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At least, she hoped diat was die case.
The cheymafs house was surrounded by old-growth
forest. Even in daylight, it was an eerie place. Huge, gnaried
trees brooded beside the rustic log cabin, making way in
spots for a narrow beam of sunlight to break dirough. One of
the forest giants had fallen nearby. There, late afternoon
sunlight streamed to die ground and illuminated the
understory plants. Small conifers and frail-looidng deciduous
trees took advantage of die rare opportunity and grew with
urgent profusion. The ground bloomed with a caipet of
autumn flowers. Vines clambered up die trunks of die trees
nearby, racing for die sun. Minerva knew die plants that
reached die upper story first would crowd out the rest and
kill them. Hard to diink of such a pretty place being die site
oflife-and-death struggle.
She walked over to the faBen tree, picked up a stick, and
smacked it on die tmnk a few times. The she ran the stick
under the trunk along the part of the tree where she
intended to sit. She flushed out a little shiny blue birdlike
creature, but no snakes. For Minerva, the snakes were the
big diing. She knew intellectually diat they weren't slimy
but they looked slimy and diey made her skin crawl. She
didn't know if tilis world had snakes, but she didn't want to
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discover it did by sitting on one.
She perched on die rough trunk and looked around her.
No tourists anywhere that she could see. Pine. So most
126 Holly Lisfc
likely Talleos was exaggerating the problem. She couldnt
imagine tourists coming to such an out-of-the-way place,
anyhow. She spread out a piece of the vellum, and one of the
pencils, and started to take notes.
It seemed a shame to waste the smooth, creamy vellum
on anything as dreary as notes. The material cried out for
calligraphy, or an egg tempera illumination, or even a sketch
of the woods. Not scrawled notes on the position in which
one had to hold one's hands when invoking the first name of
God.
Could all of that complicated rigmarole be necessary?
And if it was, how could anyone have expected her to come
across it herself? It wasn't the sort of thing that just sprang
to mind fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus.
She wrote, Maffc Using The First Name Of Cod.
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She stared at the white sheet for a moment, then under-
lined her header-
Number 1 The first name of God is ...
What was me first name of God? She couldn't remember.
Something long and complicated
She doodled along the edge of the paper, trying to think
of it Oh, wefl on to the next point.
Ritual for wwoking the name of God.
She could remember a bit more of that one. Something
about Face in the first direction, which is east. and deanse
the first direction
And then, she recafled. there had been some phrase in a
foreign language, that had to be said exactly right she
couldn't remember it at all.
And after that, hadn't Talleos said something about doing
a separate ritual for each of the four directions?
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She doodled some more. She sketched one of the little
flowers in front of her, filling in the delicate curves of the
five petals with tight strokes from a chalky, rust-colored
crayon. She did an overlay of pink, then smudged the petals
with her finger to try to match the texture. The vellum made
a perfect surface; and under her steady hand, the flower
seemed to burst into life on the page. Delighted, she laid
down the background lines of the rest of die plant with
MINERVA WAKES 127
nearly invisible pencil strokes, and sketched in some of the
fallen leaves that formed its foreground. She didn't have any
green with her just the pink and the rust and a few other
shades of browns and black- She chose a limited-palette
approach. She'd always liked the feet of the world seen
through a filtered lens and to her, the limited palette cre-
ated that effect.
The sunshine beat down on her shoulders, a delicious hot
contrast to the cool breeze. The air smelled rich and pun-
gent, redolent of rotting wood and leaves and fertile, dark,
damp earth. She breathed deeply, and let the wind rustling
through the forest canopy and the distant sounds of running
water soothe her.
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As the sketch progressed, she felt herself recapturing
some of her self-confidence. Drawing had always done that
for her. Her area of expertise, she thought, and grinned- The
cheymat and his attempts to lure her into sex magic seemed
less threatening at that moment. He was aione the last of
his land, unless he should somehow find another cheymat.
She tried to imagine being the last human and decided if
she found herself in such an awful predicament, she might
be just as pushy and obnoxious and desperate as he was.
Not that she had any intention of doing what he hoped
she would. She was willing to be understanding. And she
would go a long way out of piiy but not that far.
Minerva kept drawing; and while she sketched, she con-
sidered what she knew of the nature of magic. Magic wasn't
impossible. That she was in this bizarre situation was proof
of that. Since it was possible, she would leam to use it. She
would find a way to understand the forces she needed to
control if moving galaxies was what she had to do to save
her children and get back home, then she would learn how
to move galaxies. Wth a grin, Minerva reflected that she'd
always believed she could do anything she put her mind
to the time had come to put her faith to the test. But no
more letting Talleos upset her no letting him get her goat,
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she thought, and giggled. She decided she'd use the "get her
goat" line on him. That ought to annoy him.
The drawing seemed to take on form and design without
128 Holly Lisle
conscious effort on her part. For her, artwork had always
been like that a sort of communion between her and her
materials; a joint effort to bring forth out of wood pulp and
ground pigments and wax a new entity; an object able to
convey an emotion, or a concept or a sense of passion.
Minerva noted a space in the background of her picture
that seemed to cry out for more detail. She studied the shad-
ows and shapes already there, then sketched in a cat peering
from beneath the vines and wistfully, she made the cat into
Murp. Broad-faced, round-eyed, and orange tabby-striped,
with a white blaze down his nose, white bib and white feet,
Bame/s cat grew out of her memory until he stared back at
her from the page.
She got a lump in her throat, and closed her eyes, and
gripped the crayon so hard it snapped in her hand. She
could see that horrible blue light again, and Bamey with
Murp tucked under his arm, running toward her toward
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what he thought was safety. 1 should have been able to save
him, she thought. Hot tears rolled down her cheeks. A mom
should be able to save her children, damnut. The universe
shouldn't give you kids and then take them away. She
dropped the crayon fragments and her drawing and sobbed,
burying her face in her hands.
"Mrm-m-p?"
A furry head shoved against the back of her arm and
rubbed along her back. Her eyes flew open. A cat. she
thought, while her heart raced- Jesus Christ, what a weird
coincidence.
"MrrmTrp?"
She turned around, and when she saw the cat on the log,
began to shiver. Bizarre coincidence. It was a big orange
beast with white markings and bright yellow eyes . . .
.. . just like Murp.
Can't be. Murp vanished with Bamey.
She reached out a trembling hand and scratched the cat
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