It was late in the day when she began singing the song as she moved among the whispering pillars of rain. She sang it over and over again.
“What’s that song?” snapped her husband at last, walking in to sit at the fire table.
“I don’t know.” She looked up, surprised at herself. She put her hand to her mouth, unbelieving. The sun was setting. The house was closing itself in, like a giant flower, with the passing of light. A wind blew among the pillars; the fire table bubbled its fierce pool of silver lava. The wind stirred her russet hair, crooning softly in her ears. She stood silently looking out into the great sallow distances of sea bottom, as if recalling something, her yellow eyes soft and moist, “Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine,” she sang, softly, quietly, slowly. “Or leave a kiss within the cup, and I’ll not ask for wine.” She hummed now, moving her hands in the wind ever so lightly, her eyes shut. She finished the song.
It was very beautiful.
“Never heard that song before. Did you compose it?” he inquired, his eyes sharp.
“No, Yes. No, I don’t know, really!” She hesitated wildly. “I don’t even know what the words are; they’re another language!”
“What language?”
She dropped portions of meat numbly into the simmering lava. “I don’t know.” She drew the meat forth a moment later, cooked, served on a plate for him. “It’s just a crazy thing I made up, I guess. I don’t know why.”
He said nothing. He watched her drown meats in the hissing fire pool. The sun was gone. Slowly, slowly the night came in to fill the room, swallowing the pillars and both of them, like a dark wine poured to the ceiling. Only the silver lava’s glow lit their faces.
She hummed the strange song again.
Instantly he leaped from his chair and stalked angrily from the room.
Later, in isolation, he finished supper.
When he arose he stretched, glanced at her, and suggested, yawning, “Let’s take the flame birds to town tonight to see an entertainment.”
“You don’t mean it?” she said. “Are you feeling well?”
“What’s so strange about that?”
“But we haven’t gone for an entertainment in six months!”
“I think it’s a good idea.”
“Suddenly you’re so solicitous,” she said.
“Don’t talk that way,” he replied peevishly. “Do you or do you not want to go?”
She looked out at the pale desert. The twin white moons were rising. Cool water ran softly about her toes. She began to tremble just the least bit. She wanted very much to sit quietly here, soundless, not moving until this thing occurred, this thing expected all day, this thing that could not occur but might. A drift of song brushed through her mind.
“I — — ”
“Do you good,” he urged. “Come along now.”
“I’m tired,” she said. “Some other night.”
“Here’s your scarf.” He handed her a phial. “We haven’t gone anywhere in months.”
“Except you, twice a week to Xi City.” She wouldn’t look at him.
“Business,” he said.
“Oh?” She whispered to herself.
From the phial a liquid poured, turned to blue mist, settled about her neck, quivering.
The flame birds waited, like a bed of coals, glowing on the cool smooth sands. The white canopy ballooned on the night wind, flapping softly, tied by a thousand green ribbons to the birds.
Ylla laid herself back in the canopy and, at a word from her husband, the birds leaped, burning, toward the dark sky, The ribbons tautened, the canopy lifted. The sand slid whining under; the blue hills drifted by, drifted by, leaving their home behind, the raining pillars, the caged flowers, the singing books, the whispering floor creeks. She did not look at her husband. She heard him crying out to the birds as they rose higher, like ten thousand hot sparkles, so many red-yellow fireworks in the heavens, tugging the canopy like a flower petal, burning through the wind.
She didn’t watch the dead, ancient bone-chess cities slide under, or the old canals filled with emptiness and dreams. Past dry rivers and dry lakes they flew, like a shadow of the moon, like a torch burning.
She watched only the sky.
The husband spoke.
She watched the sky.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“What?”
He exhaled. “You might pay attention.”
“I was thinking.”
“I never thought you were a nature lover, but you’re certainly interested in the sky tonight,” he said.
“It’s very beautiful.”
“I was figuring,” said the husband slowly. “I thought I’d call Hulle tonight. I’d like to talk to him about us spending some time, oh, only a week or so, in the Blue Mountains. It’s just an idea — ”
“The Blue Mountains!” She held to the canopy rim with one hand, turning swiftly toward him.
“Oh, it’s just a suggestion.”
“When do you want to go?” she asked, trembling.
“I thought we might leave tomorrow morning. You know, an early start and all that,” he said very casually.
“But we never go this early in the year!”
“Just this once, I thought — ” He smiled. “Do us good to get away. Some peace and quiet. You know. You haven’t anything else planned? We’ll go, won’t we?”
She took a breath, waited, and then replied, “No.”
“What?” His cry startled the birds. The canopy jerked.
“No,” she said firmly. “It’s settled. I won’t go.”
He looked at her. They did not speak after that. She turned away.
The birds flew on, ten thousand flrebrands down the wind.
In the dawn the sun, through the crystal pillars, melted the fog that supported Ylla as she slept. All night she had hung above the floor, buoyed by the soft carpeting of mist that poured from the walls when she lay down to rest. All night she had slept on this silent river, like a boat upon a soundless tide. Now the fog burned away, the mist level lowered until she was deposited upon the shore of wakening.
She opened her eyes.
Her husband stood over her. He looked as if he had stood there for hours, watching. She did not know why, but she could not look him in the face.
“You’ve been dreaming again!” he said. “You spoke out and kept me awake. I really think you should see a doctor.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“You talked a lot in your sleep!”
“Did I?” She started up.
Dawn was cold in the room. A gray light filled her as she lay there.
“What was your dream?”
She had to think a moment to remember. “The ship. It came from the sky again, landed, and the tall man stepped out and talked to me, telling me little jokes, laughing, and it was pleasant.”
Mr. K touched a pillar. Founts of warm water leaped up, steaming; the chill vanished from the room. Mr. K’s face was impassive.
“And then,” she said, “this man, who said his strange name was Nathaniel York, told me I was beautiful and — and kissed me.”
“Ha!” cried the husband, turning violently away, his jaw working.
“It’s only a dream.” She was amused.
“Keep your silly, feminine dreams to yourself!”
“You’re acting like a child.” She lapsed back upon the few remaining remnants of chemical mist. After a moment she laughed softly. “I thought of some more of the dream,” she confessed.
“Well, what is it, what is it?” he shouted.
“Yll, you’re so bad-tempered.”
“Tell me!” he demanded. “You can’t keep secrets from me!” His face was dark and rigid as he stood over her.
“I’ve never seen you this way,” she replied, half shocked, half entertained. “All that happened was this Nathaniel York person told me — well, he told me that he’d take me away into his ship, into the sky with him, and take me back to his planet with him. It’s really quite ridiculous.”
“Ridiculous, is it!” he almost screamed. “You should have heard yourself, fawning on him, talking to him, singing with him, oh gods, all night; you should have heard yourself!”