Sword and Sorceress XXVII Read Online Free Page B

of light, Moon now looked on the man before
her with new eyes. When she had first met him, Bluejay had appeared as a
warrior, a god. Certainly, the ability to walk the worlds was a magical gift.
Yet he had sought her out to do what he could not.
    “It’s time for truth between us,” she
said. “Who are you?”
    The air between them wavered like heat
rising from the summer plains. Bluejay’s form shifted and grew more slender. He
was still tall, but his shoulders were narrow, his hands graceful and soft. He
wore a shirt of azure wool, touched here and there with gold, and belted over
narrow leggings. Thongs of dyed leather tied a cluster of blue feathers to one
of several gray braids. His face was angular, with heavy eyebrows and a long,
straight nose, very different from the features of her own people. A band of cloth
covered one eye; the other, golden as a hawk’s, met hers steadily.
    “Do you know me now?” Only his voice had
not changed.
    Unable to speak, she touched the cloth
over his ruined eye.
    “A small enough loss,” he said. “Only
someone brave enough to face down a charging bull, and steadfast enough to
follow an injured animal so far into the wilderness, could cross the wild
worlds without going mad. You see, I was right.” With a small smile, he touched
her cheek. “You were the one.”
    Moon dared not speak, dared not breathe.
At first, his true appearance had seemed strange to her. Now she would not have
him any other way.
    Which of them, she wondered, had paid
the greater price—he with his eye or she, having left behind her home, her
sister, her clan?
    “I will take you back to your plains.”
Bluejay held out his hand, “if you wish it.”
    Moon found her voice. “I wish to go with
you, but not to return to the life I had before. I wish—I wish to see all those
other worlds.”
    To walk those beaches and meadows, to
explore those cities and forests...
    She felt his heart rise in his breast,
even as hers did. Warm fingers closed around her own. Together, they stepped
out on the luminous road.
    The Memory Box
    by
Patricia B. Cirone
     
    Dozens of men
were trapped in a mine, and it was Amina’s job to get them out. She expected
the task to be difficult, but when she was deep underground, she discover a
complication she had not expected at all.
    Patricia
B. Cirone has worked as a scientist, a teacher and a librarian, but her true
love is writing. She has had a number of short stories published, including
several in previous SWORD & SORCERESS anthologies and is currently working
on a book. She receives frequent editorial comments on her writing from one of
her cats, who considers any hand to be better employed in petting her than in
typing.
     
    ****
     
    “Can Onia do it?” Amina asked, turning
the mug of tea around and around in her hands, and trying not to sound as if
she was begging—or worse yet, whining. She kept her gaze steadfastly out the
window, as if she could see something in the utter darkness outside. Utter
darkness, as it would be inside the mine.
    “You know that wouldn’t work—she has
absolutely no training,” her aunt replied.
    “Yes, but she is of the line. She should
be able to access the box...” Amina trailed off, knowing this was all a
pointless argument. It was her nerves talking, throwing up barriers between
herself and what lay ahead.
    “Most women of the line cannot even
pluck a memory from the box the first time they try, even with some training in
ordering their thoughts and working in a trance state!”
    “I did.” The words slipped out before
she could snatch them back from her teeth.
    “Yes, and we all know how well that went!” her aunt said acerbically and Amina winced.
    Yes, years of nightmares and waking
dreams. She had not ridden that memory—it had ridden her. She had been a child,
headstrong and determined; her mother vain and unwilling to spend the time to
curb her willful child. Widowed young, her mother had been too busy keeping an
eye