The sea wind sought her out and tugged at her hair and the skirt of her tunic. Both material and hair flowed to her left, and the air stroked every part of her body with an intimacy she would not have permitted in anything else. She was exhilarated. She shaded her eyes with her left hand and waved to the sea with her right. She wished she could be here forever.
Then she looked down. The cliff at whose brink she stood was no ordinary work of nature. It was a monstrous stone musical instrument, a hammered dulcimer without its strings, rising five body lengths above the heaving surface of the water. Two giant stone roses were set in it, red with green leaves despite the weathering of the stone. In these alone the old magic lingered. The rest of the instrument was scarred with cracks and chips, and the top was overgrown with moss and grass.
How long had it been since the Players left? No theow seemed to know, and if the despots knew they did not tell. How long did it take for waves and weather to make stone crumble? Nona shivered. Longer than the time required for nine generations, obviously. Far longer, surely.
She looked to her left. There was a giant mandolin, its stone also cracking apart. The grass and moss outlined its entire top surface in green, and its hole was a dark cave into which the waves crashed. To her right was a great fiddle, in similar ruin.
These had been the possessions of the Megaplayers, even in their destruction suggesting the immense power of that lost age. What giants had wielded these mighty instruments? What could their music have been like? What could have caused these beings to depart, not only leaving their music behind but dumping their treasures into the sea?
Nona tried to imagine the Players, and could not. She tried to fathom the playing of the instruments, and could not. It was all too far beyond her. Yet somehow she had to find the Megaplayers and call on them to return. To deliver her people from near slavery. If only she could!
She stepped to the side, then back. She hopped. She shifted her weight and turned her body to an imaginary rhythm. She spun about, her skirt flaring out, her brown hair wrapping around her face. She felt a faint beat, as of distant marching or a baby's heart. She heard a faint sound, as of a delicate melody hidden behind crashing waves.
In a moment she was dancing. At first she set her feet deliberately in the patterns of the dance. Then something took them, and she abandoned herself to it. She stepped and whirled, kicked and leaped. The beat intensified, carrying her with it. She saw the world turning around her, the sky above, the sea below, and she was not in it but of it. She floated, she soared!
"Ana!"
She fell, abruptly released from the spell. Stave caught her, his strong arms bearing her back from the brink. "You were going to leap!" he exclaimed apologetically.
She realized that it could be true. Something had imbued her, and she had let go of her own will. It had been glorious—but now she realized how readily that possession could have swept her over the cliff and into the surging sea. Actually that would not have meant her death, because she had developed the power to fly, or at least to float in the air and to propel herself by attempting to conjure heavy objects to her. But if she had gone over the cliff, and fallen, and used that power to save herself, her secret would have been out, and that would have meant her death at the hands of the despots.
"Thank you," she panted. "I—I lost control."
"I never saw anything so beautiful," he said. "You danced as if the Players had taken your feet! Your legs were so lovely when your skirt floated up. Where did you learn those steps?"
The Players... Could it be? Had she made contact? The prospect awed her. But what could she say to Stave?
For a moment she was nonplussed, knowing that she could not afford to have him guess that she was tuning in on the music of the Megaplayers, but also that it would not be right to lie about it. The magic she sought was the essence of truth; a lie would taint and perhaps nullify it. Yet if she distracted him by waxing romantic, she would be deceiving him in another way. She had no intention of marrying him.
"Just how far did my skirt rise?" she inquired, forcing a blush. This was about as much of a ploy as she cared to try: diverting him to a minor matter.
"Oh, not that far!" he said quickly. But it was obvious from the dilation of his pupils that it had been too far. Yet maybe that had solved her problem: he had already been distracted. It was not the way she would have chosen, but perhaps it was just as well.
"I tell you, Ana," he said as she hesitated. "I always thought you were, well, distant. Not the sort of girl to take on a date. I came here with you mainly from curiosity. But when you danced—you are a truly comely woman—it would be easy to love you."
"Don't do that!" she exclaimed. Then she had to laugh. "I mean, I didn't mean to—"
She saw him grow subtly tense. He felt rebuffed. "You just wanted to see what kind of impression you could make on a man when you tried?"
"No, I—"
"Well, I'll tell you: you made an impression on me!"
This was getting worse. "Stave, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have—"
He smiled, not comfortably. "You're trying to say that you didn't know how well it would work, or if it would work at all, and it worked too well? I understand. You had no more interest in me than I had in you. You just wanted to try the dance and see. Now you know: it works. So it's time to fetch whoever it is you're really interested in, and make your skirt flare up for him, so—"
"Stave, no!" she cried, chagrined.
"It's all right. There's someone I'd like to impress too. Can you show me how to do that dance?"
She stared at him. She had not tried to deceive him; he had deceived himself. But she had to accept it. If he took the dance as a romantic prelude, instead of a connection to the Players, there would be no suspicion.
"I can try," she said. "But it isn't something I learned. It just happened."
"Let's make it happen again." He set down the skunk, which became a stick as his hand left it. "You did a side step, like this, and back. Then you hopped." He did these motions and he talked. He was nimble on his feet; he knew how to dance. "Then something happened."
She had heard the distant rhythm of the Megaplayers! But she doubted that he would be able to hear it too; he was not ninth born. Could she duplicate the dance without that music?
She tried. She set her feet in the remembered pattern, and her body moved, but the magic was not there.
"No, that's not it," Stave said, following her perfectly. "But the wind was taking your hair and skirt. Maybe if I try it up at the brink." He walked to the verge, faced out as she had, and tried the steps again.
The wind caught at him, as it had at her, and the sound of the sea seemed to grow louder. Stave danced—and it seemed almost that he was getting it. Certainly his tunic was flaring; if it went any higher she would have to avert her gaze. Then he misstepped, and teetered on the brink.
Nona screamed, and Cougar barked. At the same time, she exerted her magic, drawing him to her by a spell of attraction. Just enough to prevent him from falling outward. Stave caught himself, and dropped to the ground, catching his fingers in the sod for support.
Nona ran up, her heart pounding. "I thought you were going over!" she said, dropping to her knees beside him.
"So did I," he confessed. "I almost got it, but then—"
"Enough! Get away from the edge. Don't dance any more. If—if you want something of me—"
He glanced into her decolletage as she leaned toward him. "I do. There is no other woman I wish to impress. But I think—I think it is forbidden. Get your bosom out of my face before I forget."
She straightened up, smiling contritely. She had come to him in genuine alarm, thoughtless of her appearance. The tunics of the theows tended to be too large in the neck region, so that women normally held them closed with one hand when bending forward. Certainly she had given him something to see! She was no longer embarrassed; the horror of his near fall over the brink had banished that. But she played the innocent. "For
bidden?"
He got up and dusted himself off, then extended a hand to help her up. "Will you answer one question?"
Had he felt the faint presence of the Players? Suddenly she feared that he had. He might not have been able to attune well enough to dance, but he might realize that something was there. She didn't want that. Neither did she want to discuss it, because the despots could be eavesdropping with their magic.
So she did not answer. Instead she stepped up close and drew his head down for a kiss.
She could tell by the way his body didn't give that she wasn't fooling him. He did suspect.
Then he put his mouth down by her ear. "I felt it," he breathed, his moving lips actually touching her ear. "I felt your magic save me. You can trust me."
Could she? He had made it seem like an endearment, as jf kissing her ear. In the process he had eliminated both sight and sound, because not even a magic spy could hear such a faint sound beyond her ear or see the motions of his lips against it. Yet suppose he merely wanted to learn something about her, so as to curry favor with the despots by telling them? She could not risk it.
"Nona," he breathed.
She jumped. He had spoken her true name! But no villager knew that. Not even her father knew it, and if he suspected, he would never have told.
Then, to cover her reaction, she spoke. "You bit my ear!"
"A love bite," he said. "Isn't this what we came here for?"
"I'm not sure." Indeed, she was in doubt. Was he going to require her favor, in return for his silence? She did not see him as that type of man, but he had already expressed interest in her body. This could be a dangerous game.
He drew her slowly in, and kissed her. This time she was the unresponsive one. He pretended not to notice, then moved back to her ear. "Can you hear me?"
That much she could admit to. She tightened her arms around him, once.
"Then listen," his lips said almost soundlessly into her ear. "I am the other changeling."
Again she jumped. "Will you stop that?" she said aloud. "I need that ear." The other changeling? The baby they switched with her? The true child of her parents?
"But it tastes so good," he protested in his normal voice.
They kissed and clinched a third time. This time she held herself still for the whole of what he had to say.
"I thought I was the eighth and last child in my family," he continued into her ear. "But my mother let slip once that she had lost one. I thought she meant the baby had died. But later I learned from another slip that it had been given away to skew the count. For my mother was the eighth child of her family, and had been required to marry young, lest she have magic. She was the eighth generation. That meant I was the ninth of the ninth, masked as the eighth to save my life from the despots. It applies only to females, but the despots tend to act first if there is any doubt."
They changed position, and kissed a few times in case there were watchers. Cougar settled down a short distance away; he did not find kissing as much fun as fetching, but he could tolerate it. The dog had learned that sometimes kissing led to more interesting activity. Then Stave sat on the ground and she joined him, pulling up her tunic so as not to soil it, though this meant that her bare bottom was on his lap. Had he drawn up his own tunic—but fortunately he did not. He was after all not pursuing her that way, though at this point that was a mixed relief. He ran one hand along her bare leg while he nuzzled her ear again, and she had to tolerate this for the sake of the appearance they had to make. He had abruptly become most intriguing, in an entirely different way.
"But I had no special magic," he continued. "Only the skill of illusion we all share. And my parents did not seem to expect more of me. How could that be, if I was the ninth? This concerned me. I did not at first understand that the effect is limited to the female line. Then I realized that there could have been a double mask. I did not closely resemble my siblings, though none ever teased me about it; indeed they helped me to be more like them. I could have been from another family—exchanged for the true ninth."
His hand was resting high on her leg, but he was not moving it now. His interest was only for show. She, in contrast, was far more interested than she had been. Stave was after all no ordinary young man; he was bound to her in the most special way. He was in a sense her brother, and in a sense her protector.
She moved to put her mouth at his ear. "I never guessed!" she breathed. Then she touched her teeth lightly to his lobe.
"Hey, now you're biting!" he protested.
She mussed his hair. It was fun flirting, now that she knew it would lead nowhere. "You are getting fresh for a first date. Get your hand off my leg."
He looked regretful. "Oh." He removed his hand.
She embraced him. "You should not be too quick to believe what a woman says."
He held her close and breathed into her ear again. "So when I came of age to wander, I walked from village to village, staying only long enough to see every person who was my age. When I came to this one, and saw you, I knew. You could have been one of my foster sisters. Then I looked at your parents, and they were fair like me. And your father—"
He paused. He brought his right hand around and turned so that his wrist was before her eyes. There was a small wine-colored stain—exactly like the one on her father's wrist. There was no doubt of it: he was the son of her parents.
He had had as much reason to come here with her as she had with him. She had been looking for the Megaplayers; he had been looking for his alternate. His expression of diffidence had been only a cover.
Now she knew his question, and she trusted him with the answer. She glanced around, and spied a dry stem of grass. She picked it up. "I will give you an illusion," she said. In her hand it became a rose, its hue matching her dress, its bud just opening. She handed it to him.
He took it by the stem and brought it to his nose, pretending to smell its perfume. Then he froze, for just a moment. He brought it closer and actually touched his nose to it. A subtle shudder went through him; had she not been sitting on him she would not have known. She had answered his question.
For it really did smell like a rose. Because it was a rose, not a mere illusion. She had transformed it: sight, feel, smell. But he knew the difference between the semblance of a rose and ; a real one, for he could not nullify it.
He handed it back to her. She flipped it away, and it became the grass again, reverting in the manner of illusion when it left the hand of its creator. She had changed it back; had she not done so, the rose would have remained.
Stave drew her close again. He was shivering, though the day was warm. "How may I help you, my sister?" he whispered.
She took her turn at his ear. "Date me again. Let me dance with the Players. I must find them if I can. Tell no one."
"I will tell others I touched your body," he breathed back in due course. "I will touch it more each time." He put his hand on her leg again, at the exact place it had been before, just above the knee. There remained some distance to go before such touches got serious.
She nodded. They would have to appear to be getting quite intimate, so that no spy could doubt the nature of their interest in each other. It would be a perfect cover, much better with his cooperation. "Thank you," she whispered.
Then they kissed once more, and she protested that it was getting late, and he protested that there was still plenty of time in the day, and she pointed to the storm which was expanding toward them, and he suggested that they could take off their tunics and roll them up to keep them dry, and she suggested that he take off his head and roll it up instead, and he finally agreed that they would return to the village. He evinced silent disappointment that he had not been able to make more progress with her, and she evinced silent relief that she had managed to restrict his ambition, this time.
Yet behind the act was something else. They had found a bond, and they were in a manner brother and sister. But they were not related, and they did like each other. The romance the
y were pretending was not fully pretense. She had come to understand, in the course of their close contact, that he really was interested in her body as well as her nature, and she was becoming interested in his interest.
IN the following month they came many times to associate near the instruments. Nona would dance and Stave would watch, and then they would get together and become increasingly affectionate. Sometimes there were other couples there. It didn't matter. Stave and Nona were now known as a couple, and it was thought they might marry.
Indeed, the notion of marrying Stave was growing in her.
She wondered whether her destiny could be truly worth it, if it took her away from him. She liked his kisses, and the touches of his hands on her body. When he reached the permissible limits, she took his hand and guided it to more intimate regions than she would have tolerated had she not had control of it. It was both game and not-game, at the verge of loss of control. She wanted to stop teasing him and being teased by him, and to let nature take its course beyond. But that would be tantamount to commitment, and she couldn't afford it. Never before this series of dates had she truly understood how a girl could actually come to desire what it seemed every young man did.
Meanwhile she was definitely getting closer to the Megaplayers. She felt them more perfectly each time she danced. But they remained distant. Their music was there, capable of being evoked in her mind, and the beat of it grew stronger, but that was all. The Players themselves were somewhere else.
How was she to reach them? She had only one more month before her birthday. Then she would have to marry Stave, or risk the alternative. They discussed this openly, for it was independent of her quest.
"If we go to work for the despots," he said, "I will become a carpenter like my father and build shelves. That is my training. But though you are trained in music, you may not be sent to teach it. You are too beautiful."
"I know," she agreed.
"If we marry, I will still be a carpenter, but you will not be the plaything of your employer. They will let you teach music."