His muscles stopped fighting her grip; his hand closed slowly over her shoulder, slid down her sleeve to her wrist. His head fell forward. “Oh, my thousand gods… why did you come here, Moon? Why?” fiercely, in anguish.

“To find you. Because you needed me. Because I need you…

Mt.

because I love you. Oh, I love you…” She let her arms go around him, buried her face against his chest.

“Don’t touch me!” He pried at her arms, pushed her roughly back. “Don’t touch me.”

Moon stumbled, shook her head. “Sparks, I…” She rubbed her face, felt the pain of his bruise stir dimly in her cheek. “Because I’m a sibyl? But that doesn’t matter! Sparks, I’ve been off world since then; I learned the truth about sibyls. I won’t contaminate you. You don’t have to be afraid to touch me. We can be together the way we always were.”

He stared at her. “The way we were?” flatly, disbelievingly. “Just two simple Summer folk, stinking of fish, with our nets drying in the sun?” She nodded, faltering, feeling her neck resist the lying motion. “And I don’t have to be afraid of you contaminating me.” A shake, sincere. “Well, what about my contaminating you?” He struck his chest with his open hand, forcing her to see him as he demanded: the shirt of flame-shaded satin tatters showing ribbons of flesh between ribbons of cloth; the heavy jewelry that hung like golden chains of bondage from his neck and wrists; the skintight breeches that left nothing to her imagination.

“You’re… you’re even more beautiful than I remembered.” She told the truth; felt a sudden rush of desire, was frightened by it.

He put his hand up, covering his eyes. “Don’t you know? Why won’t you understand, damn it! That was me you saw on that beach, killing the mers! I’m Starbuck — don’t you know what that means; what that makes me?”

“I know,” catching at the fragments of her breaking voice. A murderer . a liar… a stranger. “I know what it means, Sparks, but I don’t care.” Because the price she had paid for this moment was too high a price for ruins and ashes. “Can’t you see that? It doesn’t matter to me what you’ve seen, or done, or been — now that I’ve found you it doesn’t matter to me any more.” There is no time, or death, or past; unless I let them come between us.

“It doesn’t matter? You don’t care if I’ve been another woman’s lover for five years? You don’t care how many of the Lady’s sacred mers I’ve butchered just so I can stay young with her forever? You won’t care, when you find out where I went today with the take from our last Hunt, or what’s going to happen to your fish-stinking kin y.

and mine in a few more hours because of it?” He grabbed her by the wrist, twisting her arm. “It still doesn’t matter that I’m Starbuck?”

She pulled back, half in revulsion, half in anger, unable to answer or even struggle as he began to lead her down the hall.

He reached a door, hit the lock with his palm and kicked it open, dragging her after him into a room. Light flared, hurting her eyes, as he shut the door again behind her, and sealed them in with his fingerprints. Moon found her own reflection gaping at her in every wall. She looked up at the ceiling to find herself looking down; looked down again too quickly, and staggered sideways into Sparks’s waiting arms. He smiled at her, but it was no smile she had ever seen on his face, and it turned her cold inside. “Sparks… what is this place?”

“What do you think it is, Cuz?” He twisted her in his arms until she saw the wide bed in the center of the room. His arms locked around her as she began to squirm; his hand groped her breast. “It’s been a long time for you, hasn’t it, sweeting? I could tell when you looked at me out there. So you’ve come all this way to be Starbuck’s lover, huh? Well, any way you like it, honey—” He jerked open his shirt front, she saw scars like thin white worms along his ribs. “I can oblige you.”

“Oh, Lady, no—” Her hand covered his side, shutting them away from her eyes.

“No? Then we’ll make it fast and uncomplicated, the way Summer girls are used to it.” He hauled her to the bed and threw her down across it, pinning her there with his body. She kept her mouth i clamped tight against his rough kisses, bit back her cry as his hand squeezed a breast hard enough for pain. “This shouldn’t take long.” He fumbled with his pants, his eyes never leaving her face.

“Sparks, don’t do this!” She worked a hand free, stroked his face with desperate gentleness. “You don’t want it to happen, and I don’t—”

“Then why don’t you fight back, damn it?” He shook her, with a kind of wildness in it. “Contaminate me, sibyl! Prove you’re something I can never be. Kick me, bite me, make me bleed — make me crazy.”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Staring up at her own face in the ceiling, Sparks’s fiery hair, his body obliterating hers, she saw only the image of Taryd Roh’s face going slack and mindless, the image of Sparks’s the same way… too easy, too easy! She sucked in a harsh breath. “I can! Believe me, I can do it! I can make you mad. But I don’t want to hurt you.” She shut her eyes, turned her face away, feeling the weight of his breathing body press the air out of her lungs. “She’s hurt you enough, because of me.”

His eyes were a wall. “Don’t waste your pity on me, sibyl, because you won’t get any back.” He gripped her jaw with his hand, turned her face to him. “You’re with Starbuck — you wanted Starbuck, and there’s nothing lower on this world than he is.” But it was his gaze that broke under hers this time; and she realized suddenly that even it he had wanted to go on with it, his body had refused him.

“I wanted Sparks! And I’ve found him. There’s no crown of spines on you, no black hood, no blood on your hands. You aren’t Starbuck! Throw them away, Sparks — you don’t have to wear them any more.”

“I’m not Sparks! And you’re not even Moon…” He shook his head, she felt a tremor flow through their bodies. “We’re ghosts, echoes, lost souls; caught in limbo, damned in hell.” He let her face go.

“Sparks… I love you. I love you. I’ve always loved you.” Wincing, murmuring the breathless words like a charm to bring calm seas. “I know what you’ve done, but I’m here. Because I know you. I know it was meant to be. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t believe we could make up for the time and the wrongs between us. If you don’t believe it’s true, then send me away… But first look at yourself, look in the mirror! It’s only you there, only me beside you. We’re the waking, not the nightmare.”

He rolled off of her slowly, staring at her. “What — what happened to your cheek? Did I do that to you?”

She lifted a hand to the smudged yellow remains of the bruise, nodded.

He got up from the bed, his face pale and expressionless, went toward his reflection waiting impassively in the wall. Their hands met at the interface; he pressed his forehead against its image, and Moon saw his body tighten like a coiled spring.

“Sparks—”

His hands turned into fists, and he smashed them into the mirror; sent his reflection clamoring down in a hail of splintered ice. He backed away, turned… she saw blood trickling down his hand like zigzag lightning.

She pushed herself up and went to him, closing his hand in hers, staunching the wound. j

“No, don’t!” he cried. “Leave it, let it bleed!” eagerly, almost joyfully. She looked up at him, sickened, but he shook his head. , “Don’t you see? I’m alive! I’m alive, Moon…” He made a sound : that was like laughter, but wasn’t. She saw his eyes become the color I of emeralds; and tears overflowed with the flicker of the lids. He , raised his wet hand to his wet face. “Moon. My Moon.” His arms i went around her again; but this time there was nothing hurting about his embrace except the pain of rebirth and release. “Alive. Alive again…” i

She felt sudden fire pass into her through her skin and kindle at his nearness. She reached up to unfasten her cloak, let it fall, press — I ing herself even closer. Her fingers found the slashes of his shirt; she felt his flesh, warm and smooth, his muscles sliding under her touch. His own hands slipped down along her sides, rose again, tracing the line of her back. He began to lead her to the bed, moving with her, drawing her down beside him on the cool sheets, this time with j infinite tenderness. “No, let me… just let me…” He kissed her I softly. He slipped her dress down over her shoulders, along her body ‘ to the floor, with hands that sang against her skin. He removed his own clothes, self-consciously; she tried not to see the scars on his body.