“There you are absolutely correct. There are multitudes of women in this world who don’t love me. In fact, if we were looking for women who did love me, I think we could quickly narrow it down to two. However, one loves me as a brother and one as a cousin. Neither is very satisfactory to a man.”

“Why not?” She stood just under the shadow of the trees. Her basket rested on one outthrust hip. I could smell the mushrooms, and the soft, heavy petals of a pale water blossom that tasted like sweet pepper. The necklace I had given her glittered around her throat. It was the only thing she wore. Her jutting breasts seemed to offer themselves to me, a warmer sort of fruit. For a moment, I could not think.

“A man wants more than kindly affection from a woman. He wants all of her.”

She puffed her lips at me again. “That is a stupid thing to want. Only a woman can have all of herself. You should be happy with what any woman offers you, rather than to want everything she is. Do you offer all you are to any one woman? I doubt it.”

That stung. “I would if a woman offered all of herself to me. It is hard for me to be with someone who holds herself back from me. My heart doesn’t love that way, Olikea. Maybe among your folk that is how you love. But among my people—”

“Your people and my people are the same people, Nevare. Over and over I tell you this. Cannot you learn it? The People are the only people you have now, Nevare. And we offer you everything. So why do not you love us with this ‘heart’ of yours? Why do not you come to us for every day and every hour, and use the magic of the People as it should be used?”

“To do what?” I asked her. We had moved closer together. The cool mud of the spring’s edge cradled my bare feet. The night did not seem so dark. There was light in the spring water that glinted up at us. The light in Olikea’s eyes was twin to it. I smelled the startling tang of crushed fruit. It was a berry in her hand. She reached up to my unsmiling mouth to push it gently between my lips. Her fingertips lingered a moment on my tongue and then drew back, painting my lips with the stinging sweetness of the fruit. My senses reeled with the flavor, the scent, and her touch.

“This is a new taste for you,” she whispered. “They grow only in our dream country. And only a Great One like you is allowed to eat it. I can taste it only when I taste it on your mouth.” With sticky fingers, she hooked my face, pulled it closer, and lapped her tongue lightly across my lips.

A man can only bear so much. My dreams of true love and the fulfilment of a life shared dissolved beneath a wave of simple lust. I caught her up and pulled her close. She let the basket of food fall. I tasted the skin of her neck, breathed in the scent of her hair.

She laughed softly. “Remember, I do not love you as your sister does, nor as your cousin does. I do not love you as a plain-skin woman would love her man. So this—” and she touched me teasingly “—is not enough for you. Is it? You don’t want this from me, do you?”

“I want it,” I told her fiercely, imprisoning her in my arms. “I want it, but I want more than just this. Can’t you understand that, Olikea? Are our peoples truly so different?”

“Our peoples? I tell you and tell you. You have only one people. There is only one people, the People. They are our people. All others are strangers. All others threaten our ways.”

“I don’t want to talk right now,” I decided. I stooped and picked her up in my arms. She gave a whoop of surprise and flung her arms around my neck. I liked the feeling that I could startle her, that I could move her with my strength. It fueled my lust.

I carried her deeper into the forest. Magic surged in me with the heat of desire. I made a gesture, and moss and fallen leaves gathered themselves into a couch for us. Another motion of my hand, and a tree branch drooped to become a support for a vine that suddenly draped itself into a bower around us. Fragrant flowers opened to perfume the night. I banished the small stinging insects that had come to investigate us, and invited instead the little glowing moths, that I might better see what I touched. I lavished magic with a free hand. It was as simple and natural as the way Olikea opened herself to me, and as mutually pleasing. This night I led and she followed in that most ancient dance. In our previous times together, she had always taken the role of aggressor, and I had been astonished to find how much pleasure I could take in that. This night, I think she was equally surprised to find that a male could command her pleasure so completely. Discovering that I could render her near-mindless with bliss bolstered my sense of myself as nothing else had in the previous year. It spurred me to greater efforts, and when at last she lay beside me, slack in my arms, I felt I had proven something to her, though I could not have said exactly what.