In the Green Star's Glow

But not before I saw the burning color of her cheeks.

A day or two later, while setting the long table for the evening meal, she had cause to reprimand me for a fancied clumsiness. She slapped and scratched me as I stood unresisting, my arms folded upon my chest, my head lowered. Suddenly, her blows softened almost to so many caresses. She drew the fingers of one hand, slowly, down the bulge of my biceps while her other hand went out, tentatively, to touch my bent back.

I heard her catch her breath.

The moment was electric with excitement. I said nothing, did nothing. Her hand removed itself, and the next thing I knew, she had left the cabin, and did not return for hours, not even to join in the evening meal.

She did not return, in fact, until after the fall of darkness. As I lay unsleeping in my cubicle, tethered to the metal ring, I heard her come slamming in, then the creak off her cot as she flung her restless body upon it. Then, a bit later, I beard the muffled sound of her weeping.

She cried herself to sleep that night. But I… I did not sleep at all, but lay staring up into the darkness, thinking my own thoughts.

Many times during the days and nights thereafter I felt the sensitive pressure of her gaze upon my body as I toiled at my tasks. It seemed to me that Varda sought every pretense she could think of to be in my proximity, and that she found many a reason to touch me or to stand very close to me.

I pretended to notice nothing, hoping I was mistaken about the cause of her curious malady, and its nature. For it was not really either rare or curious, the fever which, as I suspected, had Varda in its grip.

It was a sickness as old as the very world.

The affection which Varda evidently felt for me had an adverse effect on our relationship. Instead of being kinder and more gentle in her treatment, she flew more frequently into wild and furious rages, during which she scratched and pummeled me unmercifully. She fell into black moods of brooding, or into sulky passions during which nothing could rouse her or lighten her mood.

When she had cause to punish me, she did so with the utmost cruelty and vigor. It was almost as if, in punishing me, she was somehow inflicting punishment upon herself.

Although I am no psychologist, and, no more than any other man, pretend to have anything but the slightest and most cursory understanding of women, I believe I came to an understanding of her dilemma. It was the conflict between her private emotions and her public position.

The savage girls had been misused and outraged by their brutal captors. Slaying the marauders who had enslaved them had not sufficed to revenge them fully upon the male sex. So they maintained a virulent hatred of the other half of the human species, and, as I was the only male around, took this out on me.

So—while all that was womanly in the heart of the teen-aged girl was beginning to respond to my own maleness—this was in conflict with Varda’s own ingrained loathing of the masculine gender. She loathed and hated herself, on some deep, hidden layer of her being, for looking upon me with the dawning of desire.

Being only human, she punished me for the mere fact that I was a male, and that she found my maleness arousing.

The situation was potentially an explosive one.

I literally held my breath and stayed out of her way as best I could. It goes without saying that, neither by look, word, act, nor gesture, did I encourage her interest in me or display any awareness or response to her own youthful and violent passion.

This, however, seemed only to heap fuel on the flames that raged within the girl.

It was a horrible situation to be in. I could see the danger of it, but I knew myself to be completely helpless to avert the catastrophe I could so clearly foresee.

There is nothing more ghastly than the position of the prophet who, although forewarned, can do nothing to avoid the impending doom he senses.