Above, in the lofty pale room, Ruth stood below the window. It had no colors, but was of opaque white glass, incised with an intricate pattern, coiling ferns, and the head perhaps of an angel.

The light fell over Ruth.

She was naked. She slept naked now, with Malach, in their bed. With him she had lost her modesty and her evasion.

Ruth had grown taller with the winter. Her body was even more beautiful, elongated in its slenderness that flowered into lustiness at the breasts. At her groin the raven's feathers, melting to a blue mist under her flat belly. There was no hair on her arms or legs, it did not grow there, and under her arms was only a shaven whiteness. The hair of her head cloaked her back down to the base of her spine.

On the table lay her treasures, her trophies.

She had brought them to the flat. The apple, the duck, the gold razor… The leopardskin had gone, given away. It was not a living animal but a robbery of life.

Ruth lifted her right hand, and looked at it. There was a dark scar across the palm, exactly below the fingers. Some of the nerves were dead, or temporarily impaired, and the fingers were stiff and awkward. Malach had shown her that with practice, she could write with her left hand.

She had burned her right hand on the ice. Malach sometimes took this hand, and held it against him, against his face, or his chest, as if feeding her the pulses of his body.

He slept now.

He slept like death. So silent, hardly seeming to breathe. Sometimes in sleep he would murmur words. They were the languages of other countries, perhaps of other times.

Ruth went back to the bed, and sat down on the edge of it, watching him.

He lay on a tide of white hair, his head half turned.

There were faint lines on his face, about the mouth, on the forehead, those of a man in his late thirties. But his skin was taut, the light brown of some lost summer, which had never left it.

Ruth wanted to touch him, but she would not wake him.

She wanted to touch him continually. She was sore with want, with always yearning. She relished the rare rich pain.

And now, he opened his eyes.

Their blueness always caught at her. There had never been blue eyes in the world, until his.

"You're awake," he said. "Wide awake."

"Yes."

"We are going," he said, "to a flat land with low skies crowded by clouds, and with a liquid light. Do you remember the paintings I showed you?"

"Yes."

"Like that."

"Will they hate me there?" she said. "Like here." It was not a child's question, it was uttered nearly indifferently.

"They'll judge you from what you are."

"What am I?"

"What I will make you."

"Yes," she said. "Scarabae."