Morning is an indeterminate time for an appointment. Trehearne made it
early, clambering over the spray-wet rocks. The sun was warm, and the
sea was very blue, flecked with white foam. A high excitement burned in
him. He had not slept, thinking of the girl Shairn and the man Kerrel,
trying to analyze the strangeness that clung about them and touched
some buried chord within himself. He had not succeeded.
There was something almost fierce in the way he moved. He was oppressed
by a fear that Shairn would not come. He felt that she was playing some
game of her own with him, though for what purpose he could not guess.
But having started the game, he was going to see to it that she played
it out. If she did not come he would find her, if he had to take the
stones of St. Malo apart to do it.
He found the cove. It was deserted. Reason told him that he was
impatient, but he was disappointed and angry all the same. Then,
looking closer, he saw footprints in the sand, small naked ones leading
to the water. A beach robe and a pair of sandals were tucked into a
crevice in the rocks.
He searched the waves that rolled idly in between two grey, tumbled
shoulders. There was no sign of her. Trehearne's eyes took on a hard,
bright glint. He stripped off his shirt and slacks and plunged into the
cold surf.
He was an excellent swimmer. In his college days he had gone through
a phase of being a star athlete, until he was stopped by a vague
conviction that his physique had been designed for something more
important than leaping over bars and running arbitrary distances
on a cinder track. He had never found the important thing, but the
conviction remained with him. It was part of that pride which was the
mainspring of his character--a meaningless pride, he was forced to
admit, which had served only to make trouble between himself and the
world.
He made the circuit of the cove twice before he found her, hiding among
the broken rocks of the north wall, half veiled in glistening weed,
laughing at him. He reached for her and she went under him like a
dolphin, breaking water ten feet away to splash and dive again.
He chased her down into the rustling blue-green depths and up again to
the sunlight and the foam, and her body was the color of silver, fleet
and lithe and wondrously strong. He might have caught her, but he did
not, only touching her with his fingers to show her that he could. Her
hair was unbound, a streaming darkness around her head, and her mouth
was red, and her eyes were two green dancing motes of the sea itself,
unknowable, taunting, fickle as the waves.
At last she rolled over on her back to float, breathless, pleased with
herself and him.
"Let us rest!" she said, and he floated near her, watching the motion
of her white arms in the water. The lines of an old poem came unbidden
to his tongue.
"'What bright babes had Lilith and Adam--
'Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,
'Radiant sons and glittering daughters....'"
"The man who wrote that knew only half the truth," said Shairn. "Let's
go in."
They found a sheltered spot where the sun was warm. Absently, Shairn
smoothed a patch of sand with her palm, and rumpled it again. After a
while she said,
"What sort of a man are you, Michael? What do you do? How do you live?"
He looked at her keenly. "Do you really want to know? All right, I'll
tell you. I'm a man who has never been satisfied. I've never had a job
I could stay with very long. I'm a flier by trade, but even that seems
a dull and rather childish business. And why? Because I'm too good for
any of it."
He laughed, not without a certain cruel humor. "Don't ask me in what
way I'm too good. I seem to be unusually healthy, but that's only
important to me. My brain-power has never set the world on fire. I
have no tendency to genius. In fact, a suspicion creeps upon me that
I'm just not good enough. Whichever way it is, there has always been
something lacking, either in me or the world."
Shairn nodded, and again he was conscious of a queer wisdom in her that
did not fit with her youth. She smiled, a small thing full of secrets.
"And you thought that if you learned the origin of your blood you would
understand yourself."
"Perhaps. My father was a weedy little man with red hair. He swore I
was none of his. I didn't look like my mother's side, either. I've
never looked like anybody, until I met you and Kerrel. Oddness becomes
very wearing, especially when you don't know why you should be odd." He
added, "The villagers in Cornwall called me changeling. I had the same
thought when I saw you."
"So we are of one race. Could you stay with me, Michael?"
"You're not a woman, you're a witch. I've never met a witch before."
She laughed outright at that. "Nonsense. Witch, changeling--those are
words for fools and peasants."
"Who are the Vardda, Shairn?"
She shook her head. "I told you last night. It is a tribal name. You
were saying to Kerrel that you had come to Brittany to trace down your
family. Do you know where to start?"
"I learned in Cornwall that they came from a place called Keregnac."
He thought she started a little at that name, but she said nothing, and
he asked, "Do you know the town?"
"It's not a town," she answered slowly. "Only a tiny village, lying on
the edge of a great moor. Yes, I know Keregnac." She picked up a bit of
driftwood and began to draw idle patterns in the sand. "I don't think
you will learn much there. The village is very old, and is now almost
dead."
"But," he said, "I don't have to worry about that now, do I?"
"How do you mean?"
"You, Shairn. You know about my family, my race. I don't have to depend
on Keregnac. You'll tell me."