She stirred the fire again. “But then, you’ve chosen to do something else with your hands.” She took my hand and looked at it. “Good hands, you’ve got. I noticed that the first day we met.”
She looked up at me. “There’s a kind of shiny patina all over you, very smooth and polished. But I think there’s something else inside.”
I reached out with my other hand, but she gently fended it aside.
“Please, Benvenuti, don’t.”
I withdrew the hand, but she kept my other hand in hers. Then she lay on her back and drew me down next to her. After a long silence, she laughed.
“It’s not that I’m a shy virgin, you understand? And I admit I find you attractive. You’re so impossibly handsome! It’s that we’re so different, and our lives go in such different ways.”
She raised herself up on one elbow and looked down at me.
“I don’t think we’d really manage a casual fling of it,” she said softly. “And as for anything else—I don’t think there’d be anything but heartbreak in it.”
I tried to argue with her, but she was a difficult person to argue with. The more so as my conscious intellect thought she was probably right—even if my body was crying out otherwise. I did manage one kiss, and for a brief moment I felt a hint of passion that sent a hot spike through me. But I didn’t try to push the matter. Some instinct told me to let it go, for the moment.
* * *
When I awoke, the green glow of the sunlight filtering through the trees, I looked up and found Gwendolyn staring down at me. Her expression was unreadable. Then, without warning, she leaned over and gave me a quick kiss. Before I could respond, she rose, took my hand, and, with the fluid grace of a giant cat, hauled me to my feet with one effortless motion. God, the woman was strong!
“Let’s go,” she said. “We’ve got a lot of distance to make today. If we push it, we can be out of the forest by tomorrow morning.”
The last sentence wasn’t said with any great enthusiasm. “I would have thought—”
She chuckled harshly, and set off. “The Grimwald isn’t so bad, despite its reputation. And once we’re out of the forest, Benvenuti, we’ll be in the Baronies—which are just as bad as their reputation.”
I reviewed in my mind what I knew of the reputation of the Baronies. “Eeek,” I muttered.
PART V
In Which We Return
to Korzeniowski’s Superlative
Account of the Misdeeds of the Sorcerer
and his Loyal But Stupid Apprentice as the
Desperate Twain Continue their Attempts to Evade
the Forces of Justice; Indeed, Now Compound
Their Crimes with Further Acts of Malice
and Chicanery. Herewith, the Conclusion
of Korzeniowski’s tale.
The Last of the Line
By Korzeniowski Laebmauntsforscynneweëld
(concluding portion)
“Going up that road,” continued Barley, “was like entering a vegetarian’s nightmare, a semi-insane cacophony of ferns and cycads and mosses and vines and—most of all—the trees; endless trees! Huge, but numberless—like an army of leafy kings looming over us in judgment. Impenetrable, silent—but not the silence of peace, no, it was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over the vengeful aspect of its inscrutable intention to prosecute enigmatic purposes aimed at unknowable ends.
“Trees, trees, trees, trees, trees—at their foot, hugging the narrow path, crept the little coach, timid, tentative, a fearful mouse creeping about the catacombs of the Temple—no, not even!—rather, a sightless worm slithering under the shadows cast by the sarcophagi of mummified emperors. It made you feel very small, very alone, very lost—but glad to be lost; hoping not to be noticed by anything—very insignificant, completely insignificant; insignificance defined as never before—and glad of it—wanting to be insignificant!—yearning for microscopic status!—very—”
“Will you get on with it, Barley?” growled the Director. “Pretty soon you’ll be babbling about the heart of darkness and God knows what else.”
“Well, yes,—but! In any event. Around midday a roll of drums—fear! prehistoric the fear and the cause of it—did it mean war?—or peace?—prayer?—well!—we could not tell; but the drum roll passed, fell behind; became distant; more hours passed.