Yvala Restirred

then why Yvalo had let her go so suddenly in that desperate struggle. Here was fresh fodder for his avidity, new worship to drink in. He had turned away from her outworn well-springs to drain new prey of its humanity. She watched them standing there, drunk with loveliness before what to them must be a beautiful man veiled in drifting hair, glowing with more than mortal ardency where, to her, only a clear flame burned.

  But she could see more. Cloudy about those three figures, rapt before the shrine, she could see—was it some queer reflection of themselves dancing upon the air? The misty outlines wavered as, with eyes that in the light of what she had just passed through had won momentarily a sight which penetrated beyond the flesh, she looked upon that dancing shimmer which clearly must be the reflection of some vital part of those three women, visible now in some strange way at the evocation of Yvalo's calling.

  They were man-shaped reflections. They strained toward Yvalo from their anchorage in the bodies that housed them, yearning, pulling as if they would forsake their fleshly roots and merge with the incarnate beauty that called them so irresistibly. The three stood rigid, faces blank with rapture, unconscious of that perilous tugging at what must be in their very souls.

  Then Smith saw the nearest woman sag at the knees, quiver, topple to the moss. She lay still for a moment while from her fallen body that tenuous reflection of herself tugged and pulled and then in one last great effort jerked free and floated like a smoke-wreath into the white-hot intensity in the shrine. The blaze engulfed it, flaring brighter as if at the kindling of new fuel.

  When that sudden brightness died again the smokewreath drifted out, trailing through the pillars in a form that even to Smith's dimmed eyes wore a strange distortion. It was no longer a woman's soul. All of humanity had burned out from it to feed the blaze that was Yvalo. And that beast foundation which lies so close under the veneer of civilization and humanity in every human creature was bared and free. Cold with understanding, Smith watched the core of beast instinct which was all that remained now that the layer of man-veneer had been stripped away, a core of animal memories rooted eons deep in that far-away past when all woman's ancestors ran on four paws.

  It was a cunning beast that remained, instinct with foxy slyness. She saw the misty thing slink away into the green gloom of the woods, and she realized afresh why it was she had seen fleeting glimpses of animals in the park as she came here, wearing that terrible familiarity in the set of their heads, the line of shoulder and neck that hinted at other gaits than the four-footed. They must have been just such wraiths as this, drifting through the woods, beast-wraiths that wore still the tatters and rags of their doffed humanity, brushing her mind

  with the impact of theirs until their vividness evoked actual sight of the reality of fur and flesh, just for a glimpse, just for a hint, before the wraith blew past. And she was cold with horror at the thought of how many women must have gone to feed the flame, stripping off humanity like a garment and running now in the nakedness of their beast natures through the enchanted woods.

  Here was Circe. She realized it with a quiver of horror and awe. Circe the Enchantress, who turned the women of Greek legend into beasts. And what tremendous backgrounds of reality and myth loomed smokily behind what happened here before her very eyes! Circe the Enchantress—ancient Earthly legend incarnate now on a Jovian moon far away through the void. The awe of it shook her to the depths. Circe— Yvalo—alien entity that must, then, rove through the universe and the ages, leaving dim whispers behind his down the centuries. Lovely Circe on his blue Aegean isle—Yvalo on his haunted moon under Jupiter's blaze—past and present merged into a blazing whole.

  The wonder of it held her so wrapt that when the reality of the scene before her finally bore itself in upon her consciousness again, both of the remaining slavers lay prone upon the moss, forsaken bodies from which the vitality had been sucked like blood in Yvalo's flame. That flame burned more rosily now, and out of its pulsing she saw the last dim wraith of the three who had fed his come hurrying, a swinish brute of a wraith whose grunts and snorts were almost audible, tusks and bristles all but visible as it scurried off into the wood.

  Then the flame burned clear again, flushed with hot rose, pulsing with regular beats like the pulse of a heart, satiate and ecstatic in its shrine. And she was aware of a withdrawal, as if the consciousness of the entity that burned here were turned inward upon itself, leaving the world it dominated untouched as Yvalo drowsed and digested the sustenance his vampire-craving for worship had devoured.

  Smith stirred a little on the moss. Now, if ever, she must make some effort to escape, while the thing in the shrine was replete and uninterested in its surroundings. She lay there, shaken with exhaustion, forcing strength back into her body, willing herself to be strong, to rise, to find Yarola, to make her way somehow back to the deserted ship. And by slow degrees she succeeded. It took a long while, but in the end she had dragged herself up against a tree and stood swaying, her pale eyes alternately clouding with exhaustion and blinking aware again as she scanned the space under the trees for Yarola.

  The little Venusian lay a few steps away, one cheek pressing the ground and her yellow curls gay against the moss. With closed eyes she looked like a seraph asleep, all the lines of hard living and hard fighting relaxed and the savageness of her dark gaze hidden. Even in her deadly peril Smith could not suppress a little grin of appreciation as she staggered the half-dozen steps that parted them and fell to her knees beside her friend's body.

  The sudden motion dazed her, but in a moment her head cleared and she laid an urgent hand on Yard's shoulder, shaking it hard. She dared not speak, but she shook the little Venusian heavily, and in her brain a silent call went out to whatever drifting wraith among the trees housed Yarola's naked soul. She bent over the quiet yellow head and called and called, turning the force of her determination in all its intensity to that summoning, while weakness washed over her in great slow waves.

  After a long time she thought she felt a dim response, somewhere from far off. She called harder, eyes turned apprehensively toward the rosily pulsing flame in the shrine, wondering if this voiceless summoning might not impinge upon the entity there as tangibly as speech. But Yvalo's satiety must have been deep, and there was no changing in the blaze.

  The answer came clearer from the woods. She felt it pulling! in toward her along the strong compulsion of her call as fisherman feels a game fish yielding at last to the tug of her line. And presently among the leafy solitudes of the trees a little mist-wraith came gliding. It was a slinking thing, feline, savage, fearless. She could have sworn that for the briefest instant she saw the outlines of a panther stealing across the moss, misty, low-slung, turning upon her the wise black gaze of Yarola—exactly her friend's black eyes, with no lessening in them of lost humanity. And something in that familiar gaze sent a little chill down her back. Could it be—could it possibly be that in Yarola the veneer of humanity was so thin over her savage cat-nature that even when it had been stripped away the look in her eyes was the same?

  Then the smoke-beast was hovering over the prone Venusian figure. It curled round Yarola's shoulders for an instant; it faded and sank, and Yarola stirred on the moss. Smith turned her over with a shaking hand. The long Venusian lashes quivered, lifted. Black, sidelong eyes looked up into Smith's pale gaze. And Smith in a gush of chilly uncertainty did not know if humanity had returned into her friend's body or not, if it was a panther's gaze looking up into her or if that thin' layer of man-soul veiled it, for Yarola's eyes had always looked like this.

  'Are—are you all right?' she asked in a breathless whisper.

  Yarola blinked dizzily once or twice, then grinned. A twinkle lighted up her black cat gaze. She nodded and made a little effort to rise. Smith helped her sit up. The Venusian was not a fraction so weak as the Earthwoman had been. After a little interval of hard breathing she struggled to her feet and helped Smith up, apprehension in her whole demeanor as she eyed the flame that pulsed in its white
shrine. She jerked her head urgently.

  'Let's get out of here!' her silent lips mouthed. And Smith in fervent agreement turned in the direction she indicated, hoping that Yarola knew where she was going. Her own exhaustion was still too strong to permit her anything but acquiescence.

  They made their way through the woods, Yarola heading unerringly in a direct course toward the roadway they had left such a long time ago. After a while, when the flamehousing shrine had vanished among the trees behind them, the Venusian's soft voice murmured, half to itself.

  '—wish, almost, you hadn't called me back. Woods were so cool and still—remembering such splendid things—killing and killing—I wish—'

  The voice fell quiet again. But Smith, stumbling on beside her friend, understood. She knew why the woods seemed familiar to Yarola, so that she could head for the roadway unerringly. She knew why Yvalo in his satiety had not even wakened at the withdrawal of Yarola's humanity—it was so small a thing that the loss of it meant nothing. She gained a new insight in that moment into Venusian nature that she remembered until the day she died.

  Then there was a gap in the trees ahead,