She smiled brilliantly. “No one, no one else will kiss you that way—ever.”

Her eye fell on a tiny plant almost at her foot. “This too is beautiful,” she said, letting her hand drop towards it.

Aton spoke sharply. “That’s a hvee. A wild hvee.”

“May I not have it?” she asked, amused.

“May you not!” he said, unconsciously imitating her choice of words. “Hvee is only for men. I told you.”

She laughed once more. “Until they are loved.” She took it up. “See. See, it does not wither in my hand. But I will give it to you, my present, and it will love you and stay with you as long as you remember my song.”

“But I don’t know your song.”

She put the green stem in his hair. “You must come back to me to learn it.” Her fine hands took his shoulders, turning him around. “Go, go now, and do not turn back.”

Aton marched off, confused but somehow elated.

•  •  •

He returned next day, but the glade was empty. The nymph of the wood had gone, and had taken her song with her. He dwelt on it, trying to recover the tune, but he possessed only a fleeting fragment. He touched the flat stump where she had sat, wondering whether the warmth of her body remained in it, beginning to doubt that she had been there at all. But he was unwilling to let the vision of the nymph go. She had talked to him and kissed him and left him the hvee and part of a song, and the memory was strange and strong and wonderful.

In the days and weeks that followed he continued to visit that place in the forest, hoping for some hint of the music. Finally he stopped and gave himself up to the more somber world of reality—almost.

Their nearest neighbor lived five miles down the valley. This was a branch of low-castle Family of Eighty-One, Aurelius never mentioned them. Aton had not known of their existence until his nymph indirectly introduced him to the children of Eighty-One.

Taken by a fit of loneliness when his tenth visit to the forest had been to no avail, Aton had either to assume the woman to be gone forever (because he found that easier than counting on into two figures with only ten fingers), or to begin a search for her farther afield. He chose the latter. Surely she was somewhere, and the logical place to investigate was the long valley, since he was not supposed to walk along the hot black highway. His aunt always arrived by aircar from that direction, over the valley, and while he did not conceive her residence in terms of place, or wish to visit it, the fact added logic to his decision.