“Professor Kurtz?”
Magda froze.
“I’m Angelica di Rienzi.”
It was the girl Magda had scried in her room. In sudden panic Magda took a step backward, then caught herself and tried to smile. The girl smiled back and went on breathlessly.
“I wish I’d been able to take one of your classes this summer—I wanted to audit one but they wouldn’t let me. I’m just starting here,” she added. “But I wanted you to know how much I loved Daughters of the Setting Sun—”
She was such a beautiful girl! Magda nodded, stunned. “Angelica, how—how nice of you—”
She winced as Angelica took her hand and shook it vigorously. The girl had incongruously large strong hands, a peasant’s hands despite their long polished nails, with broad, slightly callused fingers.
“Oh, I mean it, Professor Kurtz, it was wonderful—”
That smile! It was ravishing, and Angelica was probably not as unconscious of its effect as she tried to appear. When Magda wanly smiled back, she felt that her own mouth was too small and meager to project anything remotely worthy of this girl’s radiant good will.
“—I did a paper on it at school. It really, really changed my life.”
Magda arched an eyebrow. “Really really?”
“Oh, yes! I loved that story about the Greeks—the fight between the men and women, and how when the women lost, the men said their children would no longer be allowed to keep their mothers’ names. That was the first time I ever thought about the whole notion of a matriarchy. It was like a door opening, and you opened it for me.”
“Saint Augustine.”
“Excuse me?”
“The story’s from Saint Augustine. You know, the proto-feminist,” Magda said drily. “So I guess you should thank him for opening the door.”
“Oh. Well, anyway…”
When you took them apart Angelica’s features were almost too exotic, at least to someone accustomed to California, where girls were polled neatly and expensively as bonsai evergreens. And, of course, she was wearing green contacts. No one had eyes that color, Magda thought, like the virent flash of some Amazonian butterfly’s wing.
“…made me want to become an archaeologist. Before that I was planning to go into the theater—a friend of mine from Sarah Lawrence said she could set me up with an audition for ‘Dark Shadows’…”
Magda nodded. The girl definitely had something. The unusual features projected a striking, almost disturbing, beauty—Magda thought of the famous bust of Nefertiti, or the heavy-lipped face of the hermaphroditic Akhenaton. Exquisite, but in a way that wasn’t quite human. She wondered why the Benandanti had brought her here. Perhaps they had known, somehow, that she was to be chosen for some great work. But Magda was fairly certain that even the Benandanti had not known until a few days ago that a Sign was to appear.
No, something else would have driven them to Angelica; the world was full of beautiful girls who were not marked for the Benandanti. What Magda sensed in her was an overwhelming determination, a great and terrible will.
Will toward what, Magda had no idea. Probably the girl herself didn’t even know—not yet, at least. But when she found out, all hell would break loose. Magda stared at her thoughtfully as Angelica went on.
“…spent some time with my cousins in Florence and then…”
It wasn’t just her beauty: she projected such raw pure energy. Nearly everyone stared at her. A few, men and women both, quite literally stopped in their tracks to stare. As though some great icon—the Sphinx, Venus de Milo, Greta Garbo—had strolled into a cocktail party and mixed herself a drink.
And, while she seemed to pay no heed to this constantly changing backdrop of admirers, Angelica di Rienzi noted every single one of them. Magda was sure of it.
“And then one night I got a phone call from Balthazar…”
Balthazar? Since when did undergraduates call him Balthazar? Angelica reached out to stroke Magda’s bare arm, the girl’s touch like warm oil poured across her skin. Magda shivered.
“…and I love it, I just love it…”
Magda closed her eyes. The girl’s perfume enveloped her, a sweet warm fragrance like sandalwood and oranges. Like the sun burning down upon those tiny wild hyacinths that grow beneath endless blue Aegean skies—
Kirkotokous athroize te mani Grogopa Gnathoi ruseis itoa
—like the sweet smoke drifting up from the mountaintop, the kouroi gathered there and harrowed in the dusk like grain…
“So I like, really think that I’ll find myself here.” Angelica laughed and let go of Magda’s arm. “I’m sorry to go on like this! But your work really has meant so much to me.”
…Othiym haïyo…
Magda drew back as though she had been slapped.
What the hell is going on?
But Angelica had noticed nothing. Her huge emerald eyes were fixed on Magda. She opened her hands and held them palms upward as she recited in a low voice, “‘I have made you a lioness among women, and given you leave to kill any at your pleasure.’”
“What?” demanded Magda. “What did you say?”
Angelica dropped her hands. “From your book.” She looked confused. “I mean, I think that’s where it’s from. I’m sorry—was it, was I—did I remember it wrong?”
Magda drew her clenched fists to her breast.
“No,” she said, trying to keep her voice from shaking. Who is this girl? “It’s—it’s not from my book. It’s from the Mysteries of Eleusis—I mentioned them in there, but I never quoted that verse. I never quoted it anywhere.”
“Oh. Eleusis. The corn thing.” Angelica gave a self-deprecating laugh. “I must have read it somewhere else, then.”
Her voice trailed off and Angelica suddenly looked away. Magda followed her gaze.
On the other side of the reception room there was a stir, as people turned and craned their necks, to watch someone arguing with a gentleman by the front door. Magda heard tittering, a single raucous shout. Several students cheered drunkenly. Magda stood on tiptoe, trying to see over the crowd.
In the smoke-filled entrance to Garvey Hall stood a tall unsteady figure, wearing what appeared to be white robes—no, a sheet—no, two sheets, and one of them patterned with lurid purple daisies—draped around his torso and across his head like a hood. As she stared the figure straightened and pulled a small white rectangle from somewhere within his makeshift toga. Magda recognized the same heavy embossed card that had been issued as invitation to every Molyneux reception she had ever attended. With a flourish the sheet-clad figure presented it to the man at the door. The guard peered at it suspiciously, then waved the newcomer through. The boy walked into the main room with his head bowed, face still hidden by white and purple folds. Whistles and catcalls filled the air.
“Check it out!”
“Hey, Ah—lee—VER!
“Ah—lee—VER!” chanted a group by the bar. “Ah—lee—VER!”
The boy in the toga drew himself up. He gave one shoulder an exaggerated shake, like a stripper shedding her costume, and threw his head back. A flurry of long ebony hair fell around his shoulders. Angelica gasped.