Being a Green Mother by Piers Anthony Page B

lascivious. Orb could appreciate how a man could be excited by the youngest of such girls, and she herself experienced a rush of desire as she watched the men.
    Flustered, Orb wished she could leave before her embarrassment was evident. But she knew she could not—and a deeper countercurrent in her didn’t want to go. Her own appetite was stirring, and part of her wanted to participate, flinging away caution and indulging in the passion of the moment with complete abandon.
    She spent the rest of the occasion in a kind of fog; it was Tinka who got her safely home. She slept—and in the morning was disgusted. “Any man could have done anything hewanted with me!” she exclaimed, appalled in retrospect. She spoke in Calo, imperfectly, but the feeling was there.
    “No,” Tinka said. “My father decreed that you are not to be molested.”
    “I mean that I would have welcomed it!” She spoke as freely as her command of the language permitted, for though her association with the Gypsy girl had not been long, it had been intense, and they were becoming confidantes. Three years separated them, but the Gypsy girl’s knowledge of sexual matters was greater than Orb’s.
    “No shame in that!” Tinka exclaimed, laughing. “For five years I have longed for a man, any man, but few would touch me, because of my faults.”
    Faults: her blindness and her mutilated hands and deformed feet. But Orb was aware now that the restriction was not because men found Tinka unattractive, but because they deemed her to be unable to perform the role of a Gypsy wife and mother. Sex was much on a Gypsy man’s mind, but it was not untempered by practical considerations. “Few?”
    “My father got some to come. But I knew …” She shrugged.
    Paid love. What girl of any age wanted that? In Tinka’s case it was evidently more than dating, but the principle remained. Tinka wanted to be truly accepted and to captivate the love of a man by her own resources. “I think they are more interested now.”
    “Yes. Three asked me to the bush last night, but I wouldn’t go.”
    “Three!” But Orb had seen how much in demand the girl had been for dancing, and of course the line between dancing and complete sex could be fuzzy, as the
tanana
showed. Orb set aside her own reservations, knowing that the strictures of her culture did not apply here. “Why not?”
    “Because they were riffraff. After I learn what you are teaching me, I can get a noble.”
    She had a point.
    The work continued, though it was a pleasure. Before she knew it, months had passed, and Orb had not only learned the language, she had learned much about the Gypsy culture. Tinka taught her the
tanana
, though Orb had no intention of ever doing the suggestive dance in public, and other nuancesof the culture. Meanwhile Tinka progressed on the evocation of her latent magic and was able to generate the orchestra at will. Orb noted with interest that for the girl it was a Gypsy orchestra, not a conventional one. But its power was as great.
    It ended with seeming suddenness. The Gypsies were a traveling people, and the population of the village was constantly changing. They did not have wealth, as that was not a Gypsy objective, but some families were in better regard than others. Tinka encountered a handsome, talented, clever Gypsy man, danced the
tanana
with him, and touched him constantly, and Orb knew she was playing the magic music for him. This was the one she wanted, and it seemed that it required only five minutes for her to captivate the man entirely. The man was not concerned about her blindness or her hands; he recognized her music as a treasure beyond such matters. Her beauty hardly hurt, however. Before the evening was done, they had agreed to marry.
    Orb was sorry to see her relationship with Tinka end, but she knew it was time for her to move on. She had learned as much as she could here and now was far better equipped to pursue her quest for the Llano. The Gypsies of this