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"Bad ones are not reborn..." Both were walking very quickly now.

"Destroyed," Akiva said.

"So the world becomes better and better." She smiled a little.

"The best are taken and the worst are taken."

"But our souls grow older and they learn," she said timidly. "From being here so many times, trapped in bodies. Alone."

Akiva turned his face away. She put her hand on his arm and his body seemed to vanish, leaving nothing but the place she touched. They stopped walking and stared earnestly at one another, until Berthe let her hand fall and they both went on as quickly as before.

At length she said dreamily, "I was looking at the picture in the temple where the Daughters of Autumn hide the infant Spring.

Do you think...If the daughters had obeyed their father, wintertime would never end. Goddesses know when to disobey. Is that right?"

Akiva said nothing. She said, "But then there is the betrayal of the Lost God, Verloring.

His friends disobeyed; they betrayed him to the evil one. And they lost him. And they were gods, too."

They stopped. "They knew," Akiva said. "They were divine and omnis--they could foresee the loss of Verloring from Ayekar." He paused. His jaw trembled. "They were not like human beings, who would have believed until the instant of his capture that they were Verloring's true friends."

"Until the instant," Berthe repeated. They looked at one another, pleading for restraint. She said, "But gods foresee everything, don't they? They see the time when the world will be good, and see the little godling lead him back to Ayekar."

Akiva walked on. She continued beside him, light and shadow racing over them as they walked faster and faster, each trying to breathe normally, both almost running. At last, tired by the heavy plank across her shoulder, Berthe turned off the road, panting, "I go through the fields from here. Good morning, Father Akiva."

"Good bye," Akiva said. He broke into a run. She watched him.He could not stop running. He ran faster, his back and neck held stiff by her gaze. When he rounded a curve and was out of her sight, he sat on a rock and sobbed in exhaustion.

The boy was dying. Akiva saw from the moment he entered the hut that his efforts would be vain.

The child was so worn that the grandmother who sat mopping his brow with a wet cheesebag looked in the darkness like his daughter. He stared at the fire, moving occasionally in the tiny gestures Akiva knew were the soul preparing to flee the body. Something hampered it. They must have given him herbal medicines. It is we who sleep and he who wakens, Akiva thought. When the first man Rani grasped the hands of Fate and demanded prophecy, the reply was torn forth, "Man, you sleep, but you will waken." Torn forth in agony. The prophecy bespoke knowledge even Fate himself could barely stand.

The mother came in from her work while Akiva began the farewell chant. He thought of questioning her about the herbal witchcraft, but he knew she would tell him nothing so he continued to sing.

Afterward, the mothers fell to weeping. Akiva started homeward through the ill-kept field. As he walked away the man of the house went in and the lamentation increased.

It was late afternoon when Akiva returned to his hut. Low-lying rainclouds, tinged deep with blue and purple, gathered at the eastern horizon. The sky faded behind them from pink to grey. Wind among the grasses promised rain and new growth. The roof's shadow pointed up the broad trunk of the uko that shaded the house at midday, the shadows of its near leaves cast upon the ones behind to leave the edges shining. The leaves are transformed, Akiva thought. Possessed. The soul embraces them although they are nothing.

Possession. That could be it. A god was persecuting him. He could think of no reason why he should be chosen, since all human beings fell short. It was true that he had hated his mother and father for dying and leaving him alone, that he had been ungrateful to the women who cared for him, that he disdained the city people because they scorned the peasants' priest, and the peasants bored him. He had feared, almost hated Shurat's wife until she died, and as for Shurat himself -- Shurat was dead.

Some god, seeing his pride and disdain, had trapped him with it. A woman was sent to him from people worse than animals, herself animal when whe was among them, but when she came to him they invested her with the grace of Fea.

He had heard somewhere that she did not want to marry away from her parents. She would be near him until she died. What a trap they had set him, a goddess he could never cease to love. He would have no peace.

He could not have loved a goddess. The gods in Ayekar were his persecuters. Berthe could be no goddess. She was human or illusion. He had touched her, smelled her, seen her as a child. As a child...if she were illusion, all must have been foreordained at her birth, though he had not sinned yet. And what if she were a human being?

The light had faded. Akiva went inside and lit a taper to study. He was a priest, he would cure them both. His legs trembled while he removed his sandals at the door.

On the desk lay two small cup-shaped ugewa flowers, blue as -- he thought it before he could stop himself -- blue as her eyes, and bound together by an orange hair, thick and radiant, that must be hers. He stared, unable to close his mouth or cry out. He looked into the taper's flame and remembered a dream.

Some nights ago Akiva had dreamed that he was talking with Berthe in the temple, safe and calm, he seated behind the ceremonial screen and she before it as was proper, but suddenly the screen became invisible. She talked on and he watched as her words trailed to the floor in flowering vines that swayed with her movements. Her face shone in the light of a torch behind him. Leaves drifting in through the window blew past. He heard the sound of rushing water and the leaves turned to fish. The flowering vines floated toward him, then wrapped tight around Akiva's legs and surged upward, seeking his throat. He groaned aloud and dropped the taper.

"Berthe!" he whispered. He was certain. She could be no peasant; she was an incarnation of earth, outside the law. He could do only as she commanded. At the same time he knew she was a peasant and felt the pull of his soul's yearning downward.

He turned to the door, though where he would have run he did not know. Something moved in the half-light. It was she. She stood in his doorway, her wide hands quiet at her sides, and he could not look away. He raised his arms as at the beginning of the wedding dance, then stopped and let them fall. He said the greeting spoken by the groom to the bride, "I hail the prevision of Ayekar."

"Through you I grow worthy," she answered, extending her right hand. He took it and kissed the palm, then, pushing back her sleeve, kissed her wrist and the inside of her elbow. He had not smiled because he did not want to deceive her about the seriousness of what they did, but now he thought he should reassure her. Was she frightened? Her heart beat fast; he could feel it against his lips. He decided to smile but could not do it.

She wore a kerchief tied under her chin. He undid it. Red-gold hair fell over his face in a quiet rush. Her skin was so smooth to the touch that he thought it must be a dream. With her hair around them he could no longer see her, but he kept his mouth close by her ear and murmured the names of flowers and goddesses as they came to mind.

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CONTINUE..................... CLANDESTINE LOVERS ..................... MEANWHILE, ON ANOTHER PLANET.....................

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