stood not just in the wards of the house but in a circle of protection. Nothing magical could cross this circle, nothing less than a deity or the Nameless itself. The hungry ones that were slaughtering people would have been stopped by it; they weren't deities yet.
The yard had been planted within an inch of its life like most yards in Southern California. It was an abandoned lemon tree grove, now. The small trees were covered in dark green leaves. It was too late in the season for blossoms. I mourned that. But the moment I walked between the close crowding trees and the dry, crumbling grass and leaves underfoot, I knew this was it. The trees whispered among themselves like elderly ladies talking of the past softly with their heads close together in the warm, warm sun. The eucalyptus that lined the street just outside the garden wall was a heavy spicy scent that rode the air to mingle with the smell of the warm lemon trees.
A large cotton blanket lay on the ground, waiting. Maeve had offered to bring silk sheets, but all we needed was something of the earth, animal or vegetable. Something thick enough to cover the unyielding ground but not thick enough to separate us from it. We still needed to be able to feel the earth under our bodies.
I lay down on the blanket as if I was going to sunbathe. I pressed myself to the blanket, arms and legs wide, letting myself sink into the soft fuzz of the blanket, then past it to the coverings of the grass, leaves, and sticks, a covering of small sharp things, and farther still to the hard-packed earth beneath. There was water here or the lemon trees would have withered and died, but the ground seemed bone dry as if it never felt the touch of rain.
Wind caressed my body, drew me back. The wind played against my skin, rustled the dry leaves and weeds outside the edge of the blanket. The leaves whispered and shushed together. The smell of eucalyptus coated everything with its warm, pine-wood scent.
I rolled onto my back so I could watch the trees moving in the wind, feel the heat of the sun on the front of my body. I don't know if I heard a noise or just felt him standing there. I turned my head, my cheek lying on a bed of my own hair, and there he was.
Galen stood lost in the tossing green of the leaves and the small whispering trees. His hair lifted in a halo of green curls around his face. That one thin braid that was all that was left of his long, long hair trailed over his bare chest.
As he stepped out of the trees I could see that he wore nothing. His skin was a flawless white with a shade of green to it like the gleaming underside of a seashell. His waist looked longer without clothes, a slender expanse of flesh and bone leading up to the swell of his shoulders, and down to the slenderness of his hips. He was bigger than I'd thought he would be, longer, thick, growing as I watched, as if he felt my gaze travel down his body. His legs were long and muscled as he moved toward me.
I think I stopped breathing for a second or two. I hadn't really believed that he would come. I had grown tired of hoping. Now, here he was.
I raised my eyes to his face and found his smile. Galen's smile, the one that had made my heart skip a beat since I was old enough to care. I sat up on the blanket, holding my hand out to him. I wanted to run to him, but I was afraid to move out of the circle of trees and wind and ground. Afraid almost to look away from him because if I blinked, he would seep away into the trees like a summer dream.
He stood at the blanket's edge just out of reach and slowly lifted his hand toward mine until our fingers brushed, and that small touch sent a fluttering like a cloud of butterflies inside my body. It drew a sigh from my lips. Galen dropped to his knees on the blanket, hands at his sides, making no effort to touch me again.
I came up on my knees to mirror him. We knelt staring at each other, so close that we almost didn't need hands to