CHAPTER 14 .
Colin, having slept most of the night, awakened around midafternoon.
Careful not to disturb Draper, who had gotten no sleep at all, she quietly
arose, dressed and left the bedchamber. Her first order of business was to
tell the other girls of Draper's transformation. All were amazed - and
disappointed, particularly Martin and Justin, who had not yet been
serviced. Then the other girls informed Colin that the big Greeks were
missing, along with the power launch, effectively cutting them off from the
rest of the world, with barely two weeks' supply of food on hand.
The island had several springs, so water would not be a problem There were
plentiful wild guinea fowl, goats and rabbits as well and the sea was
teeming with fish. The transmutes, however, being flighty females more
interested in their hair and their nails than in practical matters, were
unable to appreciate the difficulty of their situation. Even had they been
cognizant of it, they had no idea how to hunt or fish, and besides, they
lacked the necessary tools and equipment and were constitutionally
incapable of making any from materials on hand. Their main concern was the
loss of the island's only man; their conversations centered on what they
would do to Stavros and Dimitrios should they be foolish enough to return,
and on where they could find more men.
Neal thought that there might be a storm any moment - a ship could be
wrecked on the rocks, stranding a whole crew of sailors on the island.
Steven thought that the Greek air force would hold war games in the
Cyclades any time now, and drop a few dozen paratroopers on the island,
whom they would convince to live there for ever and ever. Justin was
certain that if they could only send smoke signals to passing ships, one
would drop anchor and send a "rescue" party to service them.
Colin was no exception. She foresaw no disaster and hoped for a rescue. She
helped herself to the comestibles on hand without regard to the lack of any
reserves. After she had eaten, she prepared a tray of fruit, cheese, sliced
sausages, canned chicken, sardines and samples of everything good and tasty
still left in the camp's larder. She carried the tray to her bedchamber in
the late afternoon, for she knew that Draper would be ravenously hungry
when she awoke. But when she returned, the bed was empty! Draper was not
there. Nor was she anywhere in the temple or on its immediate grounds.
Distraught, Colin returned to the other girls and formed a search party to
scour the island. It was not until evening, just after sunset, that they
spied Draper from the height of a cliff on the western side of the island.
She was standing tip-toe on a rock in shallow water at the base of the
cliff, half-clad in a bolt of diaphanous black silk which the evening
breeze was ballooning over her shoulders. The almost-new moon, a tenuous
crescent, was about to follow the sun into the sea. Draper was virtually
nude, her statuesque body oddly relaxed, like a medieval saint in holy
ecstacy about to receive the stigmata. From afar, where the girls stood on
the cliff, it seemed Draper was entranced.
As indeed she was. Draper had awakened in the still of late afternoon. It
was so quiet that she could hear the distant crash of the waves beating
against the island's rocky coast. Irresistibly drawn to the sea, she
wrapped herself in the bolt of black silk and descended the steep path to
the water's edge, where she was brought under the sway of the setting moon
the moment her feet touched the water. There, on a rock, at the edge of the
livegiving sea, Peter Draper became the moon's captive, her body forever
enslaved by its cycles and phases. As Draper stood transfixed on the rock,
she felt the moon's infinitesimally faint gravitational tug - on her
breasts, on her womb, on her ovaries. She felt her fertility well up in her
soft womanbody, like the tide wells up in a bay, utterly obliterating her
masculine past.
