FELICITY SAVAGE

THE EARTH'S EROGENOUS ZONES

Sailors scrambled over Silver Wind's rigging, readying her to sail, as Dolores
climbed down the hill, swaying and slipping on the rope ladder. Above her,
Charles supervised the lowering of the baggage into the canoe. Below, the
governor of Shikaroa was welcoming her politely to the island. Dolores sank into
the canoe and tried to smile at him. Her stockings chafed her thighs. Prickly
heat washed over her in waves. She was afraid the natives had seen up her
petticoat, and as a concession to the heat, she wore no drawers. Madness! she
thought wearily. To have come all the way to this Godforsaken speck of land just
to prove Charles' theory right!

But she would have followed him much farther, if he had asked her to. He was her
life.

The canoe pulled away from Silver Wind, wallowing under the weight of trunks and
carpet bags and expensive phonograph. Charles was swapping conversational
gambits with the governor, a grizzled Scotsman who wanted to hear news from
Home, trying to find out if they could hire islanders to guide them into the
jungle. The air grew stickier and hotter as the green arms of Shikaroa closed
around the bay. Dolores looked back at the clipper. It was sheering rapidly off
the coast. Unbidden tears of homesickness sprang to her eyes. Silver Wind had
been her home for almost a year: the other passengers' wives had helped her
pretend she was still in England. Now there was nothing between her and the heat
and the crystal water. Nothing except Charles.

"I canna for the life of me understand why we're wanting to go inland," the
governor said. "Much less--" he nodded at Dolores-- "tak' yet lady. The natives
themselves will not go into the heart o' the jungle! They say they never have.
Course, could be they just want to hang around town, and they're inventin'
excuses not to go back, but mebbe there's truly something that they're feared
of. I'd bear it in mind, were I yerself."

"It's all in the name of Science," Charles said cheerfully. "And I'd be lost
without Dolly. I'd probably forget to eat. She looks after me like my mother
did."

"But why have ye come all the way out here?" the governor persisted. "Ye
collectin' specimens? I'd be back in Edinburgh right now if I'd the choice."

"I have a radical theory." Charles coughed significantly. "Modern. Not really
suitable. . . " He cast a glance in Dolores' direction. He liked to act as if he
spared her the embarrassing details of his scientific research. Usually she
enjoyed the sheltered, womanly feeling that gave her. But today she found
herself thinking, I know as much about the theory as he does. Why does he have
to be so childish? And she was scandalized at the very thought.

"I'm in the forefront of scientific thought," Charles said pompously. "When I
come back from this trip, the Royal Geographic Society is going to publish my
book."

They'd laughed Charles out of the society, though before he came up with this
new theory, he had been a respected member, and out of the society for
Psychological Research, where he had gone afterward. If Dolores had heard the
theory from a stranger, she would have laughed too. But she had tried to
understand, and so she had seen the perverse logic behind it. It was like a
fairy tale. And Dolores wanted it to be true. She wanted Charles to capture his
evidence on the phonograph cylinders, vindicate himself, and take her home.

The water lapping against the sides of the canoe was perfectly clear. She could
see all the way down to the floor of the bay. Tiny crabs scuttled on the sand,
seeming to leap upward as the currents altered her perception. The drops thrown
up by the paddles felt as warm on her hands and cheeks as the air. The jungle
encroached on the bay like a pulsating green mist, scarcely dented by the brown
shanty-town at the head of the bay. No human noises came from the island. Only
the faint, strident babel of the jungle.

Dolores shuddered.

Weeks later, dark breaths of air brushed over her nightgown like invisible
hands. She lay on her cot, listening to the jungle's rustle outside the tent.
Sweat greased her crotch, glued her arms to her sides. It was insufferably hot
here even at night. Charles said they were right upon the Equator. She felt that
invisible line going straight through her, skewering her. He had measured her
spread-eagled body to locate this very spot on the Earth's body. Terribly
improper of her, to let him use her like that! Now she was sewed here, fastened
--

She tossed, shattering the illusion.

Outside, small things shrieked, squealed, ticked, and banged with unsettling
frequency into the tent. There had never been so much noise in London. But in
Dorset, it had been more like this. She remembered lying in her starched bed,
her hair in two pigtails, clutching the Raggy that her dead mother had made her,
listening to the martens twittering under the caves. Or the mice in the skirting
boards. Or on summer evenings, the hired hands exchanging bawdy jokes in the
courtyard. Young Dolores grinned fiercely to herself when she understood their
innuendoes.

"A passionate little gift whose smiles flickered across her face like white
lightning." She'd read that in one of her father's notebooks, after he died. He
had devoted reams of paper to her. Her mother had died when Dolores was three;
and her father had taken charge of her. He'd taught her Horace, Homer, and
Montaigne, archery and knife-throwing. Fancy cookery and needlework were not
even in her vocabulary. On winter nights, she would lie by the fire in his
study, cuddling Mary the whippet. If she had a nightmare later on, she would
jump into her father's bed for comfort.

(Drenched with rain, dashing across a wide green field all alone, shrill
laughter escaping her)

(Swimming naked in the river in flood, her father leaning on his malacca cane on
the bank, applauding when she turned a somersault in the water)

(Older: kissing Peter the gardener's son, catching her breath with excitement as
his hands ventured under her boy's shirt and trousers, as the rain drummed on
the roof of the hay barn; he was a year older than she and she thought she was
in love)

Her father had raised her as "a pure human being, uncorrupted by society."
Somehow he had combined loving her with using her as an experiment.

She had married Charles right after her father died. He was the nephew of a
family friend, come to help her sort through the years of accumulated
possessions in the country house. She had loved him because he was so big and
solid, because he told her not to worry, he would take care of it. When he
proposed, she had felt she was being rescued. She threw herself into his life in
the city, made his friends' wives her friends, took an interest in his
experiments, utterly rejecting the solitary, eccentric life she had led with her
father.

But sometimes it had been difficult. Days of rain pounding on the roof when she
could not go outside. Days when she was so glad of an unexpected caller, a
tradesman at the door, an unruly housemaid to discipline-- anything to take her
mind off her predicament -- days when she had cried upstairs, alone, desperate
for someone, anyone, to hear her.

In other words, she had not yet escaped the longing for her father. She had not
completely gotten away from the thing that Charles was seeking out in the jungle
with his phonograph. And she could no longer pretend that she wanted him to find
it, in who knows what strength of concentration, here.

She twisted onto her stomach, thrusting her face into her pillow to prevent her
cries from waking the native maid.

The phonograph emitted a soft, steady click-click-click as Charles cranked the
handle, perched on a folding chair, staring into the night. "I'm here. I've
come."

He had done all he could. His powerlessness was both exhilarating and humbling.

"Speak to me. Please."

He had triangulated this location from all six continents, using Dolly's body as
a model, measuring the distances from her feet, hands, head, and navel to her
mound of Venus. It wouldn't have mattered what woman he measured -- the Earth
was Every woman. The proportions would have worked out the same. And that an
island lay exactly at this latitude-- didn't that prove his theory?

But the Society had not thought so. So he had come here, to collect
incontrovertible proof. A recording of her voice.

The scent of the jungle was heady, ethereal. A thousand species of flowers
bloomed here. He had crashed dozens of tree frogs underfoot, setting up his
equipment in the twilight. The water hyacinths which clogged the myriad streams
emitted a sweet stink. None of the flowers seemed to need rain to bloom. This
was the lushest jungle he had ever seen: an equatorial hothouse, nourished by
the salt air.

But wasn't this, after all, her birthing mouth? he thought lyrically. Where else
should she be more prolific?

Secretly, he knew, his colleagues envied his leap of intellect. What they could
not stand was that it reduced their ideas to mere trifles, like candles before
dawn. His terra sentiens theory was the ultimate melding of Science and Reason,
dwarfing all of their feeble explanations of human existence, surpassing them, a
tenuous web extrapolated from a dream.

But that very intangibility was its strength. No one could disprove it. And he
remembered that first dream so clearly. . . !

That dream had been the purest, finest moment in a life spent dabbling in
science purely for the prestige it brought him. He had been lying beside Dolores
in their bedroom in London, listening to the produce-carts rambling down the
street in the dark, bored and restless from the frustrations of the day. And he
had drifted into a half-waking dream. Disorienting warmth enveloped him. He felt
himself rocked tenderly, as if he were a baby again in his nurse's arms. Yet the
warmth was intensely sexual, too, and little by little, lust entered him and
grounded him. He was making love to this huge, invisible being, thrusting into
her. He heard her voice: enormous, multi-tongued. And he knew that if he could
only distinguish the words she spoke, he would possess the secret to this
mingling of physical fulfillment and spiritual joy. This was it. The goal. The
mystery that everyone was working toward.

And he started bolt upright, breathing hard. His awareness of that vast, deep
mystery evaporated like a puddle in the heat of day.

But the aftermath of physical arousal remained, and his mind raced. He thought,
Everyone has experienced this at some point, even if he can't remember. Even if
he was in the womb at the time. But only I, Charles Ruthven, can put it into
words. All have to do is go to her. To her.

Only I know where she is to be found.

Now, two years later, here he was. The jungle whispered around him. The
phonograph clicked.

"You can speak!" he whispered. "Indulge me! It won't cost you anything, but to
me it means fame and fortune." He saw himself leaning back in an armchair in the
Royal Geographic Society, a briar pipe dangling from his fingers, a bottle of
bourbon on a silver tray at his side, a copy of his epoch-making treatise on the
reading table. His one-time detractors clustering around him, hanging on his
every word.

It would be the discovery of the century. That Darwin fellow would have to eat
his words.

Click. Click. Click.

The 'night wore on. His torso rose and dipped as he cranked the phonograph,
slower now. The humid night air licked his face. Something furry crawled up his
trouser leg; drowsily, he shook it off. . . .

"IyeZ."

A female voice. Look, in Shikaroan.

He started upright, listening.

"Isn't he afraid? Does he know the danger?" This voice was male. "The longer we
stay, the less hope we have of escaping! How can we make him leave?"

Jealousy flared hotly in Charles. The female voice was undoubtedly her. How dare
she be so capricious as to manifest herself to one of the natives? How dare she?

"I'm afraid too," she whispered.

Charles shut his eyes tight. Tears oozed between his lashes.

"But don't relinquish your soul to God yet, shichu. Manal suggested to me a way
to save us all."

Her voice was not at all as Charles remembered. But the hair on his nape
bristled and his forehead sweated, the air in the clearing gone suddenly thick,
and he could hardly breathe for the smell of the water hyacinths.

"Want me to get rid of this scoundrel?" he said aloud, pugnaciously, to her.
"Anything. I'll do anything for you. Just ask --"

He heard a sharp, frightened intake of breath, and the noise of someone
scrambling away through the undergrowth. Good. The man was gone. He sat forward,
scarcely daring to breathe. "Come closer . . . " She was so close that he felt
the air stirred by her movement, heard her feet shifting on the leaves. He heard
her breathing shallowly. She said, "You're mine . . . all mine, Charles
Ruthven." She laughed with what was almost girlish nervousness.

Wordlessly, he stood up and held out his arms.

In London, she'd been a formless presence. Here, at the very wellspring of her
power, she had taken on humanity. Her maternal vastness had intensified into a
woman form, like air compressed into liquid. She danced in and out of his hands,
giggling as he paddled the air before him with grim desperation, trying to catch
her. Wet, silken skin kissed his fingertips. She was utterly naked, covered with
sweat. The thought of her naked in the jungle aroused him to the point of
insanity. He pleaded disjointedly with her. For a brief, heady moment she thrust
herself against him. He felt her teeth on his earlobe and her prickly little
Venus mound pressing into his leg. He clutched her close, trying to tip her head
back so he could taste her lips

And she slid out of his arms.

The air was thin and empty.

He stumbled after her, lowing wordlessly.

And he lost his balance, and sat down heavily in a stream. Lukewarm water
quenched his arousal. Hyacinth roots tangled his ankles. He cursed aloud,
repetitively.

"Can I help, master?" asked one of the bearers' voices. Callused hands fastened
on Charles' elbows. The voice was deferential, but Charles heard an unmistakable
note of amusement.

This might be the man who had fled the clearing earlier. Or it might not.

In any case, there was nothing to be gained by acting like a guilty school boy.

"Get me out of this piss-gully!" he growled, straggling to his feet. "But don't
pack up the phonograph. In fact, change the cylinder. I shall stay out the rest
of the night."

When you sleep during the day, you sleep close to the surface. You have dreams
you think are real. But when you wake, the images evaporate, and you feel
vaguely contaminated, the way you do after Charles has his way with you. Your
pillows smell as stale as your mouth tastes. Flies hover around the cot. You
pull out the silver watch on its chain and it confirms your worst fears: it is
the middle of a sticky, withering, overblown afternoon. You have spoiled your
chances for sleep tonight. The hours of darkness yawn ahead, punctuated only by
the possible return of your husband-- and that is such a distant possibility:
he's entrenched in the jungle, determined to stay there until he finds what he
seeks. From the natives' reports, he has not slept in three days. You imagine
him with his hair wild, his cheeks splotchy, and you feel a terrible longing to
spruce him up and make him eat, but you know he would not have you. Tears
squeeze past your lashes. You plop down on the edge of the cot, sobbing loudly,
longing for someone, anyone, to overhear you. Then you fall limply back onto the
cot, clutching the watch like a talisman.

Sunlight comes through the roof of the tent, bathing the folding teak furniture,
the scattered lacy garments, the toilet articles, the maid's empty cot. Outside
the tightly laced door-flaps, the jungle is silent: it too sleeps during the
day. You have no idea where the hired servants are, not even the girl Elizabeth.
The shadows of the trees on the roof are spooky, unmoving. Aloneness breathes
down your neck. Your heart beats fast in panic. But drowsiness overtakes you,
and suddenly it all seems too exhausting to bother with.

You doze.

He is tall, brown-skinned, eager. Dolores woke to find his hand sliding inside
her decolletage, his thumb and index finger pinching her nipple. His arms were
already around her, his mouth dipping to hers. She thrust her hands against his
chest, yelping fearfully, but his smile flashed over his face and she was at
once entranced and reassured.

"My husband. . . " she murmured, though she ceased to struggle. "My husband. . .
"

The man shook his head, brows wrinkling, dismissing Charles as an object of
hilarity. His irreverence charmed her. She smiled tentatively.

Her earlier tossing and turning had flattened her pillows; gently he lifted her
up, plumping them up, then laid her down as carefully as if she were a doll. His
knee had found its way between hers. It slid steadily upward, easing her legs
apart, crumpling her dress around her hips, as his fingers worked on the bodice
of her gown, tearing the fabric seam by seam. Frowning, he glanced at his
finger: a bead of blood stood out at the comer of a ripped nail. "Let me," she
whispered. Drawing his hand to her mouth, she sucked the saltiness from the hurt
finger. It made her head spin.

He smiled. Taking back his hand, he reached under her, unhooked her corset and
eased it aside.

"Ohhh," she gasped. "Ohhh blessed Lord."

His hands slid up under her arms, moving them above her head, and he pinioned
her wrists with one hand as his mouth moved down her neck, over her collarbone,
between her breasts, leaving a chilly trail in the hot air. His hair smelled
wild, like earth. She quivered. "Charles!"

"He'll never know, if you don't tell him," the man said forcefully. His voice
was melodic, angry. He had a Shikaroan accent. "Don't even think about him! Just
be yourself!" He grinned up at her, and ducked his head, and loose black hair
brushed her stomach as his mouth spiraled farther down, his tongue wetting her
stomach and her secret hair. Now her hands were free. She clutched his
shoulders, pulling his head deeper between her thighs, spreading her legs for
him as he mouthed her private lips, his teeth nibbling, invoking pain that was
not pain, not pain, not --

And he pulled away. The air licked coldly against her privates. Language lost,
she begged him. And he rose over her, his eyes shining, and before his weight
came down on her she glimpsed the blood-thick phallus. His chest seared her
nipples. His mouth locked over hers, still flavored with her sex. His organ
plunged into her, spearing into her very core, impaling her. She yelped into his
mouth. Surely with Charles it had never felt this way!

But the pleasure -- the pleasure --

And she forgot Charles. Forgot him entirely as her lover's thrusts slammed her
into the cot, and her arms flopped out to the sides, powerless to stop him, not
that she wanted to -- not that she wanted to -- and she was kissing him back,
biting his lips as his thrusts grew shorter and faster, the friction exciting
her, and just before he erupted she floated away, frozen, stiff, eyes
half-lidded on a wave of ecstasy.

They lay together, their breath growing even. At last he eased out of her. She
twitched the sheet up to cover them. He crooked one leg over her, kissing her
forehead, reaching lazily down, rubbing that place with lazy, expert fingers.
She convulsed against him, muffling her gasps in his shoulder. This time it was
sweet, sweet, a blow of pure delight.

When she could stand no more, they slept.

And she started awake, crying aloud, weeping for something, she did not know
what. The shadows of the trees had not moved. The flies buzzed under the bright
roof of the tent. The flaps hung open, their laces dangling. Her dress and
corset -- ravaged as if a wild beast had attacked her-- pooled behind her on the
cot, the discarded husks of a cicada. Her nether regions throbbed. Scarcely
believing, she reached one hand between her legs, and pulled out her silver
watch, chain first, smeared with fluid.

She thrust it in revulsion down the side of the cot.

"Elizabeth!" she screamed. "Elizabeth!"

It seemed hours before the maid came running, her bare feet slapping the earth,
bringing the scent of wood-smoke. She had been cooking the evening meal, from
the smell of her.

"Help me dress," Dolores commanded, trying to disguise her disgust. "I want to
come help you with the meal." Hastily, she covered the torn clothes with the
sheet. She would dispose of them later. "I daresay the meat could use a dash of
Worcester."

"Missy is flushed. She did not sleep well?" Elizabeth's English was
mission-school correct, like that of most of the natives.

"I slept poorly. The heat is unbearable. Close the flaps, for the Lord's sake! I
shall want undergarments, too."

Elizabeth's silky black hair fell about her face as she rummaged in the open
trunk. "It isn't wise to sleep alone, Missy, in the jungle, far from others who
are also sleeping. If Missy had unpleasant dreams, perhaps she should not go to
sleep again until I, too, am here."

"You weren't here last night!" Dolores said, fastening on another aggravation.
"I woke and called for water, and you weren't in your bed!"

Elizabeth swallowed, losing her composure fast. "I-- I was -- I thought I heard
a noise outside!"

Dolores smiled humorlessly. She did not know what Elizabeth had really been up
to, and she did not care. "Has anyone else . . . had unpleasant dreams."

Elizabeth looked up. Moist lips, unreadable eyes; a plaid school gift dress
pulled taut over bouncing breasts. She nodded. "Some of my ushichi have
dreamed." A smile played briefly over her mouth for a moment. "I, I do not
dream."

Dolores resisted the urge to slap her.

Perched on her camp stool above the circle of Shikaroans that evening she gnawed
a haunch of aye-aye, trying not to spatter her napkin with sauce. It was the
last damask serviette she had brought from London. Covertly she examined the
face of each bearer, trying to recognize the man who had come so confidently
into her tent and changed her forever. Had it been any of them?

Or had it been a dream, and had she lain rubbing her watch between her legs,
plucking out the stitches of her dress, oblivious to her own shamelessness?

The brown faces in the firelight all looked alike to her. They were laughing and
joking in their own tongue. Traitorously, Elizabeth had joined in. Dolores
glanced up at the star-speckled night, feeling terribly alone. What is wrong
with me? she thought forlornly. If he came again, I would let him take me
willingly.

The truth lit up her mind like burning magnesium.

Shikaroa has stripped me to the raw fruit.

The knowledge dizzied her. Panicking she rejected it, setting herself afloat on
a choppy sea of self-disgust. The fire flared, splashing the circle with light,
and the bearers lifted their voices and began to chant. Harsh, inharmonious
sonorities. She started violently. "Elizabeth! What -- what are they singing?"

Elizabeth had been chanting too, brows drawn together, her voice swooping above
the thunder of the men's voices, but she broke off to answer Dolores. "A ward,
Missy Ruthven."

"A ward against what?"

The maid shuddered. "She who wants us to pander to her. She who will not be
denied. She who wants blood."

"It's all too, too horrible!" Dolores burst out. She stood up and swept away
from the circle. Part of her wanted to join in, that was the worst of it. She
threw herself down in her tent, tears of anger starting from her eyes.

He felt quite alert tonight. He had not slept in seventy hours: how much more
did she expect from him? He stood erect, cranking the phonograph, shifting from
one foot to the other, humming a little tune, indulging in a slightly delirious
fantasy of himself as Chairman of the Royal Geographic Society.

When he heard his name-- her voice caressing the final s like a pet snake -- he
turned around quite slowly, determined this time to keep his head.

"Mother?"

But he wasn't expecting the mother-entity; his loins were already heating in
anticipation of the full-bodied, utterly corporeal woman who had taunted him
before.

"Yesss. . . " she breathed.

Oh Lord. Oh Lord. Charles almost wept as he straggled to contain his exultation.
He took a step forward and, keeping the phonograph turning with one hand,
flicked the switch he had his men rig two days ago.

The floodlight over his head spattered sparks, and chemical light poured into
the clearing turning the ground into a black-and-white mosaic, and she fell to
her knees and protected her head with her hands, her bottom in the air, a
ludicrous picture of guilt. "Oh master Ruthven!" she whimpered, "Don't hurt me
-- don't hurt me!"

Charles' hand dropped numbly to his side. His mouth felt stiff, so stiff that he
could hardly form words. "Elizabeth. Dolly's maid. That's not you, is it?"

She nodded violently, keeping her head covered. "Yes. It is. Oh please, please
let me go--" And without waiting for permission, she got up and flung herself at
the jungle. She was stark naked, lithe, with a cascade of black curls loose down
her back. Charles lunged at her and caught her by one arm. She went limp in his
grasp, hanging her head, blubbering in earnest.

"Do you mean that it was you the other night, too?" His mind worked furiously,
trying to stay ahead of paralysis.

"Oh, please -- yes --"

"Why?" he said bitterly. "Why did you want me to believe I had found what I was
looking for? You do know what I was looking for? You did do this deliberately?"

"My ushichi know what you seek. I do it for them. They not want you to find
ese." She shivered. Distractedly, Charles shrugged out of his safari jacket and
draped it around her shoulders. He was afraid he knew what ese was. If the
natives had wanted him to lead them out of the jungle so badly that they had
resorted to making this innocent girl play a part in their deception -- then
Governor Thomas had been right. They feared something.

And Charles was right, after all -- although not in the way he had imagined.
There was something to fear.

The floodlight fizzled and went out. A dark wind gusted softly through the
clearing, fingering his hair.

Elizabeth clung to him, sobbing noiselessly. A dead silence fell over the
forest, like the shadow of a tremendous wing. Gradually Charles became aware of
a roaring noise, like the sea, like a thousand small voices. It was the noise
that one imagined the stars might make falling out of the sky. It was the
twittering of a million sparrows. It came closer, paralyzing him with an
atavistic fear of moving in case he should be sensed --

He cursed in terror, and scrambled for the backup floodlight.

White light bathed the clearing.

The night sounds of the jungle hit him like a merciful wave.

Elizabeth sagged, weeping harder, and in her sobs he heard a note of terror.

"That's quite enough waterworks!" Charles snapped. "I shan't feel any more
kindly disposed to you whether you cry your eyes out or not. Stop it!"

She looked at him, startled into holding back her sobs. Her black eyes, framed
with wet, clumped lashes, were uncommonly beautiful. "What -what are you going
to do to me?"

"Mmm." He frowned. He felt ashamed of his abruptness. The tetra sentiens of his
dreams did not exist: there was nothing but Elizabeth with her hot skin and her
wet lashes

But that did not mean all was lost.

The nature of the proof that he expected to find on Shikaroa had been his
secret. The phonograph -- brought in secret. If he brought back something other
than what he had secretly hoped for, who would ever know? Certainly not the
Society. Nor the public, whose appetite for freaks, curiosities, and scientific
discoveries dubbed The Greatest In Living Memory seemed insatiable.

The whirl inside Charles' mind cleared, like muddy water settling. For the first
time he could see his way clear to that seat of state in the Society.

It was almost relieving to fall back on everyday, tangible methods of achieving
his goals instead of straining to pin down a vision.

"Elizabeth? What will you do for me, to make up for deceiving me?"

"Anything, master," she said eagerly. "Anything, be you don't hurt my ushichi
--"

Charles dismissed her ushichi with a wave of his hand. "Your English is much
better than you're letting on. I've heard you talk to Dolly. Save that pidgin
for public appearances -- it's what they will expect at Home."

"Master?"

"Oh, stop pretending, girl." He sat down on the leaves, in the comfortable
brightness of the floodlight, and pulled her down facing him. A fat slug
splatted from a tree branch to the ground and began to inch hurriedly toward the
shade. "I need you to play a parts" Charles said. "I want you to leave Shikaroa
and come back to London with me. Your name will be Earth Incarnate. All you need
to do is put on the native costume of Shikaroa and behave as though you don't
know any English. Make some mystical gestures. Sing some of your native songs.
You'll be famous, and so will I. And when the public gets tired of you, you can
go home. Or wherever you want."

A smile began to curve her mouth. "I think I like the sound of this," she said.

"Call me Charles." He could not take his eyes off the shifting shadows in the
collar of the jacket.

"But what about Mrs. Ruthven? How will she like this plan? She loves you dearly.
She may be jealous, even though I am to be only your employee."

"Oh," Charles said tiredly. "Oh. Dolly." He shut his eyes, and then opened them
again. "She's a dear girl, really. Very pliant. No trouble at all."

Elizabeth smiled. "Charles. I think we . . . how do you say? I think we see eye
to eye. Ever since I was a little girl at the mission school, I have wanted to
have lots of money."

"Yes?"

"When the English first came to Shikaroas, I could not get any of the coins
Governor Thomas scattered on the beach, because I was too small to fight for
them. It was then I knew what I wanted." Black eyes stared guilelessly at
Charles. "Lost of money. And an English lover."

Dolores emerged from her tent next morning, pushing her hair off a sweaty
forehead. She had lain awake all night, unable to sleep for wondering if he
would come. And he had not come, and the dawn filtering through the roof had
brought pure, wordless despair. And Elizabeth was missing, so that Dolores had
to arrange her toilet by herself this morning. The girl was impossible!

She blinked. The camp had vanished. Circles of pale ground surrounded the
earth-damped fire-pit. The sky brooded gray and high over the crowns of the
trees. On the northern fringe of the clearing, bearers loaded the mules with
bundles. A breeze smelling of water hyacinths lifted Dolores' hair. "What are
you doing?" she shouted to them. "Where is Mr. Ruthyen?"

The natives looked at each other. Finally one of them came over. "He said he is
ready to leave. We waited for you to wake. We may take the tent now?" He barked
an order over his shoulder. Two more men slipped around Dolores and started
jimmying out the stakes.

"You may not!" Dolores felt tears coming to her eyes. "All my things are --" She
trailed off, defeated. What did it matter if they exposed her lacy underpinnings
to the air? What had she left to expose? She said in a voice that was almost a
whisper, "Where is my husband?"

"Missy, he asked us not to -- "

"He's not in his hide is he?"

"No."

"Tell me!"

Sullenly, the man pointed.

She gathered up her skirt and walked to the edge of the clearing, pushed her way
between thick, water-laden leaves. The temperature had increased since
yesterday, as if the clouds had let the heat down to the earth, but not out
again. The ground was spongy with excess water. Lurid shoots poked up through
the rapidly disintegrating leaf-mold. Dolores' feet were soon sopping. Once she
stepped on a snake that slithered with little splashing noises into a tangle of
vines. She flung her arm round a massive trunk, holding on as if for dear life.

And hanging there she saw Elizabeth, not ten yards away, writhing on a spread
tarpaulin. Charles sprawled on top of her, sucking greedily first on one
engorged nipple and then the other. Elizabeth must have seen Dolores: her face
went blank. Charles continued to feed on her breasts. Staring past him, she
seized a handful of his hair and twisted his head around. His mouth opened.
Then, hastily, he hitched himself away from Elizabeth and struggled into his
trousers. A brilliant flush rose from his collarbone to his ears. As if she
hadn't seen it all before.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Ruthven!" Elizabeth moaned. "I'm sorry!" She seized her plaid
dress and pulled it over herself like a sheet, huddling into a ball, tucking her
limbs under the scrap of fabric.

"It's not your fault, Lizzy!" Charles said. Now that his shame was hidden by
clothes, he seemed to be recovering fast. "Dolly, what are you doing here?" He
advanced toward her, pointing a finger at her chest, heckling her. "You must
have come with the bearers. Where are they? I told them not to move until we
came back! I told them to let you sleep!"

Dolores' limbs were watery with fear. "They did let me sleep. How could you do
this?" she whispered. The ground seemed to be slipping from under her feet. She
felt as if she might slide off at any moment. Charles had always been her
support, and now there was nothing. Wisteria Avenue and the stately, strained
life she'd led there seemed to be a sandy spit, precarious footing now rapidly
being eaten away by the twin tides of her childhood and Shikaroa.

Charles spat with anger as he talked. "You were brought up to be intelligent,
not feminine, Dolly! Don't you know that was why I married you? I needed a
helpmeet! And then you even rejected your intelligence. You should be grateful
I've stayed faithful to you this long! You couldn't satisfy any man!"

She felt nothing but pity for him. He had betrayed her with Elizabeth--but he
had already betrayed her with his theory, no matter how hard she had tried to
convince herself otherwise. Before that, with his obsessive scientific
dabblings. The process of desertion had been happening ever since they married.
The only thing different now was that this mistress was flesh and blood,
reducing his infidelity from a selfless dedication to an easy, common sin.

The scent of hyacinths was intense. There must be a brook somewhere nearby, for
she thought she could hear water trickling. "I blame myself, Charles," she said
over the noise in her head. "Well, maybe I blame my upbringing. But that is me.
I know that now. I blame myself for being such a good wife. For denying myself.
I thought it was my duty not to complain." She laughed, shaking her head. "I
revelled in duty."

He looked pitifully confused at her lack of anger. She appeared to have deflated
him. He stood there with the mud squishing between his bare toes, his braces
trailing in the mud, his hands working emptily by his sides. She remembered how
those fingers had used to brash her arm as he passed by her chair, rub her neck
as she perused one of his accounts. Had those touches meant anything at all ? Or
might he just as easily have caressed the chair itself? He had taken her for
granted so completely that he had never even stopped to wonder if she needed
tenderness.

"Please forgive me," he said now. "Please." His face was as hopeless as that of
a little boy who knows he will be punished. "I love you, Dolly. I need you."

He did need her. She had always comforted herself with that thought. But though
her whole body ached with battling passions, she could not apply them to the
matter at hand. She could not make herself care about him, nor feel sorry for
his loss. Fear had given way to a pressing need to be free of him, of the whole
wearying mess. Unable to express her desperation in words, she stepped around
him, into the forest. The leaves closed behind her.

"Dolly!"

She started to run. His steps slowed, halted, then turned back to the clearing.

Her breath sounded harsh in her ears. Lianas lashed her face and bare hands. Her
heeled boots chopped into the soggy ground. Time and time again she blundered
through streams, soaking skirt and petticoat, until she heard a voice in her
ear, as calm as if it came from the eye of the storm inside her head.

"Dolores."

She fell to a halt, panting.

She stood on the verge of a lake of black, scum-covered water. Jungle trees
nodded over the shores, their roots clawing into the water. The clear center of
the lake reflected the sky. A powerful smell of lotus-flowers emanated from
several white beauties blooming amidst their leaves.

"Dolores!"

And she recognized the voice. Well-springs of emotion that had been paved over
since before she married broke open. She turned, half-choking, and blurted,
"Father--"

For a moment it was Mr. Shaw. The gray mustache, the immaculate collar, the
malacca cane over one arm.

Then the clothing dissolved. Her lover seized her hands in his. Behind him, the
jungle melted into a green mist.

Somehow, she kept herself from sagging into his arms. He tugged at her. She
frowned. "It was so easy to leave him," she said, straggling for words. "It
seems wrong that it should be so easy. I've been trying not to give way to these
impulses for so long. and if we hadn't come to Shikaroa, I would still be safe.
Miserable, but safe."

"Safe -- or jailed?" he asked softly.

His black eyes were full of concern. She wanted to make love to him. No, she
wanted to sleep in his arms like a child. No, she wanted-- "I don't know," she
said, almost crying. "I don't know!"

"You've come full circle. Back to where you started." Gently, he pulled her into
his arms. This time, she permitted it. His fingers rubbed over her back. "Not
many people ever get the chance to know themselves this way."

"But I didn't want it," she sobbed into his chest. "I never wanted it. Charles
did. Why didn't it come to him? Instead of me?"

"He wasn't ready. He was so certain of what he wanted to see that he couldn't
see the truth when it pressed dose around him." He kissed her.

"Oh, lord. Oh lord." Crying quietly, powerless to resist any more, she let him
pull her down to her knees. His fingers were soft as leaves creeping over her
face. The cold was a shock, but his caresses soothed her shivering, and she lay
still, breathing evenly. She thought she might just sleep this time.

He smelled pungent, but without a hint of unpleasantness, not like Charles.
Sweet. Like water hyacinths. Like lotuses. "Lie still," he whispered, and as the
blackness crept up and over her she started up, crying, panicking as the air
swirled out of her lungs in a series of gasps. But then she remembered she
wanted this, she wanted to sleep. She let herself sink. Soft. Deeper. Deeper.

She did not even feel it when she bobbed to the surface again, face down.