Dark Mist Rising (16 page)

So I sat on my log, wretched and cowardly, and late that afternoon dragged myself back to the hut. Fia, on the watch for me, came running to the edge of the clearing. ‘Roger! Where have you been? Why did you go away so long? Tom is very sick and I cannot lift him myself!'

Groans.

Fia said, ‘We were just inspecting the pool when this illness seized him. I think ... Did Tom eat any mushrooms in the forest?'

‘I don't know.' It was possible. With Tom, any impulsive act was possible. ‘Have you seen such an illness before, from eating mushrooms?'

‘I ... I think so. At any rate, somehow I know what to do for it.'

‘How do you know?' I said bluntly.

‘I don't know. Perhaps I was once a healer?'

‘And a shepherdess and a lady's maid and a kitchen girl.'

She looked from Tom, groaning and oblivious, to me. Her lovely face creased with hurt. ‘Roger, are you angry with me?'

Yes. No. I had no idea, except that it was less anger than fear. But all I said was, ‘The sun is full in his poor eyes. We must move him inside.'

It took both of us to shift Tom's bulk. I took his arms, and Fia, stronger than she looked, took his legs. Somehow we got him inside, and I built up the fire. Tom had begun to shiver uncontrollably and to cry out with pain.

Fia said, ‘I can make him a tea that will at least shrink his tongue.'

‘Do so!' I didn't know what else to do for him. I didn't know anything.

She brewed the tea from her store of gathered plants, and together we dribbled it down his throat. Within a few minutes, Tom's tongue began to shrink, giving him some relief. He grew quiet, then slept. I loosened his belt and raised his tunic, my heart hammering. But there was no rash, no pustules, no discoloration on his broad chest. It was not plague.

I said, ‘I think it might have been mushrooms, after all.'

‘I think so too,' Fia said, and began to cry.

I put my arm around her, and so it happened – or rather, it did not happen.

She turned in my arms and her tears flowed hard and silent, wetting my shoulder. I tried to say, ‘He will not die,' for Tom was already sleeping deeply and his colour was better, and anyway if the mushrooms were the type to kill him, he would have stomach cramps and vomiting. But it was my words that were killed, for Fia raised her head and kissed me.

At the first touch of her soft lips on mine, my member rose and hardened to stone. Her breasts pressed against my body. Her hand reached for me, and I found my voice, although it came out hoarse. ‘Not here ...' Not beside Tom, who had also desired her, even though he lay oblivious.

Fia nodded, took me by the hand and led me outside and a little way from the cabin. She put her arms around me and kissed me again. We sank to the ground, kissing wildly, and I whispered, ‘Me ... not Tom? Why?'

‘It was always you.' She lay back on the pine needles and raised her skirt, smiling at me.

Maybe it was the smile, which wavered between tears and encouragement. Maybe it was the gesture of raising her skirt. But I think it was the scent of pine needles. For it was here, in this grove, that I had once rested in the Country of the Dead with Cecilia in my arms. And it was here I had found Maggie when I returned from Soulvine Moor. She had been digging edible roots, and her face had flushed with both pleasure and fury at my return, and I had taken her away from here and back to The Queendom. Maggie, whose face always surged with pleasure when she saw me, who loved me better than I had loved her or than I deserved. Maggie, whom I had left on a sunny hillside after taking her as I was now prepared to take Fia: without a future or the promise of a future. Maggie, whom I had deserted. My mind filled with Maggie, and with guilt, and my member wilted under Fia's hand.

Nothing more humiliating can happen to a man. And although Fia tried, she could not revive me. I covered my eyes with my one hand.

‘Roger, it is all right. Truly. You are tired. You must have walked all morning, and the shock over Tom's illness—'

‘I will see to Tom now,' I said, to escape her and my shame. I would have got to my feet, but she clung to me.

‘Don't go,' she said, ‘please don't go. We can try again in a little space of time.'

No words were ever said more seductively, more softly. They had no effect on the softness in my breeches. Scarlet-faced, close to tears, I went to see to Tom.

By noon he would be asleep again. In the afternoon heat Fia bathed in the pool beneath the waterfall. Each day I would say I would not join her, and each day I did. My arms held her slender naked body with its full breasts, and the blood sang in my veins. My member gorged and rose. Then we lay on the sweet grass beside the pool, and the thoughts of Maggie would douse me as the cold mountain water had not. I could not take Fia.

‘It's all right, Roger,' she would say and hold me tighter, until I broke from her in shame and confusion and growing suspicion. It was not just thoughts of Maggie that wilted my member. I was suspicious of Fia – why she had wanted to journey to The Queendom, why she now stopped here, where she had come from. When I asked her these questions, she always replied that she didn't know. If my suspicions proved wrong, and Fia discovered them, she would push me away in horror. I did not want that. But if my suspicions were right ...

No. My doubts were baseless, without foundation. And even if they
had
had foundation, they would have dissolved in the strength of my desire for her and its continual frustration.

Sometimes I heard
guns
in the distance, always in the distance, but with the echoes in the hills, I could not be sure how far away. However, even if I had known them to be very close and hunting me, how could I leave Tom ill and Fia for the savage soldiers? She was strong and resourceful, but no woman can stand against soldiers bent on taking her. And if they found out she knew me ...

Fear, like guilt and suspicion, does not help a man lie with a woman.

Fia was endlessly patient with me. But as the days passed, her patience took on an edge of desperation. Tom grew steadily better. He slept less. He began to watch Fia and me.

‘Roger, are you bedding her?' The dangerous glint was back in his eyes, and once more I was ‘Roger'.

I said, truthfully, ‘No.'

His face cleared immediately. ‘I knew you ain't. I knew you wouldn't go back on your word to me. By damn, forgive me for even doubting you for a moment. It's this stupid piss pot sickness, it makes a man not himself. I hate it!'

‘You'll be better soon,' I said, because I must say something, and I no longer had any idea what was or was not true.

‘How fine!' Tom said. He sat on a log at our rock ‘table', looking almost like his old robust self. We were eating dinner later than usual, due to the long time Fia had needed to bake her cakes. Two rush lights lit either side of the cabin. They cast eerie shadows in the dim hut. By their subdued glow Tom looked even bigger than he was, and Fia even more desirable. She sat with eyes downcast, holding her honey cake, and her lashes threw spidery shadows on her pale cheeks. Tom swallowed his cake in two bites and shifted his gaze to mine. Hastily I ate it, letting the sweetness dissolve slowly on my tongue.

‘By damn, sweetheart,' Tom said, ‘but you're a treasure! And it's a wonder how those bees never sting you. They'd perforate me a dozen times over if I got within a field's length of their hive. Are you going to eat that or not, Fia? By damn, you didn't eat no more than a crumb!'

She laughed and held it out to him. ‘I'm not hungry.

You eat it.'

He did. We went on laughing and talking, the three of us, and all the while Tom grew larger and larger. I didn't understand how that could be. Suddenly he filled the whole cabin, then abruptly shrank again to a normal-sized man. The rush lights grew to the ceiling and then shrank to nothing but glowing flames, which danced across the floor and then up onto Fia's white arms, turning them pink and gold and orange. I was admiring this when Tom said, ‘So tired ... just rest a moment ... tired ...'

He staggered to his pallet and fell upon it, and the pine boughs enclosed him tenderly and began to hum. I knew their song; I had heard it once before; I almost had it in mind. But then Fia was leading me outside and we were in the pine grove.

The pine grove, hadn't I been here before? I had been here with ... with ...

‘Roger,' Fia breathed, and her dress was half off, her white breasts gleaming in the moonlight filtering between the dark branches of pine.

I took her then, with a ferocity I had not known I was capable of and a joy I had never known either. We loved once, twice, and when I lay spent on the fragrant pine needles, Fia cradled in my arms, she whispered in my ear.

‘Roger, love, will you promise me something?'

‘Anything,' I said and meant it, even though I was having trouble with the pine branches above us – they shrank and grew and shrank again. Now they were great sheltering arms, humming, and then they were mere twigs, silent. How odd! And yet it was not odd, it was just as it should be. Everything was just as it should be, and my member stirred faintly, a third time, at the press of Fia's body against mine. Pine needles damp with dew had become trapped between our bodies, and their slight sting only inflamed my love for her.

She said softly, ‘Don't cross over again into the Country of the Dead.'

‘All right,' I said, watching the branches shrink and grow, shrink and grow, even as her words sank into my brain, no stranger than anything else in this strange night.

‘Do you promise?'

‘Promise what?' Shrink and grow, shrink and grow.

‘Do you promise me to never cross again into the Country of the Dead?'

‘Yes.'

‘Do you promise on your mother's grave?'

‘Yes.' And then, ‘Does my mother have a grave?'

‘No,' Fia said with profound sorrow. I did not understand the sorrow. My mind floated, high in the branches that were still shrinking and growing, shrinking and growing. ‘Do you promise on your mother's soul?'

‘Yes,' I said.

‘Remember that you have promised me.'

‘I will remember,' I said.

She clutched at me. ‘They are almost ready!'

‘Oh,' I said, without interest, for her clutching had aroused me again, and I reached for her. But before we could proceed, I fell abruptly asleep.

When I woke in the early morning, she was gone. And knowing all at once what had happened, what she had done, I started after her in rage, far more rage than I had ever felt towards any savage soldier who had only tried to kill me.

I was not the tracker Tom was, but she could not have gone far. When I had last held her close to me under the pines—

The branches shrinking and growing
.

—the sky had already begun to pale in the east. Now the sun—

‘
Do you promise on your mother's grave?'

—
had barely cleared the trees. And it must have rained a little overnight, my clothes were damp, so—

‘
Does my mother have a grave?'

‘No.'

—
there should be traces of her in the mud of the track leading away from the hut. I could find her. I would find her. And when I did ...

She had not stayed on the track, but neither had she gone very far. I circled the hut in ever-spiralling circles, as Tom had taught me. This was not as easy as I had hoped, but I could follow her course. A footprint here, smeared sideways where she had slipped slightly. A small piece of cloth on a bramble where she had caught her gown. A flattened place in the weeds where she had sat to rest. She must be tired; we had been awake much of the night. I was not tired. Rage is a great strengthener.