The sun rode high in the sky and the morning dew had left the grass when Tull returned to his house from Chaa's. After the executions the night before, the mood in town had been quiet, and the Pwi hesitated to disturb any mourners by walking outside their homes.

As a son of Chaa, Tull would be expected to move his belongings into the family house, but he thought he would let that wait for a few days. He would want his valuables kept at Chaa's while he was gone, that was certain. The newness of the situation unsettled him.

So he'd decided to spend the day making a new war spear for the journey. So he took a bone from a dimetrodon's dorsal fin and began sharpening its sides, forming a three-foot-long spearhead. It was the only kind of spearhead one wanted while traveling through territory infested by Mastodon Men and wild mammoths.

Tull felt profoundly aware of the silence in the woods outside of town. When he neared his door, the only sound he could hear was the surf beating against the rocks and sparrows hopping among the laurels by his doorstep.

So when he reached the doorstep, he was surprised to see a figure eight painted with flour upon the grass—a small figure eight, no more than four feet across. Normally when a woman painted the figure eight upon a man's doorstep, she set all her possessions in one half of the circle——her food, her cooking utensils, her weapons—then she stood with them and waited to see if the man would join her. But there was only a handful of wild daisies in the circle, and no woman.

Tull crouched to look at the daisies, wondering what it could mean. Only a poor woman would have left them, a woman who had nothing but herself to give. Even the poorest Pwi would have brought an object that contained kwea, something to which she had a strong emotional attachment. Perhaps this one loved daisies?

A child, he thought after a moment. A little girl has a crush on me? Who could it be?

He'd have to let the girl down gently.

But another thought came. Perhaps it was someone who had nothing at all, not even some poor necklace that held good kwea.

He suddenly thought of the one woman who fit that description. His heart began racing in his chest. He stood up to look for her, entered his home, and found Wisteria sleeping on his mat on the floor.

She woke when the swinging door scraped the dirt floor. Her eyes were red and swollen, as if she'd cried all night, and her hair was sweaty and matted, her blouse and skirt rumpled. She didn't say a word, just rose from the floor and sidled past him, back out the door. She stepped into the sunlight in the circle and stood with her chestnut hair gleaming, daisies at her feet.

He could not believe it. "Are you sure?"

"Sure?" Wisteria said, placing a hand on her forehead as if to test for a fever. "Yes. I'm sure."

Tull studied her.

"I'm tired. I'm hungry. I'm desperate," she continued. "I'm hurting inside, and I'm mad as hell. You know I've always been fond of you—from the time we were children—but I wasn't sure . . . if those feelings would last. Then, this morning it all came clear to me. I'm in love with you. I've been in love with you for years. But I was afraid that my father would disapprove. . . ."

"When he stumbled into me last night," Tull said, "I grabbed him to keep from falling. I didn't even know who'd hit me, and then I realized someone was trying to escape. I threw him back into the crowd and held him at the same time. I didn't know it was him. I swear, if I'd have had time to think, I'd have let him go."

Wisteria began to tremble. Tears misted her eyes. "I know," she whispered.

"We were all crazy last night," Tull said. "We just stood there and watched it happen. I didn't have time to think, to decide if what we were doing was right."

Even now, Tull wasn't sure. Had Beremon gotten what he deserved? Tull hated slavers, hated the pain that they caused. Part of him said, Yes, they deserve it. Yet he could never have killed the man himself.

"I know," Wisteria said again.

"And if you marry me," Tull answered, "You will have to live with that. You'll remember every day of our lives that I betrayed him."

"You didn't," she said, wiping her face. "It was an accident."

"And if you marry me," Tull said, "you will still be alone for a long time. I'm leaving in a week, and I won't be back until midwinter. This will be a lonely time for you. The hardest in your life."

Wisteria sat down on the grass and began coughing up great wracking sobs. After several moments she said, "I don't want to be alone. I don't want to be without you! I can't stay in this town right now anyway. It hurts too much. Everything reminds me of what happened last night. I want to come with you."

Tull studied her. Always before, humans had seemed so . . . emotionally resilient, or perhaps just emotionally sheltered. They were never destroyed by pain half so much as the Pwi. To see Wisteria this way, weeping in the grass, he could almost imagine she was Pwi at heart, that the evil kwea of last night would drive her away from here. And Tull realized something else—he was trying to talk her out of this marriage in spite of the fact that he desired it, in spite of the fact that he wanted it so badly he couldn't bear the thought of losing her.

"You've never loved me," he suddenly said. "Not completely." She didn't love him the way that a Pwi woman would.

She looked up. "I was too young for commitment. When we were younger and I kissed you, I was . . . crazy with want. When Father sent me away, I dreamed about what life would be like with you, about how it would be to make love to you, and twice I tried to run away from Lady Devarre's. But last night, when I ached for someone to comfort me, I realized that I needed you. Without you, I'm . . . only half a person."

Tull wanted her, but this all seemed so sudden. For months now he had been thinking about Fava. She was a simple girl, strong, and the quaint scent of vanilla water in Fava's hair charmed him. But from his youth, Tull had imagined life with Wisteria. The attraction he felt for her was strong. Suddenly Tull understood his fear, his hesitancy to enter the circle. He took a deep breath and almost choked as he offered his last excuse—his only real reason for hesitating, "Wisteria, I'm afraid to marry you. My father——I . . . I don't know how to love. When I was younger, I didn't believe in love. For years I felt dead inside, as if I were the world's lone witness to a great joke—the fact that everyone else believed that such a thing existed when obviously, so obviously, love was a lie. But over the years, I realized that love exists, that everyone else feels it but me. I want to feel it for you. I feel something. I feel drawn to you. But you're as human as my father, and I'm afraid of that."

Tull didn't know if Wisteria could understand. She looked up at him, her eyes wet and bloodshot, though no tears flowed down her cheeks. She sniffled, and said very clearly. "I'm not like him. Jenks is a twisted man, even for a human. But love? Love is easy. I'll show you how to love."

Tull found himself staggering into the circle. All the years of waiting to love seemed to collapse inward; all the walls he'd built against it tumbled down. He wasn't even aware that his feet were moving till he stood in the second circle and took her hands.

She held her palms out and up, in a beggar's gesture, and they clasped one another's wrists. She spoke the words of the wedding ritual, though she had no friend to witness. "I seek shelter from loneliness. I bring all that you see within this circle. But mostly, I bring my heart."

Tull's jaw trembled. "This house, it is empty without you, just as I am empty without you. I offer you shelter, until hand in hand we take our journey to the House of Dust."

He kissed her, a long slow kiss, and carried her into his house.

It did not seem right to make love to her. He knew she had been up all night, knew that she needed consolation. Yet he could not refrain. The desire that was in him pulled him, tore him till he was tossed in the wind like dandelion down in a storm, and she seemed eager to caress him and give herself.

Wisteria's voice was husky as he pulled her to him. "You don't know how often I dreamed of this. I'll teach you how to love," she said, cupping his head in her hands. "I'll show you how."

Among the Pwi, it is said that when two people first make love, that the Goddess Zhofwa bends near the land and blows her kisses upon them, and at that moment, their act becomes holy, Thea, and if the love is pure the Goddess will enter them for a time to join the dance of the lovers' bodies.

Tull held Wisteria, wanted to drink her with his eyes, learn the colors of every mole on her body.

The air suddenly seemed fresh and clean. He felt the Goddess kiss him in the small of the back, and an intense cool thrill of pleasure passed down his back and into his groin. It felt as good as he'd dreamed love could be, and for the first time he knew that he could be touched by love, that he could give.