Free The Forest of Forever by Thomas Burnett Swann

onto the floor.
    She resumed her place on the couch as if she had fallen by accident. Her rueful laugh was like bells with copper tongues, sweet but metallic. Kora had laughed like wind chimes. “I see that no amenities are necessary between us, my dear. Yes, I am holding your two friends in my hive—unwilling guests, you could say—and it lies in your power to rescue them.”
    He glared at her. “What do I have to do?”
    “Eunostos, I must tell you a sad truth. My daughters are diligent workers, but unintelligent and unresourceful. It has taken them seven days to build the hive, which is not yet finished. I myself have given them a long, proud lineage. I can trace my ancestry back to the days when the Yellow Men were living in crude stone huts and Cretans were cowering in caves. But the males of my tribe—well, to call them Beasts is a monumental exaggeration. The very best of them—Sunlord, for example—is a poor specimen of bestiality. At the next nuptial flight, I’m not even sure that I shall be able to conceive, and a queen who doesn’t conceive is dethroned.”
    “In other words, you need a husband from another race.”
    “Precisely.”
    “Well, you might consider a Centaur.”
    She shuddered. “Too large. Too many legs.”
    “A Paniscus? They’re the right size for you.”
    “Odorous. Onion grass, don’t you know.”
    “Just who did you have in mind?”
    Impatience flickered behind her smile. “Don’t be dense, dear boy.”
    “Me?”
    “Who else?”
    “For a stud,” he muttered. “Like the Cretan bulls who are bred for the ring.”
    “Stud? Husband, you mean. Didn’t I speak of a nuptial flight? Or lover, if the notion of matrimony frightens you. Yes, Eunostos, you are to sire my next eggs. I spied you from the air when I first arrived in this land, and you seemed to me as a dragonfly to a rose. As a tiger moth to a night-blooming cereus. As a—”
    “And that’s all I have to do to rescue Kora and Zoe?”
    “That’s all,” she snapped. The Thriae do not like to be interrupted in their figures of speech. “I have no other reason to hold them.”
    “Set them free first.”
    She pouted and turned her back. “You make it sound like a crude bargain. Here I’ve swallowed my pride and come to your arms like a common little Dryad, and you want guarantees of my good faith.”
    “At least give me proof you’re holding them.”
    She proudly produced the Centaur pendant. “I believe this horsy fellow is a close relative of your dear one.”
    He nodded with reluctant recognition. “Kora’s pendant. You do have them, then.” He did not think to ask for guarantees of our safety. It never occurred to him that Saffron might have murdered or be in the process of murdering us. His bluff male heart could not conceive of such perfidy in a female.
    “After all, what have you to lose?”
    After all, what did he have to lose? He did not know the traditional fate of a drone.
    “Am I so unlovely?” she continued. “Are my wings uncouth, my color disagreeable? Is this any way to treat a stranger in your land?”
    “You’re a bit skinny,” he said, “and you must be a hundred or so.”
    “If you think me plain, you ought to see my workers. Why they don’t even know how to paint their faces!”
    “You’ve never taught them?”
    “It might distract them from their work. As for my age, I am a hundred exactly without a so. This Zoe creature, I believe, is in her three hundreds.”
    “You’ve held up well at that,” he admitted. “You’re sure I won’t tear your wings?”
    “As sure as I am that the earth is flat and supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”
    At least she knew her science.
    * * * *
    With her small but insistent hand, she pushed him onto his back. Dear Zeus, he thought. After my bout with the Panisci, am I equal to pleasuring a Bee queen? He took a deep breath and flexed his muscles. He lashed his tail—the part which was not under him—until it cracked like a