"Perhaps I can be of assistance."

She jumped in surprise-which was no small matter in the low gravity. She had been trying so hard to ignore the Titanide's existence that she had forgotten he was there.

"I doubt it," she said. For some reason, she was embarrassed when these outlandish animalls talked. They pretended to be human, and did such a poor job of it.

"You could try," Serpent suggested.

"I was wondering if ... if you had any cardamom."

"Great or small?"

"What?"

"We use two varieties: the Greater-"

"Yes, yes, I know. The small."

"Do you want the dried rind or the crushed seed?"

"The seed, the seed!" Nova regretted being drawn into the conversation in the first place. But Serpent handed her a jar, and she tapped a portion onto a slip of paper and twisted it shut. Then he helped her find the cinnamon. She could see he wondered what she might be cooking, and that whatever it might be, he didn't approve.

"Anything else?"

"Uh ... would you have any benjamin?"

Serpent pursed his lips primly.

"You'd have to look in the medicine cabinet for that." It was clear his opinion of her recipe had dropped even lower. "It will be labeled in English, as 'benzoin' " He paused, seemed about to ask a question, but Cirocco had warned him to tread on eggs when dealing with this human. "If it matters," he went on, "there won't be any potassium cyanide left in the solution, but there might be some alcohol."

Nova was going to say she meant the gum resin, not the crystal, but decided against it. She hurried away and upstairs to the infirmary, which she had already located and raided for other ingredients.

Back in her room, she shut the door, pulled the drapes, lit a candle, and stripped off her clothes. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she tapped out portions of her new acquisitions into the small metal dish she was using as a crucible, added some water, and stirred it with her finger. She used a pin to draw blood from her thumb, and dripped it into the aromatic mess as it began to bubble from the heat of the candle. When it was going well, she plucked three pubic hairs, singed them in the candle flame, and added them to the crucible.

A dollop of vodka nicked from the cabinet in the living room soon had the mixture sizzling with a blue flame. She continued to cook it until she had a few ounces of grayish powder. She sniffed it, and made a face. Well, she wouldn't use much. She fretted for a moment about the benjamin, and the fact that the recipe called for mushroom liqueur instead of vodka. But this was supposed to be sympathetic magic, not literal sorcery, so it ought to do.

She began plucking more hairs. She plucked until she was sore, and then wound them together and tied them up into a tiny, golden brush. Pulling on her shirt and pants, she peered out the door. When she was sure she was unobserved she hurried down the hall to Cirocco's room.

Inside, she used the brush to dab tiny spots of powder onto the bedposts and under the pillow. Under the bed she drew a five-sided figure and left a pubic hair in the middle. Then she retreated to the door, leaving an infinitesimal dab every three feet.

Down the hall she went, dabbing her brush in the pan and leaving little dots of powder in a trail to her doorway.

When she closed her door she had to lean against it for a moment. Her heart was pounding and her cheeks were hot. She tore off her clothes and jumped into bed. She used the brush to make a mark between her breasts, then thrust it down between her legs, muttering an invocation. Then she set the pan on the floor near the wall, where Robin would not see it. She pulled the bedclothes up to her neck and took a deep, shuddering breath.

Be still, heart. Your beloved will come.

Then she leaped out of bed and flung herself at the huge, wondrous vanity table with the wavy mirror. She dug into her cosmetics, heedless of the fact that some of them might be irreplaceable. She made up her face with infinite care, applied her best perfume, and jumped back into bed.

What if the perfume covered up the scent of the potion? What if Cirocco didn't care for lipstick? She wore none herself. She didn't wear any cosmetics, and was the most beautiful woman Nova had ever seen.

Sobbing, she flew down the hall to the bathroom. She scrubbed it all off, then was sick in the toilet. She cleaned it up, brushed her teeth, and hurried back to bed.

This must be love; what else could hurt so much?

She wept, she moaned, she thrashed the sheets to ribbons, and still Cirocco did not come.

Eventually, she cried herself to sleep.

SEVEN

In the dream, Cirocco opened her eyes.

She was on her back in the fine black sand. Her head rested on her pack. The sand was quite dry, and so was her body. She spread her arms and dug her fingers into the sand, pointed her toes and felt it shift under her heels, moved her shoulders and hips in a slow, sensuous circle that dug the Cirocco-shaped hole in the sand a few centimeters deeper. She let out a deep breath, and relaxed totally.

She was aware of every muscle and every bone. Her skin was stretched taut, each nerve ending waiting to feel the strange thing again.

It came after a timeless dream-time. A small hand was rubbing her left leg, from the top of her foot to her knee and back down again. She could feel it quite distinctly. Four fingers, a thumb, the heel of the hand. It was not pressing hard, not massaging, but neither was it the touch of a feather. She watched without alarm, in the way of some dreams. She could see the minute changes in texture on her skin where the hand moved.

Her nipples hardened. She closed her eyes (it was not completely dark beneath her eyelids), pressed her head back against the pack, raising her shoulders from the sand and arching her back. The hand moved up to her thigh, and another cupped her breast, moved light fingertips around the curve of it, brushed a thumb over the wrinkled nipple. She sighed, and relaxed back onto the accepting sand.

She opened her eyes again. In the dream.

The land was darker. In a land of unchanging light, dusk seemed to be sweeping over the quiet lake. Cirocco moaned. Her legs were heavy, engorged; she opened them, offering herself to the darkening sky. Her hips seemed to grow from the ground; she thrust them out and up in the most primitive gesture of all, then relaxed again.

Two small footprints appeared in the sand between her legs, one at a time. Then there was the imprint of knees. The sand swarmed, taking on the shape of legs, hollowing out a space for a hip as the phantom knelt and shifted. Both hands were on her thighs now, moving gently up and down.

Cirocco closed her eyes again, and could immediately see better. Ghost images of the lake, the far shore, the sky pulsed against the inside of her eyelids. She lifted herself on her elbows and let her head fall back. Through the thin skin she saw trees converging on a point in the sky. The sky was the color of blood. She bent her legs, her knees up and open. She gasped as the hands explored her. Keeping her eyes closed, she lifted her head.

When she looked straight ahead she could see nothing but the throbbing of her own pulse, the fulgurant and amorphous ephemera of her own retinas. But when she looked to the side-careful to keep her eyes closed-a figure was revealed kneeling between her open legs. It was a Cubist conception, existing from all sides at once, a layered thing with depths her peripheral dream-vision could not reach. It was a thing of colored smoke bound together by moonbeams. Cirocco knew who it was, and she was not afraid.

In the dream, she opened her eyes to almost total darkness.

The shadow knelt there. She felt the hands descend her thighs and spread out over her belly, saw her hyaline lover's face moving down, felt the brush of long hair, felt the tickle of a warm breath, felt the tender kiss, the more insistent kiss, the eager opening of mouth and vulva, the entry of tongue, the hands sliding around to clutch her buttocks and raise her from the yielding sand.