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Maharet had looked worldly yetto findher fashionable paint, as she called it-the skillful cos h the real world What a tiny waist she had, and such long hands, even loves she wore So carefully she had stepped through the ferns and past the tender saplings, when she ht have pushed the trees themselves out of her path

She'd been to San Francisco with Jessica and Gabrielle; they had walked past houses with cheerful lights; on clean narrow pavements; where people lived, she'd said How crisp her speech had been, how effortlessly contemporary; not like the timeless woman I had first encountered in the mountaintop room

And as I alone again, she'd asked, sitting by h the thick of the redwoods? Why would I not talk to the others, even a little? Did I kno protective and fearful they were?

They are still asking me those questions now

Even Gabrielle, who in theThey want to knohen I' to talk about what happened, when I'ht

Maharet had said that ould see her again very soon In the spring perhaps we should come to her house in Bur But the point ere never to be isolated from one another; we had ways to find each other, no ht roam

Yes, on that vital point at least everyone had agreed Even Gabrielle, the loner, the wanderer, had agreed

Nobody wanted to be lost in tiain

And Mekare? Would we see her again? Would she ever sit with us around a table? Speak to us with a language of gestures and signs?

I had laid eyes upon her only once after that terrible night And it had been entirely unexpected, as I cah the forest, back to the coht just before dawn

There had been aabove the ferns and the few scattered winter wild flowers, and then paling utterly into phosphorescence as it rose aiant trees

And the twins had co down into the creek bed tothe stones, arown as beautiful as her sister's, her hair brushed and shining as it hung down around her shoulders and over her breasts

It see softly in Mekare's ear And it was Mekare who stopped to look at reen eyes wide and her face for onein its blankness, as I'd feltwind on my heart

I'd stood entranced looking at her, at both of the dried up

I don't knohat hts were; only that the pain seemed unbearable And that Maharet had , and that I should goall around us Our preciousby My pain had been finally loosened, like a o as I'd turned away