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“Not really,” she snorted, wiping her eyes “What is one entrance to the underworld? It’s always the saive what you can, you go into the dark The dark took us No more needs be said”

“There is always more Tell me, like you used to, when I warmed your bark with my belly and you kept your hair so short”

“You were always tireso a little “I went to the lake…”

THE TALE

OF THE

DANCING GIRL’S

DESCENT

TAGLIO KEPT HIS ABSENTIA IN A LITTLE BOX, too, did he tell you that? He showedin an or angewood box like the rattle in a snake’s tail He wanted me to see them because I am a huldra, and so in sorandmothers, forto witness another person’s faith laid out like that, reduced to so small and dry and lifeless, a reliquary full of toenail clippings I think he always liked me better than you He had never met a real huldra We were abstract; the story of the Heifer-Star and her brother was real I was proof of his religion, I was as good as a Star, and I slept against his stomach between the cart handles He looked at ht, that the dull, phantos was sacred

I don’t know anything about that I airl and cow, and that is no more a divine revelation to ht I was proof of the existence of a god But I felt sorry for our green gazelle—do you remember his little cape?—and I let him tell ether while the Manticore taught you to pick pockets and sing scales He was so quick with those teeth, and I became as quick as he It was so hard to stay by you—I looked at you and shivered as though the holloalls of the Mint were still all around me I looked at you and knew I should have taken the burden, I should have lain under the sta ofWith Taglio singing little rhyh to snatch, I forgot

And I forgot when I danced When I was Zs When I was Zirl who had lost a kiss to the miller’s son, or her hair to a unicorn, or seven years to a factory I was her, and I was green, and I writhed And as the lio and played his little flute, I understood less and less that I was not her On the hunt he called me holy; in the dance I kneas divine If it seems silly now, at least I have the consolation that one before me in madness for love of her, for love of the snake and the sky I cannot explain it better I danced her so often that I felt her inaround herself in the fog What da of a story play upon its teller? I told her story hundreds of times I could not bear to remain outside of it

The day after you kissed ht of it again Taglio and I went after supper We were on the track of a fawn I lay on my belly in the moss and birch leaves and watched its spots flash in and out of the wood He lay beside s

“You look like a snake lying there I am sure it is not an accident, and I aly

“Why would you say that?”

“You are barely here I can alh you You would speak to no one, and only dance, if you did not like to hunt so well If you did not like un to wonder if you do not like me only because I once saw her”

I turned my head slowly, so as not to start the deer “Don’t say that You are ht”