Free Greendaughter (Book 6) by Anne Logston Page B

dance alone. I dance a sword dance.”
    “Sword dance?” Sharl asked, finally breaking his brooding silence.
    “How many swords?” Suan asked.
    “Eleven,” Chyrie said. “Sometimes I can dance twelve, but I am only confident with eleven.”
    “Eleven,” Suan repeated, impressed. “We have no sword dancers in the village now, and the last I saw could dance only eight. Would you possibly consent to dance for us? If you feel fit, of course, after your ordeal.”
    “What is a sword dance?” Sharl repeated.
    “I will show you,” Chyrie said, “if I may have the loan of ten swords.”
    She could have had thirty if she wanted them, as every elf near her thrust scabbards at her. While the elves in the clearing finished their dance, Chyrie selected ten blades. When the clearing was empty, Chyrie took the blades out of the scabbards and placed them carefully at angles, one sharp edge hammered firmly into the earth with a wooden mallet, the other edge gleaming upright. When all eleven swords were set to her satisfaction, Chyrie put the scabbards and mallet aside, laid her boots, tunic, and leggings over a log, and stepped back out into the clearing. A murmur passed from elf to elf as firelight glistened off her amber skin and the full extent of Valann’s work became clear.
    Starting at the soles of Chyrie’s feet, two moondrop vines twined upward around her legs, branching richly around her torso, thinning only at her neck, and shoots trailed down her arms. In some places the vines bore buds or flowers; in others the moondrop berries hung full and ripe. On some prescient whim, Valann had even chosen to depict a cluster of golden berries on Chyrie’s belly, which now swelled gently.
    Chyrie nodded to the musicians, who began a slow but light beat, waiting for Chyrie to set the pace. Chyrie took a deep breath, engraved the pattern of the swords into her mind, and began to dance.
    Valann had taught her the sword dance, as he had taught her so much else. He had thought the swiftness and energy of the sword dance more suited to Chyrie’s nature than the more delicate and ethereal dances more commonly danced by elven women. As usual, he had been right. Like most other beast-speakers, the wild blood was strong in Chyrie, and now it flowed fierce and hot in her veins. Strong and alive she felt, young and fast and free, her feet carried on the notes of the music, on moonlight and firelight, on the current of her blood, on the very wind as she danced. Her feet flickered precisely, yet ever more quickly, between the shining blades: like all life, balanced on the sharp edge of the blade.
    Now the musicians had her rhythm, and the drums beat with the hot pulsing of her heart. Firelight flickered yellow and red off her skin, freely sheened with sweat. The patterns on her skin glowed like living things, the vines seeming to flex and coil around her arms and legs, leaves reaching to cup her small breasts. She felt the wild life of the Mother Forest reaching up from the earth, reaching for her, reaching for the children in her womb, flowing through her as it did whenever she touched the mind of bird or beast. For that one breathless moment, hanging suspended in time, she was the Mother Forest, she was the dancing feet of the Mother Forest, she was the Mother Forest made flesh, strong and wild and ripe with new life.
    But she could not hold it, desperately though she tried. The fatigue and strain of the last few days was weighing down her limbs; soon her pace would fall off and her feet become unsteady. She felt a pang of reluctance; better to go on, better to hold the moment for a few last heartbeats. But no—one could spoil the dance by clinging to it past its moment. Regretfully she fell back into her body, back to the clearing, holding out just long enough for the music to reach the proper climax, and she leaped free of the blades.
    There was a moment, crouching there on the hardened earth, where the pulse pounded in her ears so