"I don't want to look at you," I murmured back, returning his kisses and giving a few of my own. "What I want to do is kiss you, and have you kiss me, and- Oh, Rik! Stop worrying and just do it!"

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He looked down at me with those glowing, bronze eyes, shook his head slightly as he smiled, then went ahead and did it.

I have no idea how much time pa.s.sed, but afterward I lay comfortably in his arms, satisfied, contented, fulfilled, happy-every positive word there is. Rik had made love to me, beautiful love, giving me something I hadn't known it was possible to have. He'd been nothing but gentle-and yet he hadn't been gentle at all-or maybe gentle when he had to be, and not when it wasn't called for. I shook my head against his chest over the confusion I felt-and over me confusion that had magically, literally magically, melted away.

"Arc you regretting it already?" he asked, one hand to my hair to show he meant the headshake. "Was that a 'no, I'm sorry I did it', or a *no, I'm not sorry I did it'?"

"Definitely a 'no, I'm not sorry I did it'," I told him with an inner smile, but the smile faded rather quickly.

"You asked me earlier if I was hungry; does that mean there's food around here somewhere?"

"Nothing but more rabbit, but it should keep us from starving," he answered, patting my back to ask me to sit up- "Hold on a minute, and I'll get it."

He stood up and headed for me other side of the loft, and I located his leather shirt and put it on. My bead necklace was gone in me straw somewhere, and I really didn't expect to miss it. While I waited I began pulling the straw out of my hair, knowing I was going to have to give him an explanation, but having no idea where to start. If I waited until we'd eaten something it would give me a chance to pull my thoughts together, to figure out what to say. After we ate, it would be a good deal easier.

After we ate it was not easier. He had come back with a leather package of rabbit and a large jar of water, the containers most likely the result of pilfering in the city, and had grinned to see what I looked like in his shirt. The thing was about five sizes too large for me, and I'd had to roil the sleeves up to find my hands. We shared the rabbit and then the water, and then I had no further excuses to keep quiet.

THE PAR SIDE OF FOREVER 26l

"Are you sure you don't mind my wearing this shirt?" I asked as a compromise beginning, the subject having noth- ing to do with what I really wanted to say. "If you're cold I'll be glad to . . ."

"No, no, I'm not cold at all," he denied immediately, those eyes on me in a way mat said he was telling the truth. "Unless you're offering to share it, just forget about it. "I didn't want to mention this sooner, but I can see something's bothering you. Would you like to tell me what it is?"

"Not really, but I suppose I have no choice," I mut- tered, then sat straighter in the straw to look directly at him. "It seems I owe you another apology, one I didn't know I owed you. I've been blaming you for something you had nothing to do with, but 1 didn't know that-and didn't even realize I was blaming you."

"Now I understand completely," he said with a judicious nod, leaning down to his left elbow on the other side of the leather we'd used as a table. "I didn't do it, but you were blaming me anyway, and now you're not blaming me any more. Are you sure 1 didn't do it?"

"Positive," I answered, not quite up to responding to his teasing. "I would have hnown it sooner if I hadn't been under a spell, but Morgiana was trying to protect me, to let me live as normal a life as possible. It wasn't entirely normal, but I didn't know that until we began this quest. The spell was also the reason I could never remem- ber that nightmare."

I looked down at my hands, not nearly as together as I was trying to sound, but also not as shattered as I might once have been. I had me memory now and it was an appalling one, but it was also softened by the pa.s.sage of years and considerably more bearable for not having been dwelt on. And for being seen in the light of normality.

That had been the key, of course, and if it hadn't been for Rik ... I couldn't bring myself to look up at him again, but his patient silence encouraged me to begin the story.

"I grew up living on the streets, with a pack of other kids, and even after I'd begun to trust Morgiana, I still couldn't talk to her about what a lot of it had been like.

Most people consider the city Guard their protectors, for

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instance, but we were some of the ones they were protect- ing people from. Usually if they caught you, you just got a beating with their belts, but if you were a boy and old enough, the army garrison was usually in need of recruits, or maybe the merchant fleet. If you were a girl and old enough, there were certain-houses-that paid for their own kind of recruits. Because of that there weren't many packs with older kids in mem, but there were still a few. . . .

"Morgiana made it a policy never to pry, but after the second or third time I'd had the nightmare she put me under a compulsion and made me tell her about it. It had happened not long before she'd found me, and 1 hadn't been able to just bury it along with all the other ugly, dirty things that had happened to me. We-we had found a warehouse with a back door whose lock was broken, and I had decided mat we had to risk sleeping there. The fact that it wasn't abandoned made it dangerous, but I was sure it would snow that night and some of my pack weren't strong enough to survive sleeping in an alleyway in a snowstorm. Once it was dark we slipped inside, then found a place behind some sacks where we wouldn't be easily seen.

"We woke up suddenly in the small hours of the morn- ing, knowing we weren't alone, but also knowing the newcomers were intruders rather than legitimate visitors.

There was a lot of moving around but no conversation, and only one torch had been lit. We hid behind our sacks and tried not to make any noise of our own, understanding at last why me lock on the back door had been broken, but we'd chosen the wrong hiding place. The intruders weren't taking everything they could on a random basis, they had certain specific items they wanted, and when they began moving the sacks, they found us.

"I suppose you could say that we all knew each other and be right, but until then our paths had crossed only at a distance, never close up. They were a pack of older boys who had managed to avoid the Guard long enough to establish certain 'connections' in the city, and that night they were acting for their major connection. They knew we wouldn't-and couldn't-go to the Guard about what

r'

i?

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we'd seen, that we were no threat to them at all as long as we got out of there fast and melted back into the gutters, so they decided to-show us how low down on the ladder we were, and how untouchably important they had be- come. Pack status was an important part of life to those of us who lived it, and until then the status of my pack had been fairly high."

When I paused in the narration 1 became aware of the fact that Rik had moved closer to me, but he still wasn't saying anything and he wasn't touching me. My gaze had shifted to the brown cloth panel I still wore, and I had no interest in moving it elsewhere.

"When I realized they were going to do something to us," I continued, "I stood up and told the leader of the other pack that I was willing to face him with challenge sticks. He was a lot bigger than anyone I had faced until then, but that didn't frighten me. I was big, and strong, and no one had ever been able to best me in a challenge.

which was why the status of our pack was so high. Their leader laughed at me, a deliberate insult, and then he came closer and grabbed me. I fought him with all my strength, strength that had, until mat minute, been totally adequate, but it proved to be completely impossible to make him let me go. He let me struggle and fight against him until 1 knew without doubt who was stronger, and then he threw me down to the dirty wooden floor and-hurt me."

I had to stop again at that point, feeling the terror and shame all over again, but I also discovered there was now a lot more anger in me than there had been. I wasn't fright- ened I was furious, and if I ever faced that animal again, my challenge to him would not involve sticks.

"I wasn't me only one of the pack they hurt that way, and what was worse, most of my pack were boys," 1 went on with a sigh. "When they were through with us they threw us out into the quietly falling snow, then went on about their business. I think every one of us must have been in shock, and when morning came I discovered that half the pack had disappeared, and none of them ever came back. Over the next few days the rest of us drifted apart, trying to forget what had happened by surrounding ourselves with people who didn't know, I suppose, or

264.

trying to find places that wouldn't scream at us silently in the night. ... I knew I should try to find the one who did that to us and challenge him in public where he couldn't refuse, but the days went by and I couldn't quite force myself to do it, and then Morgiana found me, and that's all there was to it. I was out of it, but I still wasn't able to forget."

"I-don't think 1 understand where I come into all that," Rik said, his voice decidedly odd. When I looked up at him I saw a look in his eyes I'd never seen before, a rage that would have seemed more at home in the eyes of his link-shape. "I grew up with my family in a close, pleasant community, where nothing even remotely like- that-ever happened. If it had, we probably would have torn the sc.u.m apart."

'The leader of that older pack was a lot bigger than me," I said with another sigh, wondering how you ex- plained something like that diplomatically. "He was also dark-haired, and had brown eyes that were rather strange.

There was a lot of red in me brown, like nothing any of us had ever seen before, almost as though they were-"

"Bronze," he finished when I didn't, finally under- standing all of it. "Every time you looked at me, all you could think of was-him."

"And I didn't even know I was doing it," I agreed, wishing his anger would come back to replace the hurt look now visible in his stare. "Morgiana put a spell on me, making me forget that night and everything that went with it. That's why people would say things to me that pa.s.sed right over my head, and why I was so convinced I was as strong or stronger than anyone around me, even men. If I'd started thinking about things or doubting them, I might have been able to break me spell and get to the truth-before I was meant to. Morgiana wanted me to know normal love before 1 remembered about hate and hurt, and once I did, the spell dissolved itself."

"I have to admit I was wondering," he said, carefully putting his hand out to touch mine. "You're certainly old enough to have had experience, but everything you said or did since the quest began pointed toward your being inno- cent. Not to mention the fact that your response to me

indicated the same. I was surprised when reality didn't match."

"But of course I'm not innocent," 1 said with a small laugh, taking his hand hard to show that I saw nothing wrong in touching him. "You have no idea how tired I am of hearing people say 1 am. What was it you were wonder- ing and surprised about?"

He looked at me sharply for a moment, just as though he thought I was joking about something, and then he seemed to be working very hard not to laugh.

"Let's discuss that some other time," he said, putting his arm around me to draw me closer. "Right now I'd like to spend some time being glad the mix-up is straightened out- We have a lot of hours to wait before it gets dark."

He bent his head to kiss me, and I found I'd been right in believing his kiss would be brand new every time- I started to enjoy it the way I had the first time-and then discovered that something was bothering me.

"If you get bored and distracted that easily, I think I'm in trouble," Rik said suddenly, the kiss having ended without my noticing it. "I've never seen anyone walk away like that without moving her body."

"Something about what happened is bothering me," I said with a small flush of embarra.s.sment for the way he was looking at me, making my usual mess when I tried explaining about something I'd done. "Something is wrong, and 1 can't figure out what it is."

"Of course you're bothered by what happened," he said, immediately concerned, his arm tightening around me. "How could you not be bothered? And there's noth- ing wrong any more, so you don't have to . . ."