Maia

She was Lespa-mortal Lespa, the prettiest village lass that ever walked the earths-Lespa on her way to the greenwood, tripping through the meadows of spring. The grass was cool at her feet, the flowers were springing-ah! and here was a patch of muddy ground she had to cross. Pouting, she stopped and wiped her feet, one and then the other; then stooped to pick a yellow spear-bud and put it in her hair. Her body was burning with frustrated longing, with desire for her lover, for poor young Baltis gone to the wars.

During this first, opening minute she realized what Ba-yub-Otal had meant in speaking of Fordil. She had never conceived of any accompaniment of this quality. She would not have thought it possible. The quick, pattering notes of the hinnari seemed actually created by her own movements. They did not follow her; they led her on and bore her forward. It was Fordil who was really dancing, except that she, happening to be young and a girl, was acting on his behalf. She was his reflection, and therefore they could not be out of accord.

A kynat, migrant of spring, purple and gold in the sunshine, flashed suddenly out of the distant trees and she stood entranced, shading her eyes to gaze after it as it flew. Then, recalling her errand, she went on up the course of the little brook towards the watercress-edged cattle-wade on the outskirts of the wood.

When dancing for Occula, Maia, throughout this first episode of the selpe, had always felt, above all, the pathos of a girl left forlorn in spring; intensely aware of the mul-tifoliate burgeoning of the new year all about her, yet separated from it by her loneliness. To stress this sense of loneliness, she knew, was important as a contrast to the excitement to follow. She was a girl sad in springtime: this was what she had to express; and now the hinnari, with a

soft sobbing of zhuas beneath, was saying it for her as, in Occula's hands, it had never been able to.

How long should she give it? Not very long, for this was only the prelude to her story. Bending down, she pulled some strands of watercress and nibbled them; then sprawled on the short grass in the sunshine, first picking her teeth with a twig, then rolling quickly over to catch a tiny frog and let it jump off her hand into the water. So clearly did she mime these things and so closely did the drummer follow her, that the frog's leap was represented by a quick, sharp stroke of his thimbled finger on the side of the hollow lek, at which Maia herself, watching the frog, spontaneously gave a little jump. The watchers laughed, not only at the joke but with pleasure in the skill which had enabled them to recognize it. A moment later she got up and, disentangling her skirt from a spray of bramble as she climbed the fence, entered the wood, disappearing into the darkness on the lampless side of the hall.

Almost at once-more quickly than she would have wished, but she guessed that Fordil wanted to forestall any possible outbreak of chatter or restlessness among the audience-the music changed to the quick, light knocking of the two leks, playing alone. Yet she herself must wait a moment; she could not change her role so quickly. This was Shakkarn coming-Shakkarn stolen away in spring from the palace of the gods to wander footloose among the fields and woods of earth. Far off he was as yet, his footsteps faint but coming closer, sending before them the disquiet and apprehension latent in all sounds of approach by someone or something unknown to the hearer. And at this moment, as luck would have it, two of the lamps, their oil exhausted, simultaneously flickered and died. A total silence fell throughout the hall, save for the tapping of the leks answering each other, hoofed footstep and echo, among the rocks high up in the wood.

Occula had told her that sometimes a girl would elect to play Shakkarn masked and horned, and thus disguised as the god would appear in full light as plainly as in the part of Lespa. Yet this was not the true style of the sen-guela, the tonda and the other great traditional dances. "So often, banzi, a pretty girl wants to show off as Lespa, but she only wants to dress up as Shakkarn. That's not real senguela! You've got to be Shakkarn-make them believe you're another person-well, almost." And had

not Maia seen Occula herself perform just such a feat on the night when Ka-Roton had taken phantom knife and stabbed himself?