Midnight at the Well of Souls

“Nathan?”

“Yes?”

“What kind of people live here? I mean, what—”

“I know what you mean. I couldn’t get a really good description out of anyone. It’s not the most traveled route, mostly a through route. The best I could get was that they were two-legged vegetarians.”

“That’s good enough for me,” she replied, and started picking clumps of grass and chewing them.

“Don’t get too far away!” he called. “It’s too damned hot to build a fire, and I don’t want to attract the wrong people. We might be—probably are—trespassing.”

Satisfied as long as he could still see her, he stretched out the furs to dry and stripped completely. After discovering that some of the grass was stiff and sharp, he spread the three wet towels out to form a mat, then got out a couple of large bricks of cooked confection he had bought back in Donmin. He sat on the towels and ate about half of one bar, which was hard and crunchy but filling, and then came down with a terrible candy- thirst.

He reached for the flagon containing water, but decided to leave its half-empty contents if he could. No telling what the water was like here.

He got up and went over to the border, only a few meters away. He could hear the howling winds and see the blowing snow. Some of the cold radiated out a few centimeters from the border. He got down on his knees, reached into the cold, and came up with a handful of snow.

That did the job.

He went back and stretched out on the towels. He still ached from the day’s ride, but not nearly as bad. He knew the pain would come back when he mounted the next day, though. Maybe in three or four days he would get used to riding. By his own estimates, they were still almost nine hundred kilometers from the Center.

She came back after a while and surveyed him lying there on the towels.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” she said.

“Too tired to sleep,” he responded lazily. “I’ll get off in a little while. Why don’t you get some? You’re doing all the work, and there’s a lot yet to do. In the next few days we’ll sure find out if they have pneumonia on this world.”

She laughed and the laugh developed into a major yawn.

“You’re right,” she admitted. “I’ll probably fall over in the night, though. Nothing to lean on here.”

“Ummm-humm,” he half-moaned. “Can you sleep lying down?”

“I have, once or twice, mostly on the end of drunks,” she replied. “It’s not normal, but if I don’t crush my arm, I can. Once we go to sleep we’re just about unconscious and unmoving for the night.”

She came up close to him and knelt down, then slowly rolled over on one side, very close to him and facing him.

“Ahhh…” she sighed. “I think this is going to work, tonight, at least.”

He looked at her, still half-awake, and thought, Isn’t it funny how human she looks like that? Some of her hair had fallen over in front of her face, and, on impulse, he reached over and put it in back of her gently. She smiled and opened her eyes.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he whispered.

“That’s all right,” she replied softly. “I wasn’t really asleep. Still ache?”

“A little,” he admitted.

“Lie with your back to me,” she told him, “I’ll rub it out.”

He did as instructed and she twisted a little to free her left arm then started a massage that felt so good it hurt.

After a few minutes he asked her if there was something he could do in return, and she had him stroking and rubbing the humanoid part of her back and shoulders. Doing so was awkward, but she seemed satisfied. Finally, he finished and resumed his position on the towels.

“We really ought to get some sleep,” he said quietly. Then, almost as an afterthought, he leaned over and kissed her.

She reached out and pulled him to her, prolonging the embrace. He felt terribly uncomfortable, and, when she finally let him go, he rolled back onto the towels.

“Why did you really come with me?” he asked her seriously.

“What I said,” she replied in a half-whisper. “But, also, I told you I remember. I remember all of it. How you gambled to save my life. How you held me up in the Well. And—how you came out of your way to find me. I saw the map.”

“Oh, hell,” he said disgustedly. “This will never work. We’re two different kinds of creature, alien to each other.”

“You’ve been wanting me, though. I could feel it.”

“And you know damned well our bodies don’t match. Anything like sex just won’t work for us now. So get those ideas out of your head! If that’s why you’re here, you should go back in the morning!”

“You were the only clean thing I ever ran into in that dirty old world of ours,” she said seriously. “You’re the first person I ever met who cared, even though you didn’t know me.”

“But it’s like a fish falling in love with a cow,” he retorted in a strained, higher-than-normal tone. “The spirits are there but they happen to come from two different worlds.”

“Love isn’t sex,” she replied quietly. “I, of all people, know that better than anyone. Sex is just a physical act. Loving is caring as much or more about someone else than you do about yourself. Deep down inside you have the kind of feeling for others that I’ve never really seen before. I think some of it rubbed off. Maybe, through you, I’ll face down that fear inside of me and be able to give myself.”

“Oh, hell!” Brazil said sourly, turning his back to her.

In the quiet that followed, they both went to sleep.

The centaur was huge, like a statue of the god Zeus come to life, and it mated with the finest stallion. He came out of his cave at the sound of footsteps, then saw who it was and relaxed.

“You’re getting careless, Agorix,” the man said to him.

“Just tired,” the centaur replied. “Tired of running, tired of jumping at every little noise. I think soon I will go into the hills and end it. I’m the last, you know.”

The man nodded gravely. “I have destroyed the two stuffed ones in Sparta by setting the temple on fire.”

The centaur smiled approvingly. “When I go, there will be naught but legends to say that we were here. That is for the best.” Suddenly tears flowed from his great, wise eyes. “We tried to teach them so much! We had so much to offer!” he moaned.

“You were too good for this dirty little world,” the man replied with gentleness and sympathy.

“We came of our own choice,” the centaur replied. “We failed, but we tried. But it must be even harder on you!”

“I have to stay,” the man said evenly. “You know that.”

“Don’t pity me, then,” the centaur responded sharply. “Let me, instead, mourn for you.”

* * *

Nathan Brazil awoke.

The hot sun was beating down on him, and had he not already been tanned from earlier travels, he would have had a terrible sunburn.

What a crazy dream, he thought. Was it touched off by last night’s conversation? Or was it, like so much lately, a true memory? The latter scared him a little, not because the dream was obscure, but because it would explain a lot—and in a most unpleasant direction.

He put it out of his mind, or tried to.

Suddenly he realized that Wu Julee was gone.

He sat up with a start and looked around. There was a large indentation in the grass where she had been,