A Different Kingdom(31)

The girl was here beside him with an avid grin on her face. So close he could feel her breath on his neck. He sprang away in terror but she followed his leap and caught him. Slim arms went round his waist and they tumbled into the ferns and leaf litter and the grasping brambles. Her hair flew across his face like a black scarf. She was laughing, the same silver laugh he had heard earlier. Her chin dug into his navel.

'Hold hard there, my warrior. I will not eat you.'

She was wet, he realized. Water sparkled in drops on her skin as though she had been in a shower. She climbed up him like a monkey and lay full length on his body. Involuntarily, his hands settled on her back. Wet, the thin shift was like skin under his fingertips.

She kissed him, her mouth pushing over his, hungry, still laughing.

But Michael threw her aside, tumbled her to the leaves and fumbled for the hazel spear.

He saw a light leap in her eyes, vulpine, perilous.

'Who are you? What do you want?' he demanded, the crude weapon pointed at her stomach. Her eyes were green, but the pupils had dilated so as to make them almost black. They seemed to shine in the dimness of the darkening wood.

'What are you?' he whispered.

Her fingers encircled the haft of the spear loosely, caressing the smooth bark. The smile was back on her face.

'A friend. Come, calm yourself. I mean you no harm.'

'What was that I just saw? Those two—' He cursed the hoarse up-and-down of his breaking voice.

'A memory. Something the wood remembers. No more.' He lowered the spear. 'You know my name.'

'I've watched you for a long time.'

'You're part of it, aren't you? What this is all about. The wolves, the—the things in the woods. I don't understand.'

She shrugged as if it were unimportant. 'No one can understand everything. You ask a lot of questions, little Michael.'

'I'm not little.' Hotly.

She drew close, her nose six inches from his own. If she was shorter than him it was by a hail's breadth.

'Believe in fairies, then, do you?'

'Is that what you are?'

She spun around, her shift mushrooming about her legs.

Bare feet. A mole on one calf, the muscles sliding below it. Michael felt a pang of lust so acute it dizzied him, adolescence in a buzzing rush. He gripped the spear till his knuckles whitened, which seemed to amuse the girl. Everything about him amused her, he realized with irritation. He could still feel the imprint of her teeth on his lips.

'Well?'

'Well what?'

He felt absurd. 'Are you a fairy?'

'If you like.'

'What's your name?'

'Call me Cat.'

'That's a stupid name.'

'You're a stupid boy.'

Silence. Maybe he was. He had no retort for her. He stood watching her with a mixture of glumness and rising excitement. He wondered if she would kiss him again.

'Have you anything to eat?' she asked.

He was trying to decide what she smelled like. There was a fragrance off her, something familiar. 'Bread and cheese, and milk—too warm.'

'Put it in the river to cool.'

'All right.'

It was as if a test had been passed, a hurdle leapt. He set the bottle in the river where it sparkled over the stones and was less warm, then opened his satchel to her. She drew back from the sickle in distaste and was reluctant to touch it. He offered her the food and she ate ravenously, cramming it into her mouth, crumbs trickling from her lips. They were dark lips, he noticed, so dark they looked almost bruised. Her nose was neat and upturned, her eyebrows heavy and black, almost meeting in the middle. There was a fine down of colourless hair where a man's sideburns would be. Her skin was sun-ripened, flawless but for scrapes and dirt. Freckles spattered her nose. She seemed to him one of the loveliest things he had ever seen, long-limbed as a boy, her hands slim, the nails short and grubby. He could have stared at her all day.

He fetched the milk, and only realized then how dark the wood was becoming. Not his wood, either. It was time to be getting back. Cat wiped her white moustache away and gazed at him with those strange eyes.

'You saved me from the wolves,' he told her. 'You showed me the way home.'

'Indeed?' A smile curved one corner of her mouth.

'Can you do it again? Can you show me the way home now, before night?'

'Leaving so soon?'

'I have to. They'll worry.' He did not want to go. It was not that he was no longer afraid, but what is frightening for one can be an adventure for two. And he did so love looking at her.

'All right.'

Gorse blossom. That was what it was. She smelled of yellow gorse blossom, a summer smell, bringing to mind short-cropped grass and high cirrus.

'I saw you on the beach,' he said. Her eyebrows were two black bars in the fading light and her hair shaded her face like a hood. Her grin was predatory, frightening almost, but he felt no fear, only a rush of exhilaration. He did not even start when the wolves began to howl in the blooming twilight.