IV
She woke again to see complete spotted sunlight bright across the wall, wondering for the first sleepy seconds where she was. It was a footstep that had roused her; she turned her head and saw Gaidu Pyax looking down, with spots on his costume.
“The greeting of the morning,” he said. “It is spring.”
“Oh,” was all Lalette could say, pulling the covers close around her neck, and then; “Well, I greet you.”
The smile she had once thought rather pleasant became fixed. “I have come to keep the spring with you.” He laid his hand on the edge of the covers. “You are my partner.”
“No. Not this time. No.”
“It is festival morning. You must.”
“No. What would Rodvard say?”
His laugh had an edge of nastiness. “His head will be on another pillow now. I know him. Why should you not do it as well as he?”
He reached down and began to paw at the bedclothes against her resistance, the scream she tried to give was only a squeak in that heavy-hung and distant room, and then he flung himself on her, catching her wrist to twist it around, crying; “Witch, witch, I will tame you or break all your bones.” She bit at the hand that touched her face, and with her own arm swung a sweeping blow that took him where head and neck join. He was suddenly standing beside the bed again, and she was saying low and furious, through tears:
“If you force me, I will kill myself and you, too. I swear it by the Service.”
Gaidu Pyax’ lips pouted out like a little boy’s, he sank slowly to one knee beside the bed, reaching a hand out gropingly. “Ah, I knew it couldn’t be true,” he said, and lifted toward her a face of wordless misery.
For a long minute she looked at him, all her fierceness and resolution melting in the face of that unhappy desire. (She felt no spark for this boy, only thought: and what if I do, they do not want me, it was all a deceit put upon me, and I can at least heal this one’s hurt); and was just reaching from under the covers to draw him to her and comfort him—
When a flash of lightning wrote in letters of fire across the inside of her mind the words Will you go with me now? and though there was no meaning in what they said, she understood that it told the unfaithfulness of her lover.
The hand that had extended to take that of Pyax patted it instead. “I am sorry,” she said. “Perhaps it was my fault. I should have told you. . . . When others do it, I never could. But I thank you for the good festival.”
13
FAREWELL AND GREETING
Back again to the place of masks through streets littered with the sour debris of festival, among which languid sweepers toiled. After what had happened, Lalette did not ask to say farewell to the elder Pyax or Aunt Zanzanna. There was a twitch at the corner of the doorman’s mouth as he let them out; she would not let Gaidu accompany her farther than the market square (for morning had brought back all the anxiety of the price still on her apprehension). He remarked somewhat spitefully that he could understand how she would not wish to have her people see a Zigraner bringing her home.
Laduis answered her knock; he seemed truly happy to see her. The widow was at the cookshop; Lalette changed the mask of Sunimaa for her worn clothes, finishing just as the woman returned. They ate, talking but little, and that much in light terms. Dame Domijaiek sent the boy out, and as his footsteps went down the stair:
“Did you find him?” she asked.
“He is at Sedad Vix.” Her mouth worked a little, and with the calm eyes fixed upon her, she could keep it back no more. “He has been unfaithful to me.”
“I do not understand.”
“In the witch-families we cannot help—”
“Ah. Then it is a knowledge gained through falsity and witchcraft, not through the God of love, and so will lead to no good end.”
“I am unhappy,” was all Lalette could whisper, (not understanding what the woman was trying to say).
“It is because you look on this man as personal to you. Love must share with all.”
(There was something passionately wrong with this, Lalette felt, but rue and the after-lash of last night’s wine and this morning’s experience had left her too low to seek out the flaws.) She began to weep softly.
After a few minutes, the widow said: “Let us reason. If you owe him not less than all love, so he owes as much to you; and by destroying your joy, he has failed his obligation. Do you still love him, not as we must love all, but to yourself, as of the material world?”
(It seemed to Lalette as though there were something big and dark and heavy in her breast where her heart ought to be, and she had no clear thoughts at all any more.) “I did not—ah, I do not know, he is all I have.”
“You have a mother, child.”
“A mother who tried to sell me! And still would, if she could find me.”
“Because she wishes to save you from distresses she herself has felt. That also is done in love, I think.”
“Then I’ll have no love!” cried Lalette, looking up furiously, tear-drops sparkling on her lashes. “I’ll hate and hate and hate.”
A tiny red spot appeared on each of Dame Domijaiek’s cheeks. “I do not think you had better say that again in this house,” she said. “I have an arrangement to make, and will return before evening. Tell Laduis.”
She went out, leaving a Lalette who could hardly bear herself, nor find anything to do, in her mind going over and over the dreadful ground of Rodvard’s treachery and the fact that he was one of the Sons of the New Day. Even if he came to her now, she would not have him, that book was closed by his own hand; and the boy Laduis coming in, she allowed him to draw her out of her megrims, so that when the widow returned, they were almost gay together. But it was almost dawn before sleep touched her.