Page 9 (1/2)

The throat opened into a rooht, scoured with it, brighter than day, a lather of light like soap rubbed furiously in the hand I could hardly see, the change was so sudden, and in the center of it, the wolf-creature like a sun, gently blazing

The cavern was not e a woman, asleep or dead, fourteen slender hands closed over fourteen frozen breasts Their hair swept over their pedestals as though it had grown a thousand years; their liether, piled up like apples at harvest Piles of jade and granite and opal, of garnet bright as blood, of shale and iron ore, and of dia like snow

In the Garden

WAKENED NOW, THE BOY CHEWED SLOWLY ON AN APPLE CORE, MESMERIZED Wolves bounded gracefully through hisared in gold thread and embroidered with lilies He wrapped it around his shoulders and edged gingerly towards the girl, as a ether under their scarlet tent, and she lowered her lashes earthhen his hand brushed her knee, snatching the water flask and drawing it in They were very close; he could smell the musk of her hair, cedar and jasmine

The first lights of dawn, luh the fine fabric of leaves, writing in rose and silver shadows on their skin

It is very still, the world at dawn, under its glittering net of dew In their little thicket, the pair of children ere very nearly finished with childhood sat dry and warirl’s voice had fallen as silent as a cat’s paw on pine needles The infant sun brushed the boy’s hair fro, cherubic hand He did not ht, and his sister would be rising soon, her face growing storht of his empty bed

“I have to go,” he rasped finally “I have to get back before the household wakes up”

The girl nodded, suddenly shy, drawing back into herself after all this long night of spinning out her heart like flax, straw into gold

“But I will come back,” he reassured her, “as the flocks of river birds do, at sunset I will bring us another supper and you will tell randmother in her cave”

He touched her face, and his hand on her cheek was soft as a hare’s paw The girl smiled into his pal lashes closed briefly, exposing the swirling black of the birthht without stars The boy marked that he did not find it un-beautiful, now that he knew her a little He dipped his tousled golden head a little, to ain

“I will coht,” he declared quietly, and ran into the striations ofin the jasmine and aster, and the apple trees

The girl bent to the reether the flasks and crusts of bread to feed the crows and gulls She then rose fro a few errant petals froold beams of the day

When the sun had lain down in the west and covered itself with long blue blankets, and the girl sat cross-legged under the silver-lavender jas across the thick emerald lawn to her He burst into her thicket, industriously setting out her dinner She had been sure he would not come

He brought dark bread and pale cheeses, a slice of roasted la with juice, several sreen apple and a slice of chocolate, precious as myrrh

“I thought I would leave the wine tonight, so that I do not steal off to sleep again,” he ad his water flask instead