She felt drowsy. Her deft fingers recommenced their work, then faltered and paused, lying still as she leant back in the soft, resilient thickness of the piled net and closed her eyes. The breeze, the wavelets lapping on the shore, the leaves of the ash-tree, the flies darting in the bright air--all these were in motion above and around her, so that she herself seemed like a still centre, a sleeping princess, motionless save for the gentle rise and fall of her bosom under the self-mended dress.
She woke with a start, conscious that someone was standing beside her. She half-sprang up, then lay back, laughing with relief as she realized that it was only Tharrin.
"Oh--Tharrin--oh, you give me such a turn! I'd dropped off for a moment. Don't matter, I've done most of it, look. It's done proper, too--won't go again in 'urry."
He lay down beside her, leaning on his elbow and gazing up at her intently. As he still said nothing she felt a touch of nervousness.
"What's up, then, Tharrin? Nothin' wrong, is there?"
At this he smiled. "No, nothing," he answered, laying a hand on her bare forearm. "Nothing at all."
"Well, go on, look at it, then! I've made a good job of it, you c'n see that."
He began picking over the mended places, lifting the net in his two hands and idly testing the knotting between his fingers. She saw that they were trembling slightly and felt still more puzzled.
"You all right? What's matter then?"
Suddenly he flung one entire fold of the net over her from head to foot and, as she struggled beneath the mesh, pushed her back into the piled folds, laughing and pressed his hands down on her shoulders. She laughed, too, for she had often romped with him before; but then quickly shook her head, throwing one hand up to her face.
"Ow! You caught me in the eye, Tharrin--do look out--"
"I've caught a fish! A golden fish! What a beauty!"
"No, honesty Tharrin, it hurts! Look, does it show?" And, still lying under the net, she turned her face towards the light, pulling down her lower eyelid as the water ran down her cheek.
"I'm sorry, Maia fish! Oh, I didn't mean to hurt you! Here, let me kiss it better."
He took her head, wrapped in the net, between his hands and kissed her eyelid through the mesh.
"Want to come out, pretty fish? Ask nicely!"
She pouted. "I'm not bothered. I'll come out when I please!"
"Well, I'm in no hurry either, come to that." And with this he pulled aside the fold, lay down beside her and drew it back over both of them.
"You've caught me too, you know, golden Maia. Look, here's something nice. I brought it specially for you."
Fumbling a moment, he held out to her a lump of something brown and glistening, about half as big as his fist. At the smell, at once sweet and nutty-sharp, she began to salivate once more.
"Go on; try it! You'll like it. Look!" He bit off a piece and lay nibbling, crackling the brittle stuff between his teeth.
Maia copied him. The taste was delicious, filling her mouth and throat, suffusing her with the luxury of its sweetness. With closed eyes she bit, chewed, swallowed and bit again, her smarting eye quite forgotten.
"M'mm! Oh, it's gorgeous, Tharrin! What is it?"
"Nut thrilsa. Nuts baked in honey and butter."
"But these aren't ordinary nuts. Where do they come from? Oh, do give me some more!"
"No, these are serrardoes. The black traders bring them to Ikat from heaven knows where--far away to the south. Want some more?"
"Yes! Yes!"
"Come and get it, then!" Very deliberately, and holding her gaze, he put a piece lightly between his front teeth, then took each of her hands in one of his own, fingers interlocked, and held them back against the net.
Slowly, realizing what he meant and why he had done it, Maia raised her head and placed her mouth against his. His arms came gently round her shoulders, clasping her to him, and as she drew the sweetmeat into her mouth his tongue followed it, licking and caressing. She offered no resistance, only breathing hard and trembling.
Releasing her, he smiled into her eyes. "Was that nice, too?"
"I don't--I don't know!"
"And this?" He slid his hand beneath her torn dress, fondling one breast.
"Oh, you shouldn't; don't!" But her hands made no move to pluck his away.
Pressing himself against her from head to foot, lithe and strong, he once more took her hand and drew it downward between his legs.
And now indeed she cried out in earnest, suddenly realizing what before she had only half understood.
Feeling, with a kind of panic, what he had meant her to feel, she thought--like a young soldier for the first time face to face with the enemy--"This isn't a game any more--this is what really happens--and it's happening to me." For long moments she lay tense in his arms; yet she did not struggle.
Suddenly her body felt full and smooth and sufficient-- like a new boat pushed down into the water. It was as though she were standing back, regarding it with satisfaction. It was sound: it floated. Her body, her beautiful body, which could swim miles in the lake--her body would take care of everything. She had only to allow it to do what it had been created for. Sighing, she pressed herself against Tharrin and waited, shuddering as he caressed her.
The moment he entered her, Maia was filled from head to foot with a complete, assenting knowledge that this was what she had been born for. All her previous, childish life seemed to fall away beneath her like broken fragments of shell from the kernel of a cracked nut. Tharrin's weight upon her, Tharrin's thrusting, his arms about her, were like the opening of a pair of great, bronze doors to disclose some awesome and marvelous treasure within. Only, she herself was at one and the same time the doors, the fortress and the treasure. Catching her breath, moaning, struggling not against but with him, as though they had both been hauling on a sail, she clutched him about, crying incoherently, "Oh, don't--don't--"
At this, he held back for a moment.
"Don't what, my darling?"
"Don't stop! Oh, Cran and Airtha, don't stop!"
Laughing with delight, he took her once more in a close embrace and entirely at her word.
When she came to herself she was lying in the net and he was smiling down at her.
"I've landed my fish! It is a beauty! Don't you agree?"
She answered nothing; only panting up at him, a child caught at the end of some hide-and-seek game.
"Are you all right, pretty Maia?"
She nodded. The unshed tears in her blue eyes made them seem even bigger.
"Like some more thrilsa?" He put a piece to her lips: she bit into it with relish.
"You like that?"
"Oh, it's simply lovely! I've never had it before!"
He roared with laughter. "What are you talking about-- thrilsa?"
Realizing what she had said, Maia laughed too.
"Tharrin, did you mean to come and do this when you told me to mend the net?"
"No, not just like that, fish: but I've wanted to do it for a long time. You didn't know?"
"Well--p'raps I did, really. Leastways, I c'n see it now."
"Yes, you can see it now. There!"
She bit her lip, looking away.
"Never seen a man's zard before, pretty girl? Come on, you're a woman now!"
"It's soft, and--and smaller. Oh, Tharrin, I've just remembered--" and since it never occurred to Maia to think of the words of a song separately from their tune, she sang " 'Seek, daughter, that horn of plenty with which men butt'--that's what that means, then?"
"Yes, of course. If you didn't know, where did you learn that song?"
"I was with mother one day in Meerzat. It was that hot in the market and I got a headache. She told me to wait for her with the tavern-keeper's wife at "The Safe Moorings'--you know, Frarnli, the big woman with the cast in her eye."
"I know."
"Frarnli let me lie down on her bed. There was men drinking and singing in the next room: I just thought it was a pretty so
ng. I remembered the tune and some of the words and what I couldn't remember later I made up: but I never knew what it meant. When mother heard me singin' it she got angry and said I wasn't to sing it n' more."
"I'm not surprised."
"So I used to sing it out on the waterfall, by myself. Oh, Tharrin, Tharrin! Look! Blood! What's happened?"
"Out of your tairth? That's nothing. That's only the first time. Just wash it off in the lake, that's all."
"My--what did you say?--tairth?"
Gently, he touched her. "That's your tairth. And you've been basted--you know that word, don't you?"
"Oh, yes; I've heard the drovers saying that. 'Get that damned cow through the basting gate'--you know how they talk."
"Yes, I know, but I don't like to use it for swearing. Love-words shouldn't be used like that, fish."
"I'm your fish now. What sort of fish am I?"
He paused, considering. "A carp. Yes, round and golden. I must say, you're a fine girl for your age, Maia. You're really lovely--do you know that? I mean, anyone, anywhere, would think you were lovely--in Ikat or Thettit-- or Bekla, come to that: though I've never been to Bekla. You're just about the prettiest girl I've ever seen in my life. Lespa can't be more beautiful than you are."
She made no reply, lying easy in the delicious warmth of the sun, feeling the cords and knots of the net all about her. She felt content.
After a time he said, "Come on, let's take the boat out now. After all, we'd better have a few fish to show when Morca gets back, don't you think?"
He got to his feet, stretched out a hand and pulled her up.
"Maia?"
"M'm-h'm?"
"Take care of our secrets, darling. I've heard you talk in your sleep before now."
This was typical of Tharrin. How do you take care not to talk in your sleep?
4: VISITORS
Like most men of his sort, Tharrin was kind-hearted (as long as it did not involve taking too much trouble), and quite good company in his own superficial way. No less than a soldier, a poet or a mountaineer, a philanderer needs certain natural qualities, and Tharrin had made a reasonably good job of seducing Maia. That is to say, he had not forced, frightened or hurt her, he had given her pleasure and satisfaction and left her with no regrets and the conviction that this was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her and that she had crossed a great threshold--as indeed she had. The harm, of course, lay not in what Tharrin had actually done, but in what he was and the situation in which he had placed himself and Maia. He might have disappeared one dark night, taking Maia with him--though for her the outlook would have been a poor one indeed. He might have stressed yet again the need for, and then gone on to instruct her in, the strictest secrecy, continuing to make love to her only at safe opportunities. Or he might even have told her firmly that the matter must end where it had begun--and stuck to that. He did none of these things. To have become once more, at his time of life, the lover of an exceptionally pretty, ardent young girl, whom no one else had ever enjoyed, went to Tharrin's unstable head like Yeldashay wine. He showed attentions to Maia. He called her by pet-names.
He bought her a glass necklace from a pedlar, though it was weeks since he had given Morca any trinket. Giving out implausibly that he wanted her opinion about a new fishing-boat he was thinking of buying (there was not so much money in the household as would have bought a pair of oars) he took her with him to Meerzat and gave her a couple of drinks and a meal at "The Safe Moorings." On that occasion he certainly took pains to see that she enjoyed herself, but his real motive--even though he was perhaps unaware of it himself--was to show her off; and in this he was most successful, for he was no stranger to the place and Frarnli, the proprietress, who had had the measure of him for some time, was not one to fail to draw conclusions. Irresponsibility and indiscretion are two lovely berries molded on one stem, so it is hardly surprising that Tharrin, having begun his pleasure with the one, should continue it with the other.
Children are quick to sense any change in domestic atmosphere, and it was not long before nine-year-old Nala perceived--and remarked to Maia upon--something new in the relationship between her and Tharrin. Maia's response was first to threaten and then to cajole her, and sharp little Nala began to turn the situation to her own advantage with a kind of petty blackmail.
But the biggest give-away was Maia herself--her bearing and the impression she made on everyone around her. Unless what has happened is altogether against her own wishes--intimidation or rape--any normal girl is bound to feel herself in love with the first man who possesses her. And while to a man love-making is an end in itself and primarily a matter of recreation, to a girl it appears in the nature of a foundation on which she wants to build. Maia began to make herself useful. She cooked for Tharrin, washed his clothes and went through his implements and other possessions to see whether there was anything she could do to improve them. When Tharrin was at home she was like a sea-anemone with its brilliantly-colored, frond-like tentacles extended. When he was absent she was still happy enough--closing in on herself like a scarlet pimpernel in wet weather. Her behavior to Morca was much improved, and displayed a kind of joyous and quite unconscious condescension, which could hardly have failed to strike any woman, let alone Morca.
Meanwhile, she had taken to love-making like a good dog to work, and in response to Tharrin's experienced, if rather facile instruction, was gaining in reciprocity, confidence and pleasure. Enthusiasm she possessed in abundance, and if she had unthinkingly formed a somewhat mechanical notion of physical love as a matter of method and sensation rather than warmth and feeling, it was scarcely any blame to her, for Tharrin was not really capable of deep emotion. That which he was capable of, however, he performed as genially as a tapster broaches a cask.
It scarcely matters in precisely what way the secret of two illicit lovers leaks out. If it did not happen in one way then it would happen in another, and if not on Tuesday then on Wednesday. Lovers are greatly inclined to the assumption that no one can wish them ill, and that as long as they do not actually utter anything revealing, their looks, gestures and mutual behavior convey nothing to anybody else. Even illiterate lovers are almost invariably careless. Did Morca set a trap--return unexpectedly from borrowing a spool of thread from old Drigga up the lane, and glimpse, through a chink, Tharrin fondling Maia's thighs? Did she need to do even as much as that? Did Frarnli, perhaps, hint to her enough to make it unnecessary? Did Maia talk in her sleep--or merely expose, when washing, a shoulder displaying the marks of teeth, or something of a similar nature which Morca herself, of course, would already have experienced? It is unimportant compared with Morca's bitter, secret and revengeful resentment. Despite her outburst in the cabin on the evening of Maia's return from the waterfall, Morca was by nature inarticulate and little given to overt self-expression. Her way (developed during long years of childhood with a brutal and unpredictable father in whom it had never even occurred to her to confide) was to nurse an injury, like a boil, until it burst; and then to act alone; often with excessive, disproportionate savagery, in a situation which another woman would have resolved by simply having everything out in a good row. Poverty, together with a sour sense of desertion and of her own lost youth, had done nothing to modify or soften this dismal wont.
One fine morning, a few weeks after the mending of the net, Tharrin, slinging over his shoulder the bundle which Maia had put together for him, set off on the twenty-five-mile journey to Thettit-Tonilda, whence he would not be returning for several days. His ostensible purpose was to buy some new tackle for the boat, since it was the time of year when the annual consignment of rope arrived in Thettit from Ortelga. During his time on that island (the time when he had been lying low from Ploron) he had made a friend, an Ortelgan named Vassek, who was usually ready to let him have a fair amount at less than the going price. What he did not need for himself he was able, on his return, to sell locally at a profit. As a result, this particular season had come t
o be the annual occasion for a little spree.
He would walk to Meerzat, beg a lift in a boat bound across the lake and then, as often as not, talk his way on to some merchant's tilt going to Thettit. The journey back, laden with coils of rope, was harder, but Tharrin had always been a resourceful opportunist.
Maia went with him to see him off at Meerzat, carrying his bundle on one arm. After a mile or so, with no need of more than a glance and a nod between them, he took her hand and led her across a dry ditch and so into a copse, through the midst of which a rill still flowed among the weeds in the bed of the shrunken stream. It was far too shallow to swim but nevertheless Maia, always drawn to any water, pulled off her smock and splashed into the one pool she could find. Watching from the shade, Tharrin--largely for his own anticipatory enjoyment--contained himself for a time before sliding down to lift her out bodily and lay her on the green bank.
Half an hour later she stirred drowsily, one hand fondling the length of his body.
"Oh, Tharrin, whatever shall I do while you're away?"
"It's not for long."
"How long?"
"Six days--seven days. All depends."
"What on?"
"Aha! Pretty goldfish mustn't ask too many questions. I'm a very mysterious man, you know!"
He waited, grinning sideways at her, clearly pleased with himself. Then, as she did not speak. "Don't you think so? Look!"
She stared in astonishment at the big coin held up between his finger and thumb.
"Whatever's that, then? A hundred meld? Must be!"