mossy darkness, ah and ah and ah on different tones, each echo ringing over the one before. Then he stroked the soft skin on her forearm and said, You are the condition of music.
Nyssa experienced for the first time (for there is only one first time) the vertigo of passion, the first desire of a girl’s stirred-up mind and thighs. The scent of him threw her off and his touch threw her off and his snake-eaten hand reaching to her face threw her off and his tongue against her tongue threw her off. This was the short life of first desire. She marvelled and reached out both hands. The earth with its wide ways yawned and firm rock cracked in two. Donal was amazed by her hunger.
Afterwards they crawled out of the cave and lay under the open sky, listening to the water. She stroked the scars on his hands and said, How long will you have me, now that you have had me?
Forever and a day, said Donal, voice clear against dusk’s melancholy. He thought, She’s got Norea’s voice and Dagmar’s face.
Say a day, said Nyssa, without the ever.
Donal looked into the sky and said, You don’t know waiting or what it is not to speak.
I never not speak, she laughed.
Donal said, Sometimes it is good to be still and say nothing.
Then it is good to be a stump. Why are you sad?
Donal smiled ruefully. I am hungry as the sea for you and could swallow as much. Sometimes experience makes a man sad.
And what is your experience that it makes you so sad?
I have travelled far from home, wandered away from everything I loved. But that is all gone now. Between home and you, it is all a blank.
Nyssa said, A traveller! And in your travels you gave up love.
But from sad experience I gained you.
Experience makes you sad, she mocked. I’d rather be with someone who makes me dance than have your experience make me sad.
Donal smiled then, but only to please her, as if he were a hibernating bear rousing itself from his winter grave. He had to persuade her.
Come away with me, he said.
And what would I do?
Live with me. I’m only a row across the water. Come, play with me something more nearly perfect.
Thoughtfully she tugged her shirt over her head. Why away? And what was this perfection?
She could not imagine what was across the water, for she had never been off the island. She wanted to go.
All right, she said with a light kiss on his lips, her fingers caressing the insides of his elbows. We’ll go tonight. But first I’m playing at the pole house. We’ll go after.
Moll walked through the people of the settlement gathered at the pole house and stood before a ship’s lantern. Its light sparked off her bones like a hammer hitting the anvil.
What song have you got for us, then, Moll? said Colin to break the wary and fearful silence.
Moll looked up. She raised her arms to the sky like a bird lifting its wings, wrapped them to the back of her and touched their palms facing upward.
Bring my kettle, said Moll to a young boy standing at the back.
He pushed forward with the pot and placed it at Moll’s feet. She unwrapped her hands from behind her back. Her blank black eyes hung there. She took a long bone out from under her dress and began to run it around the rim of the pot. A low echoing moan rose from the pot. She changed the weight and speed of her turning, and the unearthly pitch slid along the one long unbroken note.
Dolente and dolce, something inside fulfilling fate. Nyssa stood at the front and listened and doubted and did not find doubt strange. Fingers on the strings. She thought, I have heard what you hear and glimpsed what lies under your dress and the things you do to yourself in darkness. Why do I stand silent with these people full of fear?
She picked up her fiddle and laid her strong first finger across the strings. She grazed her third finger above the second string and played a soft harmonic along with Moll’s kettle. The bony woman did not look up but increased her tempo, the sound becoming higher and rounder, and Nyssa followed her, grazing her fingers along the short strings, making little bell tones. Her tones were a fleeting thing over the long drone of the pot. Moll slowed and the pitch dropped. Her