The Sword in the Cave
"But sit with your companions and watch," the woman replied.
Drea turned and found Tygg and the sailors sitting a little distance from the hearth on an old oak log that looked
well used to being a bench. She approached them as the women all gathered in circles around the hearth, one inner
and one outer. Then with a sudden gesture, they all let fall the cloaks around them, and the women had nothing
else on. Each of them had bodies young and lithe, and in the growing firelight and the rising moon they seemed to
glow. And with the grace that shoemakers trained hard to learn, they capered around the flame, the concentric
circles moving in opposite directions, as a song rose up in a language they did not understand.
The sailors, enraptured, gazed at this beautiful spectacle without a sound. Tygg sat cross-legged and cross-armed at
one end of the log, his eyes half-closed. Drea watched, not so raptly, but still cognizant that something sacred and
hitherto unseen was playing out before her eyes, and she consciously felt the need to record moments of it, such as
the pitch of the song and its change, such as the way the circles of women intertwined as the dance went on, and
they swirled through and around each other. It was a feast of discovery.
Finally, the song raised to a great cry, and the woman who had spoken to Drea leapt to the top of the hearth, and
stood, naked, the flames at her back. She raised her arms to the sky and the women stopped in their places and
collapsed to the ground, each upon the other. Then, as if a great drum had cracked, silence crashed through the
clearing.
" We are Galka," said the woman. "We have no names. We are lost."
The rest of the women stood up, and in one circle, called out "We are forgotten."
"We know not how we came to be here, but here we are, cursed, unremembering."
"We are forgotten," came the return call.
"The Beast has mastered us. The Dragon is our cruel husband."
"We are forgotten."
"We feed him. We serve and attend him. He has taken us."
"We are forgotten."
"And tonight, what does he do?"
Silence greeted this question. Drea looked at Tygg, who had not moved a muscle.
"Tonight, he becomes Golden. Tonight, he takes his cruelest shape. His most pitiless. He becomes a Man."
"Golden One," changed the women.
"And he presents us with the cruelest choice. The bitterest choice."