She was so gentle with him…

After a long time he drifted off to sleep and began to dream again.

He was in the little herdsman’s shelter where Callista, moving through the overworld, the world of thought and illusion, had led him through the blizzard, after the crash of the plane. No, it was not the herdsman’s shelter; it was the strange illusory walled structure that Damon had built up in their minds, not real except in their visualization, but having its own solidity in the realm of thought, so he could see the very bricks and stones of it. He woke, as he had done then, in dim light, to see the girl lying beside him, a shadowy form, stilled, sleeping. As he had done then, he reached for her, only to find that she was not there at all, that she was not on this plane at all, but that her form, through the overworld, which she had explained as the energy-net double of the real world, had come to him through space and perhaps time as well, taking shape to mock him. But she had not mocked him.

She looked at him with a grave smile, as she had done then, and said with a glimmer of mischief, “Ah, this is sad. The first time, the very first time, I lie down with any man, and I am not able to enjoy it.”

“But you are here with me now, beloved,” he whispered, and reached for her, and this time she was there in his arms, warm and loving, raising her mouth for his kiss, pressing herself to him with shy eagerness, as once she had done, but only for a moment.

“Doesn’t this prove to you that it is time, love?” He drew her against him, and their lips met, their bodies molded one to the other. He felt again all the ache and urgency of need, but he was afraid. There was some reason why he must not touch her… and suddenly, at the moment of tension and fear, she smiled up at him and it was Ellemir in his arms, so like and so unlike her twin.

He said “No!” and drew away from her, but her hands, small and strong, drew him down close to her. She smiled at him and said, “I told Callista to tell you that I am willing, as it was told in the ballad of Hastur and Cassilda.” He looked around, and he could see Callista, looking at them and smiling…

And he woke with a start of shock and shame, sitting up in bed and staring wildly around to reassure himself that nothing had happened, nothing. It was daylight, and Ellemir, with a sleepy yawn, slid from the bed, standing there in her thin nightgown. Andrew quickly looked away from her.

She did not even notice — he was not a man to her at all — but would continue to walk around in front of him half dressed or undressed, keeping him continually on edge with a low-keyed frustration that was not really sexual at all… He reminded himself that he was on their world, and it was for him to get used to their customs, not force his own on them. It was only his own state of frustration, and the shaming realism of the dream, which made him almost painfully aware of her. But as the thought clarified in his mind, she turned slowly and looked full at him. Her eyes were grave, but she smiled, and suddenly he remembered the dream, and knew that she had shared it somehow, that his thoughts, his desire, had woven into her dreams.

What the hell kind of man am I, anyhow? My wife’s lying there sick enough to die, and I’m going around with a lech for her twin sister.… He tried to turn away, hoping Ellemir would not pick up the thought. My best friend’s wife.

Yet the memory of the words in the dream hung in his mind: I told Callista to tell you that I am willing.…

She smiled at him, but she looked troubled. He felt that he ought to blurt out an apology for his thoughts. Instead she said, very gently, “It’s all right, Andrew.” For a moment he could not believe that she had actually spoken the words aloud. He blinked, but before he thought what to say, she had gathered up her clothes and gone away into the bath.

He went quietly to the window and looked at the dying storm. As far as he could see, everything lay white, faintly reddened with the light of the great red sun, peering faintly through the stained edges of the clouds. The winds had whipped the snow into ice-cream ridges, lying like waves of some hard white ocean, sweeping back all the way to the distant blurring hills. It seemed to Andrew that the weather reflected his mood: gray, bleak, insufferable.

How fragile a tie, after all, bound him to Callista! And yet he knew he could never go back. He had discovered too many depths within himself, too many alien strangenesses. The old Carr, the Andrew Carr of the Terran Empire, had wholly ceased to exist on that faraway day when Damon placed them all in rapport through the matrix. He closed his fingers on it, hard and chill in the little insulated bag around his neck, and knew it was a Darkovan gesture, one he had seen Damon make a hundred times. In that automatic gesture, he knew again the strangeness of his new world.

He could never go back. He must make a new life for himself here, or go through what years remained to him as a ghost, a nothingness, a nonentity.

Until a few nights ago he had believed himself well on the way to building his new life. He had worthwhile work to do, a family, friends, a brother and sister, a second father, a loving and beloved wife. And then, in a blast of unseen lightning, his whole new world had crumbled around him and all the alienness had closed over him again. He was drowning in it, sinking in it… Even Damon, usually so close and friendly, his brother, had turned cold and strange.

Or was it Andrew himself who now saw strangeness in everything and everyone?

He saw Callista stir, and, suddenly apprehensive lest his thoughts should disturb her, gathered up his clothes and went away to bathe and dress.

When he came back, Callista had been wakened, and Ellemir had readied her for the day, dressing her in a clean nightgown, washing her, braiding her hair. Breakfast had been brought, and Damon and Ellemir were there, waiting for him around the table where the four of them had taken their meals during Callista’s illness.

But Ellemir was still standing over Callista, troubled. As Andrew came in, she said, and her voice held deep disquiet, “Callista, I wish you would let Ferrika look at you. I know she is young, but she was trained in the Amazon’s Guild-house, and she is the best midwife we have ever had at Armida. She—”

“The services of a midwife,” said Callista, with a trace of wry amusement, “are of all things the last I need, or am likely to need!”

“All the same, Callista, she is skilled in all manner of women’s troubles. She could certainly do more for you than I. Damon,” she appealed, “what do you think?”

He was standing at the window, looking out into the snow. He turned and looked at them, frowning a little. “No one has more respect than I for Ferrika’s talents and training, Elli. But I do not know if she would have the experience to deal with this. It is not commonplace, even in the Towers.”

Andrew said, “I don’t understand this at all! Is it still only the onset of menstruation? If it is as serious as this, perhaps,” and he appealed directly to Callista, “could it do any harm for Ferrika to look you over?”

Callista shook her head. “No, that has ended, a few days ago. I think” — she looked up at Damon, laughing — “I am simply lazy, taking advantage of a woman’s weakness.”

“I wish it were that, Callista,” Damon said, and he came and sat down at the table. “I wish I thought you would be able to get up today.” He watched her slowly, with lagging fingers, buttering a piece of the hot nut-bread. She put it to her mouth and chewed it, but Andrew did not see her swallow.

Ellemir broke a piece of bread. She said, “We have a dozen kitchen maids, and if I am out of the kitchen for a day or two, the bread is not fit to eat!”