I have been ashamed, ever since that day, that I even thought of so disgracing myself. I would have lost the race I never ran. Had I actually done that—succumbed to Ixinatsi's love and the islands' easefulness—I doubt that I could long have lived with my shame. I would have come to hate myself, and then have turned the hate on Cricket for her causing me to hate myself. What I might have done for love would have destroyed that love.

Further to my shame, I cannot even claim with conviction that I would not have chosen to surrender my quest—and my honor—because it so happened that the gods made the choice for me.

Toward twilight, I returned to the seaside, where the divers were wading ashore with their last baskets of the day. Ixinatsi was among them, and when she saw me waiting for her, she called cheerily, mischievously, with a meaningful grin:

"I think by now, darling Tenamaxtli, I must owe you at least one more kinu. I shall dive this moment and bring you the Kuku of all kinucha." She turned and swam to the nearest rock outcrop, where some indolent sea-cuguars were basking and gleaming in the last low rays of sunlight.

I called to her, "Come back, Cricket. I wish to talk."

She must not have heard me. Glistening as golden as the animals about her, radiant and beautiful, she stood poised on one of the rocks, gave me a jaunty wave of her hand, dove into the sea and never came out again.

When finally I realized that not even the strongest-lunged woman could have stayed underwater so long, I raised an outcry. All the other divers still in the shallows came splashing ashore in fright, probably thinking I had espied a shark's fin. Then, after some hesitation, the more intrepid of them swam back to the area I pointed to—where I had seen Ixinatsi plunge under—and they dove again and again, until they were exhausted, without finding her or any indication of what had happened to her.

"Our women," said a creaky old voice beside me, "do not all live to my great age."

It was Kuku, who had naturally hastened to the scene. Although she might have berated me for having disturbed the complacency of her realm, or for having been partly to blame for Cricket's loss, the old woman sounded as if she wished to solace me.

"Kinu-diving is more than rigorous work," she said. "It is perilous work. Down there lurk savage fish with tearing teeth, others with poisonous stings, others with clutching tentacles. I do not think, however, that Ixinatsi fell prey to any such fish. When there are predators in the vicinity, the sea-cuguars bark a warning. More likely she has been swallowed."

"Swallowed?" I echoed, thunderstruck. "Kuku, how could a woman be swallowed by the sea in which she has lived for half her life?"

"Not by the sea. By the kuchunda."

"What is the kuchunda?"

"A giant mollusk, like an oyster or clam or scallop, only unbelievably bigger. As big as that rock islet yonder where the sea-cuguars are dozing, big enough to swallow one of those sea-cuguars. There are several of the kuchundacha hereabouts, and we do not always know where, for they have the ability, like a snail, to creep from place to place. But they are visible and recognizable—each kuchunda keeps its massive upper shell agape, to clamp down on any unwary prey—so our women know to stay well clear of them. Ixinatsi must have been unusually intent on her oyster-gathering. Perhaps she saw a prize kinu—it happens sometimes, when an oyster lies open—and she must have relaxed her vigilance."

I said miserably, "She went promising to fetch just such a kinu for me."

The old woman shrugged and sighed. "The kuchunda would have slammed its shell shut, with her—or most of her—inside. And since it cannot chew, it is now slowly digesting her with its corrosive juices."

I shuddered at the picture she evoked, and I went sorrowfully away from the place where I had last seen my beloved Cricket. The women all looked sad, too, but they did no keening or weeping. They appeared to regard this as no uncommon event in a day's work. Little Tiripetsi had already been told, and she was not weeping, either. So I did not. I grieved only silently, and silently cursed the meddling gods. If they had to intervene in my life—sternly pointing me to my destined future roads and days—they could have done it without so gruesomely ending the life of the innocent, vivacious, marvelous little Cricket.

I said good-bye only to Tiripetsi and Grandmother, not to any of the other women, lest they try to detain me. I could not now take the child with me, because of where I was going, and I knew she would be lovingly cared for by all her aunts and cousins of the islands. At dawn, I put on the elegant skin mantle Ixinatsi had made for me, and I took my sack of pearls, and I went to the southern end of the island, where my acali had waited all this time, stocked with the provisions put into it by Ixinatsi, and I pushed off and paddled eastward.

So The Islands of the Women are still The Islands of the Women, though I trust they are now a more convivial place by night. And any Yakoreke fishermen who visited after my time could have had no cause to resent my having been there. Those who may have come immediately after me could hardly have sired any children—surely every possible mother-to-be was already on her way to being one—but the men must have been so riotously welcomed and overwhelmingly entertained that they would have been ingrates indeed if they complained about a mysterious outlander's having preceded them.

But I thought, and I hoped, as I went away, that perhaps I would not be gone forever. Someday, when I had finished doing what I must do, and if I survived the doing of it... someday, when Tiripetsi had grown to be the image of her mother, the only woman I ever truly loved... someday toward the end of my days...

XXVII

My heart was so heavy and my thoughts so melancholy that I felt no alarm, scarcely even noticed, when the islands sank out of sight behind me and I was again alone on the fearsomely empty open sea. What I was thinking was this:

"It seems that I somehow confer a curse upon all the women toward whom I feel love or even affection. The gods cruelly take them away, and cruelly leave me alive, to live with regret and grief."

And this: "But ayya, when I bemoan my bereavement, I am being callously selfish, because what happened to Ixinatsi and Pakapeti and Citlali was so much worse. They lost the whole world and all their tomorrows."

And this: "Ever since childhood, my cousin Ameyatl and I have been merely fond of one another, yet she nearly died of imprisonment and degradation."

And this: "The little mulata girl Rebeca and I considered one another only an experiment. But, when she went from my arms into a convent's suffocating confinement, she too could be said to have lost the world and all her tomorrows."

Thus it was that, then and there, I made a decision. I would live the kind of life, from now on, that would be most prudent—and most considerate of every woman remaining in The One World. I would never again let myself be lured into love of any of them, or let any of them love me. For myself, the remembrances of the idyll I had shared with Cricket would sustain me for the rest of my days. For the women, I would be doing a mercy, not endangering them with whatever was the curse I carried with me.

If, when I got ashore at Yakoreke and walked north to Aztlan, I should find the city still intact and Ameyatl still ruling there, I would decline her suggestion that we wed and reign side by side. Henceforth, I would devote myself entirely to the war I had instigated, and to the extermination or expulsion of the white men. I would let no woman, ever again, into my heart, my life. If and when my physical needs got overwhelmingly urgent, I could always find some female to use, but that would be all she would mean to me—a handy yet disposable receptacle. I would never love again; I would never be loved again.