The Forbidden Circle by Marion Zimmer Bradley Read Free Book Online Page B

saw the girl in the crystal and had thrown over his job and his life to stay on her world, was complete. He had found his new direction, and it led toward the girl. His girl. His woman, now and for the rest of his life. Callista.
    He was cynic enough to jeer a little at himself. Yeah. He didn’t know where she was, who she was, or what she was; she might be married with six children (well, hardly, at her age); she might be a ghastly bitch—who knew what women were like on this world? All he knew about her was . . .
    All he knew about her was that in some way she’d touched him, come closer to him than anyone had ever come before. He knew that she was lonely and miserable and frightened, that she couldn’t get in touch with her own people, that for some reason she needed him. All he knew about her was all he needed to know about her: she needed him. For some reason he was all she had to cling to, and if she wanted his life she could have it. He’d hunt her up somehow, get her away from whoever was keeping her in the dark, hurting her, and frightening her. He’d get her free. ( Yeah , sneered his cynical other self, quite the hero, slaying dragons for your fair lady , but he turned the jeer off harshly.) And after that, when she was free and happy—
    After that, well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it , he said firmly, and curled down to sleep again.
    The storm lasted, as nearly as he could tell (his chronometer had evidently been damaged in the crash and never ran again), for five days. On the third or fourth of those days he woke in dim light to see the girl’s shadowy form, stilled, sleeping, close beside him; still disoriented, rousing to sharp, intense physical awareness of her—round, lovely, clad only in the flimsy, torn thin garment which seemed to be all she was wearing—he reached out to draw her close into his arms; then, with the sharp shock of disappointment, he realized there was nothing to touch. As if the very intensity of his thoughts had reached her, awareness flashed over her sleeping face and the large gray eyes opened; she looked at him in surprise and faint dismay.
    “I am sorry,” she murmured. “You—startled me.”
    Carr shook his head, trying to orient himself. “I’m the one to be sorry,” he said. “I guess I must have thought I was dreaming and it didn’t matter. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
    “I’m not offended,” she said simply, looking straight into his eyes. “If I were here beside you like this, you would have every right to expect—I only meant, I am sorry to have unwittingly aroused a desire I cannot satisfy. I did not do it willingly. I must have been thinking of you in my sleep, stranger. I cannot go on simply thinking of you as stranger ,” Callista said, a flicker of faint amusement passing over her face.
    “My name’s Andrew Carr,” he said, and felt her soft repetition of the name.
    “Andrew. I am sorry, Andrew. I must have been thinking of you in my sleep and so drawn to you without waking.” With no further sign of haste or fluster, she drew her clothes more carefully around her bare breasts and smoothed the diaphanous folds of her skirt down around her round thighs. She smiled and now there was a glimmer almost of mischief in her sad face. “Ah, this is sad! The first time, the very first, that I lie down with any man, and I am not able to enjoy it! But it’s naughty of me to tease you. Please don’t think I am so badly brought up as all that.”
    Deeply touched, as much by her brave attempt to make a joke as anything else, Andrew said gently, “I couldn’t think anything of you that wasn’t good, Callista. I only wish”—and to his own surprise he felt his voice breaking—“I wish there was some real comfort I could give you.”
    She reached out her hand—almost as if, Andrew thought in surprise, she too had forgotten for a moment that he was not physically present to her—and laid it over his wrist. He could see his own