They left the stately buildings and the wide spaces behind them, and
went in among the trees. Stark hated the forest. The city was bad
enough, but it was dead, honestly dead, except for those neat nightmare
gardens. There was something terrifying about these great trees,
full-leafed and green, rioting with flowering vines and all the rich
undergrowth of the jungle, standing like massed corpses made lovely by
mortuary art. They swayed and rustled as the coiling fires swept them,
branches bending to that silent horrible parody of wind. Stark always
felt trapped there, and stifled by the stiff leaves and the vines.
But he went, and Varra slipped like a silver bird between the great
trunks, apparently happy.
"I have come here often, ever since I was old enough. It's wonderful.
Here I can stoop and fly like one of my own hawks." She laughed and
plucked a golden flower to set in her hair, and then darted away again,
her white legs flashing.
Stark followed. He could see what she meant. Here in this strange
sea one's motion was as much flying as swimming, since the pressure
equalized the weight of the body. There was a queer sort of thrill in
plunging headlong from the tree-tops, to arrow down through a tangle of
vines and branches and then sweep upward again.
She was playing with him, and he knew it. The challenge got his blood
up. He could have caught her easily but he did not, only now and again
he circled her to show his strength. They sped on and on, trailing
wakes of flame, a black hawk chasing a silver dove through the forests
of a dream.
But the dove had been fledged in an eagle's nest. Stark wearied of the
game at last. He caught her and they clung together, drifting still
among the trees with the momentum of that wonderful weightless flight.
Her kiss at first was lazy, teasing and curious. Then it changed. All
Stark's smouldering anger leaped into a different kind of flame. His
handling of her was rough and cruel, and she laughed, a little fierce
voiceless laugh, and gave it back to him, and remembered how he had
thought her mouth was like a bitter fruit that would give a man pain
when he kissed it.
She broke away at last and came to rest on a broad branch, leaning back
against the trunk and laughing, her eyes brilliant and cruel as Stark's
own. And Stark sat down at her feet.
"What do you want?" he demanded. "What do you want with me?"
She smiled. There was nothing sidelong or shy about her. She was bold
as a new blade.
"I'll tell you, wild man."