Polystom Read Online Free PDF

jacket, who was in turn carefully shepherding another girl. Stom’s eye went to this latter. Her hair was black, her face turned away, her slight frame swathed in pale blue silk that wriggled and moved in the breeze to cling about the contours of her arms, her hips.
    ‘Who’s that with her?’ Polystom asked, blushing deeper.
    ‘Beeswing? She’s a tomboy. Oh, she’s trouble. Don’t you know her?’
    ‘No,’ said Stom, colouring deeper. ‘What a strange name.’
    ‘That’s not her name, of course,’ said Erina. ‘It’s a nickname, or something like that. I don’t even know where it comes from. Her name’s Dianeira. Are you interested in her?’
    ‘I don’t know her,’ said Stom, the blush spreading from his face to his neck and ears. The unknown girl turned, momentarily, and he caught sight of her face in profile; the delicate, almost faery features.
    ‘How funny,’ said Erina, and giggled in a low, languorous way. Stom flashed a look at her: that was really too rude, but she laid her hand on his sleeve. ‘Oh I’m not laughing at you, my dear,’ she said, adopting the tones of an old lady, ‘really I’m not. Only I’m imagining poor Aunt Elena’s face when she discovers that you’ve fallen for
Beeswing
of all people!’
    It may have been the fact that Beeswing was not regarded generally as an appropriate choice that fixed Polystom’s attention so forcefully upon her; or perhaps it was fate, karma, love, whichever of those sorts of hex-words you find most convincing. Certainly, in the early days of his infatuation, when he was most overwhelmed by the beauty of her face, the delicacy and grace of her body, and by the rumoured rebellious heat of her heart – in those days, Polystom most often thought in terms of
love
. He wrote poetry that expressed, in more flowery words than the occasion demanded, that the two of them were meant to be together.
    Aunt Elena began by expressing disbelief, and continued by voicing an elegant sort of exasperation. ‘But you don’t know what she’s like!’ she told him. It was true, but it was also a large part of the appeal. Of course he didn’t knowwhat she was like. How, his soul cried (finely honed, he liked to think, with a genteel anguish) could any person truly
know
any other person? He had tried to put this sentiment into verse and had only distressed himself with the clichés that resulted. But that didn’t stop it being true; and, he told himself, there
had
to be some connection between the two of them, some special speech in the air between Beeswing and him, or why else would he feel this way?
    ‘Speak to her guardian,’ Aunt Elena advised. ‘If you really have got a crush on this girl, then at least you owe it to yourself to go into things with a full knowledge. Disabused.’ He winced.
Got a crush
. So vulgar a phrase. His soul flinched from its crudity, or perhaps from the notion of transience it implied. To paint true love in such colours!
    ‘Her guardian?’ he asked, covering his embarrassment with a nonchalant smile. ‘What’s the story there?’ The garden party was over now; some guests had departed, others were staying over in one of Elena’s many, sumptuous guest rooms. Beeswing and her elderly companion were among the latter. Most of the guests had gone into the house; Stom and his aunt were walking together over the lawn.
    Dusk had fallen. Moths dripped from the darkening trees in their thousands. Their colonies nested in the upper branches throughout Spring Year, and now they flew through the purpling sky in random flitters, a grainy and swirling cloud over the lawn. Servants were erecting ecto-plasmic draperies before the open doors and open windows, gauze to prevent the insects getting indoors. Polystom parted one such delicate curtain to allow his aunt to step through the back door into the rear sitting-room.
    ‘Her guardian,’ Aunt Elena repeated. ‘She had co-mothers, I think; her mother and her co-mother. Her father went