Perhaps this was what it was to be in love, Andrew thought. Every time he saw Callista it was like the first time, always all new and surprising. But that thought stirred the guilt which was never very far away. After a few minutes she noticed his silence, turned to him, reaching her small gloved hand to his. “What is it, my husband?”

“I had something to tell you, Callista,” he said abruptly. “Did you know Ellemir is pregnant again?”

Her face was suffused with her smile. “I am so glad for her! She has been so brave, but now she will have an end to mourning and sorrow.”

“You don’t understand,” Andrew said doggedly. “She says it is my child—”

“Oh, of course,” Callista said. “She told me Damon had not wanted her to try again so soon, for fear she would… would lose it. I’m very glad, Andrew.”

Would he ever get used to their customs? He supposed it was lucky for him, but still… “Don’t you mind, Callista?”

She started to say — he almost heard the words — “Why should I mind?” but then he saw her suppress them. He was still a stranger in some ways, in spite of everything. She said at last, slowly, “No, Andrew, I truly don’t mind. I don’t suppose you do understand. But look at it this way.” She smiled again, her mirthful smile. “There will be a baby in the house, your child, and although I am fond enough of babies, I do not really want to have one yet. In fact, and this is ridiculous, Andrew,” she added, laughing, “although Ellemir and I are twins, I am not old enough to have a baby yet! Don’t you know that the midwives say no woman should bear a child until her body has been mature a full three years? And for me it is not half a year yet! Isn’t that funny? Elli and I are twins, and she is pregnant the second time, and I am not really old enough to have a baby!”

He flinched at the joke. How could she make jokes about the way in which her body had been held, immature, and yet, he realized soberly, it was her very ability to find something funny, even in this, which had saved them all from despair.

They reached the valley with the old stone bridge, where the twin foals had been born. Together they rode up the long slope, tethered their horses to a tree, and dismounted.

“Kireseth is a flower of the heights,” Callista said. “It does not grow in the tilled valleys, and probably it is a good thing. Men sometimes even weed it out when it grows on the lower slopes, because the pollen causes trouble: when it blooms, even horses and cattle are likely to behave like mad things, stampede, attack one another, mate out of season. But it is very valuable, for we make the kirian from it. And look, it is beautiful,” she said, pointing to the long grassy slope, covered with a cascade of blue flowers, shimmering with their golden stamens. Some were still blue, others like bells of gold, covered with the golden pollen.

She tied a piece of thin cloth, like a mask, over the lower part of her face. “I am trained to handle it without reacting much,” she said, “but even so, I do not want to breathe too much of it.”

He watched while she made preparations to gather the flowers, but she warned him away. “Don’t come too close, Andrew. You have never been exposed to it before. Everyone who lives in the Kilghard Hills has been through a Ghost Wind or two and knows how they will react, but it does very strange things. Stay here under the trees, with the horses.”

Andrew demurred, but she repeated her injunction firmly. “Do you think I need help picking a few flowers, Andrew? I brought you with me to have your company on the long ride, and to soothe my father’s fears about bandits or robbers lurking in the hills with intent to rob me of the jewels I am not wearing, or to attempt rape, which might,” she added, with a touch of grim laughter, “be worse for them to attempt than for me to suffer.”

Andrew turned his face away. He was glad Callista could find some amusement, but that particular joke struck him as being in questionable taste.

“It will not take long for me to gather what I need of the flowers; they are already blooming and are heavy with the resin. Wait here for me, my love.”

He did as she said, watching her move away from him and into the flowers. She stooped and began cutting the flower heads, putting them into a thick bag she had brought. Andrew lay down on the grass beside the horses and watched her moving lightly through the field of gold and blue flowers, her red-gold hair falling in a single braid down her back. The sun was warm, warmer than he could remember for any day on Darkover. Bees and insects buzzed and whirred softly in the field of flowers, and a few birds swooped down overhead. Around him, with sharpened senses, he could smell the horses and their saddle leather, the heavy scent of the resin-trees, and a sweet, sharp, fruity smell which, he supposed, must be the scent of the kireseth flowers. He could feel it filling his head. Remembering that Damon had warned him against handling or smelling even the dried flowers, he conscientiously moved the horses a little further away. It was a still, windless day, with not the slightest breeze blowing. He drew off his riding jacket and wadded it under his head. The sun made him drowsy. How graceful Callista was, as she bent over the flowers, cutting a blossom here and one there, stowing them in her bag. He closed his eyes, but behind his eyelids it seemed he could still see sunlight, splintering into brilliant colors and prisms. He knew he must have had a whiff of the resin; Damon had said it was an hallucinogen. But he felt relaxed and content, with no impulse to do any of the dangerous things he had been warned that men and animals did under its influence. He was completely content to lie here on the warm grass, dimly conscious of the shifting rainbow colors behind his eyelids. When he opened his eyes, the sunlight seemed brighter, warmer.

Then Callista was coming toward him, the mask fallen from her face, her hair flowing. She seemed to wade, waist-deep, through shimmering golden waves of the star-shaped flowers, a delicate girlish woman in a cloud of bright copper hair. For a moment her form shimmered and wavered as if she were not there at all, not his wife in a riding skirt, but the ghostly image he had seen while her body lay prisoner in the caves of Corresanti and she could come to him only in insubstantial form in the overworld. But she was real. She sat beside him on the grass, bending her glowing face over him with a smile so tender that he could not forbear to draw her down to him and kiss her lips. She returned his kiss with an intensity which dimly surprised him… although, half asleep and his senses half sharpened, half dulled by the pollen, he could not remember quite why this should surprise him so much.

He reached for her, drew her down beside him in the grass. He held her in his arms, kissing her passionately, and she gave him back his kisses without hesitation or withdrawal.

A random thought crossed his mind, like a flicker of wind stirring the glowing flowers: Did I ever dream that I had married the wrong woman? This new, responsive Callista in his arms, glowing with tenderness, made the very thought absurd. He knew that she shared the thought — he no longer cared to try to conceal it from her, no longer cared to conceal anything from her — and that it amused her. He could feel the little glimmering ripples of laughter through the waves of desire which swept them both.

He knew, positively, that now he could do what he would and she would not protest, but compunction stayed him from anything further than this, the kisses she shared and gave back so intensely. Whatever she felt, it might be dangerous for her. That night… she had wanted him then too. And that had ended in catastrophe and near-tragedy. He would not risk it again until he was certain, more for her sake than his own.