The Shore of Women Read Online Free

already darkening when Tal stopped, took my shoulder, and steered me east.
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    “To the shrine.”
    “But then we won’t get back before…”
    Tal hit me, knocking me into the snow. “You listen. When you are near a shrine, you pay your respects, even if it means going out of your way.” He dragged me up and brushed the snow from my back.
    I knew that he was right, but I wanted to get back to camp, to a fire and a meal. The shrine would be warm. That thought startled me. I should not have been thinking of a holy place as a spot for my comfort.
    “You wonder why I have been called three times,” Tal went on as we stumbled through the snow. “It’s because I never miss a chance to pray, and the Lady knows it. Don’t ever forget to pray.”
    “I pray every night.” Almost every night, I told myself silently, promising Her I would try to do better.
    We came to the top of a hill. The shrine was below us. On top of its curved, metallic walls sat a golden dome with a white cap. The snow around the entrance to the shrine was unmarked. No one else was near; and although no man would attack another on holy ground, I preferred to pray alone.
    We waded toward the shrine as I tried to banish unholy thoughts. I had prayed at shrines many times. When I was a young boy, my soul was sometimes called to the Lady, and an aspect wearing Her form would come to me and hold me gently. When I grew older, other aspects had shown me Her true blessings. At the thought of those blessings, I felt a powerful longing for Her. Suddenly I wondered if She would ever hear my prayers again, if She would withhold Her blessing from me, if She would turn from me, and trembled.
    Tal’s big hand clutched my shoulder. “Easy, boy.”
    I swallowed. I was thinking unholy thoughts on the shrine’s threshhold and prayed that I would not be punished. The door in front of us slid open, and we entered.
    The shrine was warm and the air bore a musky scent; the dome overhead glowed as the small room grew lighter. We knelt, cupped our groins, and pressed our foreheads to the floor, then rose.
    Twenty couches, covered with red cloth, stood in a row near one wall. Circlets of gold rested on each couch, and, above each, a round piece of glass set in the wall caught the light, winking. We walked past the couches and knelt again in front of the altar.
    An image of the Lady smiled down at us. I lifted my eyes to the statue and was at peace. This shrine was to Mary, the aspect of the Lady I had always loved the most. I had seen Her in other guises, in other shrines—as the Warrior, with black hair, slanted eyes, and a spear, or as the Wise One, with slender glass tubes and strange tools, or as Venus the Lover of Men, with bright red hair and bare breasts—and I had heard that there were other aspects in more distant shrines. But it was Mary, the Mother, the most familiar aspect to me, to Whom I prayed most often.
    We prayed for a few moments in the holy speech, the tongue I had known before I learned the words of men. Then Tal got up, went to a couch, and stretched out upon it. I took the couch next to his, put the circlet on my head, and waited. Tal, eyes closed, was still, his blond beard and hair as golden as the circlet on his brow. His lips moved, and I wondered if the Lady was speaking to him.
    He twitched and began to moan. His arms slapped the couch as his body arched. He kicked with his long legs and moaned again and shook so much that I thought he would fall to the floor. At first, I believed only that the Lady had decided to bless him, and then he smiled. I had seen Tal smile like that only once before, in another shrine, when he had last been called.
    I closed my eyes. Perhaps the Lady would call me, too. No joy I had known had been greater than Her blessing, and I burned with longing, but She did not speak, did not appear to me.
    Tal would leave me once again for the enclave. I tried to give thanks for him, but could think