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  I was quite taken with the contrast between this strange story and the other, which I found a month or so later, the latter a woman’s view of what were obviously the same events. Mistress Danae could not tell me if these were true history or teaching stories, but as she said, did it matter? She also told me that I should have a theology Mistress, but that was never in the Factor’s plans, and so she gave me more books to read that discussed the strengths and failings of the gods.

  For my part, I learned something from both these tales.

  The Mothers ’ Tale

  Once when the world was new, Mother Mooneyes ruled the skies as first among the titanics. Father Sunbones had not yet woken to his place at her right hand as consort, but rather slept endlessly on a bed of burning sand beneath her ivory-walled halls. Mother Mooneyes sometimes went to him when she rested from her labors in the heavens. Even in his sleep, she could draw forth Father Sunbones’ seed to make her children. Mother Mooneyes’ favored daughter was Desire. Desire was possessed of a beauty which challenged even that of her mother. Desire’s hair was the gold of summer wheat and the brown of autumn leaves and the black of winter ice and the palest rose blush of spring all at once. Her skin shone with the luster of starlight and the richness of cream. Her lips were more sweet than honey with the heady fullness of wine. Every portion of Desire mirrored the perfection of the morning of the world. Now it happened that Mother Mooneyes kept a garden in the lands around her ivory halls. This garden held all the promise of the world to come, ripening on vine and root and tree. To the east, cattle lowed and snuffled within their cradles of soil. Other beasts of the field were clustered around them, each with its own stalk and stem. To the north were the cold creatures and those on the wing, which partake of the world without fur or fang or thinking. To the south were the hot animals, those that would hunt and feast on the flesh of others once they stalked beneath the bright regard of Father Sunbones. Mother Mooneyes knew that to harvest the garden, she would have to wake her consort. Like all men, Father Sunbones would take counsel from his loins as much as from his thoughts. She held that dread day in abeyance as long as possible. In the west of the garden was the plot where the souled ones grew. Each lay at sleeping ease upon a bed of soft leaves. Each was watered and cleaned by a sweet spring. These were Mother Mooneyes’ special care, that the world would be populous and happy. There were men there in all their colors and shapes-aelfkin and dwerrowkin; nixie, pixie, and sprite; giant and troll-all the manifold imaginings of Mother Mooneyes’ busy hands in the long shadows of the morning of the world. Just as men had their sibs, so did Mother Mooneyes’ children. Desire sported with Love and Understanding, the twins Truth and Mercy, Justice, Obedience, and all her sisters. Outside their windows along the lawns of the ivory halls, their brothers wrestled and fought and hunted each other with arrows tipped with sky-iron. Watching the boys at their play, Desire had formed a lust for her brother Time. He was a likely lad, robust with all the years of the world on his broad shoulders. One day when Mother Mooneyes was about her travels in the heavens, Desire invited Time into her chambers. “Brother, come, I have a game to show you,” she said as they met upon the western steps. Desire licked her lips so that Time might not mistake her intent. “Is it a manly game?” he asked, for while men are ruled by their loins, those loins have two small brains each no larger than an olive and thus do not think well. Desire touched her breast and smiled. “The manliest of all.” Surely he could not misunderstand. “Then I shall invite my brothers!” Time declared. He turned to spread the word. Desire grasped his arm and pulled him close, as she set her other hand upon his sex. “A private game of man and woman,” she whispered in his ear. At last Time came to understand what she wanted of him. He followed Desire to her chambers, but was so eager in his lust that he pushed aside both her shift and her needs with a sweep of his hand and spent himself in moments of careless thrusting. She cast him from her chamber with hard words, chasing her brother out to the western steps. There he fled laughing. Desire’s breasts were heavy with need, and her loins were hot with the quick touch of her brother Time. She took herself into the west of the garden, where the souled ones were couched in their rest, and there she lay with them one by one, male and female alike, to slake her appetites. Each smiled in their sleep as she quickened their sex. Each murmured their thanks and slipped into the pleasant dreams of lust to which we all are heir. Finally Desire returned to the ivory halls. Though filled with seed and the scent of all the souled ones of the garden, her loins still quivered. She went beneath the earth to her father’s bed of burning sand and there took the guise of her mother. Desire rode him harder than any mortal man could bear, making her use of his godly strength, so that Father Sunbones woke fully in the midst of their coupling. Thinking he saw his wife, Father Sunbones drew Desire closer and made her body his toy in all the ways that a woman can be used. Mother Mooneyes came home to find much moaning in the west end of the garden, and giggling among her sons. She stalked quickly into her house, where Father Sunbones’ radiance already painted the walls with dawn’s orange glow. She found Desire coupled with Father Sunbones and in her wrath banished her daughter to her chambers for a year and day. Then Mother Mooneyes lay with Father Sunbones herself, to see if she could coax him back to sleep. It was too late. Desire had woken the world. Men stirred in their lust, and Father Sunbones rose from his bed aflame with heat and leapt to the skies. Much that is ill in this world comes from those early awakenings, but perhaps the good also. Desire’s daughters were born to her in her chambers, some for each of the races of the souled ones. She taught them all she knew-the lists of who had grown in the garden, the names and powers of her brothers and sisters, the constancy of Mother Mooneyes in her unvarying cycles-and sent them into the world to watch over the women of the souled races, whom she had mistakenly betrayed in the innocence of her lust. Ever after, the goddesses of women made it their business to shelter females from the predations of men and turn male urges to their advantage. The marriage bond, when wrought well, can bind a man to a woman’s bed. A coin spent for an hour’s fancy can at the least sap his anger away. The choice to lie only in the company of other women is another comfort and safety. Always these goddesses watch over their shoulders, for there is ever an angry man or his god at the window. And so the temples of women have thick walls and heavy doors.

  Books and cooking carried me through the winter, but the following spring, the Dancing Mistress found a much better way to occupy my time. Our nighttime runs around the courtyard had long since grown sure-footed and stretched sometimes into hours. She also had me climbing the pomegranate tree for time, to see how fast I could go and how much I could better my previous records. We danced along a low wooden bar she had brought into the practice room, along lines of cobbles in the courtyard, up and down the stairs until Mistress Tirelle shouted for us to stop ruining her house.

  All of that was great fun, and took energy from me almost as fast as it gave back more. But one night she came with a leather satchel over her shoulder.

  “Here,” she said as we stood behind the tree, away from the sight of the Pomegranate Court itself.

  I opened the satchel. Inside were several bundles of dark cloth.

  “Climb the tree and place these within the branches. Hide them so no one looking from the ground or the balcony will easily spy them.”

  “From Mistress Tirelle?” I hid nothing, not even my bowel movements, from the duck woman. Only my thoughts were my own. Sometimes I doubted even that.

  “Hide them from no one at all,” said the Dancing Mistress. “No one and everyone.”

  I climbed. I hid them, for by now I knew this tree as well as I knew my own bedclothes. I paused and thought, then climbed down. “Whatever it is you intend, it cannot be for the evening when Mistress Tirelle looks out and awaits my return.”

  “No.” Her teeth gleamed with a small smile.

  “When, then?”

  “You will know.”

  Then we r
an awhile, with me tumbling through a roll just after I took every corner of the courtyard.

  We ran every night that week, pushing me hard until my feet faltered and my breath burned. I fell into bed every evening wondering how I would know when to meet the Dancing Mistress and her mysterious dark cloths. I was smart enough not to fetch her bundles down during the day, when climbing the tree would earn me a beating. Our evening work outside was watched often enough that I did not even try to bring up the sense of the thing then.

  When the riddle answered itself, I wondered at how slow I had been. As I was brewing a blackbark tea for Mistress Tirelle, I realized that I knew when to meet the Dancing Mistress. I crumbled some of the passionflower leaves into the infusion, to encourage the duck woman to sleep more heavily-we had once more been discussing the difference between savor, flavor, medicine, and poison. Then I drank a great quantity of spring water, so that the needs of my bladder would force me awake an hour or two after we retired.

  That evening I received neither a beating nor a lecture. I lay in my bed until I could hear Mistress Tirelle’s snoring-her breathing was loudest when she slept soundly. Too much danced in my head for sleep, and as planned, my need for the chamber pot caught up with me before my elusive dreams ever did.

  Getting up, I did what was needed. I then slipped out onto the balcony and padded very quietly past Mistress Tirelle’s door. She had set a line of bells at the head of the stairs, but I slipped over the rail and slid down the outside with my palms upon the banister.

  Once on the porch below, I walked to the pomegranate tree and climbed. The bundles were where I had left them, of course. No one here besides me possessed the will or the means to climb the tree except for the Dancing Mistress herself. I gathered the cloth and slid back down to stand on the side of the trunk away from the Pomegranate Court.

  Unfolding the bundles, I found leggings, a jacket, and a small bag that after a brief time I realized was a hood. They were cotton dyed black.

  I pulled on the leggings, tucked my tunic in, and tugged the jacket on. The hood felt odd, but I pulled it over my head. I half expected the Dancing Mistress to step out of the shadows, but she did not. I waited a moment, feeling foolish, then began to run the circuit of the courtyard. Silence was my goal, and I moved quietly as I could. At each cornering, I took my tumble. I ran and ran under the starlight, for the moon was a dark coin already spent, though my legs and back ached.

  When I rolled out of the tumble at the third corner, between the gate and the tackle box, the Dancing Mistress fell into step next to me. Her fur was dark in the starlight, and her face was deadly serious.

  “Mistress,” I said, speaking within my breaths. “You were right. I knew when to meet you.”

  The Dancing Mistress nodded. “Let me show you something new.”

  I followed her as she climbed the post at the west end of the porch. We gained the copper roof, then swarmed the bluestone wall beyond to the wide, flat rampart I’d seen from the top of the pomegranate tree.

  The street was open below us. Very quiet even during the daylight, at this time of night, it was empty. A row of buildings stared back at me, windows like vacant eyes beneath the irregular peaks of their roofs, though a few glowed with the light of reason within. The great structures of the city lifted beyond, some gleaming copper, some dull tiles, some with turrets and other features I could not name, for I had not yet had a Mistress who would discuss with me architecture and the life of cities.

  The path to freedom lay before me.

  “May I go now?” I asked.

  “You are too young,” she said quietly. “Though your mind is sharp as any I’ve ever seen, and your beauty unmarred, you cannot make your way alone. Bide here, learn at our expense, but know that someday you will have a road if you need it. There may be different choices you will come to make.”