The Mouthpiece of Zitu

by J. U. Giesy

All that in a flash. Then, as though attracted by the opening of the door, the woman glanced up, lifting a pair of pansy-purple eyes.

"Naia!" Croft's lips framed the word rather than spoke it. He stepped swiftly toward her through the door. It clicked shut behind him as the vestal closed it.

Naia, of Aphur, rose. The last vestige of color seemed drained from her face, leaving her eyes very dark in its pallor, their pupils stretched wondrously wide. So for a moment, she stood staring straight before her at him she had known as Jasor of Nodhur, before her body took on a sudden panting, so that the tissues or the temple garment she was wearing became no more than a creamy ripple above her firmly rounded busts. And then while Croft waited, choked by his own emotions, drunk in his innermost being with her beauty, she moved and sank down on her slender, supple knees.

"Beloved!" Croft went one swift pace toward her. He stretched out his hands. "Naia—mine own—arise."

She glanced up. A quiver shook the perfect curve of her mouth. And then for the first time her lips writhed open. "How speaks the Mouthpiece of Zitu in a lover's guise?"

"Arise," repeated Croft, and waiting until she had once more regained her feet before he went on: "Were I to answer your question, beloved, would any hear?"

She regarded him strangely. It was almost as though she sensed some new, some unsuspected meaning in his words, some hint of something of which she had not dreamed, yet which, now that her intuition gave it seeming, she desired to have made plain. "No," she made answer slowly. "This is my own apartment—set aside for my use for such time as I remain with the Gayana. What things may be said within it shall remain unknown."

"Then—" In a single stride Croft approached her. He swept her into his arms. They closed about her with an almost yearning gesture. He drew her to him, held her against his breast. The warmth of her, the glorious litheness, the pliant softness of her figure, struck against his own. He gloried in it, thrilled in every cell to the sudden contact—to the quick, instinctive tremor which shook her form. "Hark ye, beloved," he cried softly into the shell-pink ear beneath his lips. "Hark ye—mark well my answer. The Mouthpiece of Zitu is no supernatural being, but a man and a lover—thy lover in very truth."

And on the word the supple body of the woman went tense inside his arms. It struggled, it writhed. It struck its hands against his breast and pushed back her torso, straining, bending it against his restraining hold from the hips. Its face became convulsed, a panting, lip-parted, eye-wide mask of horror. With a final effort Naia tore herself free. Hot words poured from her mouth as she choked and gasped for breath.

"Then—in the name of Zitu—-what do you here—with that—that"—she lifted a naked arm and pointed—"with the wings of Azil—the looped cross of Ga—upon your breast?"