You are listening to a Clark's World magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker

Greetings Clark's World Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you very well. This is our fourth story the reprint for the August 2013 issue titled

The Lovers by Eleanor Arneson. And I'm going to jump right into the story as, you know, it's sort of towards the end of the month and aside from Worldcon preparations, I don't believe that there's any real news to report.

For those of you who don't know Eleanor. Eleanor published her first

novel, The Swordsmith in 1978 and followed it with novels such as Daughter of the Bear

King and to the resurrection station.

In 1991 she published her best-known novel, A Woman of the Iron People, which won the prestigious

James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award.

Her most recent books are Ring of Swords, Tomb of the Fathers, Mammoths of the Great Plains, and a collection Big Mama Stories. Her story, Stellar Harvest, was a Hugo finalist in 2000. She lives in St Paul, Minnesota. Her website can be found at Eleanor Arneson. blogspot.com, that's E-L-E-A-N-O-R-N-A-S-O-N-O-N-A-S-N.

So without further ado, let me jump right in and tell you a story.

There was a woman of the Ahara. She came of a good line.

With the lineage and grew up to be tall and broad with thick glossy fur,

her eyes were pale gray and unusual color in that part of the world.

From childhood on, her nickname was Eyes of Crystal.

If she had a fault, it lay in her personality.

She was a bit too fierce and solitary. in her

home was in the town of Ahara Salle, which stood up on the top of the Salle River Bluffs.

To the west and south lay the farms and pastors of her lineage a flat rich land.

To the north and east was the river valley, wide and marshy and full of animals.

Eyes of Crystal liked to go down there into the wilderness and ride and hunt.

Her mother warned her, this was dangerous.

You'll get strange ideas and possibly meet things in people you don't want to meet.

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