A Different Kingdom(36)

But it was trickling away. His elbows were deep in mud, his face buried in the hollow of Cat's collarbone. He slipped out of her, flaccid and spent. It was wet down there, slick as melted butter.

'Mine,' Cat murmured.

'What?'

The sudden grin was an inch from his own. She kissed his nose and her legs scissored his waist. 'All mine.'

Fornication, he thought. That's what it was. The biblical word made him shiver. He stood, ashamed of the wet sheen that plastered him. He pulled his trousers up hurriedly. Cat twitched down her shift.

I've fucked a fairy, he realized, the awful, forbidden word twisting like a snake in his mind. Was that a mortal sin? He ruminated momentarily on confession, what the priest would say about this in the little dark box. What had he said to Rose when she told him?

'Will you have a baby?' he asked Cat. She was poking the fire composedly.

'Do you want one?' She seemed amused.

'What we did. That makes babies. I know.'

She began to laugh. 'You worry too much, Michael. Sit.'

He did as he was told. Her back was filthy from the wood floor. He brushed leaves from it and found himself leaving his hand there, savouring the taut muscle under the shift. The dark hair was a midnight cascade down one side of her neck, thick with the detritus of the trees.

'What do you mean when you said "mine"? That I'm yours?'

'And I'm yours too,' she said, her eyes fixed in the fire. 'We belong.'

Baffled, he took his hand away. He needed to pee, but could not while she was here.

'Listen, Michael.' She became animated, twisting round to face him. She took his hands in hers .'How would you like to go somewhere? Somewhere strange that you've never seen before, somewhere far away?'

'The wolves...' he began doubtfully.

'It's not just wolves. There are other things, too. Castles and cathedrals, cities and sailing ships. It's a whole world, Michael.' He remembered the glimpse he had been given, the empty land of the Bann valley with the single light off in its darkness.

Werewolves and wilderness.

Dream or nightmare? He didn't know. But this was real, here: this girl and what they had done. She was as real as earth and wood and stone, as solid as himself. Though only he could see her.

'1 don't know.' It was late. His grandmother would be worrying. How long had he been out here?

'You think it's a fairy tale, Michael, but it's not. It's out there, all of it. I could show you things.' Her hand caressed his stomach.

'I—I don't know. It's late. I've got to go.'

'They'll worry. You've said it before.'

He felt strangely guilty. 'Are you still cold?'

'You warmed me.'

His face burned in the firelight.

'Come with me' she said. 'Stay with me.'

He stood up, retrieved the shotgun and his bag. The desire to urinate was a hot pressure.

'I can't. I can't, Cat.' He had a moment's vision of the pair of them riding along a bright road in sunshine with the pennants of a castle flickering on the next horizon. The knight and his lady, like in the stories.

The wood was silent and dark, water dripping from the leaves. His clothes were thick with mud. He felt stupid, heavy-headed. Cat's eyes were like two dark holes in her face. He wanted to do it again, and was ashamed of himself.

'I love you, Michael.'

His heart leapt for a second and he had to smile. Seeing that she grinned that wide grin of hers and stood up also. The shift was a disrupted pattern of light and dark, white cotton and black earth. Blood there too, he noticed, a patch like a strawberry at the top of her legs. Had he hurt her?

She hugged him as though he were a child, as Rose had hugged him in the thundery nights. Their eyes were level. I'm tall he thought. Not a baby any more. A man, then?

'I'm not going,' he said as she manoeuvred him into the hut and her deft fingers unbuttoned him.

'Oh, I know.'

He no longer had to go to the toilet. He saw her stand and let the shift fall to the ground around her feet like pale water. Then she was with him, on him, under him, her smell all through him, and he was marvelling at how fine it felt to touch those forbidden places.

'Mine,' she breathed as he coupled with her. 'All mine.' They let the fire die, and were blind to the rising of the moon.

IT ROSE OVER a vast forest.



Leagues upon leagues carpeted the world in a dark sea which lapped at the shoulders of the mountains. They reared their hoary branches to the stars and at their feet moon-silver rivers wound patiently towards an unknown ocean. Hills and valleys alike were covered by the thick growth, and in the dips of the land mist gathered like lambs' wool.

Here and there the turrets of a fortress jutted above the grasping oak and elm, lime and sycamore, horse chestnut and yew. In the river bottoms were willow and alder, brakes of thorn, and where the land rose there were birch, Scots pine and spruce. At their feet briars and bracken nestled, awaiting spring.