Probably what happened, the trouble before he crossed the mountain, had influenced him. He was contrary enough that to have obstacles apparently put in his way made him more determined to press on.
The slopes of the south side of the mountain were lightly wooded, the trees folding back to those farther mountains south and west, that had grown so vague in the dusk, as if they were only paintings, which ran.
A clearing dipped through the wood. A bit of the sun had fallen into it during the sunset and now burned on a nest of wood. A firelit wagon hulked nearby, with a scrawny, moth-eaten dog tied to the wheel, but no horse in sight. Dro had come on the scene abruptly, and paused. The dog, scenting or hearing him belatedly, set up a racket, trying to offset its aberration by sheer volume. Dro was faintly amused by this, also alert to see some man come around the wagon or between the trees, brandishing axe or knife or staff. Instead, a woman appeared, and empty handed.
She stood and looked at Parl Dro across the forty-foot space between them, and gave him one of the great shocks of his existence. For she was Silky, Silky to the life—or would it be the death? And worse than seeing a mere child again, this was Silky as she might have grown to be, a woman of early middle years, a little coarsened, a little fined, but the scintillant hair still like molten honey in the firelight, spilled over her back, her breasts.
Before he knew it, he had begun to walk toward her, not even really wanting to, but impelled.
The dog dropped its histrionics to a guttural growling, and the woman who was Silky retreated to the wheel, and put her hand out ready to loosen the rope that kept the dog tied.
When Dro came on, she shouted at him.
“Who are you? How dare you sneak up on me? Don’t you know my man’ll soon be here and see to you?”
Obviously a bluff. The dray horse was gone, and the man with it. That meant a longish journey at best.
“I don’t mean you any harm,” Dro called.
He breathed more easily since she had shouted, for her voice was not like Silky’s voice, even allowing for the intervening years.
Yet her face—the closer he got, the more it seemed to him that Silky was here. Between one step and the next, he had the terrifying meditation that maybe a ghost could not only cheat death, solidify, appear to all the senses to be mortal flesh, but, into the bargain—the ultimate cheat—could appear to mature, to age. Why not? If a ghost could survive, blotting out the nature of its death, swindling itself eventually into crediting its own “true” life, then surely it must be capable of supposing itself into growing up and growing old, along with the rest of living humanity.
But he had destroyed Silky’s link. Released her—murdered her—
The woman was beautiful. Richly beautiful. There was a heavy abundance to her, despite her lean and fragile build, that found its utmost expression in the welter of honey hair. Her skin, summer-tanned, was honey too, the small lines like cracks over gold leaf. On her hand was a brass ring. There really was a man somewhere, then. But not here.
Dro slipped off the hood of his cloak. Walking slowly, his lameness was minimised, and he was graceful. He kept his hands loose, free of the mantle, showing that he himself had no weapon ready or considered.
The woman stared hard in his face, then suddenly relaxed. She took her hand off the dog’s rope and looked down at it.
“Hush,” she said. “It’s all right.”
“Thank you,” said Dro, “for taking me on trust.”
“Only a fool would judge you a robber,” she said boldly. “As for rape, would you ever have to?” She coloured at her own words, but met his eyes as she said it. “Where are you making for?”
“Over the mountain.”