As for the inhabitants, there must have been a dozen Panisci, no, thirteen, and there were four Bears of Artemis-shameful little hussies-who were keeping company with the Goat Boys. Since both Boys and Girls attained a physical development of from twelve to fifteen and since puberty comes to the Beasts at eleven or twelve, they sometimes formed unions which were rarely lasting-in fact, the Boys often shared a Girl in common-but which might produce offspring. Two of the four Girls were absentmindedly cradling infants: a cub and a kid.
The Girls were outcasts from their own race. They lacked the fastidious charm of their more civilized sisters who lived in hollow logs and wove berry chains to make a decent living. Their paws were red and coarse, their fur was long and unkempt. The necklaces they wore were not of black-eyed Susans but strand upon garish strand of metal and other bright oddments stolen or dug from the earth or found in stream beds. They were a brazen lot, these Girls. They looked at Kora as if she had come to steal their men and it shocked her to see such knowing stares on such young faces. It was even rumored that they chewed the leaves of the hemp plants, which the Centaurs had imported from their travels in the East, and enjoyed exotic visions or fell into a drugged stupor. Indeed, one of the Girls was huddled in the corner, oblivious to her comrades and looking as if she were watching a private vision. Someone spoke to her but she neither moved nor changed her expression.
“Eirene’s out of it,” another Girl said.
“Well, she’ll miss her supper.”
“Do you think she cares? I’ve a mind to join her.”
“The weed can wait. After the fun.”
Kora, it seemed, was the fun. Phlebas flung her into their midst as a hunter might have flung a haunch of venison to his hungry comrades. The thought occurred to her that she might be intended for dinner. She knew that they preferred vegetables-grass, roots, the lower branches of trees, preferably vegetables stolen from the Centaur gardens-but that they ate almost anything, including leather sandals. Well, she thought, with that wry, self-depreciating humor which sometimes salted her dreams. Half of them will go hungry. There isn’t enough of me for thirteen portions.
But they did not have her in mind for dinner. Not yet, at least. Having little to occupy them and being children or at least childish, they were curious creatures, and a Dryad in their lodge was an object of intense curiosity. They ogled her and poked her-she slapped their hands. They pinched her and prodded her-she kicked one of them in the shin and sent him limping across the room.
“Let’s dunk her in the lake.”
“Let’s yank out that pretty hair by the roots.”
“Let’s cut her up and see how she tastes.” (Now it was coming.)
The imagination of children is unlimited. She shuddered; the taste of fear was nightshade in her mouth. But her dignity did not forsake her. She drew herself to her full height of five feet so that she might tower above them in what she hoped was an awesome manner; she smoothed the linen gown which they had rumpled; she wriggled her foot and straightened her sandal.
“You are horrid children, all of you,” she said. “And if you don’t let me go, Eunostos and the Centaurs will drag this pitiful lodge right under the water. They can swim, you know, even if you can’t.”
“And drag you under with it? Besides, they don’t even know you’re here,” said Phlebas.
The group reacted as if he had told a hilarious joke: the Boys stamped their hooves and the Girls clapped their paws. “They don’t even know you’re here!”
With that, they snatched the gown from her back so unexpectedly that she understood their success as thieves. And they vied with each other insulting the modest dimensions of her breasts. (Zoe should be in my place, she thought.)
Shivering in that ill-lit, ill-heated place, for there was no window to let in the sun-merely the fitful flickering of a fire on the clay floor and some beeswax candle stubs-she almost lost her courage. She sat on the floor by the fire and the thought of Eunostos (he would track her abductors) prevented her from breaking into tears or huddling like a frostnipped swallow to warm herself and hide her breasts.
A Paniscus kid, whose mother, she supposed, had forgotten him in the midst of merriment, crawled into Kora’s lap. She started to remove him and his stench of onion grass and sour milk. But he smiled up at her with a winsome innocence, his little horns peeping through his hair like toadstools. She took heart at the sight of this brave, pathetic child, whose mother appeared so indifferent to him.
What a dear little kid, she thought, to live in such surroundings. He raised his hand to the Centaur pendant which her captors had neglected to remove along with her gown.
“Do you think it’s pretty?” she cooed. “You may play with it if you like.”
Hardly had she finished her invitation than he bit her finger, snatched the pendant from its chain, and, scuttled to his mother with the booty.
“That’s a good child,” cooed the mother, in imitation of Kora.
Now Kora did begin to cry, though the wound to her pride was far greater than the pain from the bite. Green blood oozed from her bitten finger.
“What are you, some kind of vegetable?” Phlebas asked. “Look at that, boys, we have a lettuce among us.”
“Did you think that everybody’s blood was red?” she snapped. She was so angry now that she forgot to cry. “We live in trees and eat acorns. Why shouldn’t our blood be green?”
“Suit yourself,” said Phlebas. “But we’ll stick to red. Won’t we, boys?”
The Boys assented with a simultaneous bleat. The Girls, who had not been asked and whose blood was closer to brown than to red, remained silent.
Fortunately for Kora, the Panisci were soon distracted and they quite forgot the novelty of green blood and indeed of Kora. They returned to their usual pursuits-that is, horseplay and idleness. One of the Girls had donned Kora’s robe and, while it was so large for her that it dragged the ground, at least it concealed her hairy flanks. She began to dance and stumble about the room, improvising a song-to Kora it was more like a howl-while Panisci stamped on the earth and set up a savage drumbeat, and Phlebas took a tortoiseshell lyre from a wall peg and accompanied the song with a monotonous plucking which sounded like nothing so much as a series of bat squeaks. But the sound suited the words: “Bats and rats and spiders too, Out of the earth we conjure you: Wax the wings of the honey bee, Drag the Dryad down from her tree!”
The weed-drugged Girl in the corner had roused herself sufficiently to struggle to her feet, and she was standing in one spot and swaying to the music as if it had merged with her vision. But not everyone was singing and dancing. There was never unanimity among the Panisci and their women, whatever their pursuits. Some had started to eat, with much smacking of lips and sucking of fingers, and a total disregard for the musicians. They seemed to make no distinction between a raw, unwashed root and a chunk of rancid fish, a grub or a toadstool. One of them tossed a tidbit to Kora, which she caught, examined, and discarded in disgust. A large white slug, lethargic but still alive.
“Why waste food on her?” pouted the mother of the thieving child. Phlebas cuffed her across the mouth. “Where’s your mind, up in the trees? You know we can’t afford to lose her. Remember the bargain.” Two Panisci held her arms while a third, retrieving the slug, forced it into her mouth.
“Eunostos will find me,” she gagged as the tail of the creature slithered down her throat.
“He’s too big for the tunnel. He might wriggle in like a snake, but we would brain him before he got very far. As for the Centaurs, they couldn’t get low enough to wriggle. And if they try to swim, we’ll stand on the roof and hit them in the water with our slingshots.”