Their bodies slid together in a continuous, gulping thrust, then lay joined, scarcely stirring, needing scarcely to shift, the tiniest motion amplified between them as though by some drug or device into a cataclysm of feeling. She pushed only a little, the smallest thrust of her body toward him and away, and they were gasping, uncontrolled, grasped inexorably by a continuous quiver that swept them up and over a towering wave of sensation to leave them floundering in the trough, blood hammering in their ears.
‘Aaah,’ she moaned in an almost soundless whisper. ‘Aaaah.’
‘Shhh.’ He whispered in return. ‘Celcy …’ The fear was gone. His body was disassembled. There was a violent pain behind his ears from the spasms that had seized his neck and jaw in a giant’s vise, but even this seemed remote and unimportant.
Then there was the sound of a voice, the rattle of gravel, and the vision of meadowlands shattered as his eyes snapped open. Coming toward them was the crunch of hooves, a voice cursing monotonously.
Their bodies lay flaccid, boneless, like two beings mashed into one creature, that creature scarcely aware. Through a chink in the piled stones, Tasmin could see through slitted eyes a dim segment of the path extending back the way they had come. A line of mules. Two Explorers, one of them on foot examining the trail with a lantern, then the man Donatella had said was Spider Geroan with a another rider behind him, dark and silent as a shadow. Then the string of riderless mules. They went past in a shuffle of feet, a roll and rattle of gravel. After a long gap a bald man and a tired, smudge-faced woman approached.
The final hooves came closer, passing the ledge with a scratch and click of stone against stone, then went on to the south. The voice they had heard before cursed again, at repetitive length. The woman answered, briefly and whiningly, the two finally complaining their way into silence behind the rocky rampart.
The pain in Tasmin’s head departed, leaving a vacancy behind. Her body clenched on him like a squeezing hand, and he moved once more, this time slowly, languorously, lifting her with his body, holding her there with his hand while he dropped away, then pulling her down once more, over and over again, impaling her, holding her tight to him as he rolled over upon her and thrust himself into her. The wave came again, slowly, building and cresting, carrying them with it into the dark depths of a strange ocean.
The first time it had been Celcy. This time it was no one at all. He sought a name and could not find one as nonsense words flicked by, babbling rhymes, childlike sounds. Perhaps the name he wanted was an exotic word in some foreign tongue, a question without an answer.
‘Mmmmm,’ she sighed.
He did not know who it was. Who either of them were.
They slept as their fleeting hunger had dropped them, disarrayed, close coupled, slowly moving apart as the night wore on until dawn found them still side by side, but separate. When Tasmin awoke, it was to a strange dichotomy, a bodily peace surpassing anything he had known for months coupled with an anxiety for which he could not, for the moment, find an object.
When he saw who lay beside him, both body and mind were answered. She opened her eyes to see his own fixed on her, accusingly.
‘We aren’t dead,’ she said in response to this unspoken indictment. ‘I expected to be dead by this morning.’
His instant reaction had been a twitch of revulsion, a feeling very much akin to guilt. The feeling passed as he said Donatella’s name to himself, leaving only a faint residue of grief behind. ‘You’re disappointed,’ he murmured, feeling hysterical laughter welling within him. ‘Ah, Donatella, you do sound a little put out.’
She flushed. ‘It’s not that. It’s just that I …’
He felt a surge of sympathy. ‘You wouldn’t have … I know. Neither would I. We thought we were going to die. Or maybe our bodies thought so. Well – it happened. Forget it.’
There was a silence. She seemed to be considering this. ‘Yes. I think you’re right. It didn’t matter what I did. I would never need to explain it, not to myself, not to anyone, because there wouldn’t be any tomorrow….’
He was stung into an irrational objection. ‘It may be petulant of me, but did it really take that to make you want to make love to me?’ He tried to smile to take the sting out of his words, but the wound to his vanity was there. Amazing! He was wounded because a woman he hardly knew felt she needed to explain away her actions regarding him.
‘You know better,’ she said sharply. ‘You, of all people! It didn’t take that to make me want to make love to you. It wasn’t really making love, Tasmin, and it wasn’t really you. I haven’t made love, not for years. Not to anyone. Not since …’
‘Not since?’
‘Not since Link.’ She sat up, pulling the blanket around her while she fumbled with her disordered clothes, crouching for a moment to shake herself into some semblance of order, tugging at her tunic, searching for her sash. ‘We weren’t casual lovers, Link and I. We were fellow Explorers. Colleagues. Friends. For him, there isn’t any more. For me there isn’t either. Not really.’
‘I thought you told me about that man, what’s his name? The services man?’
‘Zimmy? Zimmy was just … like getting my hair done. When things got too tight. Too rough. He was talented in that way, Zimmy. With him it wasn’t love, it was skill. Technique. It wasn’t making love.’
‘And
