The next day, as the men pushed their wagon ten grueling miles through the forest with the scent of the giant red women all about, Theron Scandal acted as a nursemaid to Tirilee.

The men pushed the wagon, grunting and straining to get it up hills, or over tree branches. They stationed two men behind the wagon to push and two at the front to pull on the axletree, while Wisteria walked ahead to clear a trail.

Every mile they stopped to rest, and Scandal would wipe the sweat from his forehead, get a dipper from the water barrel, and offer a drink to Tirilee before he drank himself. While the others threw themselves on the ground in sheer exhaustion, Scandal stood beside the Dryad, speaking softly.

Wisteria did not have to wonder at his kindness. There's something he wants from her, she knew. But she wasn't sure what it was. Did he hope to keep the girl himself, she wondered, or did he just want to sleep with her in her Time of Devotion?

The Dryad did not utter a word from the wagon, not to thank Scandal, not even to whimper in pain when the wagon bumped over a limb.

So Scandal went back to work without hearing her voice. He put his back into pushing or pulling the wagon and showed that he had muscle hidden beneath his beer belly. Afterward, he cooked dinner while everyone else sprawled on the ground like dead things.

When Wisteria went to feed the Dryad, Scandal insisted on doing it himself. In his spare time, he went to hunt in the forest for healing herbs. He was doing double duty, taking an unfair burden on himself, and Wisteria told him so.

"It's nothing," Scandal said. "It's my obligation as a gourmet."

"I don't understand," Wisteria said.

"Simple," Scandal said. "Back in the days of the Starfarers, when men lived a thousand years, gourmets were something! A man started as an apprentice, and for the first hundred years he learned only tactile cookery—the art of pleasing the palate, the nose, the hands. The Starfarers knew that everyone tastes things differently, so gourmets devised tests to see how different palates responded to a meal, and then cooked each dish to please the individual customer. Why, at a banquet, everyone would eat the same thing, yet each plate would be subtly different, to match the tastes of the customer. And they didn't care about just taste, either. Texture—both in the mouth as you chew and on the fingers as you picked it up——color, everything was geared for that one person. Back then, you couldn't be a gourmet until you had been at the job for a hundred years and passed your boards. Then, you graduated to whole new levels of cookery: nutritional, where you fine-tuned your diets to meet customers' nutrient requirements; medicinal . . ."

"Holistic cookery," Phylomon put in.

"That's right, a holistic chef," Scandal said. "I try my hand at everything: tactile, nutritional, medicinal. If ever the red drones are destroyed and we get back to space, that's what I want to be, a holistic chef. Learn their secrets."

Everyone has their dreams, Wisteria thought. For some reason, that day she felt a keen sense of loss. She's lost her home, her family. Her people had lost the stars.

During that day, the scent of cheese had always been with them. Wisteria saw the Dryads twice—slender women for all their height, with nipples dark as chocolate. Wisteria looked over at Tirilee, so thin and childish and innocent.

Scandal fed the girl, who, though still bruised and beaten, recovered some strength. He spoke soothingly as he spooned a hearty stew down her throat, and Wisteria listened to Scandal's words. He did not seem to care if everyone in camp heard him.

"How old are you," Scandal asked the child, "thirteen, fourteen?

"You must be close to reaching your Time of Devotion, right? I understand that—devotion. I've spent a lifetime devoted to preparing meals for others, grinding my own grains to make my breads, collecting and drying my own herbs, distilling the flavors from mint and anise and vanilla beans. Do you understand me? Can you speak English?"

Tirilee did not say anything, just watched him with dark green eyes.

Scandal warmed some water, dipped a rag in, came back and washed some dust from her face. He held the rag to a purpled bruise under her chin for a moment and said, "You are a Dryad of the aspens, right? We have something in common." He sang a child's rhyme, in a husky voice;

"I've ever loved the aspens,

"Most beautiful of trees.

"Their bark is pale as buttermilk.

"Silver dancers are their leaves."

Scandal let go of the rag, stroked Tirilee's pale arm as he began to speak, almost chanting. "When I was young, I lived in the lovely mountains and climbed among the deep folds of their skin, searching for white forests of aspen, flowing among the trees, searching for deep, dew-wet grottoes where I could lie myself down."

It was a form of Omali verse, a kind of poetry left over from days when everyone had dictionaries genetically implanted in their heads, where the poet composed the poem as he went and spoke in metaphors. Sailors still chanted Omali verses in the bars, on occasion, and it was considered something of an art.

The Dryad frowned at Scandal and pulled her arm away, but Scandal fondled her silver hair—"The rich humus of the forest, the wildflowers, smelled as earthy and pleasurable as a woman in love. And I'd stand on those mountains, gazing at meandering rivers and the green valleys below, dizzy with lust for living, and imagine I stood upon the breast of the world. Often in those moments, the joy of living, the ecstasy of drawing breath among those clean forests, melted the marrow of my bones, emptied me of my darkest cravings, left me shuddering—"

The Dryad pushed Scandal's hand away; he took a deep breath and intently gazed into her emerald eyes. "At times I'd sleep among the mountains in the daylight, lying in the grass, listening to the steady throb of my own heart. At dusk I'd spread my tent over the ground, erect my pole—"

Tirilee slapped his face. "I think you should take your erect pole into the bushes and tell it about your dark cravings." Her voice was as musical as the notes of a flute.

"So, you do speak English!" Scandal crowed. "And all this long day you have played dumb and never answered me a word. Ayaah, you're cruel and hard!"

"Not nearly as hard as you!" Tirilee snapped back.

"If I am hard," Scandal said, "then you have made me hard!"

"Not me," Tirilee answered. "Perhaps it is because you play with your pisser like a toy."

"Why, your breasts have not yet budded, yet you talk like a common street whore!" Scandal smiled with delight.

"Of course," Tirilee said. "I learned half my words listening to your whores call to the sailors." Even to Wisteria it was clear that the girl lied. She spoke English too well to have learned it in only a couple of months.

"Ah, that would be Candy and Dandy," Scandal said. "Those aren't whores! Those are . . . goddesses!"

"If they are goddesses," Tirilee said. "I know what you worship."

Scandal chuckled. "In another month, when we hit the mountains and see those aspen trees shining white on the hills, every fiber of your being will flame with desire for a thick one under the starlight! By God, I'll make you pay to ride my unicorn then. You'll be my goddess, and I'll worship beneath you on a blanket of aspen leaves."

"And if you're the only excuse for a man who comes around, you keg of lard, I'll make do with a chipmunk!"

"Oh, I'll come around," Scandal said. "I'll come for you."

The girl's face turned dark with rage. "When my Time of Devotion comes, I'll call for you. And when you are groaning with ecstasy from a single kiss and you are helpless as a sparrow's egg in my hand, I'll use my knife to relieve you of the burden of manhood." The child's voice held such fierceness that Wisteria could not discount the threat. She wondered if Tirilee could be a potential ally—someone who hated men as much as Wisteria hated the men of Smilodon Bay for what they'd done to her father.

Would she help me foil the quest? she wondered.

"Why are you so mad?" Scandal demanded. "Certainly men have spoken to you of desire before?"

"Oh, yes, your precious Garamon—he never fed me without talking of it. And he planned to sell me after my Time of Devotion, claiming I was a virgin. Yet he was more honest than you, he did not speak in the language of love!"