384
PARTISAN REVIEW
So here it is, he thought, swallowing. Now she was going to take a
slow step toward him, come up so close that he could breathe in her per–
fume of orange blossoms, so close he could almost feel her breasts brush
against his arm, and she would invite him to that other cave where she
slept, and he would ... he would ...
And then the woman spoke.
"I sell wind," she said.
It
grew very quiet all at once, as if the sea had paused for one long,
terrible moment. Unsure of what he had heard, Constantine blinked.
"You ... what?"
"Wind," she repeated serenely. "I sell wind. All the fishermen around
here buy it. Of course, you don't go out to sea, so you probably don't
need any.... But perhaps you would like to take a look all the same?"
She walked toward the stone at the back of the cave, and mechani–
cally he followed her. The acrid, sweet smell grew stronger, and his head
began to swim. The woman bent to pick up something off the ground
and turned to him with her hand extended. On her palm lay a small
square of linen, its corners tied into knots.
"What's that?" he asked, his throat dry. "A charm of some sort?"
The candle suddenly flared inside the amphora, and he could see tiny
specks of gold somersaulting in her oddly still eyes.
"This is how I store the winds," she said gravely. "Untying this knot
releases the Northern wind; this one summons the wind from the West;
this one is for the Eastern one; and that one is for the Southern." She
touched her light fingers to all four corners in turn. "Men here will not
go out fishing without them."
"Otherwise they'll drown, no doubt," he said bitingly, yet the sar–
casm in his voice betrayed a note of alarm. Their encounter was becom–
ing absurd and slipping from his grasp, and he suddenly felt young-too
young for his job, too young for this strange woman smiling at him
while her eyes were somewhere far away, too young for this whole
island forgotten by the world.
"Eventually they will drown," she replied sadly. "Because the winds
will not be there to obey them. The gods frown on the needlessly daring."
"The gods! You can't possibly ... "
Just then a low trumpeting sound traveled through the air, seemingly
coming from far out at sea, and Constantine started. The rectangle of
sky through the cave opening was turning crimson, and the shore lay
still, with not a single boat visible on the dark purple of the water-yet
the echo of the sound continued in a long, trembling note. The woman
