they preferred vegetables-grass, roots, the lower branches of trees, preferably vegetables stolen from the Centaur gardens-but that they ate almost anything, including leather sandals. Well, she thought, with that wry, self- depreciating humor which sometimes salted her dreams. Half of them will go hungry. There isn’t enough of me for thirteen portions.
But they did not have her in mind for dinner. Not yet, at least. Having little to occupy them and being children or at least childish, they were curious creatures, and a Dryad in their lodge was an object of intense curiosity. They ogled her and poked her-she slapped their hands. They pinched her and prodded her-she kicked one of them in the shin and sent him limping across the room.
“Let’s dunk her in the lake.”
“Let’s yank out that pretty hair by the roots.”
“Let’s cut her up and see how she tastes.” (Now it was coming.)
The imagination of children is unlimited. She shuddered; the taste of fear was nightshade in her mouth. But her dignity did not forsake her. She drew herself to her full height of five feet so that she might tower above them in what she hoped was an awesome manner; she smoothed the linen gown which they had rumpled; she wriggled her foot and straightened her sandal.
“You are horrid children, all of you,” she said. “And if you don’t let me go, Eunostos and the Centaurs will drag this pitiful lodge right under the water. They can swim, you know, even if you can’t.”
“And drag you under with it? Besides, they don’t even know you’re here,” said Phlebas.
The group reacted as if he had told a hilarious joke: the Boys stamped their hooves and the Girls clapped their paws. “They don’t even know you’re here!”
With that, they snatched the gown from her back so unexpectedly that she understood their success as thieves. And they vied with each other insulting the modest dimensions of her breasts. (Zoe should be in my place, she thought.)
Shivering in that ill-lit, ill-heated place, for there was no window to let in the sun-merely the fitful flickering of a fire on the clay floor and some beeswax candle stubs-she almost lost her courage. She sat on the floor by the fire and the thought of Eunostos (he would track her abductors) prevented her from breaking into tears or huddling like a frostnipped swallow to warm herself and hide her breasts.
A Paniscus kid, whose mother, she supposed, had forgotten him in the midst of merriment, crawled into Kora’s lap. She started to remove him and his stench of onion grass and sour milk. But he smiled up at her with a winsome innocence, his little horns peeping through his hair like toadstools. She took heart at the sight of this brave, pathetic child, whose mother appeared so indifferent to him.
What a dear little kid, she thought, to live in such surroundings. He raised his hand to the Centaur pendant which her captors had neglected to remove along with her gown.
“Do you think it’s pretty?” she cooed. “You may play with it if you like.”
Hardly had she finished her invitation than he bit her finger, snatched the pendant from its chain, and, scuttled to his mother with the booty.
“That’s a good child,” cooed the mother, in imitation of Kora.
Now Kora did begin to cry, though the wound to her pride was far greater than the pain from the bite. Green blood oozed from her bitten finger.
“What are you, some kind of vegetable?” Phlebas asked. “Look at that, boys, we have a lettuce among us.”
“Did you think that everybody’s blood was red?” she snapped. She was so angry now that she forgot to cry. “We live in trees and eat acorns. Why shouldn’t our blood be green?”
“Suit yourself,” said Phlebas. “But we’ll stick to red. Won’t we, boys?”
The Boys assented with a simultaneous bleat. The Girls, who had not been asked and whose blood was closer to brown than to red, remained silent.
Fortunately for Kora, the Panisci were soon distracted and they quite forgot the novelty of green blood and indeed of Kora. They returned to their usual pursuits-that is, horseplay and idleness. One of the Girls had donned Kora’s robe and, while it was so large for her that it dragged the ground, at least it concealed her hairy flanks. She began to dance and stumble about the room, improvising a song-to Kora it was more like a howl-while Panisci stamped on the earth and set up a savage drumbeat, and Phlebas took a tortoiseshell lyre from a wall peg and accompanied the song with a monotonous plucking which sounded like nothing so much as a series of bat squeaks. But the sound suited the words: “Bats and rats and spiders too, Out of the earth we conjure you: Wax the wings of the honey bee, Drag the Dryad down from her tree!”
The weed-drugged Girl in the corner had roused herself sufficiently to struggle to her feet, and she was standing in one spot and swaying to the music as if it had merged with her vision. But not everyone was singing and dancing. There was never unanimity among the Panisci and their women, whatever their pursuits. Some had started to eat, with much smacking of lips and sucking of fingers, and a total disregard for the musicians. They seemed to make no distinction between a raw, unwashed root and a chunk of rancid fish, a grub or a toadstool. One of them tossed a tidbit to Kora, which she caught, examined, and discarded in disgust. A large white slug, lethargic but still alive.
“Why waste food on her?” pouted the mother of the thieving child. Phlebas cuffed her across the mouth. “Where’s your mind, up in the trees? You know we can’t afford to lose her. Remember the bargain.” Two Panisci held her arms while a third, retrieving the slug, forced it into her mouth.
“Eunostos will find me,” she gagged as the tail of the creature slithered down her throat.
“He’s too big for the tunnel. He might wriggle in like a snake, but we would brain him before he got very far. As for the Centaurs, they couldn’t get low enough to wriggle. And if they try to swim, we’ll stand on the roof and hit them in the water with our slingshots.”
“What do you mean to do with me?” Kora, at the very mention of Eunostos’s name, had recovered her outward poise if not her inward composure, and she asked the question with quiet defiance.
“What do you think?” he leered, the dirty-minded little boy. The leer vanished when the Girl he had cuffed, apparently his woman, stamped on his hoof.
“Wait and see,” he sulked to Kora.
She did not have long to wait.
The singing died to a hum, lips ceased to smack, a bone clattered to the floor. The rancid air smelled now of honey and pollen. Someone was approaching the lodge through the tunnel.
A queen of the Thriae stepped into the room and brushed the dirt from her gossamer wings. With a curt dip of a wing, she acknowledged and dismissed the entire gathering of Boys and Girls and walked immediately to Kora.
“My dear,” she asked, drawing the girl to her feet, “what have they done to you? They’ve stolen your gown and they are smudges of dirt all over your face! Never mind, you’re safe with me. My name is Saffron and we’re going home.”
“But how did you find me?” Kora sobbed. It was the same queen she had spied above Eunostos’s trunk.
“When one has wings, one sees everything.”
No one tried to stop her as she recovered her stolen robe and hastily slipped it over her shoulders, as she followed Saffron out of the ill-smelling chamber, and as she stepped into the welcome light of the declining sun. Behind her, most of the sounds did not resume. Someone sang a line of that revolting song, “Wax the wings of a honey bee,” but the singer was interrupted by what sounded like a slap across the mouth, and Kora hoped that Saffron had not understood the words. It was clear that most of those disreputable children, though they had flouted all the other decencies, were awed by authentic royalty.
In the light and air, she swayed like a wind-shaken sapling; she thought at first that she was going to fall. But Saffron steadied her with a small jeweled hand.
“Just a little longer, my dear, and you shall rest and bathe and eat and be your beautiful self again.” Saffron took her arm and guided her across the field.
“But my tree lies the other way.”
“You’re to be my guest.”
“I’m deeply grateful to you, but right now I ought to go home. My mother will be sick with worry, and so will Eunostos.”
“I shall send them word of your safety. Eunostos will no doubt come to fetch you.” At the edge of the woods
