The nymph of the wood moved in splendor, hair flaming against a dress of pastel green. Light feet trod the sere debris of ancient years, the fingers of ecstasy clasped his. She had said, and he had accepted, long ago, that there could be no woman to match her. The echo of the broken song surrounded her, tantalizing, rapturous, the essence, the quintessence—

“And did you have a woman, in Chthon?” she asked him, playful in the knowledge that any mortal woman was a figurine.

Aton tried to think back, tried to imagine another woman, any other; but in the presence of Malice it was not possible. “I don’t remember.”

“You have changed,” she said. “You have changed, Aton, and it is the handiwork of the distaff. Tell me.”

“I had a minionette.”

Her fingers tightened. Never before had he felt her surprise. She did not speak.

“Yes,” he said, “I know. But she did not have the song.” That was all; no explanation, no soliloquy was necessary. Misery had been forgotten, after a single night of strange romance. Neither the appearance nor the nature of the minionette served as the basis of his love—only the person of his childhood vision, bearing the music and the magic of his youth. O joy that...

The forest diminished, laid open by an asphalt highway, hot black waves bouncing into awareness. Above it a distant space-shuttle lifted, intent on some rendezvous with an orbiting visitor. This was the realm of exploration and commerce, of navies and merchant fleets. And beside him the minionette seemed to walk in uniform: handsome, competent, severe, ruthless, female.

“No more for space, Captain?”

“No more, Machinist.”

“You could have returned, when I went to Chthon.”

She shook her head, precisely. “The guileless Xests knew, and word spreads quickly in space. It is death for the minionette to wander openly among men. And...”

“And...?”

She was silent, and it was answer enough. The spotel—

They crossed over the black heat, into a field of hvee, his father’s field, and walked among the young plants reaching for an object for their love, so like himself. Above, the sky retreated before ascending cumuli; a summer storm was in the making.

From the forest to the spaceship: Aton remembered his first journey—he and his hvee, searching for love. He, as with the hvee, had found it to be something horrendous in its full formation—a dragon whose tail, once grasped, could not lightly be relinquished.

Why had she come to him, on that first day of his new year, when all the men of space were within her range? Could it have been coincidence, that artful meeting, wherein she had shown him the melody, given him the hvee, kissed him, and forever bound his heart to hers?