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knew you were frightened, lif . I couldn’t touch you like that, as something to be endured. And I had been so forceful with you. It was the wrong thing.”
    Jak reached back and groped for Ra, and Ra offered her hand. “No,” said Jak earnestly, pulling Ra’s hand in front, clasped between both breasts. “I loved that.”
    Ra hugged Jak to her fiercely. “Won’t you look at me again, Jak?” She laid her cheek against Jak’s shoulder. “Will you never look at me?”
    To look at Ra would mean seeing Jak’s own abasement. Jak would see Kol there, humiliation and nakedness—and pity. Jak pressed Ra’s captive hand. “It wasn’t the only thing,” said Jak in a small voice. “It was the first thing.”
    Ra was assaulted then with what Jak couldn’t keep hidden: Kol would find Jak; there was no hiding from him either. When Fyn went out, and sometimes at night when Fyn was sleeping just a room away, Jak was the rabbit again. There were never any words, just the intent concentration, the owl eyes, as Kol dissected, vivisected , reduced Jak to parts. Neither did Jak make a sound; perhaps it wasn’t happening if it didn’t touch the atmosphere.
    In this complicity of silence, he manipulated Jak’s parts like Deltan clockworks, as though it were merely an experiment. Nothing escaped Kol’s expedition.
    When Jak and Geffn had first been intimate, Jak hadn’t been a virgin—taking Geffn had been easy. Jak had known it, but hadn’t known why. It hadn’t seemed important to know. When had Jak’s virginity disappeared? Jak couldn’t remember even now. Perhaps it was only that first invasive touch that mattered. How could the rest matter, when Jak wasn’t there?
    From eight to fourteen, Kol had been Jak’s shame. And then Kol had fallen from a height—exploring again—on the mountain with Fyn.
    Fyn had done it. Jak knew this, though it had occurred to no one else. Fyn had somehow, finally, known. It hadn’t made them friends. Jak had wanted that from her, wanted to be forgiven, but Fyn, succumbing to consumption, had followed Kol to the grave a miser with the precious forgiveness. The dark rooms and the white where Kol had excavated Jak, the invasion of his explorations, were gone from Jak’s conscious mind by then, and Jak only knew Fyn’s abandonment, more total in death than it had ever been in life.
    Shame, like swallowed nightshade, battered Jak from within. It was an inflamed organ that had at last ruptured, and its poison was spreading. Jak had done something to deserve it, to provoke it. Jak’s silence, perhaps, had been implicit consent.
    â€œYou’re not to blame,” Ra insisted, and Jak let out a weak, derisive laugh from the blanket. But Ra compelled Jak to look at her, and when she spoke again, her voice held the incontrovertible authority of the Meer. “You must trust me. You must let me do what I will to you.”
    Jak shrank beneath her, silent once more, paralyzed by Ra’s eyes. Ra held Jak’s head immobile and descended, a bird of prey from above. She stormed Jak’s mouth in a kiss, but not a lover’s kiss, bruising and constricting. Jak howled into the void she created between them, an unbidden issuance of sound that surged up from Jak’s feet, through the violated places and through the stomach where the agony lodged. It streamed out of Jak, demented, an audible throe, and Jak convulsed, trying to escape, but Ra was unopposable. Ra stiffened, her skin a bloodless white, eyes always on Jak’s, keeping Jak’s gaze as though it were vital.
    With a palpable, electric shock, the kiss transformed. Ra was caressing Jak’s mouth, bathing Jak with red tears, tongue tenderly probing. Jak held on to her, gathered the unbearable bliss of her thin body, kissed ardently and was kissed.
    When Ra let go at last and laid her head beside