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and juxtaposed.
The path broadened between an olive and a lemon tree, both heavy with fruit
and flowers surely a dreamlike manifestation, because olives and lemons did
not bloom simultaneously, and neither bore bud, flower, and ripe fruit all at
once. But this was no dream. This was the reality that had engendered her
visions for there, on a verdant promontory draped with moss, stood . . . two
thrones.
"Mine," said Minho, pointing, grinning broadly. "And the other one is . . .
yours!"
Pierrette gasped. Thus, then, were dream, vision, and otherworldly flight made
real: this was the time and circumstance she had longed for since she had been
small. The throne was as she remembered it . . . And yet it was not. It was
stone, ivory, and gold, but she remembered no sinuous band of lapis lazuli and
garnet about its base, nor the face of an open-mouthed god with hair full of
eels and fishes that adorned its back.
The inexactitudes troubled her but, true to the script she had learned, she
smiled and, twirling her skirt, seated herself, and placed her hands on the
throne's carven ivory arms. "Join me, King of the Isles," she bade him,
batting her long, dark eyelashes shamelessly. "Stretch out your arm and tell
me the names of those islands, that city . . ."
Minho sat. His strong, slender hand covered hers the thrones were quite close,
though she had not noticed it before. "The first island," he said, "is called
'Pierrette's footstool,' because it lies at your feet."
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"Stop that!" His facetiousness annoyed her but this was the culmination of her
dream, and she should not be annoyed. "What do the farmers who till its fields
call it? What would the olivier who attends his gray-leaved groves say, if I
asked him its name?"
"He'd say 'This is Pierrette's Island,' and would direct you to its most
ancient wharf, where your name was carved in the mossy stones so long ago it
is almost worn away. It has been so named since first I
knew you would come to me."
Pierrette believed him. Now, in retrospect, she could imagine his eyes hiding
behind those of her lovers past Aam the hunter, who shared her kill, in the
hills above Sormiou, who had shouldered the gutted doe, her sacrifice, the
other self that she had slain to feed the people. Minho had peered out from
Alkides's eyes on the Plain of Stones, when that cattleman (who would later be
named Herakles) had taught her how to defy the will of the gods without
disobeying their commands, by loving him without losing the maidenhood that
the goddess required she keep.
Had Minho truly lurked behind the dark Roman eyes of Caius Sextius Calvinus,
consul and general, when she dallied with him in his praetorium by the sacred
hot springs below Entremont, on the eve of the battle that opened Gaul to the
legions, and the world to Rome's might? Those three encounters the totality of
her romantic life had all taken place in the long-ago past, made accessible
through the
Otherworld by the spell
Mondradd in Mon
. She had visited Entremont in the one hundred and twenty-fourth year before
the Christian era, had dallied with Alkides six centuries before that, and had
hunted with Aam in a past so remote that no memory of it remained. Yes, Minho
could claim to have known her for a thousand or fourteen thousand years.
Resenting Minho's sorcerous meddling in her private moments then
, Pierrette's brow wrinkled into a frown, now
. What right had he to know her intimate moods without having labored to woo
and seduce her? What claim had he on the recollection of her cries of delight,
her struggles to release the lovely heat her lovers' hands, lips, and loins
had engendered? Then she thought of . . . Neheresta. That had been because of
its very nature more intimate, more private even than the other times. Had
Minho been there? The other times she could forgive: they had been men, as
Minho was, and she almost felt sorry for him, unable to venture out in the
great world on his own. But last night even if it had been only a dream had
been different. There was no place for a man, any man, in it; male eyes and
male mind could not comprehend it, and male lust could not parallel it. Such
an intrusion would be . . . unforgivable
She lifted her eyes from the vista of islands and gleaming sea, and her gaze
locked with Minho's his, doting and smug, hers, resentful, angry, and cold.
She forced a smile. "Are you sure you are ready for me?" she asked. "Can these
sweet, peaceful isles withstand the wind of my breath when I cry out, or my
laughter, that will shake your mountains free of every loose stone and cause
ripe and unripe fruit alike to tumble from your unnatural trees? Are you sure
you want me, King of Hy Brasil, ruler of Thera, brother of Minos of Knossos?"
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