He chased her down into the rustling blue-green depths and up again to the sunlight and the foam, and her body was the color of silver, fleet and lithe and wondrously strong. He might have caught her, but he did not, only touching her with his fingers to show her that he could. Her hair was unbound, a streaming darkness around her head, and her mouth was red, and her eyes were two green dancing motes of the sea itself, unknowable, taunting, fickle as the waves. At last she rolled over on her back to float, breathless, pleased with herself and him. "Let us rest!" she said, and he floated near her, watching the motion of her white arms in the water. The lines of an old poem came unbidden to his tongue. "'What bright babes had Lilith and Adam-- 'Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters, 'Radiant sons and glittering daughters....'" "The man who wrote that knew only half the truth," said Shairn. "Let's go in." They found a sheltered spot where the sun was warm. Absently, Shairn smoothed a patch of sand with her palm, and rumpled it again. After a while she said, "What sort of a man are you, Michael? What do you do? How do you live?" He looked at her keenly. "Do you really want to know? All right, I'll tell you. I'm a man who has never been satisfied. I've never had a job I could stay with very long. I'm a flier by trade, but even that seems a dull and rather childish business. And why? Because I'm too good for any of it." He laughed, not without a certain cruel humor. "Don't ask me in what way I'm too good. I seem to be unusually healthy, but that's only important to me. My brain-power has never set the world on fire. I have no tendency to genius. In fact, a suspicion creeps upon me that I'm just not good enough. Whichever way it is, there has always been something lacking, either in me or the world." Shairn nodded, and again he was conscious of a queer wisdom in her that did not fit with her youth. She smiled, a small thing full of secrets. "And you thought that if you learned the origin of your blood you would understand yourself." "Perhaps. My father was a weedy little man with red hair. He swore I was none of his. I didn't look like my mother's side, either. I've never looked like anybody, until I met you and Kerrel. Oddness becomes very wearing, especially when you don't know why you should be odd." He added, "The villagers in Cornwall called me changeling. I had the same thought when I saw you." "So we are of one race. Could you stay with me, Michael?" "You're not a woman, you're a witch. I've never met a witch before." She laughed outright at that. "Nonsense. Witch, changeling--those are words for fools and peasants." "Who are the Vardda, Shairn?" She shook her head. "I told you last night. It is a tribal name. You were saying to Kerrel that you had come to Brittany to trace down your family. Do you know where to start?" "I learned in Cornwall that they came from a place called Keregnac."