Impulsively he knelt up and gathered her into his arms and held her close, the way he might hold a weeping child. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

"Don't be sorry, please," she said. But her voice was high, the voice of a child who is trying not to be caught crying, and he could feel her tears soaking into his shirt, and her body trembling with silent weeping.

"I'm sorry that it's only me you get as a husband," he said.

"And I'm sorry that it's only me you get as a wife," she said. "Not the waterseer, not the glorious being you imagined that you saw. Only me."

Finally he understood what she had been asking for all along, and couldn't help but laugh, because without knowing it he had just now given it to her. "Did you think that I said those things to the waterseer?" he asked. "No, you poor thing, I said those things to you, to Luet, to the girl I met in my mother's school, to the girl who sassed me and anybody else when she felt like it, to the girl I'm holding in my arms right now."

She laughed then-or sobbed harder, he wasn't sure. But he knew that whatever she was doing now, it was better. That was all she had needed-was for him to tell her that he didn't expect her to be the waterseer all the time, that he was marrying the fragile, imperfect human being, and not the overpowering image that she inadvertently wore.

He moved his hands across her back, to comfort her; but he also felt the curve of her body, the geometry of ribs and spine, the texture and softness of skin stretched taut over muscles. His hands explored, memorizing her, discovering for the first time how a woman's back felt to a man's hands. She was real and not a dream.

"The Oversoul didn't give you to me," he said softly. "You are giving yourself to me."

"Yes," she said. "That's right."

"And I give myself to you," he said. "Even though I, too, belong to the Oversoul."

He drew back a little, enough to cup the back of her head in his right hand as she looked up at him, enough to touch her cheek with the fingers of his left.

Then, suddenly, as if they both had the same thought at the same moment-which, quite certainly, they did- they looked away from each other, and toward the spot where Hushidh had been sitting through this whole conversation.

But Hushidh wasn't there. They turned back to each other then, and Luet, dismayed, said, "I shouldn't have made her come with me to-"

She never finished the sentence, because at that moment Nafai began to learn how to kiss a woman, and she, though she had never kissed a man before, became his tutor.

SIX - WEDDINGS

THE DREAM OF THE RAVELER

Hushidh saw nothing joyful about the wedding. Not that anything went wrong. Aunt Rasa had a way with rituals. Her ceremony was simple and sweet, without a hint of the false portentousness that so many other women resorted to in their desperate desire to seem holy or important. Aunt Rasa had never needed to pretend. And yet she still took great care that when the public passages of life-weddings, comings-of-age, graduations, embarkations, divinations, deathwatches, burials-were under her care, they took place with an easy grace, a gentleness that kept people's minds focused on the occasion, and not on the machinery of celebration. There was never a hint of anyone hurrying or bustling; never a hint that everything had to be just J o , and therefore you'd better watch your step so you don't do anything wrong ...

No, Rasa's wedding for her son Nafai and his two brothers-or, if you looked at it the other way, Rasa's wedding for her three nieces, Luet, Dol, and Eiadh- was a lovely affair on the portico of her house, bright and aromatic with flowers from her greenhouse and the blossoms that grew on the portico. Eiadh and Dol were astonishingly beautiful, their gowns clinging to them with the elegant illusion of simplicity, their facepaint so artfully applied that they seemed not to be painted at all. Or would have seemed so, had it not been for Luet.

Sweet Luet, who had refused to be painted at all, and whose dress really was simple. Where Eiadh and Dol had all the elegance of women trying-very successfully-to seem bright and young and gay, Luet really was young, her gown artlessly covering a body that was still more the promise than the reality of womanhood, her face bright with a grave and timid sort of joy that made Eiadh and Dol look older and far too experienced. In a way, it was almost cruel to make the older girls have their weddings in the presence of this girl who rebuked them by her very naivete. Eiadh had actually noticed, before the ceremony began-Hushidh overheard her urging Aunt Rasa to "send somebody up with Luet to help her choose a dress and to do something with her face and hair" but Aunt Rasa had only laughed and said, "No art will help that child." Eiadh took that, of course, to mean that Aunt Rasa thought Luet to be too plain to be helped by costume and makeup; but Hushidh caught Aunt Rasa's eye the moment afterward, and Aunt Rasa winked at her and rolled her eyes to let her know that they both understood that poor Eiadh hadn't a clue about what would happen at the wedding.

And it did happen, though fortunately Eiadh and Dol had no idea that when the watching servants and students and teachers whispered, "Ah, she is so lovely";

"Ah, so sweet"; "Look, who knew she was so beautiful," they were all speaking of Luet, only of Luet. When Nafai, as the youngest man, came forward to be claimed by his bride, the sighs were like a song from the congregation, an improvised hymn to the Oversoul, for having brought this boy of fourteen, who had the stature and strength of a man and the bright fire of the Oversoul in his eyes, to marry the Oversoul's chosen daughter, the waterseer, whose pure beauty grew from the soul outward. He was the bright gold ring in which this jewel of a girl would glow with unreflected luster, Hushidh saw better than anyone how the people belonged to Luet in their hearts. She saw the threads between them, sparkling like the dew-covered strands of a spider's web in the first sunlight of morning; how they love the waterseer! But most of all Hushidh saw the firming bonds between the husbands and wives as the ceremony progressed. Unconsciously she took note of each gesture, each glance, each facial expression, and in her mind she was able to understand the connection.

Between Elemak and Eiadh, it would be a strange sort of unequal partnership, in which the less Eiadh loved Elemak, the more he would desire her; and the more he treated her gently and lovingly, the more she would despise him. It would be a painful thing to watch, this marriage, in which the agony of coming apart was the very thing that would hold them together. But she could say nothing of this-neither one would understand this about themselves, and would only be furious if she tried to explain it.

As for poor Dolya and her precious new lover, Mebbekew, it was an ill-considered marriage indeed- and yet there was no reason to suppose it would be less viable than Elemak's and Eiadh's. At the moment, flushed with the glory of being, as they supposed, the center of attention, they were happy with the new bonds between them. But soon enough the reality would settle in. If they stayed in the city, they would hate each other within weeks-Dol because of Mebbekew's betrayals and unfaithfulness, Mebbekew because of Dol's clinging, possessive need for him. Hushidh imagined their domestic life. Dol would be forever throwing her arms around him in wonderfully enthusiastic hugs, thinking she was showing her love when really she was asserting her ownership; and Meb, shuddering under her profuse embraces, slipping away at every opportunity to find new bodies to possess, new hearts to ravish. But in the desert, it would be very different. Meb would find no woman who desired him except Dolya, and so his own lusts would throw him back into her arms again and again; and the very fact that he could not betray her would ease Dol's lonely fears, and she would not oppress him so much with her need for him. In the desert, they could make a marriage of it, though Mebbekew would never be happy with the boredom of making love with the same woman, night after night, week after week, year after year.