"Not until Reaping?" That was three months - a lifetime, it seemed to her. Susan tried not to show her delight at this reprieve. She'd thought Thorin would put an end to her virginity by moonrise the next night. She wasn't blind to the way he looked at her.
Rhea, meanwhile, was looking at the moon, seeming to calculate. Her hand went to the long tail of Susan's hair and stroked it. Susan bore this as well as she could, and just when she felt she could bear it no longer, Rhea dropped her hand back to her side and nodded. "Aye, not just Reaping, but true fin de ano - Fair-Night, tell him. Say that he may have you after the bonfire. You understand?"
"True fin de ano, yes." She could barely contain her joy.
"When the fire in Green Heart bums low and the last of the red-handed men are ashes," Rhea said. "Then and not until then. You must tell him so."
"I will."
The hand came out and began to stroke her hair again. Susan bore it.
After such good news, she thought, it would have been mean-spirited to do otherwise. "The time between now and Reaping you will use to meditate, and to gather your forces to produce the male child the Mayor wants ... or mayhap just to ride along the Drop and gather the last flowers of your maidenhood. Do you understand?"
"Yes." She dropped a curtsey. "Thankee-sai."
Rhea waved this off as if it were a flattery. "Speak not of what passed between us, mind. "Tis no one's affair but our own."
"I won't. And our business is done?"
"Well ... mayhap there's one more small thing ..." Rhea smiled to show it was indeed small, then raised her left hand in front of Susan's eyes with three fingers together and one apart. Glimmering in the fork between was a silver medallion, seemingly produced from nowhere. The girl's eyes fastened on it at once. Until Rhea spoke a single guttural word, that was.
Then they closed.
5
Rhea looked at the girl who stood asleep on her stoop in the moonlight. As she replaced the medallion within her sleeve (her fingers were old and bunchy, but they moved dexterously enough when it was required, oh, aye), the businesslike expression fell from her face, and was replaced by a look of squint-eyed fury. Kick me into the fire, would you, you trull? Tattle to Thorin? But her threats and impudence weren't the worst. The worst had been the expression of revulsion on her face when she had pulled back from Rhea's touch.
Too good for Rhea, she was! And thought herself too good for Thorin as well, no doubt, she with sixteen years' worth of fine blonde hair hanging down from her head, hair Thorin no doubt dreamed of plunging his hands into even as he plunged and reared and plowed down below.
She couldn't hurt the girl, much as she wanted to and much as the girl deserved it; if nothing else, Thorin might take the glass ball away from her, and Rhea couldn't bear that. Not yet, anyway. So she could not hurt the girl, but she could do something that would spoil his pleasure in her, at least for awhile.
Rhea leaned close to the girl, grasped the long braid which lay down her back, and began to slip it through her fist, enjoying its silky smoothness.
"Susan," she whispered. "Do'ee hear me, Susan, daughter of Patrick?"
"Yes." The eyes did not open.
"Then listen." The light of the Kissing Moon fell on Rhea's face and turned it into a silver skull. "Listen to me well, and remember. Remember in the deep cave where yer waking mind never goes."
She pulled the braid through her hand again and again. Silky and ?| smooth. Like the little bud between her legs.
"Remember," the girl in the doorway said.
"Aye. There's something ye'll do after he takes yer virginity. Ye'll do it right away, without even thinking about it. Now listen to me, Susan, daughter of Patrick, and hear me very well."
Still stroking the girl's hair, Rhea put her wrinkled lips to the smooth cup of Susan's ear and whispered in the moonlight.
CHAPTER III AMEETING ON THE ROAD
1
She had never in her life had such a strange night, and it was probably not surprising that she didn't hear the rider approaching from behind until he was almost upon her.