Torlyri wondered what it would be like, having a child. Feeling the life growing within her day by day. Pulsing. Pushing outward. And then to be reaching her time, lying down among the women, opening her legs to let the new one out.

She had never given much thought to mating or motherhood when she was a girl. But she had been toying with it for at least a year now. It was not an uncommon thing to think about, here in the New Springtime. There had been any number of matings among the People since the change of customs, and nearly all those who had not actually mated yet had at least flirted with the idea. Even Koshmar had joked about Torlyri’s sudden playfulness with this man or with that one. But Koshmar did not seem to be seriously concerned. It was not the custom for the offering-woman to take a mate; and as for coupling, Koshmar knew that Torlyri had never had any great interest in that.

Torlyri had been chosen early to be the next offering-woman, when she was barely more than a girl. Thekmur had been chieftain then, and Gonnari the offering-woman. Those two were virtually the same age, so they would reach the limit the same month and go out the hatch within weeks of each other. Thekmur picked Koshmar to succeed her, and Gonnari chose Torlyri. For the next five years Koshmar and Torlyri, who had already become twining-partners, had undergone preparation for the great responsibilities that would be theirs; and then the death-days arrived for Thekmur and for Gonnari, and the lives of Koshmar and Torlyri changed forever.

That had been twelve years ago. Torlyri was thirty-two now, almost thirty-three. If they still were living in the cocoon, her own death-day would be only a couple of years away, and she would be busy training her own successor now. But no one spoke of limit-ages or death-days any longer. Torlyri would be offering-woman until death came to take her. And instead of thinking of dying, she was thinking of mating.

Strange. Very strange.

She had experimented with coupling now and then — almost everyone did, even those who had not been designated as breeders — but not very often, and not in a long time. There was said to be high pleasure in it, but Torlyri had never managed to find it. Nor displeasure, either: it had seemed merely an indifferent thing to her, a series of movements to perform with one’s body, about as rewarding as kick-wrestling or armstanding, perhaps not even that.

Her first experience of it had come when she was fourteen, soon after her twining-day, the usual age for such initiations. Her partner was Samnibolon, later to be Minbain’s mate. He came upon her in a far corner of the cocoon and beckoned to her, and held her, and stroked her dark fur, and at last she understood what it was he wanted to do. There seemed to be no harm in it. As she had seen older women do, she opened herself to him and let him put his stiff mating-rod inside her. He moved it swiftly and they rolled over and over in a tangle, and some impulse told her to draw her legs up and press her knees against his sides, which seemed to please him. After a time he grunted and released her. They lay still in each other’s arms for a while. Samnibolon told her how beautiful she was and what a passionate woman she would be. That was all. He never approached her again. Not long afterward he and Minbain were mated.

A year or two later old Binigav the warrior drew her aside and asked her to couple with him; and because he was kindly and getting near to the limit-age, she did. He was tender and gentle with her, and once he had entered her he remained there a very long time, but all she felt was a vague warmth, pleasant but unexciting.

The third time was with Moarn, father of the Moarn who was a warrior of the tribe now. Moarn was already mated, so it surprised Torlyri when he reached for her after a feast. He had had too much velvetberry wine, and so had she. They grappled and embraced. Torlyri was never certain later whether they had truly coupled or not: she remembered that there had been some difficulties. Either way, it made little difference. Certainly it had not been memorable. And those were her three coupling-partners, Samnibolon, Binigav, Moarn. They were all long since dead; and she, once she had been chosen in her eighteenth year to be the next offering-woman, had never again ventured to explore such matters.

But now — now—

For weeks now, Lakkamai had been staring at her oddly. That quiet, intense, remote man: what was on his mind? No one had ever stared at her like that. His gray eyes were marked with flecks of lustrous green, which made him appear mysterious, unfathomable. He seemed to be trying to see deep inside her soul.

Whenever she glanced around suddenly, there was Lakkamai, peering toward her out of the distance. Hastily looking away, pretending he was busy with something, with anything. Sometimes she smiled at him. Sometimes she simply turned away; and when she turned toward him again, five or ten minutes later, there he was peering at her again.

She began to understand.

She found herself often looking at Lakkamai to see if he was looking at her. And then she found herself looking at Lakkamai for the sake of looking at Lakkamai, even when his back was turned to her. He was sleek and graceful and he looked strong: not strong in the thick-bodied manner of Harruel, but with a wiry, resilient power to him that reminded her of that poor Helmet Man who had died while he was being questioned by Koshmar and Hresh. Lakkamai was one of the older men of the tribe, a senior warrior, but his fur, a deep purple-brown, had not yet begun to show any gray. His face was long and sharp of chin and muzzle, his eyes were deep-set. Throughout all his days he had said very little. Small as the tribe was, intimate as life in the cocoon had been, Torlyri nevertheless had the feeling that she hardly knew him.

One night she dreamed that she was coupling with him.

It took her by surprise. In actuality she was lying with Koshmar. As it happened, they had twined that evening, for the first time in many weeks. Her mind should have been full of Koshmar while she slept. Instead Lakkamai came to her and stood silently over her, studying her intently. She beckoned to him and drew him down — he seemed to float to her side — and Koshmar disappeared and there were only the two of them on the sleeping-mat, and Lakkamai was inside her, and she felt sudden heat within her womb and knew that he had fathered a child upon her.

She gasped and woke, sitting up, trembling.

“What is it?” Koshmar asked at once. “A dream, was it?”

Torlyri shook her head. “A passing chill,” she said. “The winter air brushing across my face.”

She had never lied to Koshmar before.

But she had never desired a man before, either.

The next day, when Torlyri saw Lakkamai outside the temple, she could not bear to meet his eyes, so powerful was her feeling that she actually had coupled with him the night before. If the dream had been so vivid for her, he must also have felt it. It seemed to her that he must already know everything about her, the feel of her breasts in his hands, the taste of her mouth, the scent of her breath; and, old as she was, Torlyri felt suddenly like a girl, and a foolish girl at that.

That night she dreamed of Lakkamai again. She gasped and moaned and throbbed in his arms, and when she awoke Koshmar was staring at her, eyes bright in the darkness, as though she thought Torlyri was losing her mind.

On the third night the dream came again, even more real. She did things with Lakkamai that she had never seen others do while coupling, that she had never even imagined anyone would think of doing; and they gave her delight of the deepest and most intense kind.

She could not bear this any longer.

In the morning the rains that had been pelting the city for many weeks finally halted, and the bright blue winter sky burst through the clouds with the force of a trumpet-blast. Torlyri performed the sunrise-offering as she always did; and then, in utter calmness, she went to the house where the unmated warriors lived. There was a cage hanging on the porch at the corner of the building, with three small harsh-eyed black creatures in it that the warriors had caught, running around and around and crying out in angry, piercing, high-pitched tones. Torlyri gave them a sad compassionate smile.