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CHAPTER IX

Will finally got himself arranged on the horse and rode out with of a party of about fifty men. The steading they left, a cluster of buildings around an open yard, was one of several such steadings grouped within an area of cultivated fields surrounded by forest. He'd never thought of Denmark as a heavily forested place, but all he knew of the country were conditions in the twenty-first century. The day continued cool, the sky mostly clear.

Guttorm rode up beside him as they passed a large bog. "Do you remember anything?" Guttorm asked.

"Nothing. Tell me, is it late fall or early spring? The trees are bare; I can't tell from them."

" 'Tis spring. There are a hundred ways to know this."

"I've forgotten them."

Denmark was a wooded and watery land, tree-covered except where there were lakes and bogs, with farms and meadows scattered here and there. All the farms had steadings similar to the one they'd come from, though none so large.

He smelled the ocean before he heard it, and heard it before he saw it. It was incredible how noisy-quiet the pre-industrial world was. He thought the volume of ocean, wind, bird songs, frog songs, insect songs, etc., was not much less than the ambient noise he'd known in his own world, but each sound seemed more distinct, more easily identified, unlike the mechanical drone he was used to. He couldn't name all the noises, but he could tell them apart.

Their road took them up over a grassy dune onto the wide shining beach. The green sea pounded itself into white surf and scattered in thunder. They turned their horses and rode south along the beach until Will made out a great black shape in the surf. Coming nearer he saw that the whale was still alive and moving, and men were rushing in to kill it with spears. The surf surged red all around.

His stomach sank at the sight. In his mind beached whales were for saving. For these people, beached whales meant protein for the community.

The others gathered to watch the killing. Will went down the beach, his back to the slaughter, marveling at the whiteness of the sand, the clarity of the water. He saw a bright orange thing half-buried, and stooped to dig it out. It was a piece of amber, about the size of an egg. He held it in his hand and it warmed.

A child came up to him, bare of leg and dressed in a white shirt, with hair cropped short. Will reckoned he must be a slave. He handed the amber over to the child. "Take it," he said.

The boy's eyes widened. "For me?"

"Yes."

"It's very costly."

"Good. Give it to your parents. It will help them buy their freedom."

Will heard laughter and looked up to see that Guttorm and three of the warriors were watching and listening. "He makes gifts to thralls," said one of them. "A piece that might win the love of a girl or the friendship of a warrior he throws away on one who can return him nothing."

"He's mad," said the other. "Such is the way of madness. Madmen cannot tell the worth of things. They think silver just another metal. They think Danes no better than Saxons. They look at, say, the sand on this beach, and imagine it to be . . . oh . . ."

"Meal," said Will. "A great granary full of barley meal." The words were almost straight out of Saxo. Since they'd fed him his cue, he'd picked it up.

"Meal?" the man asked. "Where do you think they could grind so much meal?"

Will knew the answer to that, too. "In that great mill," he said, pointing to the ocean.

The watching men laughed and the three he didn't know ran to tell the others what he had said. Will didn't think it was that funny himself, but he happened to know that he'd made a joke that would be retold for more than a thousand years. There'd be another joke along soon, if he remembered correctly. Something about a knife . . . 

Guttorm stepped close to him and spoke in low tones. "Be wary," he whispered. "They're planning something. I know not what, but you're in danger."

Will almost answered him seriously, but it might be a trap.

"Conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," he said. Or words to that effect, in translation. He fought to cover the actual fear he felt. Why had he come with these people? He'd thought his madness would protect him. He shouldn't underestimate their intelligence because they were primitive by his standards. There was more than one kind of primitive.

Someone started shouting, and Will turned to see one of the warriors gathering the thralls into a group and herding them southward along the beach. He asked Guttorm what was going on.

"Someone's found a bit of salvage," said Guttorm. "He's getting the thralls to take it to the jarl."

Will looked at him, expecting more.

"All salvage belongs to the king," Guttorm went on. "You've forgotten this too?"

"So it would seem."

In a few minutes the thralls came back. Three of the men were carrying a large wooden object, shaped rather like a knife.

"What's that? A giant's knife?" Will asked.

Guttorm scowled. "Now you're making game of me. Are you saying you don't even recognize a ship's rudder?"

Will said, "Oh God." He had walked into Saxo's story again. This was another of Hamlet's riddles.

How was it possible that he was living the story out without intending to? Was he being compelled by some force? He felt no compulsion—he was only reacting naturally.

He remembered a writer—he forgot whom—who had said something about how our freest actions seemed to be the ones in which we were aware of the least choice. He'd thought it hogwash when he read it. Now he wasn't so sure.

Another man had come up to them and heard the exchange. "What use would there be for a knife as large as that?" the man asked.

Will thought he might as well finish the scene. "To slice that huge ham," he said, pointing again to the sea.

The man found this hugely funny. Laughing, he said, "What a grand kenning—the sea is the ham of the rudder-knife! Someone should put it in a poem!" Then he went to tell the others. Once again, Will knew, history had been made.

One of the men came down to Guttorm and said, "Somebody's got to herd the thralls back to the village with that rudder. Left to themselves they'll pilfer the thing and it'll end up in pieces in a dozen houses."

Guttorm said, "Then see to it."

"I'm in charge of the whale. All the men were sent on that errand, save you. So it's you must go with the salvage."

Guttorm shrugged. "Very well. I'll take Amlodd with me."

"No, best to leave him with us. It takes many men to hold a madman if he throws a fit."

"We'll be all right.'

"The jarl told me to keep my eye on him. We'll look after him."

Guttorm looked at Will, then at the others, and saw no way out. He went to Will and said, "Watch yourself," quietly, then mounted his pony and rode off with the thralls.

Will looked about him and felt suddenly cold, as the only man who'd shown him friendship disappeared into the forest shade.

One by one and then in groups, the jarl's men came and gathered around Will. They clustered in a semicircle, just a little overclose for friendliness. Will stepped back and wet his shoes in seawater.

"Hot day," said one of the warriors.

"Hot?" asked Will. It was chill so that he wished he'd worn a second shirt.

"I've never known it so warm so early in the year," said another warrior.

"No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly."  

"You mistake, sir," said the same man, " 'tis warm. A wonderful day for a swim." He took another step forward, and the others moved in with him. Will stepped back and now stood in water to his ankles, with the waves wetting him to the knees. The men on the ends of the crescent that hemmed him in stood as deep in the water. It occurred to him that no one could see what was happening from the shore. If any of the whale butchers chanced to glance this way, he'd only see a group of men standing in the surf. He took the only defense he could think of.

"Suppose I were Odin," he said.

The men grew still.

"Suppose Odin spoke from my mouth. Suppose I had the power of Odin to curse my enemies."

A few of the men actually backed up a step.

"Suppose I could call a monster from the sea to slay you all."

Will was amazed at the power of his words. The men's eyes grew wide and their mouths fell open, as if they actually saw such a monster rise from the waves. Not only did they goggle, they turned on their heels and ran, so that Will couldn't help turning to see what had frightened them.

It was a woman on a horse, rising from the water. She had hair white as silver, but she was not old. She wore nothing at all and rode bareback, and she had a face Will knew well—his mother's face. With all his memories, he often forgot his mother had been beautiful.

"Will Sverdrup! Come with me if you'd save your life!" she cried.

Will sloshed backwards. "No!" he cried. "Not you! Not with that face!"

The woman widened her eyes, and the face around them changed. Now it was Katla's face. That he could endure. He splashed to her and she hoisted him up on the horse behind her with amazing strength.

The warriors scattered as she spurred her mount through them and straight into the forest—not up the roadway but over the dune and into the depths of the wood. The sunlight turned to dappled shade, the trunks of the trees a blur around them, and Will held tight around the woman's small waist, feeling no sexual desire whatever for the moment. Her silver hair chastised his face.

The ride ended as suddenly as it had begun, in a green glade where there was a stream. The horse halted and the woman flung a leg over its neck and slid to the ground. "Come down. Sit beside me on these stones and we'll speak," she said.

Will dismounted rather more clumsily. The horse galloped into the woods, and the woman showed no concern about it.

Will did not wait for small talk. "Who are you and why did you wear my mother's face?" he demanded. He stood and she sat, but he felt no advantage in the position.

"I beg pardon if the face troubled you," said the woman, reclining on one arm. "I merely plucked the chief woman's face from your mind."

"You can't put a man at ease by appearing naked with his mother's face."

"Yes, I should have remembered that. But you humans have so many rules and kinships, 'tis sometimes hard to keep the straight of them."

"Even now I'd rather you put something on. Unless you want to make love."

The woman sighed and a scarlet gown covered her.

Will felt more at ease, and sat on a mossy stone. "Who are you then? What do you mean by 'you humans'?"

The woman laughed, and a crowd of butterflies came from all directions to cluster around her head like a halo. Only it was too early in the year for butterflies. "My name is Hlin," she said. "You may call me one of the Old Ones—I'm not prideful about youth like mortal women."

"You're not mortal?"

"Why should that surprise you? You've seen my deeds; did you think I was someone's wife and daughter?"

"I didn't know what to think."

"But you know of the Old Ones, surely?"

"I do not."

"Then how came you here?"

"I fell down a hole."

"You did not summon one of my kinsmen? Make a pact? Win or lose a riddle game?"

"No."

Hlin sat up and set her chin on her fist. The butterflies scattered and vanished. "Yet you must know one of us," she said, frowning. "Only the Old Ones know the ways between the worlds."

"I've never seen anyone like you before."

"Hm." She thought a moment. "When did you come from?" she asked.

"Where?"

"Not where, when. Do you know when in time we are now?"

"Sometime in the sixth or seventh century, I'd guess. Pre-Viking."

"That's right, by Christian reckoning. When did you fall down your hole?"

"It was the twenty-first century."

"That's it then. That far in the future I've never fared. We have little power in your time—the christening still has some effect, and you've grown far from the earth. Still there must have been one of us. Wasn't there someone there when you fell—someone fair to look at and strange in temper? Someone who brought excitement wherever they came, with whom time and place sometimes seemed loosely bound?"

Will said, "Randy."

Hlin smiled with Katla's small, sweet, beautiful mouth. "I'm sure you're correct. So now I've done you a favor. You know how you came."

"What did you mean by the ways between the worlds?"

"There are many worlds. You must know this."

"So I've heard."

"We Old Ones travel between them. These Danes think we live under hills or in the mountains, but we've a world of our own, which we enter by doors men cannot find. The doors lead to other doors between all the worlds, and we know the ways."

"But you can take people through."

"Yes."

"Can you send me back whence I came?"

She lounged on the rock again. "I could, but it wouldn't solve your problem. You're not only in another's world, you're in another's body. You must change souls with him to go back properly. You don't want to be a stranger to your family and friends, do you?"

"I suppose not." Will's shoulders slumped. "Have you any idea how I'd manage that trick?"

"I might have ideas, but why should I answer your questions without something in return?"

"What have I to offer you?"

She smiled and the scarlet gown disappeared. "Sit beside me," she said.

Will sat on the dry grass at her side. He was growing excited.

Instead of reaching for him, the woman put her hand in the grass and plucked some plants. "Do you know herbs?" she asked.

"No. I can tell a rose from a dandelion, not much more."

"This plant with the big silver, hairy leaves is the horseshoe. It's good for curing cough. This one with the spotted purple stem and the notched leaves in pairs is the cock's comb. It also helps with the cough, and it can sharpen the eyesight. But not now. The winter killed these."

"I know what this is," said Will, pulling a reed from the stream bank.

"Tell me then."

"It's what they thatch houses with. I noticed that." Will put his hand on her ankle. Her skin was extremely smooth, and warmer than he expected.

She shook him loose. "What I mean to say," she said, "is that you are like an herb in winter. It may keep green for a time, but it's lost its life-channel. It looks alive; it may think it's alive; but it is dead. You and all your people are dead in the same way. Why would I want you? Except as food?"

He put his hand on her knee. "Would you eat me?"

"Don't laugh at me, time-tramp. I've eaten better men than you, and I know nothing of guilt. Don't judge me by the tales told to children in your time."

"All right then, what can I give you in return for what I want?"

"You have one thing I can get nowhere else than from a mortal man."

"And that is?"

"Your pain."

"What?"

"Your love."

"My pain or my love?"

"They are the same. It's what makes you do what you do—build what you build, say what you say, dare what you dare. That worm in your gut that eats you from inside, pushing you to go to a new place; make a new thing. We never do these things, for we have no pain."

He nearly made a joke about S/M.

"The first of our race was called Cain," she went on. "He slew his own brother, but the High One did not exact blood from him, because there had never been murder before, and he could not have understood. Cain feared that others of his kin would take vengeance, so the High One freed him from death and pain. That was his punishment."

"How can I give you my pain?"

"Open your thoughts to me. Relive the great wound of your life, the one that shapes your every choice. Give me that pain, and I shall give you my body."

The lust drained from Will like water out of a colander. He stood and turned his back to her.

"Your fear is a great one, mortal man," the woman said. "It makes you pale as death."

"There's nothing you can offer that would make me live that again."

"Your fear makes me hungry! I drool over pain such as yours!"

"I don't think—I don't think I've ever known the meaning of what we call 'perversion' before today."

"And is it not perversion that excites you mortals most?"

"Some of us."

"The word means to go in a wrong way. You find something upon the main path that frightens you; so you take a side path, or make your own. You think you are bold to go on side paths, but the truth is that it's what you met on the straight one that frightens you. I want to know what you found on that path, man of the future. What monster did you meet there?"

"Which way is it to the village? It'll be a long walk, I expect."

"Don't your folk believe that there is health in uncovering your scars?"

"Let me see—we went west toward the sea. If it's afternoon now, and the sun is there, then west must be that way . . . I think. We entered the forest south of the road, and didn't cross it again . . . I think. So if I head north, I should cut the road—"

Suddenly she was beside him, her hand on his arm. "I need what you feel," she said. "Have pity on me. Give me a taste."

"My pain is mine."

She pressed her rich body against him. "Just a little," she said. "You needn't do anything. Just let me snatch what crumbs I can while we couple."

He loved knowing he'd reduced this proud creature to beggary. He took her roughly in his arms and pushed her to the ground. They fornicated in the grass and wild beasts sent up howls in the woods.

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Framed

Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER IX

Will finally got himself arranged on the horse and rode out with of a party of about fifty men. The steading they left, a cluster of buildings around an open yard, was one of several such steadings grouped within an area of cultivated fields surrounded by forest. He'd never thought of Denmark as a heavily forested place, but all he knew of the country were conditions in the twenty-first century. The day continued cool, the sky mostly clear.

Guttorm rode up beside him as they passed a large bog. "Do you remember anything?" Guttorm asked.

"Nothing. Tell me, is it late fall or early spring? The trees are bare; I can't tell from them."

" 'Tis spring. There are a hundred ways to know this."

"I've forgotten them."

Denmark was a wooded and watery land, tree-covered except where there were lakes and bogs, with farms and meadows scattered here and there. All the farms had steadings similar to the one they'd come from, though none so large.

He smelled the ocean before he heard it, and heard it before he saw it. It was incredible how noisy-quiet the pre-industrial world was. He thought the volume of ocean, wind, bird songs, frog songs, insect songs, etc., was not much less than the ambient noise he'd known in his own world, but each sound seemed more distinct, more easily identified, unlike the mechanical drone he was used to. He couldn't name all the noises, but he could tell them apart.

Their road took them up over a grassy dune onto the wide shining beach. The green sea pounded itself into white surf and scattered in thunder. They turned their horses and rode south along the beach until Will made out a great black shape in the surf. Coming nearer he saw that the whale was still alive and moving, and men were rushing in to kill it with spears. The surf surged red all around.

His stomach sank at the sight. In his mind beached whales were for saving. For these people, beached whales meant protein for the community.

The others gathered to watch the killing. Will went down the beach, his back to the slaughter, marveling at the whiteness of the sand, the clarity of the water. He saw a bright orange thing half-buried, and stooped to dig it out. It was a piece of amber, about the size of an egg. He held it in his hand and it warmed.

A child came up to him, bare of leg and dressed in a white shirt, with hair cropped short. Will reckoned he must be a slave. He handed the amber over to the child. "Take it," he said.

The boy's eyes widened. "For me?"

"Yes."

"It's very costly."

"Good. Give it to your parents. It will help them buy their freedom."

Will heard laughter and looked up to see that Guttorm and three of the warriors were watching and listening. "He makes gifts to thralls," said one of them. "A piece that might win the love of a girl or the friendship of a warrior he throws away on one who can return him nothing."

"He's mad," said the other. "Such is the way of madness. Madmen cannot tell the worth of things. They think silver just another metal. They think Danes no better than Saxons. They look at, say, the sand on this beach, and imagine it to be . . . oh . . ."

"Meal," said Will. "A great granary full of barley meal." The words were almost straight out of Saxo. Since they'd fed him his cue, he'd picked it up.

"Meal?" the man asked. "Where do you think they could grind so much meal?"

Will knew the answer to that, too. "In that great mill," he said, pointing to the ocean.

The watching men laughed and the three he didn't know ran to tell the others what he had said. Will didn't think it was that funny himself, but he happened to know that he'd made a joke that would be retold for more than a thousand years. There'd be another joke along soon, if he remembered correctly. Something about a knife . . . 

Guttorm stepped close to him and spoke in low tones. "Be wary," he whispered. "They're planning something. I know not what, but you're in danger."

Will almost answered him seriously, but it might be a trap.

"Conscience does make cowards of us all, and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," he said. Or words to that effect, in translation. He fought to cover the actual fear he felt. Why had he come with these people? He'd thought his madness would protect him. He shouldn't underestimate their intelligence because they were primitive by his standards. There was more than one kind of primitive.

Someone started shouting, and Will turned to see one of the warriors gathering the thralls into a group and herding them southward along the beach. He asked Guttorm what was going on.

"Someone's found a bit of salvage," said Guttorm. "He's getting the thralls to take it to the jarl."

Will looked at him, expecting more.

"All salvage belongs to the king," Guttorm went on. "You've forgotten this too?"

"So it would seem."

In a few minutes the thralls came back. Three of the men were carrying a large wooden object, shaped rather like a knife.

"What's that? A giant's knife?" Will asked.

Guttorm scowled. "Now you're making game of me. Are you saying you don't even recognize a ship's rudder?"

Will said, "Oh God." He had walked into Saxo's story again. This was another of Hamlet's riddles.

How was it possible that he was living the story out without intending to? Was he being compelled by some force? He felt no compulsion—he was only reacting naturally.

He remembered a writer—he forgot whom—who had said something about how our freest actions seemed to be the ones in which we were aware of the least choice. He'd thought it hogwash when he read it. Now he wasn't so sure.

Another man had come up to them and heard the exchange. "What use would there be for a knife as large as that?" the man asked.

Will thought he might as well finish the scene. "To slice that huge ham," he said, pointing again to the sea.

The man found this hugely funny. Laughing, he said, "What a grand kenning—the sea is the ham of the rudder-knife! Someone should put it in a poem!" Then he went to tell the others. Once again, Will knew, history had been made.

One of the men came down to Guttorm and said, "Somebody's got to herd the thralls back to the village with that rudder. Left to themselves they'll pilfer the thing and it'll end up in pieces in a dozen houses."

Guttorm said, "Then see to it."

"I'm in charge of the whale. All the men were sent on that errand, save you. So it's you must go with the salvage."

Guttorm shrugged. "Very well. I'll take Amlodd with me."

"No, best to leave him with us. It takes many men to hold a madman if he throws a fit."

"We'll be all right.'

"The jarl told me to keep my eye on him. We'll look after him."

Guttorm looked at Will, then at the others, and saw no way out. He went to Will and said, "Watch yourself," quietly, then mounted his pony and rode off with the thralls.

Will looked about him and felt suddenly cold, as the only man who'd shown him friendship disappeared into the forest shade.

One by one and then in groups, the jarl's men came and gathered around Will. They clustered in a semicircle, just a little overclose for friendliness. Will stepped back and wet his shoes in seawater.

"Hot day," said one of the warriors.

"Hot?" asked Will. It was chill so that he wished he'd worn a second shirt.

"I've never known it so warm so early in the year," said another warrior.

"No, believe me, 'tis very cold; the wind is northerly."  

"You mistake, sir," said the same man, " 'tis warm. A wonderful day for a swim." He took another step forward, and the others moved in with him. Will stepped back and now stood in water to his ankles, with the waves wetting him to the knees. The men on the ends of the crescent that hemmed him in stood as deep in the water. It occurred to him that no one could see what was happening from the shore. If any of the whale butchers chanced to glance this way, he'd only see a group of men standing in the surf. He took the only defense he could think of.

"Suppose I were Odin," he said.

The men grew still.

"Suppose Odin spoke from my mouth. Suppose I had the power of Odin to curse my enemies."

A few of the men actually backed up a step.

"Suppose I could call a monster from the sea to slay you all."

Will was amazed at the power of his words. The men's eyes grew wide and their mouths fell open, as if they actually saw such a monster rise from the waves. Not only did they goggle, they turned on their heels and ran, so that Will couldn't help turning to see what had frightened them.

It was a woman on a horse, rising from the water. She had hair white as silver, but she was not old. She wore nothing at all and rode bareback, and she had a face Will knew well—his mother's face. With all his memories, he often forgot his mother had been beautiful.

"Will Sverdrup! Come with me if you'd save your life!" she cried.

Will sloshed backwards. "No!" he cried. "Not you! Not with that face!"

The woman widened her eyes, and the face around them changed. Now it was Katla's face. That he could endure. He splashed to her and she hoisted him up on the horse behind her with amazing strength.

The warriors scattered as she spurred her mount through them and straight into the forest—not up the roadway but over the dune and into the depths of the wood. The sunlight turned to dappled shade, the trunks of the trees a blur around them, and Will held tight around the woman's small waist, feeling no sexual desire whatever for the moment. Her silver hair chastised his face.

The ride ended as suddenly as it had begun, in a green glade where there was a stream. The horse halted and the woman flung a leg over its neck and slid to the ground. "Come down. Sit beside me on these stones and we'll speak," she said.

Will dismounted rather more clumsily. The horse galloped into the woods, and the woman showed no concern about it.

Will did not wait for small talk. "Who are you and why did you wear my mother's face?" he demanded. He stood and she sat, but he felt no advantage in the position.

"I beg pardon if the face troubled you," said the woman, reclining on one arm. "I merely plucked the chief woman's face from your mind."

"You can't put a man at ease by appearing naked with his mother's face."

"Yes, I should have remembered that. But you humans have so many rules and kinships, 'tis sometimes hard to keep the straight of them."

"Even now I'd rather you put something on. Unless you want to make love."

The woman sighed and a scarlet gown covered her.

Will felt more at ease, and sat on a mossy stone. "Who are you then? What do you mean by 'you humans'?"

The woman laughed, and a crowd of butterflies came from all directions to cluster around her head like a halo. Only it was too early in the year for butterflies. "My name is Hlin," she said. "You may call me one of the Old Ones—I'm not prideful about youth like mortal women."

"You're not mortal?"

"Why should that surprise you? You've seen my deeds; did you think I was someone's wife and daughter?"

"I didn't know what to think."

"But you know of the Old Ones, surely?"

"I do not."

"Then how came you here?"

"I fell down a hole."

"You did not summon one of my kinsmen? Make a pact? Win or lose a riddle game?"

"No."

Hlin sat up and set her chin on her fist. The butterflies scattered and vanished. "Yet you must know one of us," she said, frowning. "Only the Old Ones know the ways between the worlds."

"I've never seen anyone like you before."

"Hm." She thought a moment. "When did you come from?" she asked.

"Where?"

"Not where, when. Do you know when in time we are now?"

"Sometime in the sixth or seventh century, I'd guess. Pre-Viking."

"That's right, by Christian reckoning. When did you fall down your hole?"

"It was the twenty-first century."

"That's it then. That far in the future I've never fared. We have little power in your time—the christening still has some effect, and you've grown far from the earth. Still there must have been one of us. Wasn't there someone there when you fell—someone fair to look at and strange in temper? Someone who brought excitement wherever they came, with whom time and place sometimes seemed loosely bound?"

Will said, "Randy."

Hlin smiled with Katla's small, sweet, beautiful mouth. "I'm sure you're correct. So now I've done you a favor. You know how you came."

"What did you mean by the ways between the worlds?"

"There are many worlds. You must know this."

"So I've heard."

"We Old Ones travel between them. These Danes think we live under hills or in the mountains, but we've a world of our own, which we enter by doors men cannot find. The doors lead to other doors between all the worlds, and we know the ways."

"But you can take people through."

"Yes."

"Can you send me back whence I came?"

She lounged on the rock again. "I could, but it wouldn't solve your problem. You're not only in another's world, you're in another's body. You must change souls with him to go back properly. You don't want to be a stranger to your family and friends, do you?"

"I suppose not." Will's shoulders slumped. "Have you any idea how I'd manage that trick?"

"I might have ideas, but why should I answer your questions without something in return?"

"What have I to offer you?"

She smiled and the scarlet gown disappeared. "Sit beside me," she said.

Will sat on the dry grass at her side. He was growing excited.

Instead of reaching for him, the woman put her hand in the grass and plucked some plants. "Do you know herbs?" she asked.

"No. I can tell a rose from a dandelion, not much more."

"This plant with the big silver, hairy leaves is the horseshoe. It's good for curing cough. This one with the spotted purple stem and the notched leaves in pairs is the cock's comb. It also helps with the cough, and it can sharpen the eyesight. But not now. The winter killed these."

"I know what this is," said Will, pulling a reed from the stream bank.

"Tell me then."

"It's what they thatch houses with. I noticed that." Will put his hand on her ankle. Her skin was extremely smooth, and warmer than he expected.

She shook him loose. "What I mean to say," she said, "is that you are like an herb in winter. It may keep green for a time, but it's lost its life-channel. It looks alive; it may think it's alive; but it is dead. You and all your people are dead in the same way. Why would I want you? Except as food?"

He put his hand on her knee. "Would you eat me?"

"Don't laugh at me, time-tramp. I've eaten better men than you, and I know nothing of guilt. Don't judge me by the tales told to children in your time."

"All right then, what can I give you in return for what I want?"

"You have one thing I can get nowhere else than from a mortal man."

"And that is?"

"Your pain."

"What?"

"Your love."

"My pain or my love?"

"They are the same. It's what makes you do what you do—build what you build, say what you say, dare what you dare. That worm in your gut that eats you from inside, pushing you to go to a new place; make a new thing. We never do these things, for we have no pain."

He nearly made a joke about S/M.

"The first of our race was called Cain," she went on. "He slew his own brother, but the High One did not exact blood from him, because there had never been murder before, and he could not have understood. Cain feared that others of his kin would take vengeance, so the High One freed him from death and pain. That was his punishment."

"How can I give you my pain?"

"Open your thoughts to me. Relive the great wound of your life, the one that shapes your every choice. Give me that pain, and I shall give you my body."

The lust drained from Will like water out of a colander. He stood and turned his back to her.

"Your fear is a great one, mortal man," the woman said. "It makes you pale as death."

"There's nothing you can offer that would make me live that again."

"Your fear makes me hungry! I drool over pain such as yours!"

"I don't think—I don't think I've ever known the meaning of what we call 'perversion' before today."

"And is it not perversion that excites you mortals most?"

"Some of us."

"The word means to go in a wrong way. You find something upon the main path that frightens you; so you take a side path, or make your own. You think you are bold to go on side paths, but the truth is that it's what you met on the straight one that frightens you. I want to know what you found on that path, man of the future. What monster did you meet there?"

"Which way is it to the village? It'll be a long walk, I expect."

"Don't your folk believe that there is health in uncovering your scars?"

"Let me see—we went west toward the sea. If it's afternoon now, and the sun is there, then west must be that way . . . I think. We entered the forest south of the road, and didn't cross it again . . . I think. So if I head north, I should cut the road—"

Suddenly she was beside him, her hand on his arm. "I need what you feel," she said. "Have pity on me. Give me a taste."

"My pain is mine."

She pressed her rich body against him. "Just a little," she said. "You needn't do anything. Just let me snatch what crumbs I can while we couple."

He loved knowing he'd reduced this proud creature to beggary. He took her roughly in his arms and pushed her to the ground. They fornicated in the grass and wild beasts sent up howls in the woods.

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Framed