Avoiding too many streets, I crossed the bridge and wandered in the countryside. The trees were mainly in blossom and the air loud with song and insects. I took off my sandals and felt the grasses between my toes. Everywhere were flowers dancing with their shadows. Breezes chased ripplings of light and shadow across the meadows. I heard the maa’aa’aaing of goats and the tinkle of bells. The goatherd greeted me from the distance and when I reached him we sat down together on the bank of a blue and white stream, gurgling with stones, and ate black bread and goats’ cheese. As if it was very important we discussed the seasoning of cheeses, comparing our opinions. I felt like a girl in the mountains with the peasants again. It is so long since I have been a real girl, able to toss my hair on my shoulders and smile innocently as I watch a man’s eyes come shyly to my breasts, then away, then again, exploring, wondering. Perhaps they would have married me to Turg if the lawmen had not come, and I should not have minded. I am of godly blood, but events have pitch-forked me far from my natural niche and meadow air is the sweetest and yet the tangiest. I felt a nostalgia for Lei, whom I remembered I have not visited for so long, but there is nothing left of the wild timid brat in the little town lady with the flow of refined chatter and the nest of sophisticated vicious patrons. The goatherd and I leaned back on the bank and chewed long grasses, making their feathery tips twist in the air far out from our teeth. He was a boy my age, heavily built, his arms and legs and torso shining bronze, his greenish eyes startling pale and live in his bronze face, his grin a flash of teeth which looked clean against his face, his feet chalky with stale dust and dirt; he wore peasant boy’s clothes, a goatskin jacket, a sash full of pockets, tools and knives, a pair of full, faded, blue, ragged knee-pants.

As dusk closed in the crickets came out. They went kreeep-kreeep. Kreeep-kreeep. Kreeep-kreeep.

The boy took a pipe from his sash and blew into it. The maa’aa’aa’ing increased around us from all directions and what sounded all distances. The boy bounded to his feet, held down a hand for me. His was large, the homiest and most calloused whose fingers have ever caged mine, yet if ever a hand could have a respectful expression this was it.