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But though the islander was right (it was of course possible to learn new
things) the course of such learning was often tedious, and never more so than
now, when Pierrette wanted not only to find out how to locate Minho's Isles,
but how she was going to get back to the boat as well.
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Despite her efforts to guide the speakers in fruitful directions, each one
went off on tangents of his own.
It was really little different than listening to her father and his friends in
the wine shop. Glancing around herself surreptitiously, she decided that this
town was of no great extent, without walls or gates at the ends of the four
streets that converged on the fountain. When it was time to go, she would have
only to sidle away from this gathering and make her way along the southerly
avenue, and she should emerge
within sight of the sea and the stranded boat. There was no sign of the woman
who had led her here.
Getting away should pose no problem, so . . .
* * *
Gustave had picked up his mistress's scent at the rear of the building, having
nibbled his way around it.
He set off at a walk, his nose low to the cobbles. There were few scents to
distract him the aroma of storm-washed salt and a faint reek of carrion, not
strong enough to make him uneasy. As far as his nose was concerned, this city
was entirely unoccupied, though his eyes reported the presence of numerous
people conversing on street corners and in the moonlight. They were not
entirely real, as far as he was concerned.
Being a donkey, having experienced all the vicissitudes that might plague a
lowly beast of burden, Gustave had a low opinion of people in general, who
seldom carried bowls of tasty oats with them, but often bore sharp sticks and
resented his innocent nibbling in their dooryard herb patches or upon the
espaliered pear trees against their garden walls. Thus he kept to the shadows,
even though he was not convinced that the people he avoided were really there.
For a person, perhaps, seeing was believing, but for him, smelling came closer
to the truth.
* * *
The topic had shifted while Pierrette was considering other things. "There
have been many such cataclysms," said a tall woman whose pleated cotton gown
and smooth, dark hair reminded Pierrette of the Egyptian paintings on the
inner walls of ibn Saul's house in Massalia. "Several Roman towns were
destroyed when Vesuvius became angry, and the great mountain of Sicilia is
never entirely quiet. Such things are surely entirely natural phenomena."
"The Fortunate Isles are said to have been born in such an eruption,"
Pierrette interjected.
The sleek woman seemed annoyed at her interruption. "Nothing but a Phoenix
could survive such burning heat," she said flatly.
"Ah, yes the Phoenix," said a man dressed entirely in a patchwork of furs,
with a necklace of huge teeth around his neck. "Did you know that not only the
Phoenix, but 'Centaurs' as well, all originated among my own Scythian people?"
"Again, I say, those are mythical things, not seen in nature," the Egyptian
snapped.
"Not so, not so," said the furry one. "The myths arose to explain the
actuality. The centaurs were really horsemen, observed and described by
peoples who had never seen men astride animals. The Phoenix was the 'magic' of
flint and steel, observed by ignorant folk who could not make fire, but had to
keep it always burning, or lose it."
"Bah! We are not discussing how nature's clarity becomes twisted by ignorance.
Tell that to the druid
Boromanos over there. He and his friends are interested in that kind of
nonsense."
Pierrette, who was very interested in the evolution of myths, and the changing
realities they seemed to represent, wanted to draw the man Boromanos aside,
but she got no chance. A brass bell was ringing somewhere down the street.
"Dawn comes!" someone cried mournfully. "Dawn, and the hours pass. It is time.
It is time."
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Everywhere the babble of animated voices that had been a constant underlying
music, like the rushing of a nearby brook, ceased abruptly. "What's going on?"
Pierrette asked the Egyptian woman.
"Dawn comes," she said, as if that were explanation enough. She walked away.
Everywhere, others were doing likewise. The fountain square emptied rapidly as
people strode briskly down the streets and into the close-packed buildings.
Pierrette looked this way and that. She was alone in the plaza.
Dawn? But because the moon was almost full, and was still high overhead,
morning must be hours away.
Or was it? She glanced upward, but now clouds scudded overhead in the
darkness, and she saw no moon or stars at all. She felt a hand on her arm.
"Come," said her red-haired hostess. "It is time for rest."
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