"That's all we know. We didn't go down into the earth with her. We don't know what she saw there or how it changed her. We can only hope that her strength will be enough to keep her going, until she can come back and speak of what she has seen."

Taryn crawled the length of the bed and laid her head in Rosalind's lap. She rested there, hot eyed and silent, her body coiled and tense. Her arms were closed around her stomach. Rosalind didn't ask, didn't demand. It had been a night of too many happenings, too much to be dealt with, too many words. Taryn was drowning in the knowledge she'd come up against. With a lover's wisdom, she simply gave what simple comfort Taryn seemed ready to take and let the questions wait.

Rosalind stroked her hair, aware that Taryn might not be able to bear a touch on her back or arms. She did not cry, but every half-restrained shudder that pa.s.sed through her body was a howl of grief. Rosalind combed the night black hair with her fingers and scratched Taryn's head with her nails. She started singing, softly, a lullaby her mother had sung to her as a girl.

Taryn turned onto her back, looking up into her lover's face. Her eyes were burning with tears that couldn't come, luminescent as rain. She curled her head into the caress, even as she held her body away, rigid as steel.

Though she'd been kicked out of chorus in grade school for crimes against music, Rosalind continued to sing every song she could remember, until the tension in Taryn's body started to ease, the trembling quieted.

Taryn arched her neck against Rosalind's leg and turned her face, kissing her thigh. "This isn't how I pictured spending the night with you. Some auction this turned out to be."

"Hush, sweetheart. Try and sleep."

"Regret your winning bid?" Taryn asked, stroking Rosalind's knee. Rosalind took a chance and put her arms around her. There was a moment of resistance, Taryn's body clenched like a fist. Then, with a sigh, she relaxed into the embrace.

"I'm your lover, baby. This is a part of it."

"Never was before," Taryn said, looking out at the room.

"It was never me before. Try and fall asleep." Rosalind resumed stroking Taryn's hair.

"Yeah. That'll put me out. Am I smashing your lap?"

"You're fine," Rosalind rea.s.sured her, and pulled more of her onto her leg. "I'm stronger than I look."

Another shudder pa.s.sed through Taryn's body, like a cold wind whipping across the bed. "Tell you a secret?" she whispered to Rosalind. "I'm not. Stronger than I look." Taryn's voice was small in the darkness of the room.

"You are to me. Rest, my sweet warrior."

"I need a hero, but all the heroes are dead," Taryn muttered and shut her eyes.

Rosalind sat for an hour, until she was sure that Taryn was actually sleeping. She eased Taryn from her lap and put the blanket over her. She protested and flailed her arm out. When Rosalind took her hand she relaxed, falling back into sleep. Rosalind sat next to her, unable to shut her eyes. It had to be five, maybe even later. Dawn would be coming soon. She kept the night watch over her lover's sleeping form, knowing that Taryn needed protection. In sleep, Taryn looked far too young and far too vulnerable. "I won't let anything hurt you," Rosalind whispered, kissing her hand.

It wasn't the sudden pain that she feared, but its aftermath. For now, Taryn was in shock. But soon, tomorrow even, the changes might begin. The despair would set in, the slow spreading like a mist, the deadening of nerve endings. It would be subtle, at first, the life bleeding out of her. Bit by bit, the things that brought her pleasure or diversion would become stale and dull; the clouds would roll in and not lift. And Rosalind would watch it, unable to reach her.

She looked around the room, at the splinter of light from the window, the altar on the top of the dresser. Her eye stopped on the statue of the dancing Shiva. In the sinuous bend of the G.o.d's arms, she saw an echo of the snake in the dogwood tree. An odd feeling came over her, perhaps the lateness of the hour and the emotional night, perhaps the sparking of a childhood memory. Rosalind prayed.

It was a feeling, at first, a longing to protect and cherish. She let that longing grow until it all but choked her, then gave words to it, whispered over the body of her lover to the darkness and anything that listened. "She needs a hero. They can't all be dead. Please, let me be what she needs." It was the voicing of the one pure hope she carried into the potential of the witch's house.

There was no response. The statue was as silent as the snake had been, long ago. Rosalind let a small, bitter chuckle surface. What had she expected? The heroes were dead, and the G.o.ds were sleeping.

Her eyes started to get heavy at last, lulled by resignation. She wasn't sure that she wanted to sleep. Sleep was an escape, and she wanted to be present as she had never been before. Taryn needed her to be. She shook her head, but the weight of her eyelids dragged them down. She felt her body sway, her eyes harder to keep open than a freshman's in an 8:00 a.m. cla.s.s. In the middle of blinking and fighting to stay awake, she saw light come from the end of the room. Had the dawn come so soon?

She must have fallen asleep. She was seeing the walls of the room fade like smoke, a smoke that billowed and thinned into a haze of yellow dust. She saw a gateway of mud brick set into a wall of enameled tiles. She was looking out at the desert, across the yellow dust toward the dun hills in the West. It was the Egyptians who described death as going into the West; she'd learned that in her training. She was here at this side gate in disguise, waiting for her lover.

Through the light pouring down like molten gold she came, the beautiful boy who was a handsome girl, dressed to fool the G.o.ds. The black-eyed girl who was a prince and her beloved. The G.o.ds were not fooled, though the prince looked so very like the Lord of Sheaves, the adored consort of the Great G.o.ddess. In her youth and strength, she was as gorgeous as a leopard, as splendid as a black eagle. The prince was also reckless and felt free to deny the prophecy.

Rosalind knew that she was the woman who waited by the gate, day after day. She was a priestess, and so this affair was profane. She had been consecrated to the G.o.ddess and could not love where she chose. The prince lived in exile to avoid the death that had been foretold at the hour of her birth. Coming into the city was asking death to find her.

The dreamscape shifted. There was a street, a broad paved avenue wide enough for three chariots to travel abreast. Rosalind walked on the street in her gauzy priestess's robes, her mind full of the prince. She felt her arm being seized. A woman with wild hair like a halo of snakes accosted her. She knew this woman. It was the fortune-teller who had raised the prince in secret.

The fortune-teller had powers of her own, untrained and unregulated by the temple. She practiced her magic in the wild places beyond the walls of the city, called up the spirits of the dead and the small G.o.ds under the hills. The fortune-teller knew of the affair and knew it meant death for the prince. So she came to the city to warn and bargain, to ask the priestess to let the prince go.

It was no use. As soon as the fortune-teller set eyes on the priestess, she knew. The Wheel of Fate had already turned, binding them all together. Death was coming for the prince, and death cannot be stopped.

Death took the form of a rebel satrap who seized the prince one night when she snuck into the city to visit her lover. In the lowest reaches of his palace the prince was kept, awaiting execution. Rosalind saw this, saw the room of flat gray stone. As the priestess she was there, captive, helpless. There was the creak of bows being pulled taut, the groan of cane arrows pleading to fly. The prince waited, calm as a priest at a sacrifice, looking out on unfathomable distances. Rosalind didn't move, didn't know why she wasn't moving.

There was a flash of acrid smoke, folk magic used to cover a hasty entrance. The fortune-teller was there, wild-eyed. She saw the prince. She saw death in the room, waiting. She saw the arrows and did the only thing that her love allowed. She stood in the path and took the death meant for the prince.

The world capered and spun before Rosalind's eyes. Every particle of the air, every mote of dust began to dance. In that dance she saw that all things are one. The world existed inside of a drop of water; the sum was the part, and the part was infinite. The flight of the arrow became a spear of light arcing toward the center.

The dreamscape shifted and Rosalind saw a wheel trimmed in celestial fire. In the Wheel, Lord Shiva danced to the music of the spheres, all time bowed before him. Yet it was a woman who danced, the woman with the belt of skulls. In each hand she held a blessing or a weapon. Each arm began to move so sinuously that Rosalind could not tell the flower from the blade. The face of the G.o.ddess melted and ran, became the face of the fortune-teller in her moment of sacrifice hurling herself into the path of death in an act of love.

The face shifted, became the priestess who held out a blessing and a warning so interlaced it was the same gesture. The features ran like wax. It was a beautiful boy who danced in the Devourer's place with a smile like a dark star, a handsome girl who mingled deception and revelation seamlessly. In that moment it came down like the sparks from the divine fire, and the G.o.ddess who gives birth became the G.o.ddess who devours.

Everything was connected front and back. The Wheel became the circle of the sun; the beautiful boy became a black eagle rising in pa.s.sionate abandon to immolation and reunion with all things. The sun became a snake sheathed in golden scales winding around a branch of flowering dogwood. All motion abruptly ceased. The Wheel lurched to a halt, sending off showers of fire. Blocked by a single arrow caught in the spokes.

Rosalind's eyes snapped open to a room bathed in gold. The spears of sun had come across the floor and were edging toward the bed. She was still sitting holding Taryn's hand. The vastness of the dream mercifully faded; love eased into the s.p.a.ces it left. It was too much to hold at once, the things she had seen; her mortal senses balked at it. Rosalind concentrated on breathing in and out, taking refuge in the physical reality.

Taryn seemed to be sleeping peacefully. Rosalind raised Taryn's hand to her cheek and held it there for a moment, absorbing the living warmth. She looked at her lover's face-the line of jaw, the high cheekbones. It was the face of a beautiful boy, not quite the face of the prince in the dream. The prince's eyes had been black as obsidian. Only the soul looking out had been the same.

For a moment Rosalind's mind froze, unable to approach the visions. She reached out to touch the crown of Taryn's head and let her hand rest there. "I can't imagine a world without you. Waking up and not knowing Taryn likes this, doesn't care for that. Believes in these things, fights for them. I can't imagine not knowing what you love. None of this makes any sense without you to come home to. What good is revelation without joy?" Rosalind said softly, coming down from the madness of the dreams.

"Plato would have loved you, baby. His idealized, perfect youth. That makes me the dirty old man, I suppose," she said, absently tracing the edges of Taryn's lips.

"I dreamed you were a prince. Not you, exactly, my dear king. Someone you came from." She couldn't have slept for long, her head was still foggy. "You might not be descended from Alexander, my love. This was long before his time. She might have been a warrior, but she had the air of a priest. In the face of death, she was calm, even graceful."

The image came back with the force of a sledgehammer, and the fog lifted from Rosalind's brain. Exactly who everyone had been became clear. The prince, the priestess, the fortune-teller. It couldn't be. But Joe had cautioned her to listen to the message when it came. It appeared, whole and perfect in her mind. She saw it, every motion, like a dance.

It could finally work. After thousands of years, the symbols were too perfect to be ignored. Taryn, scion of the prince's line, was royalty. A drag king. She lived in disguise, had the magic of the trickster, the cross-dresser, the magic that was both illusion and revelation, the revealing of the soul in the a.s.sumption of ident.i.ty. She was a warrior, a soldier on the front lines of the gender wars. She'd been raised by the witch, of the line of the fortune-teller, and so was beloved of the G.o.ddess. She was beloved of the professor, of the line of the priestess, the heir to arcane formal knowledge.

The cycle that kept happening wasn't all Fate. There had only been one death foretold so long ago. Rhea's line had spent so many years fighting it, or taking it on herself, that she'd forgotten: death was simply change from one state to another. The G.o.ddess that gave birth was also the G.o.ddess that devoured.

For the Wheel of Fate to turn again, death had to be surrendered to. Not in the way of a soldier losing a fight, but of a priest going to the mystery, the wholehearted abandon of a lover, the madness and celestial ecstasy of the immolation embrace. The death only persisted because the pa.s.sionate resistance would not let it go. It was possible to end it. It turned her marrow to water, but she knew what had to be done. Taryn had to accept her own death.

"Taryn?" She shook her, gently. Her lover's body was like lead. She didn't respond. Rosalind tried again, gripping her shoulders. "Taryn? Baby, wake up." Her breathing changed, but her eyes remained glued shut.

Rosalind sighed. Taryn was going to be difficult. She climbed the length of her body, easing her leg over Taryn's hip. That drew more of a response from her; Taryn shifted in her sleep. Rosalind fitted herself to her broad back, sliding an arm around her waist. Taryn's hand closed on her arm. Good. Rosalind leaned over Taryn's neck, stopping to nip at the flesh between her shoulder and the hollow of her throat. She trailed her tongue up to her ear, circled it, and moaned. "Oh, Annie-"

Taryn's eyes flew open. "Who the h.e.l.l is Annie?" she demanded, her voice thick with sleep.

Rosalind sat up and smiled beatifically at her groggy lover. "Annie Lennox. I always did have a crush on her. Sorry, must have been fantasizing."

"Rosalind, what are you talking about?"

"Sorry, baby. I had to wake you up, and you weren't responding to anything else."

Taryn sat up, her eyes murderous slits of blue. "I'm up now. What was so G.o.dd.a.m.ned important?"

"I've got it! I think I do, anyway. We have to wake everyone up," Rosalind said, springing off the bed.

Taryn's eyes had gone wide when she saw Rosalind throw on clothing. She sat very still, not comprehending. "Now? It can't be past seven o'clock."

"Right now. Get Rhea and Joe and everyone and have them come down to the kitchen." She held out her hand, and Taryn took it. "I had a dream. I think it might be...I think it is the key to ending the cycle between you and Rhea. Among all of us. I know it's crazy, but what else has sounded sane here? Go wake them up."

Chapter Fifteen.

Rosalind took the center of the kitchen floor like the front of a lecture hall. Every time she'd addressed a group of people, she'd been prepared. She'd had the time to rehea.r.s.e, take notes, rehea.r.s.e again, to know exactly what she was going to say. Some people can speak with no warning on any topic. Ellie was one. Ellie had explained to Rosalind, once, that all you have to do is look like you know what you're talking about. Most people listen with their eyes.

This was different. Rosalind found herself standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, facing an audience whose lives she wanted to change, and she had no idea of what to say. There was no mastery to be had of this topic. It was the realm of dreams, of poets and lovers and madwomen, of stubborn insistence on moving the Wheel of Fate.

Rosalind closed her eyes and thought of a golden snake, coiled about a branch of a dogwood tree. She took a deep breath, then another, and opened her eyes to see the people before her. Joe was the perfect audience, leaning forward on his chair, eyebrows curved in question. Goblin sat with her back against the wall, tipping her chair up on two legs and swinging her ankles. Laurel and Taryn sat at the counter. Taryn was four feet from her right hand, close enough for Rosalind to imagine that she could feel the heat radiating from Taryn. And then there was Rhea.

Rhea sat opposite Joe, and if Taryn hadn't been born with presence, she could have learned it at this woman's feet. Her eyes were hints of lightning in a night sky, old eyes that had seen the cycle of blood come and go. She wore her body like a useful garment, a heavy jacket on a winter night that was about to be put away. Rhea might have been afraid, but she didn't fear her own fear, and so it didn't rule her. She looked at Rosalind with attention, but without interest.

Rosalind spoke. She let the words come in whatever order they chose and didn't try to understand them before she let them go.

"We come into the world knowing ourselves, knowing some that we love, longing to meet others. In growing up and taking on our current life, we choose to forget so that we may be able to bear being alive. So life is a surprise, love is a surprise, and the outcome of things is never certain. When we dream, sometimes we remember-who we've been, who we've chosen to be, and who we've come back to see. When we wake, we forget again.

"Maybe it's a mercy that we do. How else could we stand watching the people we love die? Even if we know we will see them again, we feel the loss every time. No two moments in the river of Time will ever be the same, no moments are wasted, and love is never a mistake. But you forget that you know this and run through life blind and deaf, shivering from the cold.

"Then, one night, you meet someone. It might be in a bar, it might be in the company of friends, it might be that a stranger has the courage to approach you and offer condolences on your loss. But you look up, and you know them. When the voice in your heart gives you that recognition, follow it. Follow it, no matter where it leads you, no matter what form it takes. Sure, it will get complicated.

"Your lives will get tangled up beyond all untying. You will have to be somebody greater than you ever imagined yourself to be, to keep up with a love like that. But follow it anyway, whether it leads to friendship, to family, or to a lover. Believe in it, hold it sacred, honor it, and fight with every ounce of your being to cherish and protect it. What are we here for, if not to love one another and find out who we are?

"We get stuck, sometimes. We give in to anger, or grief, or hate-the fast, hot emotions. Anger can twist your life into a pattern that's hard to break, and hate can bind you. The Greeks called it kyklos geneseon. The Wheel of Becomings. Long, long before then it was called the Wheel of Fate. When the wheel gets stuck, maybe by a moment of great anger, of grief, you stop growing. Say, a young woman who's been betrayed, attacked, and is full of anger. A friend approaches her, gives her comfort, speaks to the one unbruised part of her that's still willing to love, but that friend dies, or gets taken away.

"Then there is only the rage, and she gives in to it. Rage has a sweetness to it, a promise that the pain can be stopped if you get angry enough. But it's a false promise. All anger gives in the end is anger. The only way to stop the pain is to end the cycle.

"Love breaks patterns, tears down form, creates new ways when the old ones no longer serve. Oh, it takes becoming something more than you thought you could be to trust in a kind of madness like love. Love promises only itself, but sometimes that is enough. Perhaps there is only a small thing holding back the wheel. A slender wooden shaft piercing the spokes. An arrow. If the arrow is removed, the wheel can turn again. All that person has to do is believe that she has the skill. Love can be that forgetting and remembering."

Rosalind spoke and forgot she was Rosalind, forgot that her lover was Taryn, that the woman facing her was Rhea. Perhaps it was from her heart or from another place, below her memory.

"The arrow is a death. You cannot remove a death," Rhea said, her voice full of dust.

"No," Rosalind said, knowing that this was the true battle. "You can't. Death is change. In this case the death was taken from its intended target. Deflected, if you will. The Wheel will never turn until that cycle is complete. It will stay in that moment, over and over, life after life."

"Complete the cycle. Will you stand in and take the death for her? Is that your way now?" Rhea asked bitterly.

"No. That will only continue the cycle. Don't you see? You took on the responsibility of the death, but it isn't yours. You have to give it up."

"No," Rhea said instantly.

"Rhea. Hear me out. The prince, the priestess, and the fortune-teller all died a long, long time ago. I'm not advocating offering her up as a sacrifice. I'd take her place first. You must know that by now," Rosalind said, laying her heart open.

Rhea's eyes closed as if she were too weary for the world. "You have no right to ask this of me," Rhea said finally.

"Then let me ask it," Taryn said, stepping forward.

Rosalind held her breath. They had discussed this before they called everyone down to the kitchen, but saying it to Rhea was another matter. Surely the prince had never looked so regal as Taryn did at that moment, opening her hands to the witch. "You've given me everything. You took care of me when n.o.body cared if I lived or died, including me. We need such strength just to get out of bed every day in a world that would be happy to see us gone. You never give in, never let anything beat you down. You take your own s.p.a.ce and love who you want and let the world be d.a.m.ned. No way would I be here without you. Rhea, you're my family and my heart. It's time for me to take this on. Let me take what was meant for me, so you don't have to anymore."

Taryn stood with her hands held out. Rhea reached for them. It took Rosalind a moment to realize that Rhea was crying.

"To finish the cycle she needs to accept the death," Rosalind said. The silence in the kitchen was perfect. Rosalind took a deep breath, sent a quick prayer out to whoever was listening, and jumped.

"Death is an ending. It's also a beginning, the razing of the ground for a new building. I think that's what I saw in my dream. The prince was perfectly calm in the face of the arrow. She understood the mystery. Only when you stop raging against change can it have a chance to bring new things. We need something symbolic for Taryn to accept the death. Sympathetic magic, like the Better You than Me. If Taryn accepts the death, the cycle is complete. You don't have to die. She doesn't have to die. And maybe, for the first time in all our memories, we can be together."

Rhea pushed her chair away from the table with the stride of a woman too dignified to run. She walked to the center of the floor, to Rosalind, and held out both her hands. Rosalind took them. "Yes. Simple and complete. And to think I feared your coming. Thank you," Rhea said, and Rosalind felt her heart expand.

"That...that doesn't make any sense," Goblin said.

"No." Rhea stood up and slipped her arm around Taryn's waist. For a splinter of time she looked up at the handsome girl with adoration. In that moment Rosalind could see how they had been lovers. "It doesn't make sense. It's insane. Crazy. But madness is just the G.o.ds' way of saying, 'Beware, this person has power. She has a bit of the trickster in her.'"

"Can you do this?" Taryn asked Rhea.

"You know enough about magic, and me, to answer that. The symbol can become the thing itself. Rosalind is right about the perfection of the symbols in this incarnation. It makes sense that once we stop resisting, the Wheel will turn on its own. It's like light through a window I'd painted over and forgotten. It took your lover to sc.r.a.pe that surface away. It's crazy, but it's perfect. I never would have seen it."

"I never would have, either. I'd just go on letting you die for me," Taryn said savagely.

Rhea's hand lay against Taryn's cheek, just for a moment. "I've loved you since the moment we met. Before then, if you ever remember. This might mean that I will never again be your protector, your servant, in the anger of your youth. That cycle between us will end."

"But...what about you? Will it make you be okay?"

"I don't know," Rhea said, and smiled. "When the cycle is completed, it will leave room for other things to happen. Healing might be one possibility. Whatever happens next will be a surprise. That itself is a gift. I haven't been surprised in six hundred years."

"Will I still get to know you? Next time, I mean. Will I know you again?" The sadness in Taryn's voice broke Rosalind's heart.

"You've always been a splendid youth. I'd like to see what a remarkable woman you become," Rhea said. Rhea turned to Rosalind. "The day is yours. Lead us where you will."

Rosalind asked for the day to prepare the ceremony. The circle was set for nine. After outlining everyone's part, Rosalind had asked for a moment alone with Taryn, before the ritual began. She took Taryn up to the third floor and sat on the bed, patting the mattress next to her.

Taryn sat, her arms coiled around one raised knee, her eyes clouded with a look Rosalind couldn't decipher.

"You okay?" Rosalind asked gently.

Taryn nodded.

"Are you up for this?" Rosalind put her hand on the small of Taryn's back.

Taryn nodded again.