'No school,' Michael said happily. 'No algebra, no trigonometry, no grammar.'
Cat cocked one dark eyebrow at him curiously, but she was busy with the bacon, wincing as the dancing fat landed on her skin.
'I'm free,' Michael went on. 'I can do anything 1 want.'
'You can give me a hand, then,' Cat told him. 'Hold the pan—there. Almost done.'
They ate breakfast in the immense stillness, wiping out the pan with mops of bread, grand as kings. A goldfinch warbled at them from a nearby tree and finally plucked up enough courage to hop around their feet in search of crumbs. Michael's laugh startled it away. He stood warmed by the fire with the sky a cobalt dome above his head and the grass cool between his toes. He felt invigorated, invincible, the very air he breathed as sweet as a draught from a spring. Cat laughed up at him and he pounced on her. They rolled, giggling, in the dew and made love as though it were an accustomed overflow of spirits, swiftly and without thought.
'Where then?' he asked her when they were quiet and her head was on his chest. 'Where to now?'
'Anywhere you want.'
Anywhere. He could spend a lifetime here, in this place, and then go home the morning he had left. They had all the time in the world.
'Cat, you know where we are, don't you? You know your way about this place?'
'We are in the hills to the north of the Wildwood, far from anywhere. I have no say about where the doors leave us. The bridge on your side is an enduring gateway, as is the cave which is its counterpart in this world, but the rest shift and fade, blink out and reappear with no rhyme or reason. We take our chances with them.'
'What about getting back?' Michael asked, anxious despite himself.
'To return to the same place and time that we left we would have to swim through yonder cave. We would come out at the bridge again in your own world.'
That, at least, was reassuring. Michael stared at the empty sky. There was a coldness to the air, an autumnal bite, that even the flowing fire could not keep from him, though Cat was warm and slight atop his torso. Nearby Fancy was cropping grass as though she were in the meadow at home. The sight was obscurely comforting.
All that day they spent in the shelter of the trees, drying their clothes and taking stock, pondering where to go and what to do. Michael had an odd feeling that he was not here merely to sight-see. There was a reason behind this, he was sure, and he was positive that it would manifest itself in time.
'You must have cleaned out half the bloody larder,' he told Cat as the afternoon slipped into twilight and the evening star rose high and bright over the horizon. He was rummaging through the sack she had brought from his grandparents' house. Bacon and bread, apples and jam, cheese, oatcakes, and a mashed apple pie, his grandmother's glory. 'No tea,' he said. 'What do we drink?'
'Water. What else?'
'Sure... Hey wait a minute, Cat. That's thieving.'
She eyed him innocently, sliding a pair of his Uncle Sean's breeches over her thighs. One of his old collarless shirts lay to one side.
'I needed a change, Michael.' And she buttoned the breeches close over her navel, tying them around the waist with twine. Her breasts swung as she bent for the shirt and she looked arch at Michael's unabashed stare.
'Manners, my dear.'
Michael mumbled something about a lack of shame, then shook his head and left the fire to fetch the mare in closer to the light. The dark was sidling in on them. He had a sudden picture in his head of Cat in a pretty dress, shoes on her feet and a hat on her head, but it was Rose's face under the brim. He realized that he could no longer be sure it was Rose he was imagining. In his mind their two faces had become the same, and the thought disturbed him.
Fancy nuzzled him and he gave her an apple core to munch, running his fingers down her mane. For such a highly strung beast she seemed remarkably at ease. Maybe it was the quiet here, though there was a breeze picking up again. He could hear it in the branches. The land loomed out to the south in a vast expanse of nothingness. No lights, no cars; no noise here but for the waking owls. Mullan would love it. It was the country before Man had made his mark—beautiful and untouched. Dangerous, too, he reminded himself. Odd things walked in the moonlight. As well to remember that.
'Are we safe here?' he asked Cat on retuming to the fire. 'Are there things we should watch out for tonight?'
She was heating up the broken pie in the greasy pan they had used for breakfast, and the night air was full of the scent of apples and pastry.
'We're all right out here. It's in the wood we have to be careful, as you should know.' She tilted her face to the blue night and the overhanging branches of the copse. 'But here we'll have peace, unless you are afraid of owls.'
He sat down beside her and together they picked out pieces of piping pie, burning their fingers and putting it into each other's mouths. Cat's new clothes smelled of home, despite their ducking in the river. Of ironed linen and soap. Her own rich scent—if that was the right word—rose up from the neck of the shirt, incongruous as a wolf in a drawing room.