they shared. . she knew that feeling. It was warm: a filling-and-being-filled feeling. She wasn't sure what they were doing, exactly, but it wasn't this. The feeling that went with this was cold: a wanting, and wanting-to-be-in-something. It was hungry, just hungry enough to take—
He was letting the rake fall against the willow truck, and she was getting really scared now, so that she started to jump up and run away. But he was right in front of her already, and he grabbed her hard around the throat with one hand, and cov-ered her mouth with the other. She couldn't breathe. She tried to scream, to cry, but there wasn't any air. Her ears started to ring and everything went red in front of her. Nuncle Bal seemed to be saying something, but she couldn't tell what it was through the red, the black, the roar
ing. She fell backward into the darkness, silently begging oh please, let it be a bad dream. Let mi wake up, please!
After a while the roaring went away some. It was a dream, she began to think, and then heard his voice, thick, low and hun-gry. "You want
it," he said. Her eyes came open. She saw his twisted smile, shuddered, and squeezed them shut again. "You want it. Sure you want it."
He was doing something to her smock. What was he— "Mamaaaaa!" she started to scream, tears starting to her eyes. But before she could get the scream out that hand came down on her throat again. The red, the roaring, ok no, pleeeeeeeease. .
. . her back was cold. She was on the ground again, and her smock was off. So were Nuncle Bal's britches, and she squirmed and fought but couldn't get out from under his hands. His breath was on her face and he leaned in and pushed her legs far apart, too far. It hurt, and what was tie doing, he was rubbing her secret place, the wrong way! And what, what— NOOOOOO!
The scream wouldn't come out. of her throat. It was all inside her head, a shrieking pain, but not as bad as how he was hurting her down
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there. He was in her secret place that was supposed to be for her to share with her loved some day, and he was pushing himself inside. There was a horrible burning pain, again, and again, until she fell herself being torn open. There was a white-hot line of relief, then, and new agony stitching itself through the rest of the burning. It was sicken-ing. She wanted to retch but couldn't, his hand—
Tears rolled down the sides of her face, into her hair. After a while she couldn't feel them or anything else, it hurt so bad— Inside she yelled and yelled for help, but no help came. They weren't sensitives and they couldn't hear her, any of them! He was pushing it in and out, hard, It hurt worse and worse, and he was breathing fast and hot right in her face. She was breathing his wet stale breath and that made her want to be sick too — and it hurt, it hurt, somebody make it stop! Somebody, Mama, Daddy, Goddess, please., please — make it slop!
He slumped forward,, and she thought she felt something
shoot inside her, but she wasn't sure because of the pain, the way it burned, her secret place that had always felt so nice. Broken, torn, she'd never be able to use it again. No one would love her, ever, hers was broken — and the Fire, when he hurt her, it came out, it was in the pain, no more, never, it hurt, horrible—
She lay there and sobbed for air, all the screams in her stifled by horror; and when he came around and knelt over her face and pushed the hard thing, all bloody, into her slack mouth, and rubbed it in and out, she let him. At least he wasn't hurting her anymore. But when he turned her over and started to put it against that other place, she realized that he was going to hurt her even worse this time. No one was going to come help her now, either. She pushed her face down against the cold harsh dirt and tried with all her might to die.
It didn't work. When her first scream broke free, he stran-gled it. again. The terrible strength of his hand turned the world red and then black once more. The last thing she heard as she pitched forward into blackness was, very remote, the sound of some little girl screaming as the size of him tore her open the other1 way, too. .
Eventually her hearing came back. She heard him pick up his rake and hurry away, pushing the rustling branches aside. Some while later, lying as she was with her face on the hard ground, she felt-heard hoofbeats, cantering, then galloping. He was gone. Very slowly she got up. It hurt, especially be-tween her legs, when she moved them at all. She pulled down her smock and scrubbed at her face to try to get the dirt off: Her father didn't like her to be dirty.
That roaring stayed with her all that day, as confusion and rage sounded all around her1… It was her thoughts now, dazed, shocked, going around and around in her head and coming hack again to that which she had felt tangled with the agony —the Fire.
When they finally put her to bed, full of some bitter herbal potion the Rodmistress had — made her drink so she'd sleep, her head still roared, behind the steady flow of her tears. Only wter, after she had been staring for hours at the vague circles the candles made on the ceiling, did the tears flow more
slowly. Gradually, the pain between her legs began to feel far away. The roar died to a whisper. But the whisper said the same thing she had been hearing all day. . No more. Never again.
And there was a quieter whisper beneath that. One so soft that she hadn't heard it then, never heard it afterward; only heard it now with a Dragon's impossibly sharp underhearing — a seed of rage, taking root in blood and battered flesh, burning dark with hate: Some day, when I'm big, I'll kill him.
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The pain, experienced at last, fell away and left her among her mdeihei with the fiery tears running down her face. They held their silence, waiting to hear what she would sing before beginning to weave counterpoint or dissonance about it.
She was exhausted. It was fifteen years since that afternoon under the willow. Fifteen years since she had shown herself any more than Balen's terrible smile, or thought of the experi-ence as more than "the rape." She had thought she was over it, past it all. What idiocy.
As she grew, she had quickly given up thinking much about sharing her body with others. Her agemates indulged in all the delightful anticipation of adolescence — the feeling that something magical awaited them when sharing began. But when the time carne she had plunged into an experience1 that had about it nothing of magic. Instead, every sharing had a touch of the sordid about it, a taste of fear which made her want to have it finished quickly. Afterwards, she would inevi-tably plunge into another sharing, in search of what had been missing. She never found it. Nor, as she got close to the brink of focusing, had she ever managed that, either. How could she, when sharing felt so much like Fire?
Slowly Segnbora lifted her gemmed head, and sang relief and grief and wear)' regret at the walls. From the shadows her mdeihei took up the dark melody and shared it with her in compassionate plainsong. "Oh Immanence," she sang, "I'm full of Power, and in danger of running forever dry; I've shared a hundred times, and I'm virgin still; I walk on water, and yet thirst …" She brought her wings down against the floor in a gesture of bitterness.
"And tlie nightmare was right, too. I'm a killer. The Shadow has merely to touch that memory ever so lightly, and I kill one more time. Is this my destiny, then? To be a clock-work toy that can be set to kilting by any fool who happens to find the key?" Gentle and ruthless, her mdeihei answered her in one long note that shook the cave. "Fes.'"
"Or so it seems," Hasai said kindly. She looked over at her mdaha, catching for the first time the unease that had always been in his voice. She had never be-fore been Dracon enough to hear it. He gazed back, gentle-eyed, huge, terrible as a thundercloud with wings. And yet, to Dracon eyes, he was also frightened, crippled, shadowed.
"Mdaha," she said, bending her head down close to his. "Your discomfort bears looking at, for haven't you often told me that the mdeihei, and you, are me?" "Often."
"That being the case," she said, "it comes time now to deal with your stone, sithess&ch." He looked at her almost sadly, knowing — as he had always known — that it was true. "For you are me, and at Bluepeak the Shadow will strike at you too. If you succumb, I will too. Then Lorn dies, and the Kingdoms founder, and I'm forsworn. And more than that: The green place you fought for, the world you treasure so, will fall under the Shadow's domination, and not even Dragons will be safe."
Hasai was still as stone, except for his tail, which lashed nervously. Segnbora leaned closer, flipped her own tail around to pinion it and hold it down. The sight of her tail briefly surprised her. It wasn't like Hasai's. It was scaled in star-emeralds as fiery green as new spring growth. It was spined in yellow diamond.
"It has to do with rue somehow, doesn't it?" she said. "With going mdahaih in a human — and with something older than that, even— Hasai, it
must be settled, or the Shadow will settle it for us!"
He started to draw downward, away from her touch. 'There is yet time—"
"No there's not!"
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