Maia

"Doan' that just show you?" intervened Occula equably. "Well, wherever it was she came from it wasn' my country; so perhaps I'd better just leave this story until you've had time to sort it out among yourselves."

"No, no! Go on, Occula," said Chia, "and you other banzis just shut up and listen!"

"Well, wherever 'twas," resumed Occula, "they were luckier than if one end of a rainbow had come down in the village street, for Lespa was just the prettiest girl that's ever been seen in this world. When she was fourteen or fifteen, she had only to walk through the fields in hay-time to take her father his dinner, for every lad to be driven half out of his mind. They'd gather round, and keep her talkin' through the dinner-hour, and then they'd fight over who should get in trouble for cuttin' his work to walk along with her, back to her home.

"Now of all the young fellows in the village there was one, and his name was Baltis, who could scarcely sleep by night or work by day for the mischief that Lespa quite innocently wrought in his heart. He was a fine, big lad, apprenticed to a smith; and as you know, Baltis is still a general name for smiths all over the empire. If you a meet a lad named Baltis, chances are he's often a smith.

"Baltis never lost the least chance of seein' Lespa. He fought three or four other young chaps and beat them, simply to keep them away from her: and even at that he was none too successful, for however badly he beat them they'd come limpin' back for more of what had brought it on them, just like moths to a candle. He came near to losin' his place in the forge, even though he'd always worked well and was nearly out of his time, simply because he'd

down his hammer and be off if he so much as saw Lespa comin' out of her mother's door,

"Now Baltis-he knew very well what he wanted; but you must understand that as yet Lespa didn'. She was as unversed in the ways of love as a new-hatched butterfly dryin' its wings in the sun. All she knew was that she must be beautiful, for she had only to walk down the street for five or six lads to appear from nowhere and start tellin' her so; and after a time she had to give up bathin' in the river altogether-unless she could persuade her mother to come along with her and keep a look-out. All the same, in spite of bein' ignorant of what it was they were after, she enjoyed-well, which of us doesn'?-the attention of the lads, and used to show it plainly enough when they pleased her. For even in those days of her maidenhood, Lespa had pretty ways and knew-well, just as a mare or a partridge knows-how to give the right answers to those who pleased her, and how to keep them by her side as long as she wanted.

"Well, when a queen bee flies, the swarm follows- right? But she flies high, and only the strongest gets her. And the strongest-well, it often costs him all he's got. Young Baltis, so the tales tell, Was simply not his own master in those days, for he gave all he had. Every minute of his time, every meld he could scrape together went on Lespa. And so it came about that after a time Lespa, even though she couldn' have told just what it was she wanted from him, nevertheless came to feel that she'd like to be alone with him, to be in his arms and let him teach her whatever it was that she still had to learn.

"Yet even when she'd come to this resolve, to find the least chance proved altogether beyond her. For the truth was that her father, who was a prosperous man, with a farm of his own and money comin' in from a half-share in a fishin'-boat on the Zhairgen, considered Baltis beneath the family. He wanted to freeze him off, that's what. So after a bit poor old Baltis gave up comin' to the door, for no one was glad to see him but Lespa, and she'd only get a flea in her ear if she showed as much. But you know how it is: this only made her long all the more for a chance to find out what it was that Baltis wanted so desperately; for she felt it stirrin' in her body as a kind of riddle. She felt as though she must know the answer very well, but couldn' quite see it; somethin' like as though she'd dreamt

it and forgotten, perhaps-but of course those were the days before there were dreams."

"Before there were dreamsl" asked Chia.

"Certainly," replied Occula. "How the hell could there be dreams before Lespa's palace came to be raised among the stars?"

"Before there were dreams?" muttered another girl. "There was a hard world, then."