A Greater Pox

by C.B. Mosher

All rights reserved by Denlinger's Publishers, including the right to reproduce this electronic book, or portions thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

DEDICATION

For all the physicians who, since the dawn of the profession, have used Reason to dislodge superstition in alleviating human suffering.
Their efforts rescued Medicine from the Dark Ages; may they do the same as we now confront the New Medievalism.
And especially for Jim Alley, for all these reasons and a couple more.

THE AUTHOR

C. B. Mosher is a short story writer and medical historian who has previously published medical non-fiction, textbook chapters, and many short stories. The author’s stories have been published in magazines, literary journals, on-line, and (recently) read on Public Radio.

THE BOOK

There was a year when the peaceful co-existence of Moslems, Jews, and Christians in the Kingdom of Spain came to a bloody halt. That same year the world's greatest military power launched a daring invasion on foreign soil, and an AIDS-like disease from beyond the ocean erupted and spread biological terror across the globe.

But also in that year, love bloomed, and grew to an epic adventure for a naïve girl who ultimately found herself caught up in the Beauty and the hope for Man's future which was the Renaissance.

Before AIDS, there was another world-traveling epidemic. Before Bill Gates' internet, there was Gutenberg's revolutionary printing press. Before the current scandal in the Catholic Church, there was an infamous Pope of insatiable appetites.

But the human heart hasn't changed much over the centuries: there has always been Romance, always military invasions, always the lust for adventure, always those who would care for the people who couldn't afford physicians.

This is the true story of an invasion, led by the king of France, which discovered the Renaissance, but also catapulted a new disease from beyond the ocean into an epidemic. The lessons of the Renaissance are still with us today. So is the disease.

We experience all this through the adventures of Pilar, a girl whose love for a young soldier propels her (and us) into the heart of historical events.

Amid the chaos of romance, war, and epidemic, Pilar shows us, by living the adventure, how Reason began to challenge Faith, how the Renaissance obsession with Beauty transformed medieval Europe, and how the terrifying epidemic of a New World disease revolutionized Western Medicine.

Sample Excerpts

Chapter 1

Spring, 1493

A Barbary Coast wind, warm with early african summer, washed across the sea into an ancient harbor. It swung a dozen foreign ships by their anchor chains. It wound up the seaport's narrow alleyways accumulating odors, and swept back the brown and tangled hair of a barefoot girl.

She ran on the sand between old Roman walls on her left and a meandering stream to her right. She ran through the shadows cast by oak trees on the sand, past scavenging dogs that jumped from her flapping skirt, past poor women washing their clothes. She ran until the sea came into sight, then she turned, splashed across the stream, and darted down an alley.

"Martín!" She yelled between gasping breaths. "He's coming! He's coming, Martín!"

She gained speed on the downsloping alley, toward a seated figure below. She tried to yell once more, but could only gasp. Momentum took over. She collided into the massive and gelatinous back of the seated man, just as he was pouring a stream of red wine into his mouth. His body lurched forward, driving the table edge deep into his abdomen and the glass spout of his porrone halfway down his throat. Bread, cheese and fish flew from the table. He choked on the wine, gargled it back up, and swallowed. Then he turned to see what clumsy pickpocket had assaulted him so early in the day.

His eyes widened with recognition. "Pilár!" He swept his hand toward the food on the street. "My lunch!" He held up the porrone. "My wine. I was nearly impaled through the throat. What were you thinking?"

She clung to his loose cotton shirt with both fists, jumping up and down by his side. "He's coming!" she wheezed between gasps. "The man who . . . who sailed to the Indies . . . is coming! With gold . . . and treasures . . . and all his Men of Glory! To see the King and Queen. Here!"

Her jumping slowed, eventually stopped, but she maintained her grip so she could lean on him, heaving, to recover her breathing. Her smile flooded his blank and fattened face.

"Pilár?"

"Yes, Martín?"

"Get me more cheese and bread."

She lurched into the Inn through the door adjacent to Martín's table; the same door through which he'd dragged the table out into this warmest day since last September. When she came out again to place a hunk of goat cheese and a fist of bread before him, she was more subdued. He resumed eating. She stood by the table fingering her blue cotton skirt.

"Señor Martín . . ." she ventured.

"Sit down," he muffled with full mouth, not looking up at her. She quickly dropped into a chair across from him.

"I was climbing up Montjuic to watch the ships from the top of the mountain and some pilgrims said that the Discoverer is coming with all his Men of Glory and everyone is going to see him and…"

He cut off her renewed enthusiasm with a raised hand.

"The screaming I heard, which I thought was the Old Fish yelling at her husband again, was you, no, little girl?" He looked up at her.

"Yes," she bubbled. "Yes. It was I. So that you can be the first in Barrio Chino to know. Martín! We must go watch the parade to the Royal Palace!"

"If this Great Man and his gold are at all civilized," Martín droned, "he will wait beyond the city walls until we've had our siesta." His eyes glanced up to see her reaction to his tease, expecting a small eruption.

"Oh, he'll wait longer than that."

"He will?"

"He's still ten leagues from here on the Coast Road. He'll be here in two more days. We must watch him when he enters the town, Martín." She leaned toward him as far as the table would allow. "Never in our lives have we seen an adventurer more famous! You must close the Inn so we can go."

"I'd like to see this," the Innkeeper mumbled as if to himself. He looked at Pilár: "We will close the Inn and go, and pray to the Virgin that all the wealthy customers who might come at that time are delayed until we get back."

She jumped from her chair and enclosed his flabby chins in her arms. "Thank you, Don Martín! The Virgin will delay all our customers and they'll be even more hungry when we open again. I know it is so. I'll clean your table now," she scurried. "Do you want more wine? What should I wear, do you think?"

She stopped at a thought, pulled back the chair, and floated into it like a stray feather. "Martín?" Her eyes and smile were not at the table but halfway out to sea again, as he had often seen them. "Would Men of Glory such as they ever consider allowing a girl to accompany them on their adventures, do you think?"

"Yes, Pilár . . ." he began. She snapped back instantly, beaming. ". . . I would like more wine."

"Oh. Wine." Her smile shrank but didn't disappear. "Yes, more wine." She took the empty porrone into the Inn, and soon returned with it full of heavy red wine.

"Sit, Pilár."

He tilted his head back, and aimed a stream from the spout of the glass carafe onto his wine-stained tongue. When his mouth was full, he tipped the porrone quickly, caught the entire stream, and brought his head forward as he swallowed.

"Of course sailors would take a pretty young girl with them. And you'd pass your entire adventure running from their grabbing hands. Imagine how you'd waste away with no time allowed you, even for meals. You wouldn't be safe. Your honor would be constantly assaulted. And you don't know yet how to defend yourself. Of course," he mused, "you'll learn. You're not yet seventeen -" a doubt interrupted his thoughts. "Are you?"

She wagged her finger, in response.

"No. I thought not. Anyway. Adventure is for men."

"I'll have adventures, Martín. I just know it. Only I don't know the way they'll come to me."

"You'll be married someday and have the adventure of being a mother. That's the adventure which awaits all women." His smile was warm and encouraging.

"Yes, Martín, I will be a mother and have many children -"

"Twelve," Martín confirmed the oft-quoted number.

"Twelve," she agreed. "But before that, I want to do other great things. "The French girl, Joan? The one you told me about? She became a soldier. The Moorish princess, Scheherazade traveled the whole world. I'll pray to the Black Virgin to show me the way to adventure."

The wine and the considerable task of digestion caused Martín to abandon the discussion. "Pray to whomever you wish, my girl, you'll be rewarded or punished as God sees fit. Now is the hour of siesta. Close your ears so I may belch."

She pushed fingers into her ears. His stomach released an eruption of mixed gases, and, thus deflated a little, he pushed the table out of his gut and waddled off down the road to his home and bed.

* * * *

Chapter 2

Dancing a Sardana

In an open space beyond the vendors and the crowd, in front of a massive cathedral, a dozen people were prancing like fawns in a large circle. The musicians she'd been seeking were behind them on the cathedral steps and several dozen people stood around the dancers in a loose semicircle, watching, clapping, periodically shouting. She joined them.

Somewhere among the observers was a young man whose peripheral vision caught the sway of her blue skirt. He turned to look; instinct then directed his legs over to her.

"Good morning, Señorita," he said in the local Catalan. "I am Rodolfo. What's your name?"

She turned to him, turned away from him, said nothing.

"I like sardanas, too. But I prefer to dance, not to watch. Let's dance together this next time."

Pilár looked deliberately around at the crowd, as if searching for the person, so familiar to this man, to whom he must obviously be speaking.

"Don't worry," he reassured her loudly, "no one will laugh at you because you aren't wearing an apron. With me you will dance perfectly."

She glanced into his assured and oblivious face -- ignoring his sea-colored eyes -- took her apron from the basket, unfolded it, slid it over her head, and tied it with a flourish. He smiled triumphantly.

Pilár whirled and walked into the market crowd. She pushed between people with no goal other than increasing her distance from him, and was still muttering to herself about deteriorating respect for Christian women, when she heard:

"You like my vegetables, Señorita?"

She looked up. Pilár and the vegetable lady recognized each other. The vendor smiled at her, then directed her attention to other potential customers. Pilár stopped suddenly in mid-step. "The eggplants," she remembered.

"Leave them," she thought. "I'll buy more." She reached into the pocket of her apron for the remaining money. "It'll be half gone with six more eggplants," she realized, "and I still need bread. And I can't just leave the basket."

She shook her head in anger at the situation, then walked, slowly, back toward the cathedral. At the moment she broke from the crowd of shoppers, she saw Rodolfo. His clothing stood apart from that of all the other people surrounding the dancers. Over a white, almost clean blouse, he wore a soldier's blue doublet. His pants were of broad stripes of blue and yellow, and ended at his knees. His stockings matched his eyes.

With the fingers of both hands, he was raking his curly black hair. Her basket was at his feet.

She slowly approached him from behind, so he couldn't chance to see her. She held her skirt to quiet it. She tiptoed. Within a step from him, she slowly squatted and reached for the basket.

"Did you come back to dance with me, or only for your basket?"

She snatched the basket and held it up before him.

"Only this."

He laughed, then placed his hands on his waist and turned to face her.

"You should dance with me. It's been a year since I've danced the sardana. I've been fighting against infidels in the last great battle of the Reconquest. I've seen glory in foreign lands where they don't speak Catalan. And in two weeks I'll go to France to learn the crossbow. This is your only opportunity to dance with me."

"You call that 'glory'?" Pilár sneered. "Yesterday I saw the Admiral who sailed to the Indies."

"You saw him? That's all? I have spoken with him--"

"You have?!" The words were out, and her eyes were bulging before she realized it.

"Or," he added quickly in a low voice, "with one of his crew, anyway." His voice boomed again: "I know everything they saw."

She changed her facial expression and planted her free fist on her hip. "Oh? What, for example?" she challenged.

He crossed his muscled arms over his chest. "You don't believe me. Well," his eyes drifted skyward for a moment, then returned to her face, "there are birds there of green, and blue and red --"

"And yellow," she blurted. "I saw one yesterday with yellow wings." Her face softened and she moved her fist down to hold the basket with both hands, dangling before her.

He held out his right hand. "Dance with me. I'll tell you more."

She put down the basket. She danced with him. She listened to his stories. She gave him instructions to find the Inn.

* * * *

Chapter 13

The Trip

****

When the dark blue of dawn had begun to replace night in the sky, Pilár crept from the blanket to find the source of her stream. It emerged from a curving escarpment that rose abruptly from the hills and looked like a dragon's spine. She climbed the rocks of this outcropping and saw, on the other side, a large meadow encircling a small lake, shimmering silver and black in the shadows. She stumbled over the loose rocks down to the meadow. The dew on its grass tingled her legs.

The water of the lake was very cold -- it stung her teeth -- but it tasted clean. She washed her face, and dried her hands on her dress. She watched the ripples she had created sink into the lake's surface. Once again undisturbed, it reflected the fading stars.

Such beauty God creates, she thought. We should protect it. She took the packet of smut rye from her purse and poured it into her left palm.

If I blow it into the meadow, this danger is past, she thought.

A slight breeze caught her neck; it threatened to whisk across her palm. She clasped her other hand over it.

It's a powerful remedy and difficult to obtain. Sometime, it could be useful to someone.

She scraped as much as she could back into the packet, returned it to her purse, drank three more handfuls of water, then climbed back to their tent site.

"I found water over there," she told the Signora. "Give me the bladder and I'll fill it for the trip."

"You sit down and eat. All day you walk, all night you care for you novio. If you not gonna take care of yourself, Sofia Logrotti does it for you."

"I have to hurry, Signora. It's a little distance and we'll be marching again soon."

"Sit down." She handed Pilár some bread and stood over her. "Eat."

Pilár ate several mouthfuls, then took the remaining bread and the water skin. "I'll be back in a while. Wait for me!"

The sun was up and threw a beam of warmth against the left half of her body. She felt the receding cool of the night on her other half, dividing her as sharply as if a knife blade had drawn a line. A chill swept her. Her left palm tingled. The air was motionless. Only her own footfalls, swishing the grass, reached her ears.

As she began the scramble over rocks which had fallen from the escarpement and piled up loosely below, she felt a pressure over her chest: something heavy from without, or something pulling from within. A rock rolled unevenly, and carried her left foot down with it. Her right foot dug in to hold her, but the rocks under it also shifted. She plopped down, face forward, into the moraine. Small broken pieces of mountain stared at her, from the distance of the tip of her nose. She laughed at them, and the dust on their surface danced to her laugh.

"You promise to be good little pebbles, stay where you are, and I'll try again," she told them. "Otherwise, I'm just lying here forever and ever and you'll never see the sun again underneath my dress."

They promised. She pushed herself up, and continued the climb. There were a couple of rocks, immature rebels, really, who rolled a little beneath her feet to demonstrate their independence, but she overcame them. From the top of the pile, she looked at the lake, now crystalline blue and deep. Like Rodolfo's eyes. It shimmered at its western edge; the eastern portion was still shielded from the sun of Italy by the mountains. Her mouth was parched, as when she had been in the southern Rhône valley, where she'd begun this trip. Was that just this morning? The trip from seashore to here just one day? She turned and looked back over her shoulder, to see the minuscule people, like gnats, their movement barely detectable from the distance. No, the seashore was before today.

She hurried down the tumbling rocks, driven by severe thirst. Small puffs of dust rose under her feet. Her skin prickled, itched, crawled. She looked at her arms: no ants. The journey across the meadow seemed far longer than she'd recalled from the first time -- when was that? Years ago? Her thirst drove her. I must be almost there, she thought. She stopped and looked behind her. She was halfway between the rock moraine and the edge of the lake. I'll never make it. I'll die of thirst before reaching the lake. The lining of her mouth curled like the leaves of winter. Her breath stuck against the desiccation of her throat, suffocating her. She clenched her teeth, and, thinking of the strength she'd found with which to treat Rodolfo, pushed her legs, one then the other, against the thirst, the itching on her palm, and a growing fire beneath her skin. With each step toward the lake, its water grew more distant. The meadow flowed past her in a tinkling spray of dew against her legs. Her throat constricted against the air she breathed.

Sometime, she saw the lake's edge at her feet, dropped to her knees, and plunged her head into the water. She came up choking and freezing, but with the inside of her mouth wet. The rippled reflection of her face was only vaguely familiar. She cupped her hands and scooped. As the level of water in her hands fell while she drank, the water became increasingly purple. She dropped the water and looked at her hands. Between two of the fingers there was still a smear of the purple-black dust. She shivered uncontrollably as she washed it off.

When the shivering had tapered off, she sat back to look around her. There was now a breeze blowing through the peaks above her, from Italy to France. She heard its humming and looked toward the sound. It came from between two bare rock snags. She could see them vibrate, just barely perceptible, like a musical instrument. The sound of the wind, uniform and smooth, was blue -- a shade lighter than Rodolfo's eyes. The wind gusted, and its sound pulsed to iridescent violet, raced down spotted snow fields into the meadow, and flew past her ears like an arrow from a crossbow. Then the violet whistle slowed again to a blue hum.

She watched it flow across the meadow, rustling the blades of grass into a sardana. She caught it winking at her, and she felt her face muscles pull into a smile.

Like a spark shot unexpectedly from a fire, a bird tweeted nearby. The tweet struck her burning skin, ignited it, and flooded the surface of her body. Her toes curled. Another bird chirped and a different spark tickled her exquisitely sensitive skin. She giggled, and sniffed her skin.

That one smelled like cinnamon, she thought.

Another bird, another spark, the smell of citrus. She closed her eyes but the meadow and the bird sparks remained before her, shimmering as clearly as if her eyes were open. Soon the meadow was a shower of bird calls, falling on her skin like a rainbow of spices. It tickled. She rolled on the grass, laughing from within a cloud of multicolored smells, until urine, hot and flooding, cascaded down her thighs. Through the blur of her tears she saw the meadow, lake and mountains as a smear of colors that melted slowly into odors: the rocks were pungent garlic; she smelled the emerald meadow as a cloud of tangy mint; the lake washed over everything with the deep blue scent of fresh rain.

It all flowed slowly, over her and through her, eyes closed or open. She found herself immersed in a vision of purple breezes and tinkling silver flowers. She lost understanding, lost even herself, and swirled in exhilaration.

"I love you," she whispered clumsily to everything she sensed. "You are love," she clarified.

She was on her stomach in the grass. She smelled the sun warming the dew and watched sweet-smelling vapors escape, like clouds of transparent smoke, from the living plants before her. A flower, smaller than her thumbnail, was hidden among the blades of grass. Its yellow petals were speckled, near the center, with red -- the colors of Catalonia. She looked for Rodolfo in it, and found him at the same instant that she saw another flower, identical in color and size, but facing modestly away. Rodolfo's stem, a little weak, bending, leaned against the second flower for support.

"I love you," she whispered again. Both flowers shook a little from her breath.

A bird sang in the hot, prickling sunshine and Pilár's exhausted skin fizzed briefly. She rolled onto her side quivering, to face the sun, and Italy. She saw the sky covered, to all horizons, with a multicolored translucent cloud of birds. She saw rivers of gold flowing between gleaming white towers of ivory. She heard the language of the Italian people, like the birdsongs of her sisters, and from among the millions of singing throats she heard Rodolfo.

There was a crack in his voice, but it was still strong. It came from the Catalan flower. She ran her eyes over its stem and, near the ground, found the wound which had weakened it. The bite of a beetle, she thought, or a cut from the knife-edge of a blade of grass. Or maybe I stepped on it. I'm sorry, flower. There, you see? One illness can look like another and you can't be sure. It's not Buas. And you're strong. Even with the wound, you're beautiful.

The Catalan colors began to melt, like wax, and drip from the flower's face. Pilár suspected tears, and blinked to squeeze away their smudge, expecting to find the flower restored. Its petals blackened, twisted, putrefied. She closed her eyes, but the flower continued to rot before her vision.

She sat up, looked in a different direction, and blinked. From the smear emerged Casilda. Tall, sure, and walking toward Pilár in her long flowing dress of crimson. Her hair shined under the mid-morning sun like a million threads of gold.

"Casilda?" whispered Pilár. She saw the word float toward Casilda's face. The face was indistinct. The grey lips opened to reveal perfect teeth, glistening like snow, sharp and deadly as the jagged peaks which trapped Pilár in this meadow.

"Casilda?! Casilda!!!"

The eyes of this apparition burned like sulfur; the only recognition it revealed was the recognition of prey. Pilár whirled her head from it to face west. Red and blonde Casilda was there, also, approaching. She squeezed her eyes shut. Excruciatingly detailed, she saw Casilda, still approaching.

"Virgin of Saragossa," Pilár cried into the void, "protect me!"

And the red robe became the pillar of jasper for which Pilár was named; the blonde hair was transformed into a gold halo; the fangs, Pilár saw as the carved whale ivory which centuries before had been placed in the mouth of the Virgin of the Pillar. Pilár sucked in panic. The air was thick with molten wax and perfumed smoke. She heard the grass grow up and over her like murmured prayers. Incense snaked around her neck and tightened.

Pilár erupted from her coiled fetal position and ran blindly. A glint of steel caught her attention. She saw a knight, armored and immobile, lance at rest. "Save me," she yelled, still running. He held a crucifix which looked down at her. His monstrous horse moved only its tail, swatting flies. A serpent emerged from the helmet's visor.

"Martin! Martin! I've been bewitched! Help me, Martin. Where are you? Martin!"

His name echoed from the mountains and into the meadow, flying in all directions like a thousand arrows in a melee of crossbowmen. It whizzed past her ears, each time a rock-distorted version of her own voice.

"Martin. Please! Help me. The Evil One is taking me!"

She stumbled and fell to her knees, heaving for her breath. She itched. Things crawled on her skin. She tried to jump up and run again, but her legs quivered, then collapsed. Something -- someone -- was biting her all over. These serpent's fangs sank into her back, her breast, her belly --.

She glanced behind herself in terror, and frantically began to crawl as fast as she could. "Mar-te-e-e-e-n!!!" as long and as hard and with as much power as her entire body contained until it rang from within the little meadow which was a deep and inescapable trap, closing around her.

Clink. She saw the sound, at her knees. It was the knife from the table at the Inn. She stopped and picked it up. She felt it, fearful of falseness. Its weight was right. Its balance was right. She brought it up to her nose to smell it. She inhaled.

"Starfish," it whispered as it entered her nose. "Be calm. What are you thinking?"

The words decomposed and their smoky wisps left her as she exhaled. She inhaled again.

"I'm here. Have faith. Here's the real --"

She reached the end of her inhalation, quickly exhaled, then drew in the smell of the knife again, slowly.

"--the real Casilda."

With further inhalations there were no more words, only the smell of the Inn.

"Pilár?"

Like the tweet of the birds, it sparkled.

Pilár froze in terror.

"Pilár?"

It was Casilda's voice, soft, concerned. The Evil One could mimic her voice even while chewing on Christian flesh.

"Pilár?"

The words and something else touched her left shoulder. She looked over in trembling fear and saw four spindly white fingers.

She bolted from the fingers and splashed into the lake, cold and wet, with a vague smell like fish.

"Pilár, what is wrong? Are there visions attacking?"

Pilár braced herself, hands sinking into the mud. Casilda, black haired and black robed, stood before her. She squatted to extend a hand to Pilár.

"Oof! This baby of mine has come between us, Pilár. Your hand."

Pilár began to extend her muddied hand, then a flash recalled the skillful deceit of the Devil, and she yanked it back.

"It is I, Casilda."

Her hand remained patiently extended from the black sleeve of her dress.

"Show me," croaked Pilár from her parched throat, "your belly."

Casilda pushed herself erect, lifted her dress above her waist, and turned sideways. Her lower abdomen protruded roundly. Pilár stared at the smooth white skin, so thin a separation between the baby and this world outside. Pilár saw the baby look back from her coiled but comfortable position.

"She's not afraid."

"Who is not afraid?"

"Your baby."

"Good. Now, give me your hand."

Pilár touched the hand, and felt familiarity. She let Casilda help pull her out. They stood facing each other. Pilár found some courage and looked into Casilda's face. Black eyes, and intelligent. Pale flesh, reflecting the sun. Thin lips, pink, which smiled softly. Pilár collapsed into her arms.

"Oh, Casilda. I've been enchanted. Someone has given me to the Evil One. My eyes, my ears, my whole body betrays me."

"Are you assaulted by visions?"

"Horrible visions."

"And beautiful?"

"No." She began to sob against Casilda's breast. She reached out to touch Casilda's hair. Strands of hair fell off her fingertips, making faint music like plucked harp strings. She brought a handful of the hair to her nose and smelled fresh herbs.

"Yes," she whispered. "Beautiful also."

"Sit here." Casilda led Pilár away from the lake, sat down, and pulled Pilár close to her. She rocked the girl rhythmically in concert with Pilár's chanting:

"I'm so frightened. I'm so frightened. I'm so frightened."

"Did you take the smut rye?"

"I took it. I took it. I took it."

"Why did you take it?"

"To save the baby."

"This, I understand. What I ask is, did you swallow it?"

"No. It's here. It's here."

Pilár fumbled into the folds of her dripping dress, and pulled out her purse. It was full of water, the package of smut rye decomposed.

"Not even a little bit, you took?"

"There was some on my fingers."

"Ah. And did you wash your fingers carefully?"

Pilár's attention was caught by a butterfly which flitted past, dancing in the air.

"Probably not. When will you learn, Pilár? Be clean. It is healthier."

Pilár's skin burned where the sun warmed it. It crawled with ants under her sodden dress.

"You are having effects from the smut rye. You will perceive many things which are not real. The amount was probably small. You will recover."

Pilár felt a powerful tightness, deep in her pelvis. "I'm safe in here, aren't I?"

"In where?"

Pilár looked up at the face of this tall black haired woman.

"In here." Pilár placed her hand on Casilda's belly.

Pilár yanked her hand away, startled.

"It kicked," said Casilda. "Did you feel it?"

"She kicked?" Pilár ventured a laugh. "Let me feel her again." She put her hand over Casilda's belly again. The baby thumped several times. Pilár felt herself float into Casilda's womb, comfortable, protected.

"You've been very good to me," Pilár said with welling tears. "Very kind. I didn't have a mother, you know. You didn't have to be my mother, but you are, and I thank you."

She stretched and kissed Casilda on the lips. Her lips were warm, coursing with blood, but filled with pain.

"Is all of you like that?" whispered Pilár. "With pain?"

Casilda's eyes were very distant.

"All of me," she nodded, "except, now, my womb. Thank you for that."

Pilár stood up, took off her dress, and found a rock over which to drape it. The sun played tinkling music on her skin, incompletely drowning the itching of the smut rye. She stretched out her arms, and turned slowly under the sun. A butterfly alighted on her belly button, flapped its wings twice, then released into the breeze.

"I'm thirsty," said Pilár. "And starving."

"This water is safe to drink," said Casilda pushing herself up, and walking toward the lake. "Only people contaminate water, and this lake knows no one but Pilár."

Pilár looked at the breeze-rippled surface of water and saw the orchestrated sound of a million raindrops. Duller, like a drum, was the muddy area she'd earlier violated. Casilda stood quietly near the edge, like someone watching a brother and sister playing in a stream. Casilda sensed Pilár and jumped just a moment before the impact would have sent her into the water. Pilár hit the water and shattered it into a thousand drops again.

"I was almost dry," she sputtered, encased to her neck in water, the drops falling around her.

"I would advise," pronounced Casilda like a towering granite statue of some city's founding father, "that you acquire a different method of drinking. Such manners will be scorned in Italy."

Pilár stood up slowly, then whirled quickly. A sheet of water fanned out from her hair like a parallel lake surface, and sprayed music across Casilda's neck.

"Refreshing," she said analytically.

"Let's look at France," sang Pilár gleefully. She ran from the lake, across the meadow, and clamored around the rock surface of the escarpment toward the west. Her wet leather foot coverings squeaked against the rocks.

"Casilda, look! This little stream leaves the lake, goes into the rocks, and comes out down there as my friend!"

She continued climbing until she found a sun-warmed ledge on the western face. She turned to Casilda who was slowly working her way up, hem held high by one hand. "The problem is," Pilár yelled down, "that you have clothes on. It's not natural."

She laughed, and heard her echo laugh. She laughed again and the echo returned from a point far to the west. She squinted and followed the path of the echo, to see herself sitting on the bank of the Rhône in the warm sun, yelling words like butterflies out across the river. They flew across the plain and into the violet mountains where she now sat. Her womb spasmed like a baby kicking within her, and Pilár winced. She looked down at her belly, naked in the sun. "That's all right," she cooed to Casilda's baby. "Move all you want. It means you're well."

She felt the fiery pulsing of the baby's beating heart deep in her empty womb. She leaned back against the rock to expose her belly to the distant French horizon. She saw herself, in France, lean back against the riverbank to expose her belly to the distant Italian horizon. "Many new lands beyond the Indies, to discover," she mused.

"And many new treatments," said Casilda, now puffing at her side, "for all the illnesses."

"What else, Casilda, will the baby discover?"

"What else?" Casilda sat on the ledge next to Pilár. "That human beings have beauty, even here on earth."

"Here on earth," repeated Pilár.

"Someday, that will be discovered."

Casilda's words, soft and ethereal, drifted past Pilár's eyes like clouds.

"Look how thick they are," Pilár said. "They can block out a mountain. They carry heavy rain. But they float, in the breeze, like feathers."

Pilár felt the burning beneath her skin, and though it must be like Casilda's trapped pain.

"I know why they bleed people who are ill," she told Casilda.

"Do not worry," Casilda answered. "I will not bleed you."

"I trust you."

"How foolish. To trust." They both sat in silence for a few moments. "If I had not trusted you, I would not still have this baby. It is a girl?"

"A girl." Pilár affirmed. "And you've taught me that I can trust something else. Before, I could only pray, and trust the prayer. Now I see --- other possibilities."

They both looked west. Casilda couldn't see the Rhône, but Pilár watched herself at the river, looking back over it to watch herself in the Alps.

"We've come a long distance."

"And a long distance, we have yet to go. The others are gone by now. Can you travel?"

Pilár jumped up.

"Travel? I can fly!"

She giggled at Casilda's fleeting alarm.

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