Two emerald-green eyes stare at me. "You shut me off, Peter. There was a time you wouldn't have dared. …"

I return his stare. We both know he's no longer the imposing figure he once was. At best, Father can't be any more than eleven feet long. His color, once as richly green as mine, now has a sickly yellow pallor to it. Age has slowed his movements, buckled and rippled his scales. "I'm sorry, Father," I say.

He hisses, mindspeaks, "Speak properly to me!"

"I'm sorry, Father."

"You should be." Father adjusts himself so he's sitting on one haunch, motions for me to approach. "So, is that what caused you to make such a fuss last night?"

A flush burns my cheeks and I stare directly at this creature that sired me-that brought me into this world where I could never fit. I growl a warning, "Father!"

He waves one taloned claw, as if to smooth away my pain. "Who taught you to be so sensitive? Bring her here. Let me see what you have."

Father clucks with pleasure when I place the body on the hay next to him. "So young. So fresh…" He inspects the carcass, trying to decide, I know, just where to start his meal.

I look away, busy myself opening windows, bringing light into the room as he starts to feed.

"Don't be so skittish," Father says, chuckling. "You're the one whose naked body is covered in her blood."

Shocked, I examine myself, touch the sticky red substance that seems to coat my arms and spot my chest and legs. "I didn't even think about it.…"

Father chuckles again. "It's just blood. It washes off."

I nod, then pace the room as he continues his feast.

When he finishes, he sighs and turns his attention to me. "Tell me, Peter, why such a fuss last night?"

"I didn't want her dead, Father. I liked her. I thought, maybe, I could see her for a while… It gets so lonely sometimes."

"You think I don't know that? I haven't had a wife since your mother's death. You don't see me mooning over some human woman."

"You're old!" I blurt out. Then I say, "Sorry, Father, I'm upset. First the aroma, then Maria's death…"

"Ah, the aroma!" Father chooses to overlook my outburst. He coughs and chuckles at the same time. "You said it smelled of cinnamon and cloves?" I nod.

"Possibly some tinge of musk too?"

"Yes."

"What did it do to you?"

"It drove me crazy," I say. "I wanted sex. I needed to feed. I couldn't control my body.…"

Father claps his hands together. "I told you!" he mind-speaks, his thoughts stronger than before, almost joyous. "I knew it and I told you! "

I glare at the irritating old creature. "And just what is it you've told me ? "

He laughs, claps his hands again, pauses to eat some more, even though he knows the pause will make me more angry, more anxious.

"Didn't I promise that one day you'd meet a woman of the blood?" he asks finally.

"So?"

He ignores my frown, grins at me in an indulgent way, as if I have no capacity for independent thought. I consider walking from the room.

"Peter," he mindspeaks, "you've found your woman."

"What are you talking about?"

Father shakes his head. "The aroma, Peter. The scent! Why do you think it drove you so crazy?"

He guffaws. "She's in heat, son! Oestrus. Our women› come to term every four months once they reach maturity. Before they mate for the first time, for a few days every quarter they fill the sky with their scent. It travels almost forever."

"But where Is she?"

Father shrugs. "She could be anywhere from within one to fifteen hundred miles of us. You're lucky. I had to go to Europe to find your mother."

He absentmindedly picks at the remains lying next to him, breaks a rib bone and sucks the marrow from it. I watch it without flinching, without a thought of Maria. My mind's intent now on the memory of that incredible scent and I try to picture the creature that created it. "How will I find her, Father?"

He taps the side of his snout with one taloned claw. "You'll follow your nose, son. You'll learn how natural it is."

"But, so many miles …"

Father laughs and a paroxysm of coughing and rasping breaths overtakes him. I wait for it to pass.

"I promised you'd find a woman, Peter. I didn't promise it would be easy."

Chapter 4

The idea of a female of my own kind consumes me, occupies my mind, crowds out all other thoughts. I have dozens of questions, all of which Father ignores. "Later, Peter," he tells me as his head nods and his eyelids close. "Let me rest now. Come to me tonight and we'll talk more."

His breathing turns rhythmic and I know it's useless to try to rouse him. I look at the bones scattered around him, stripped of all meat, and shake my head at his gluttony. I have no choice but to wait for him to sleep past his languor.

The yips and growls of the dogs outside remind me I've much to do. They've caught the aroma of the kill and are waiting now, not so patiently, for their share. I carry the entrails, and the other body parts Father chose not to eat, out onto the veranda and throw them over the parapet to the hungry pack below. Then I return to my room and busy myself with removing all traces of Maria from the house.

As I strip the bloodstained bedding from my mattress, I take extra breaths, hoping to smell some trace of cinnamon in the air, but the air carries only its usual sea smells. What little wind there is blows light and seems to shift direction every few minutes.

I think about the breezes of the night before, the strong gusts that seemed to have a life of their own and I try to remember if the wind had shifted during the evening too. Surely if I can remember the wind's direction and follow its route backward, it will lead me to her.

Carrying the sheets and Maria's belongings up the spiral staircase to the third floor, I feed them to the fire in the great open hearth. I try to recall where the wind came from during the last evening, but my memory fails me. My attention had been on Maria, not on the bend of the trees' limbs or the direction of the waves. I know that further toward the summer, a southeast wind blows almost every day and night. During the winter, the north wind brings its chilling effect. But in March, the wind could just as easily come from any point of the compass.

I add logs to the blaze, listen to them crack and pop as they catch fire, watch the sheets and Maria's belongings flame, then turn dark and shrivel into ashes.

A weak gust of air blows through the room and I sniff at it expectantly. Nothing.

The wind ruffles the flames in the fireplace and carries away with it a thin trail of smoke as it courses through the remainder of the room, exiting the window opposite the one it entered.

Watching the smoke's passage, I remember the winds blowing through my bedroom the night before, which windows they seemed to favor. I grin and go on with my work, walking to the top of the staircase, grabbing the thick, manila rope wrapped around a large iron cleat bolted to the wall, scooping up the excess line coiled on the floor below it.

A southeast wind! I'm sure of it now, remembering the play of it over our bodies, the windows it entered and exited, and before that the ridges of water rolling northward across the bay. A wind blowing from that direction meant she lived somewhere in the Caribbean or Latin America. I try to picture how exotic she might be.

All of it makes me feel positively adolescent and, for the first time in more years than I care to think, I unwrap the rope from the cleat, grasp it tightly with my right hand and, holding the excess line in my left, jump the railing and launch myself into the open middle of the staircase.

Above me, hanging from a huge hook set in the center of a massive roof beam, an ancient arrangement of wooden blocks and tackle screeches and groans as the rope rushes through it, the line suddenly taut from the heavy burden of my falling body-its motion slowed by the counterweight of the hoist's wooden platform my weight brings up from the bottom floor.