Swallowing Darkness

Chapter 41-42

  Chapter Forty-One

  There were voices. Screams, cries for help. I could see nothing, but I could hear them. There was something on top of me, something heavy. I found that I had hands, arms, and could push at the weight on top of me, but I could not move it. But the more I pushed at it, tried to turn my head against it, the more I began to realize what I was pushing at. Cloth, and under the cloth flesh; I was pushing at someone. Someone was on top of me, someone large and heavy, and. . . Jonty.

  I whispered his name, still trapped in the darkness underneath him. His broad chest was so wide that I could see nothing but the dimness of his body. The ground underneath me was solid, and the frost on the grass was already beginning to melt, which meant that Jonty and I had lain here long enough for our body heat to begin to warm the ground. How long had we lain here? How much time had passed? Who was screaming for help? It wasn't the Red Caps. They would not scream. The soldiers, the human soldiers, it had to be them. Oh, Goddess, help me help them. Don't let them die like this. Don't let them die for me. It seemed so unfair.

  I braced against the ground, and pushed with all my might. Jonty's weight moved a little higher, but that was it. I had a moment of hope, then the weight simply did not move anymore. But warm liquid ran down my hands, and began to soak into my sleeves. The blood was still warm. That was good. Either it was his blood, and he was still alive enough for it to be warm, or it was his magical blood from his hat, and the fact that it was flowing at all meant he was still alive. I could see a thin line of moonlight. It was still night. My arms began to tremble, then finally collapse. I tried to keep the weight from crushing me, but other than that, I was trapped. The blood began to trickle down the side of my face, like a warm creeping finger. The darkness seemed thicker for that bit of brightness I'd seen.

  The blood trickled down the side of my neck. I fought the urge to wipe at it, since I couldn't reach it anyway. It was just blood. Blood wasn't bad, and it was warm, and that was good. I fought to calm my pulse; panicking would not help me. I used what little movement I had with my hands to search for Jonty's heartbeat. I was much lower than his heart, though. I could not reach high enough to touch his heart. Was there another pulse point close to my hands? Was there any way for me to tell if he was still alive?

  If I couldn't reach higher, could I reach lower? There was a big pulse point on the inner groin. The femoral artery was as good as the carotid in the neck, it was just usually too intimate to use. But, under the circumstances, I didn't think Jonty would mind.

  I inched my hand down the side of my body until I found the joint of his hip, then I traced inward, fighting against the weight and the sheer bulk of him. Since I couldn't see anything but the darkness of him above me, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my fingers, on what I was feeling.

  My fingers found something softer than his thigh, which meant I was close to the artery. I moved my fingers down a little and to the side. As I pushed my way lower, his body reacted to my touch. What had been large and soft was becoming less soft. Did that mean that Jonty was alive? I tried to remember what I knew of the freshly dead. I knew that death sometimes made you have one last orgasm, but was this that, or was the quickening of his body against my wrist a sign that he was alive? I couldn't remember if any professor or book in college had ever talked about it; probably not, too much information for most human classrooms. In fact, you got in trouble for asking things like that, or I had. That embarrassed silence, the mortified look on the teacher's face.

  My fingers slipped inside his thigh. I had to squirm my fingers just a little more into that warm, close place. His body continued to be happier against my arm. I was going to take it for a good sign, a sign of life, but I wanted to feel the beat of his pulse. I wanted to know that the swelling of his groin was not the last beat of his heart, the last thing he would ever feel. "Please, Goddess, please don't let him be dead. "

  I was almost certain that my fingertips were where they needed to be to feel the pulse. Admittedly, trapped underneath him, it was harder to judge, but I was almost sure. I couldn't feel anything. I took a deep breath in and held it. I held my breath and put all my attention into my fingers, into feeling what there was to feel. I stilled my body so that I wouldn't mistake my own pulse for his. I pressed my fingers into his flesh through his clothes, and willed that pulse to beat against my fingers.

  There, was that it? The pulse came again, slow and thick against my fingers. It was slower than it should have been, but it was there. If we could get him to a healer, he would live. If we could get help, Jonty would not have to die for me. If we could find anyone who wasn't my enemy tonight.

  The bomb had worked. I could hear the muffled screams of the soldiers. If Jonty's damage was any indication, the Red Caps were badly hurt too. Why had the Unseelie nobles not hunted me down and finished me while I was unconscious? What had they been waiting for?

  I felt the scream beginning to build, like a pressure that I couldn't fight. No, didn't want to fight. I couldn't move. I couldn't help Jonty. I couldn't see what was happening. I couldn't fight back, but I could scream. That I could do, and it was as if even that would be a release, a help to my awful growing panic. I took deep, even breaths, forced myself to slow my pulse, and that trembling sensation that was trying to steal me away from myself. If I started screaming from sheer panic, I wouldn't stop. I'd scream, and squirm under Jonty's body until my enemies found me. I had no illusions what would happen if Cel's people found me. Were there Seelie warriors on the field tonight too? If they found me, would they try to take me back to Taranis? Probably. Death, or more rape by my uncle. Please, Goddess, let there be other choices.

  Where was Doyle? He hadn't been the body at their feet, but if he was able to come to my side, where was he? Galen, or Rhys, Mistral, Sholto, any of them, what could have kept them from my side this long? Were they. . . dead? Were all whom I had loved dead?

  Jonty moved above me. "Jonty," I said.

  He didn't answer, and I realized that I couldn't feel his muscles tensing at all. He was still unconscious above me, but he began to lift without his arms moving at all. Someone was lifting him. A few moments before I'd wanted him off of me so badly that I had had to fight down panic. Now, I wasn't so certain. Whether the Red Cap being lifted slowly off of me was a good thing or a bad thing depended entirely on who was doing the lifting.

  My pulse sped up as Jonty's big chest rose upward. It was taking so long that I began to wonder if it was the humans, the soldiers. They would have trouble lifting him. Then he rose upward enough that I could see legs. The leg of a uniform, the torn leg of a designer suit. I said, "Doyle!"

  He knelt, hands still on the big Red Cap, pushing like you'd shoulder press a weight. "I'm here," he said.

  I reached out to touch his leg. My hand came back with blood on it. Was it Jonty's, or Doyle's? What had been happening while I lay unconscious? In that moment, I almost didn't care, because Doyle was here. I could touch him. It was all right, because he was there.

  I could see more legs. Another was in black trousers and boots - Mistral. I remembered now that Galen and Rhys had been wearing soldiers' uniforms. They were all here, all of them. Thank you, Goddess.

  "Are you hurt?" Doyle asked.

  "I don't think so. "

  "Can you move out from under the Red Cap?"

  I thought about it, and realized that I could. I began to push my way out from under Jonty's rising body. I had to do a sort of modified crab walk on my elbows and butt, but finally my face was in the clean, fresh air. I took a deep breath of winter air, and kept pushing. When I was clear enough, I turned and crawled on my hands and knees. A hand took my arm and helped me stand. It was Dawson. He looked unhurt.

  "Princess," he said, "are you all right?"

  I nodded. "I think so. " I touched his hand. "I'm glad to see that you're okay. I heard screaming. "

  He got a strange look on his face. "I'm okay now.
"

  I thought it was an odd way to phrase it. But Galen was beside me, taking me into his arms, and there was no time to question Dawson. Galen lifted me off my feet, holding me so tightly that I couldn't see his face clearly. But I could see Jonty's back over Galen's shoulder. The sight stole the smile from my face.

  The Red Cap's back was a mass of wounds, a red ruin. Doyle and the others laid him gently down on the grass. I knew why they'd moved him slowly now. "Oh, my God, Jonty," I said.

  Galen loosened his grip enough to see my face as he lowered me to the grass. "I'm sorry, Merry. " Blood was drying on the side of his face from a gash near his temple.

  "You're hurt. "

  He smiled. "Not as bad as some. "

  I looked back at Jonty with the other men grouped around him. They were too serious, too quiet. I didn't like it. "Jonty's heart is still beating. If we can get him to a healer he won't die. "

  Galen's face was stricken in the moonlight, so pain-filled. "But you would have died. "

  He was right. If the bomb had done that much damage to a Red Cap, then I'd have been so much red ruin. Me, and our babies, would have been turned into so much raw meat.

  "Cel's followers did this," I said.

  "Dawson told us," Galen said.

  I started toward Jonty and the others. Galen slid his hand in mine and we walked to him hand in hand.

  Doyle laid his hand against my cheek, and I pressed my face against his hand. "The Red Caps did our duty for us," he said.

  The comment made me raise my face from his hand and look past Jonty and the other guards. Soldiers were standing, helping wounded move across the field, but the Red Caps were still figures lying across the grass. Almost none of them were sitting up, and none were standing.

  "How are the humans up and the Red Caps so hurt?"

  "We were hurt," Dawson said, "but we healed. "

  "What?" I asked.

  "Every solider who you healed earlier healed on their own. Then we healed the others. "

  "What?" I asked again, because it still didn't make sense.

  "We healed them," Dawson said. "We used the nails. They were like some sort of magic wands. "

  "Can it heal the Red Caps?" Doyle asked.

  "They're metal," I said.

  "They are dying, Meredith. I don't think it will hurt them now," Rhys said. One of his arms was in a sling, and the sleeve of his uniform was blackened.

  Mistral's coat was a blackened ruin across his back. Had Taranis himself attacked with his Seelie warriors? I realized that Sholto was still missing.

  "Where's Sholto?"

  Doyle dropped his hand from my face, and answered me while turning away. "Sholto is well. The sluagh came to his call. It is all that saved us from Taranis and his men. They fled from the sluagh. "

  I grabbed Doyle's arm with my free hand. The other was squeezed tightly in Galen's hand. There was too much happening, and I didn't know how to cope with it all. But I knew one thing; I didn't want Doyle's face to look like that.

  He turned and looked at me, but his face was that old unreadable darkness, only his eyes flinching around the edges. Now I knew what that little flinch meant.

  "I want to wrap you around me like a coat, and cover you in kisses, but we have wounded to save. But do not doubt what I feel for you, even in the midst of this. " The first hard tear slid down my cheek. "I thought you were dead, and. . . "

  Galen's hand dropped away, and Doyle wrapped me in his arms. I clung to him as if his hands on my body were air and food, and everything I needed to live.

  I heard Rhys say, "Come on, Dawson, let's see if those little nails will help Jonty. "

  I wanted to melt into Doyle's kiss and never come up for air, but there was duty. There was always duty, and some horror that had to be fought, or healed, or. . . Everyone thinks they want an extraordinary life, but you don't. When standing knee-deep in yet another disaster, ordinary begins to look very good.

  We broke apart, and he led me to Jonty's side. Dawson was already kneeling on the ground. He held the nail that had come out of me when I healed him. He held it point down above one of the wounds.

  "We'll have to get the shrapnel out of his body first," Rhys said.

  "It didn't work that way for us," Dawson said.

  "How did it work?" I asked, my arm wrapped around Doyle's lean waist, the strength of him beside me almost too good to be real.

  Galen was carefully not looking at Doyle and me. I realized that he had come to me first. That he had swept me off my feet, and though I had been glad to see him, it hadn't been the feelings I had had for Doyle. It simply hadn't. I couldn't change how my heart felt, not even to save the feelings of one of my best friends.

  "Like this," Dawson said, and he began to pass the nail over Jonty's wounds, point down, as if he were invisibly carving something. My hand tingled. The mark of blood on my palm tingled.

  I stepped away from Doyle. He tried to catch my hand, but I drew it away before he could touch it. Somehow I wasn't sure that him touching the hand of blood while it was itching to be used would be a good thing. I didn't entirely understand what was happening, but I didn't question the urge to step up and drop to my knees beside Dawson.

  I spoke words without willing them, as if the universe had been waiting for me to speak them, and with each word, it was as if time itself let out a breath that it had been holding. "You call me with blood and metal. What would you have of me?"

  Dawson looked at me, and his lips moved, but it was as if he too wasn't in complete control of what he said. "Heal him, Meredith. I ask this with blood and metal and the magic you have given to this flesh. "

  "So be it," I said, and I spread my hand over Jonty's back. My skin ran with heat, as if the blood in my body was turning to molten metal. There was a moment of almost unbearable pain, then blood fountained upward from Jonty's body. Metal rained upward, expelled from the body with the blood.

  Jonty came to with a gasp. But the blood kept pouring out. I scrambled back from him, and Dawson came with me. The blood slowed, but though the metal was out, the wounds were not healing.

  Jonty turned his head with obvious effort, and said, "You call my blood, My Queen. You cleanse me of the human metal. I die for you, and I am content. "

  I shook my head. "I don't want you to die for me, Jonty. I want you to live. "

  "Some things are not meant to be, Princess," he said.

  "It looks like it's a good thing we didn't come when the call first hit us, or we might be dying too," said a voice from the dark. I turned and found the goblin twins, Ash and Holly. In the dark you could have mistaken them for full-blooded sidhe, so tall and straight, only a little more bulky in the muscles, but hitting the gym a little harder could explain that away. Their yellow hair was a little short, just touching their shoulders. If it had been longer, they could have indeed passed for sidhe.

  It was too dark to see that Ash's eyes were a solid green like the leaf of the tree he was named after, and Holly's eyes were the scarlet of winter berries. Only the solid color of their eyes with no whites truly betrayed their goblin blood.

  "I did not call to you," I said.

  "Your magic calls to the Red Caps, and our father's blood is in us," Ash said.

  "I hate that your white-fleshed magic calls to us," Holly said.

  They nodded in unison. "We hate that your hand of blood calls to us as if we were Red Caps. We are Seelie, and you have helped us understand that there is more to us than goblin blood, but yet your power calls to us as if we are lesser things," Ash said.

  "For me, it was enough that your magic in Los Angeles made me a more powerful goblin, but I thought it would make me what the goblins had once been," Holly said. "But, even I, even we, are still less, or your magic would not pull at us like a dog to its master's whistle. " His voice was bitter.

  "Would you let them die for pride's sake?" I asked.

&nbs
p; "We are goblins," Holly said. "We do not heal anything. We slaughter and destroy. It is what we are, and the treaty that brought us to America so long ago stole us away from ourselves. There is no room for goblins anymore. "

  I stumbled as I got to my feet, stepping on the hem of my coat. Holly laughed at me, but I didn't care. I knew something. I got it. Knew it; understood it. I wasn't even certain in that moment what "it" was, but the compulsion of it moved me toward the twins. It kept me walking across the winter grass, the frosted weeds making a dry sound against the leather of my coat.

  Doyle came to my side. "Have a care, my Merry. "

  He was right to be cautious, but the feeling inside me was right, too. The scent of flowers rode the air, as if a breath of summer's heat trickled across the cold moonlight.

  Rhys came to our side and touched Doyle's arm. "The Goddess is near, Doyle. It will be all right. "

  I kissed Doyle first, and he had to bend down to help me do it, then I kissed Rhys. He looked at me, and there was sadness on his face. But it was not a sadness that I could fix. I could only kiss him gently on the lips, and let him know that I saw him and appreciated him, but nothing that either of us could do would make me love him the way I loved Doyle or Frost. That it pained him pained me, but not enough to change it.

  I walked the rest of the way alone. Ash and Holly stood in front of me. They tried to look arrogant or hostile - their handsome faces were made for both - but under all of it was uncertainty. I made them rethink themselves, and neither sidhe nobles nor goblin warriors are accustomed to rethinking anything. Their sense of rightness is absolute in most things. I gazed into their eyes, and wasn't sure what was about to happen, but as the scent of roses grew stronger on the cold air, I knew the Goddess was coming. The scent of roses mingled with the rich scent of herbs and leaves, as if we stood on the edge of some forest glade.

  "Do you smell flowers?" Holly asked.

  "I smell forest," Ash said. "A forest like nothing in this land. "

  "What are you doing to us?" Holly asked.

  "You wanted to be sidhe. " I held my hands out to them.

  "Yes," Ash said.

  "No," Holly said.

  I smiled at Holly. "You both want power, don't you?"

  "Yes," Holly said, his voice a little reluctant.

  "Then each of you take my hands. "

  "What happens if we do?" Ash asked.

  I smiled, then I laughed, and the scent of roses and the sensation of summer sun on my skin was so real that it was almost dizzying to have my eyes see the winter's dark.

  "I don't know what will happen," I said, and that was the truth.

  "Then why should we do it?" Ash asked.

  "Because if you let the smell of summer and autumn fade, if you miss this moment of power, you will always wonder what would have happened if you took my hands. "

  The brothers looked at each other. They had a moment between them made up of years of scheming, fighting, surviving, all come to this second, this choice.

  "She's right," Ash said.

  "It is a sidhe trick," Holly said.

  "Probably," he said, then he smiled.

  Holly grinned back at him. "This is a bad idea, brother. "

  "Yes. "

  Holly reached out, and Ash echoed him. They reached out for my hands as if they'd practiced the movement. Their fingers tingled power down my skin, and it must have felt the same for them, because Holly started to draw back.

  Ash said, "Don't stop, Holly. "

  "This is a bad idea, brother," he repeated.

  "This is power," Ash said, "and I want it. "

  Holly hesitated a heartbeat longer, then his hand moved with his brother's so that they took my hands in theirs in echoing moves. "I've followed you all my life," he said. "I won't stop now. "

  Then the field and the winter's cold were gone, and we stood in a circle of standing stones on a wide plain under a full moon and a summer's spill of stars.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Ash swung me around so that i faced away from him, one hand on my throat, the other around my waist, pinning my sword to my body. Holly drew his own sword, and faced the outside of the circle. His sword gleamed like cold moonlight made solid.

  "Take us back," Ash hissed in my ear.

  "I didn't bring us here. "

  "Liar," he whispered, and his fingers tightened just a little around my neck. That one flex of fingers, the firmness of his palm against my throat, made my pulse speed.

  I spoke carefully, not wanting to do anything to make his fingers tighten any more. "I cannot change winter to summer, or transport us to a different country. "

  His fingers squeezed just a little more, until swallowing was uncomfortable. "What do you mean, 'a different country'?"

  I spoke even more carefully. "There are no standing stones in America, not like this. "

  His hand tightened until my breath wheezed under his grip.

  "Then where are we?" he asked.

  "A place between," a woman's voice answered.

  Ash went very still beside me. His fingers didn't tighten, for which I was glad, but they didn't loosen either. My breath still wheezed out from between his fingers as he turned slowly toward that voice.

  Holly said, "Who are you?"

  The woman's voice said, "You know who I am. "

  Ash turned so that he saw her before I could, but I knew what we would see, or what I would see. She wore a hooded cloak that hid most of her face, but for an edge of chin or a glimpse of lips. She held a staff, and her hand would be pale one moment, dark the next; old and young; slender and not. She was the Goddess. She was all that was female, all that was woman, and all at once.

  It was Ash who said, "Why have you brought us here?" Holly was still facing the figure with his sword out, as if he meant at any moment to attack.

  She wasn't flesh and blood, I knew that. I didn't think his sword could hurt her, but it seemed wrong to be threatening her. I might have protested except that Ash's hand squeezed too tightly for words.

  "Take us back or your chosen one dies. "

  "Harm her and you will never have the power you seek, Ash. "

  His hand eased a little so that I could breathe without fighting for it. "So if I let her go you'll give me power?"

  "She is the key to your power. Without her there is nothing. "

  "I do not understand. "

  Holly lunged toward the figure. A sword clanged down the length of his blade, pushing it against the grass, and a body was on the other end of that sword. He was tall and short, muscled and not, dark and light, all men and none. He had thrown off the cloak that they wore to save our minds so that you simply had to see all the many forms at once. He stood bare in all his beauty and terror, for a long, muscled body can be just for pleasure, but that same muscled weight can thrust a sword and spill blood. He was the greatest of tenderness and the greatest of destruction all at once. The potential was all there in that swirl of images, shapes, scents, and sights.

  He disarmed Holly, but he had to cut the goblin's hand to do it. It spoke of Holly's skill or the God's impatience. His voice was deep and rumbling as gravel, and the next light and airy as any, all men echoed in his voice. "Who am I?"

  Holly went to his knees with the sword point at his neck. "You are the God. "

  "Who is my consort?"

  "The Goddess," Holly answered.

  The God stepped back to the cloaked Goddess, but the moment they touched hands her cloak was gone, and they stood side by side. I don't know what the goblins saw, but I saw a dizzying swirl of faces and bodies. They were all these beings at once, but my mind could not hold it all. I finally closed my eyes, for I could not take it all in.

  Ash began to move, and I opened my eyes as I realized that he was moving us both to kneel on the summer grass. He'd stopped choking me somewhere during the revelation. In fact, now the arm that had been ch
oking me was around my shoulders. What had been hurting me was holding me almost tenderly now.

  "It has been long since the goblins saw the face of God," Ash said. "And Goddess," the Goddess said, and there was chiding in her voice. It was the voice of every mother, every big sister, every aunt, every teacher, all rolled into one echo.

  "And longer still since the goblins saw the face of the Goddess," Ash said. If he resented the chiding, it didn't show in his voice.

  "Are you goblins?" the God asked.

  "Yes," Holly answered.

  Ash was a little slower with "Yes. "

  "Are you sidhe?" the Goddess asked.

  "No," Holly answered.

  "We have no magic," Ash answered, as if that answered the question, and perhaps it did.

  "What would you give to possess the magic of the sidhe?" she asked.

  "Nothing," Holly said. "I am goblin, and that is enough. "

  "She did not say we had to become sidhe, brother," Ash said. "She spoke of the magic of the sidhe. "

  "Magic of the sidhe, but still goblin," Holly said. "That would be worth much. "

  "Once there were many courts, even among the goblins," the Goddess said.

  "Once," the God said, "there was magic in every court of faerie. "

  "The sidhe stole our magic from us," Ash said, and his hand that had been tender tightened against my shoulder. He didn't hurt me, but his body was suddenly tense as it knelt beside me.

  "Daughter," the Goddess said, "what say you to this?"

  "The sidhe stripped the goblins of their magic to win the last Great War between our peoples. "

  "Do you think this was well done?" She asked.

  I thought before I answered, because I could feel the magic beginning to gather around us. You would think that in the presence of Deities there would be no room for magic to build, that their presence would mask everything, but whatever was building in this summer night in this place between pressed against the air like the weight of invisible rock, as if a mountain were building above us one thought at a time.

  Ash's arm across my shoulders was almost trembling with tension. I had a moment to glance up at him, and he was staring as hard as he could straight ahead. I think he was afraid of what I might see in his eyes.

  "I've been told that if we hadn't taken the magic from the goblins they would have won the war. "

  "But your two peoples are no longer at war, are they?" She asked. "No," I said. Ash had gone utterly still beside me. I could feel the tension along his muscles, as if he fought himself to be still.

  "If you could undo the wrong done the goblins, would you?"

  "Was it wrong?" I asked.

  "What do you think?" She asked.

  I thought again. Had we been wrong? I had seen what the sidhe had done with their magic. They had used the fact that only we had major offensive magic to be tyrants. We had won the wars, but in the end, it was the humans with their technology who had truly won.

  "I think we won a battle, but not a war, by taking the goblins' magic. "

  Ash's hand spasmed against my shoulder.

  "But was it right, the right thing to do?" the God asked.

  I started to say yes, then said, "I don't know. I was told that our magic came from You. That would mean that we stole magic from the goblins that You had both given to them. Did you agree with what we did?"

  "No one asked us," the Goddess said.

  Ash startled beside me, and I just gaped at them. They had hooded themselves again, so my eyes and my mortal mind would be able to deal with them better. When had they hooded? Just now? Minutes ago? I couldn't remember.

  "Taking the goblins' magic was the beginning of You turning from us," I said.

  "What if you, daughter, could undo that injustice?" the God asked.

  "You mean give magic back to the goblins," I said. It was always good to be clear.

  "Yes," they said together.

  "You mean give Holly and Ash hands of power," I said. Ash had actually dropped his hand, as if it were all too much.

  "Yes," they answered again. Were they beginning to fade?

  "They are sidhe as well as goblin," I said.

  "Would you give them their sidhe-side powers, daughter?" Now I was answering voices.

  If I said no, would the Goddess retreat from me, from all my people again? I looked at Ash, and he would not look at me. I glanced in front of us at Holly. He was glaring at me. His face showed plainly that he thought I would deny them. But it wasn't his anger that I saw, it was the reason behind the anger. Years of looking in the mirror, and seeing all that sidhe blood looking back at you, and knowing that you would forever be denied. It didn't matter how sidhe you looked. If you had no magic, then you weren't real to the sidhe. You were simply not one of them. I knew what that felt like, to be among them but not one of them. I looked less sidhe than the brothers did. At least they were tall, and until you saw their eyes they could have passed. I would never pass for pure-blooded sidhe, not with a thousand crowns on my head.

  "Will you give them their birthright back?" the voices asked.

  For politics, I should have said no. For the safety of my world, no. For the safety of everything we'd signed treaties for, no. But in the end, I gave the only answer that felt right. "I will. "