The Beginning Place

8

It still moved. The jerking of the arms—small, like a lizard’s forelegs, against the mass of the body, but shaped like human arms and hands—was rhythmic, a reflex without intent. Human arms, a woman’s arms, and those were breasts, pointed like a sow’s teats, between the arms and lower down the belly, there where, as the pulsing spasm of the body went on, the wound was brought into view again, and again, and again, and the grip of the sword protruding from the wound. Irena, on hands and knees, crouched down lower and vomited on the rocks and dust. When she could raise herself up a little she began to crawl away, to get away from the dying creature and the reek of the opened belly. But Hugh was lying there under the thing and how could she leave him there? But he was dead too or dying and she was frightened, there was nothing she could do. She could not even stand up. She kept trembling and making a queer noise like “Ao, ao.” When she had crawled up close, under the twitching arms, so close that she could see the entrails sliding inside the wound, and Hugh on his back pinned under the huge wrinkled leg and body, she could not even get hold of him. She could not tug him out. She had to move the dragon thing, to try to push it off him. When she set her hands against the white wrinkled side she screamed aloud.

It was cold, a dead coldness. It was inert and stiff, the spasms running through it mechanically. She pushed, her head down and her eyes shut, weeping. It moved a little, rolled under her push, rolled slowly over onto its back, freeing Hugh’s body lying in a gush of slime and blood. The thin white forearms were now raised up into the air. Their twitching, fainter and faster, was in the corner of Irena’s vision as she crouched beside Hugh. He lay on his back, both legs bent to the side, his face masked, effaced with blood. She tried to clean the stuff off his face with her hands, to get his nostrils and mouth clear, for he was breathing, a gasping shallow breath at intervals; but he lay motionless and his face felt cold. The dragon thing had fallen on him and lain on him too long, chilled and stifled his life. He was broken. If she could get him out of this mess, the blood and the burst intestines and the white shuddering bulk she would not look at, if she could just get him somewhere else and get him clean and make a fire and get warm, both of them get warm. But she could not move him. If his back was injured she could kill him trying. She did not dare even move his legs, afraid they were broken.

“What shall I do?” she whimpered aloud, and felt her tongue dry and swollen in her mouth. She had been thirsty for a long time, for miles before they came to the cave, for hours while Hugh went on at that remorseless steady pace, never stopping, driven or drawn, and she could only stay with him because she knew that neither of them would ever get out of this country alone. And the way had gone higher and higher, and there had been no more streams, and they had come to the cave. But her mouth was like dry plaster, and there must be water somewhere. She sat back on her heels, looking with half-seeing eyes about the stony level in front of the dark gap of the cave mouth, the bare slopes and cliffs above, the treetops and rising ridges across the gorge. She would not look at the white thing, but the tremor of the forearms was always at the edge of her eye; it had almost ceased, a running shudder. She tried to wipe her hands on stones, for they were sticky and growing stiff with slime and blood. She heard the breath catch in Hugh’s throat. He moved his hands and coughed, a small, thin sound like a child. His lips worked, and presently he opened his eyes. There was no mind in them at first, but as she crouched beside him and said his name he looked at her, she saw his blue eyes, his soul alive.

“Can you move, Hugh? Can you sit up?”

The breath whistled in his chest.

“Wind ’ck’d out,” he said very faintly.

“It’s all right. You got knocked down. If you can move, we’ll be able to get a ways away. I can’t move you.”

“Fat,” he said. “Wait:”

He shut his eyes, then presently opened them, set his lips, and got himself propped up on both elbows, his head hanging over his chest. “Hang on,” he said to her or to himself. “That’s it,” she told him, holding his shoulder, “that’s the way.” He got up onto his knees with a lurch. There he stayed for a while. He showed no awareness of where he was, did not see the dead thing shivering beside him; he could go no further than his own body now. When he tried to stand up, Irena could help him, getting her shoulder under his arm as a crutch. He was very heavy, shambling, not seeing. She guided him in a staggering shuffle around the body of the dragon creature, across the level, into the thin trees that grew beside the cave wall. The trail went on there. Almost at once it turned sharply left and downward, descending so steeply that Hugh could not keep his feet. At least they had got past the cave. She was going to have him sit or lie down there on the trail while she went to find water, when she heard the sound of water running; and she thought then that all along she had heard that sound, while they were in the stony place in front of the cave. She got Hugh to shuffle on around the turn of the path. The trail ran down among high ferns. Above it water slipped in a clear film over boulders, crossed it, and vanished among ferns and moss down the mountainside. “Here,” she said. As soon as she ceased to support him Hugh went down onto his knees again, and then onto all fours. “Lie down,” she said, and he let himself slip down on his side among the ferns.

She drank and washed her hands and face in the little ceaseless, clear rilling, and gave Hugh water in her hands, a swallow at a time, the best she could do. She tried to get him to sit up so she could get his coat off. He did not cooperate. “It’s all covered with blood and, and tripe, Hugh, it smells—”

“I’m cold,” he said.

“I’ve got a blanket, a cloak. It’s dry, you’ll be warmer.”

His resistance was not conscious, and by persisting she got the leather coat off him. He cried out twice with pain as she tried to work it off his shoulders, so that she thought his shoulder was broken or dislocated, or his arm injured; but he said clearly enough, “It’s O.K.” All the front of his shirt was sticky, pale brownish-red; she got that off him too. She could see no injury on him. His shoulders, arms, and chest were heavy, smooth, and strong, very white in the dusk place among the ferns. She got him wrapped in the red cloak, and when she had washed out his shirt she used it to clean his face and throat and hands better; then rinsed it again, craving and healed by the water, the touch and cool and clarity of it. When she let him be, he lay with his eyes closed. His breathing was still shallow, but quiet. She sat with her hand on his, for his comfort and her own.

The immense gorge they overlooked was still. All the mountain was still, except for the small constant music of the spring.

It was a good place, this nook beside the path: the ferns, the boulders, the film and the glimmer of water, the steady dark branches of the firs. She looked up. The path had turned sharp round; they must be directly below the stony level and the cave mouth. The spring must rise beneath the floor of the cave. It came out here into the light. They were in front of the cave here, but on beyond it, past it. You never think of going on past the dragon, Irena thought. You only think about getting to it. But what happens afterwards?

She began to cry again, noiselessly, painlessly. The tears ran down her cheeks in a film like the spring water. She thought of the piteous, hideous arms, the pointed white breasts; she put her face in her arms and wept. I have passed the place of the dragon and I can’t go back. I have to go on. It was my home, the light in the window, the fire on the hearth, I was a child there, I was the daughter, but it’s gone. Now I’m only the dragon’s daughter and the king’s child, the one that has to go alone, go on, because there is no home behind me.

The water sang, small and fearless. She curled down at last to sleep, worn out. It was a damp place they were in: the touch of the ferns was chill, the ground moist. She could not get warm. There was nothing nearby to build a fire with and she felt too weary, having once half relaxed, to go gather wood and make a fire. Hugh lay fast asleep. He had turned partly onto his face and his arms were drawn in close for warmth. A corner of the red cloak had caught on the ferns and pulled free. She crawled in under it, back to back with Hugh. That was no good. She turned over and put her arm over his side under the fold of the cloak. That was warm, that was comfort. She fell asleep, like a stone falling.

Waking, she lay lapped in warmth some while, rocked in the mild rhythms of Hugh’s breathing and her own, entirely tranquil. Memories began to shape themselves, intruding like the angles and pebbles of the streambed; again she ran down the thin, steep way to the cave mouth, crying defiance, and again, and slipped on the rocks and fell—and sat up, struggling out of the folds of the red cloak. For a while she sat, still sleepy, and looked around at the ferns and the stream, the trees down the gorge, the bluish depths and far ridge lines, the uncolored sky. She crawled over to the stream and crouched to drink where the water rilled over a grey boulder’s curve, and washed her face and the back of her neck to clear her mind; then went along the path and off it among the trees to piss. When she came back, Hugh was sitting up huddled in the cloak, hunched over. His thick, rough, fair hair, stiff from her attempt to wash the blood out of it, stuck out from his head; the stubble on his jaw was thick; he looked heavy and haggard. When she asked him how he was it took him a long time to answer. “O.K,” he said. “Cold.”

She unwrapped bread and meat for them. She offered him his share, but he did not get his hand out from under the cloak to take it. He hunched up miserably. “Not now,” he said.

“Come on. You never ate…yesterday, whenever it was.”

“Not hungry.”

“Drink something anyhow.”

He nodded, but did not move to go drink at the stream. After a while he said, “Irena.”

“Yes,” she said, chewing smoked mutton. She was starving hungry, already eying his untouched share.

“The…Where…”

“Up there,” she said, pointing to the thick-grown slope above the spring. He looked up uneasily.

“Did it…”

“It was dead.”

Hugh shuddered: she could see the tremor run right through his body. She felt sorry for him, but she was at the moment mainly concerned with food. “Eat something,” she said. “It tastes so good. We ought to get going before too long. If you feel all right.”

“Going,” he repeated.

She attacked a piece of hard dry bread. “Away. Out. To the gate.”

He said nothing. He picked up a strip of dried meat, gnawed at it half-heartedly, then gave it up. He went over to the stream to drink. He moved awkwardly, and spent a while levering himself down so that he could drink. He drank for a long time, and finally got up, laborious, holding the red cloak around his shoulders. “I need my shirt or something,” he said.

“See if it’s dry. I had to wash it. Your coat too.”

He looked down at his jeans, stiffened and blackened in streaks with dried blood, and swallowed. “Right. Where is it?” He saw it where she had spread it out over a big fern to dry, and shrugged off the cloak to put the shirt on. Irena watched him, seeing the beauty of his heavy, gleaming arms and throat. Pity and admiration filled her. She said, “You killed the dragon, Hugh.”

He finished buttoning the shirt, and after a minute turned towards her. Among the grey boulders and the arching ferns he stood still, and she still between rock and fern, looking at each other.

“You went ahead of me,” he said slowly, remaking the moment at the turn of the high path. “You ran down—you called ‘Come out.’ How did you—What made you do that?”

“I don’t know. I was sick of being frightened. I got mad. When I saw the cave. When I saw it I knew she was in it and you’d go in after her, go in there and never come out, and I couldn’t stand it. I had to make her come out.”

He tucked his shirttail into his jeans, wincing as he moved.

“You call it ‘her.’” he said.

“It was.” She did not want to speak of the breasts and the thin arms.

He shook his head, with a sick look, his pallor increasing. “No, it was—The reason I had to kill it—” he said, and then put out his hand groping for support, and staggered as he stood.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s dead.”

He stood still, his face averted, watching the stream.

“Is the sword…”

“The belt and sheath’s somewhere here in the ferns. The sword is…” She must have looked as sick as he did, for he broke in: “I don’t want it.”

“Hugh, I think we ought to go on. I want to go. If you’re feeling well enough.”

“What happened to me, anyway?”

“It fell on you.”

He drew a deep breath; his face was bewildered.

“You don’t feel like anything got broken or anything?”

“I’m all right. I can’t get warm.”

“You ought to eat.”

He shook his head.

“Maybe we could go, then. It’s damp here. Maybe walking will warm you up.”

“Right,” he said, coming down to where they had slept among the ferns. Irena organized things: strapping the packet of food and the still damp leather coat so that she could carry them easily, and giving Hugh the red cloak. “Put it on right, see, it ties at the neck. I’ll carry your coat like this till it dries out.” He moved so clumsily that she said, “Is your shoulder all right?”

“Yeah, it’s my side, I guess I sprained something.”

“What about walking?” she asked sharply, alarmed.

“It’ll wear off when I warm up.” He was apologetic.

“I don’t know where we are,” she said.

They stood on the path, just beyond the hands-breadth slip and murmur of the stream crossing and dropping away into fern and moss among tree roots down the mountainside.

“The only way we could be sure of where we’re going would be to follow the whole trail back.” She gestured uphill towards the cave. “Past there, and all the way back to the High Step, and then back down to town and onto the south road.”

“No,” Hugh said.

“Well,” she said, much relieved but unable to admit it, “I don’t want to either. It was an awfully long way. But I don’t know where the gate is from here.”

“If we go down,” he said, “maybe we’ll pick up the sense of the axis, the direction, again.”

“O.K. If this is the south side of the mountain we’re on, this path leads east. If we can keep going pretty much east or southeast, we ought to cross Third River somewhere down at the foot. And follow Third River to the road; and then on to the gate. It shouldn’t be half as long as going clear back around.”

He nodded; and she set off down the path under the spindly, crowded firs. She was cheered by walking, cheered by the decision not to go back; she had been afraid he would want to go back. “Go without looking back…”

The white figures stood silent on the dusk road, long ago now, and always, changelessly.

The path was narrow and rocky, a mild downhill grade. It was pleasant to walk, working the knots and sorenesses out of arms and legs, her breath coming easy. All that endless way from the High Step to the cave, all that day or days of being afraid and going on and on, she had not been able to breathe right: there had been a pressure on her lungs from below. Now she felt breathing a pleasure as deep as the pleasure of drinking cool water. I breathe, am breathed, am breath; I am so, am so. So walk, so go on earth, am earth, breath; and beneath all, joy.

They had come a long way when the path reached the bottom of the gorge. It was dark twilight here, a silent creek running under overhanging shrubs and ferns, a slippery dim crossing. Hugh came slowly across. She saw that he did not walk easily. She saw that on this side of the canyon the path turned back, going west.

If it was west.

All confidence slipped from her down in the dark slippery place. If they had come farther than she had counted on, and the cave of the dragon was on the western face of the mountain, then all her directions were off. They were in country she knew nothing about. Anirotembre, the land behind the mountain, the name was all they had ever said of it. If there were towns there they were not spoken of. What had Hugh once said about the west? Something about the sea. That was no good. She must decide what to do. This trail they were on might be a circle. It was the same trail they had been on since they left the High Step, it was the dragon’s way. It might go zigzagging in and out of the ravines and up and down the slopes around the mountain and back at last to the High Step. Days walking, maybe, and Hugh already standing here, his head down a bit, glad to stop. It was no good going in circles. They had to get off the dragon’s path, and get out.

“I think maybe we should leave the trail here,” she said, speaking low, for the deep place was awesome. “We’ve got to try to keep heading east.”

He looked up at the dark slopes overhanging. “It’ll be hard to keep any direction, off the trail.”

“This river’s running east. I think. We can keep following it.”

“O.K.”

“I’m just guessing it’s east,” she said shortly. “I don’t know.”

“There’s no way to know.” He absolved her without question. “I’d never get anywhere,” he said, looking at her across the dark air, “not by myself.”

“Out again Brautigan,” she said. “Maybe. If only this river is running the right way.”

“Not a river at all, it’s a creek,” he said amiably.

“I call them all rivers. You want to rest here a while?”

“No. Ground’s too wet. Let’s go on.”

It was unnerving to step off the path deliberately, to choose pathlessness, as if you knew your way. At least the going was not hard at first. The trees on this side of the gorge were mostly big old hemlocks, without much underbrush between them, once they were up out of the streambed. The slopes were steep. Before long she wished her right leg could be taken up a couple of inches. But they were making good progress, and there was more light here.

The stream began to descend more steeply. Irena did not try to follow close to the water, but struck up to the spine of the ridge, where the walking was easier and the direction still the same as the flow of water. She had had some hope of seeing the way ahead from the ridgetop, but as always the trees grew too close. Had they been fools to leave the path? Maybe, but she was not turning back. All they could do was take their chance. She was hungry. It seemed too soon to stop, until she thought back to the place below the cave where they had slept—hours ago, way back up the mountain. She turned and said, “I’d like a break,” to Hugh, plugging along behind her. He halted promptly. He looked around and pointed out a level bit of ground between the roots of two great, shaggy trees, and they headed for it. He wore the red cloak, which made him look rather like a grandmother from behind, but stately in front view. They found convenient roots to sit on, and Irena unstrapped and unwrapped the packet of food. “I thought maybe we’d go light this time, and next time we stop eat more. Are you very hungry yet?”

“Not hungry at all.”

“Eat something, though.”

She set out portions that looked shamefully meager to her, put up the rest, and fell to. She thought she was chewing slowly and making it last, but it was gone at once, gone before he was half done. He did not even eat the bread. She looked at him uneasily. He was pale, but the haggard look was mostly unshaven beard. His expression was not strained. In fact he looked easy and contented, gazing off among the trees. Evidently feeling her gaze on him, he looked round at her. “You work, or go to school, or what?” he asked.

At first the question seemed crazy, senseless, she could not answer it, here lost on the dragon’s mountain. Then the impulse that had moved him asserted itself in her, and she saw nothing strange in what he asked. “I work. Mott and Zerming. I’m an errandperson.”

“A who?”

“An errandperson. They have all these affiliates and subsidiaries in town, and a whole lot of correspondence and memos and a lot of blueprints and stuff—they’re partly in engineering—and it pays them to use people to carry it around to the different offices instead of using the mail. It’s a pretty big outfit. But they’re still local and Mr. Zerming still pretty much runs it. He likes to use people who have their own car. But I get all my gas free.”

“That’s crazy,” he said approvingly. “So you drive around all the time?”

“Some of it’s easier to do on foot, the downtown offices. Or use the bus. Some days it’s all driving. It’s kind of weird. I like it because of being on my own and sort of doing it my own way. I hate doing things when somebody else says how to.”

“Trouble with most jobs.”

“The trouble with this one it’s really a kid’s job. Sort of unreal—you know. You never really do anything. Go and go and get nowhere.”

“What would you like to do?”

“I don’t know. I don’t mind this one, you know, it’s all right. Just a job. But I guess what a person really does is different. Ought to be different. Like a farm. Or teaching. Or kids. But I’m not there. You have to have some real dirt and a tractor. Or get a teaching degree or a nursing degree or whatever.”

“You can go to night school at a community college,” he said meditatively. “And work daytime. Starting, anyhow. If…”

“That sounds like something you’ve thought about. Or would you have to go to a special college?”

“What for?”

“Library work, you said.”

He looked at her again, a slow look. “That’s right,” he said, and she knew beyond reason or question that she had recognised something that had been slighted, done something absolutely and permanently right. She did not know what it was, but the effect delighted her. “Crazy,” she said. “All those books. What would you do with them, anyhow?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Read them?”

His smile was purely good-natured. She laughed. Their eyes met, they both looked away. They were silent for a while.

“If I was just sure we were really going east, I would feel so good!…Are you feeling O.K. now?”

“I’m fine.”

He always spoke quietly, but she was aware of the resonance of his voice, muted; a beautiful singing voice, it might be.

“Sore as hell here,” he remarked with some surprise, exploring his left side with a gingerly touch.

“Let me see.”

“It’s all right.”

“Well, let’s see. I thought you moved kind of stiff on that side.”

He tried to pull up his shirt but could not raise his left arm. He unbuttoned the shirt. He was embarrassed, and she tried to act detached, doctorly. At the level of the elbow, on the edge of the ribcage, was a greenish-black spot the size of a coffee-can lid. “My God,” she said.

“What is it?” he asked, apprehensive; he could not see it clearly.

“A bruise, I guess.” She thought of the grip of the sword protruding from the belly of the white creature. Her own body tightened and shrank together at the thought. “From when the—when it fell on you.” All around the livid spot the skin was yellowish, and there were other bruises and discolored streaks running up towards the breastbone. “No wonder it feels sore,” she said. She felt the heat of the bruise on her fingertips before, very lightly, she touched it.

He caught her hand with his. She thought she had hurt him and looked up into his face. They did not move, she kneeling by him as he sat with one knee drawn up.

“You told me never touch you,” he said, his voice husky.

“That was before.”

His mouth had softened and slackened, his face was intent, profoundly serious, as she had seen it once before. She had seen on other men’s faces that same mask, that made them all alike, and had hidden her own face. Now unafraid, awed but curious, she watched him, and touched his mouth and the hollow of the temple by the eye as gently as she had touched the black bruise, wanting to know this pain and this desire. He held her to him, but awkwardly and timidly, until she put up both her arms, feeling herself go as soft and quick as water. Then he held her and mounted on her, overcoming; yet her strength held and contained his strength.

As he entered her, as she was entered, they came to climax together, and then lay together, mixed and melded, breast against breast and their breath mingled, until he rose in her again and she closed on him, the long pulse of joy enacting them.

He lay there, eyes shut and head turned aside, three-quarters naked, his jeans pulled down. She touched the long splendid line from hip to throat, looked at the peculiarly innocent, fair silky hair in the pit of his arm. “You’re cold,” she said, and managed to get the red cloak pulled over them as they lay. “You’re beautiful,” he said, his hands trying to describe that beauty in caresses, but without urgency, tenderly, sleepily. He lay with his face against her shoulder. Half asleep, she saw the unmoving leaves of the hemlocks against the quiet sky. The comfort they gave each other was very great, but it was all the comfort they had. The ground was rough. She felt shivering go through him as he slept. She drew away from him. He protested, saying her name, relapsing for a minute into sleep.

She pulled on her clothes, shivering a bit herself, and as he roused she got him to wear the leather coat, which had finally got fairly dry, and the cloak on top of that. “It’s shock that makes you feel cold,” she said.

“The shock of what?” he asked with a placid smile.

“Shut up. It does make you cold—shock from injury.”

“I think we figured out how to get warm.”

“Yes, all right, but we can’t get to the gateway by lying here and screwing, Hugh.”

“I don’t know if we can get there by standing up and walking,” he said. “At least we can enjoy the rest stops,” he added, and then looked at her to make sure he had not hurt her feelings or offended against modesty. His own modesty, his vulnerability, were entirely admirable to her. She was much cruder than he was, she thought, and if he judged her he must disapprove; but he did not judge her. He did not come to her with judgments, or with a place for her or a name or a use for her. He came with nothing at all but strength and need.

He was looking at her. He said, “Irena, you know, that was the best thing that ever happened to met.”

She nodded, unable to answer.

“I suppose we ought to go on,” he said. He felt his left side with a thoughtful and disgusted expression. “Wish that would wear off.”

“It’ll take a while. It’s an awful bruise.”

He was looking at her again, uncertainly; then, with resolution, came to her, touched her hair and cheek, and kissed her mouth—not expertly, and not very passionately; but it was their first kiss. Better than the kiss she liked the touch of his large hand. She wanted to tell him that he was beautiful and that she liked him, but she was no good at saying things.

“Are you warm enough?” he asked. “I’ve got all the clothes on.”

“I always warm up right away walking.”

He waited for her to start off, making no pretense of knowing where they should go. She set off with a new access of confidence along the ridgetop, continuing their course beside the stream in the direction she was resolved to call east.

They walked steadily without speaking for a long way. The ridge, a long, lean spur of the mountain, curved somewhat to the left as they went; its back rose and fell, but the slant over all and always was downhill. The woods on the spine of the ridge were sparse, making easy going, and there were some long open stretches where it was pleasant to walk in the short, dry, brownish grass out from under the dark overhang of branches. At last the spur began to descend steeply, then abruptly. Failing to find an easier way they had to scramble down, clutching at roots and forced sometimes to slide. They fetched up at the bottom, in the streambed, a steep-sided, thickly overgrown ravine. They made their way at once down to the stream to drink.

Irena climbed back up the muddy bank to a clear place made by the falling of a big tree, and stood there considering. This stream was about the same size as Third River. If it was Third River, all they had to do was follow it and they would cross the south road—but this wasn’t Third River. This was the same stream they had been following all the way from its source, the spring among the ferns, below the dragon’s cave. It was flowing east or southeast, down off the mountain, in this canyon. Third River flowed west, past the mountain. This must be a tributary; it would meet Third River somewhere. It was running toward the left and Third River would run to the right, from this side, if she was facing south now—

She stood trying to work this out, how the streams could be running opposite ways, what direction she must be facing. A knot came into her throat. The names of the compass, north, west, south, east, were words without meaning. Whichever way she faced could be south. Or could be north.

Hugh came up beside her. “You ready for a break?” he asked. He put his hand on her shoulder. She flinched away from the touch.

He moved away at once, crossing the little clearing. He sat down with his back against the massive trunk of the fallen tree, and closed his eyes.

When she came to sit down by him he said, “Maybe we should eat something.”

She opened the pack and laid out the food that was left. There was more than she had thought; certainly enough to get by another day on. That gave her courage to say, “I don’t know where we are.”

“We never did, did we?” he said, impassive. Then, with visible effort, he moved, opened his eyes, asked questions and made suggestions. They discussed following this stream on as they had been doing, since it must join one of the larger streams eventually.

“Or if we’re going the wrong way we’ll come to the sea,” he said, meaning to joke, but his voice died off on the last word.

“The other possibility would be to turn left here,” Irena said, working on a second strip of mutton jerky and feeling enlivened by it. “Because I keep thinking we aren’t going east enough. And so long as we stay on the mountain we aren’t completely lost—at least we know where the mountain is.”

“But we don’t get any nearer the gateway.”

“I know. But the mountain is really the only landmark we have. Since we lost the sense of where the gateway is.”

“I know. It’s all alike. Like when I went past the gateway. I guess…I guess what I’m afraid of is that that’s happened again. The gate isn’t there any more. There’s nothing to find.”

“That’s never happened to me,” she said, defiant. “It’s not going to. I’m not going to stay here.”

He was pushing fir needles into patterns on the ground beside the fallen tree.

“That’s yours,” she said, trying to keep her eyes off his share of meat.

“I’m not really hungry.”

After a while she said, “You’re not leaving more for me, or something creepy like that, are you?”

“No,” he said, candid, startled; he smiled, looking up at her. “I just don’t feel like eating. If I did you wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“You can’t fast and do a long walk like this too.”

“Sure. Live off my fat, like a camel.”

She frowned. She wanted to move closer beside him and touch him, his rough hair and tired, stubbly cheeks, his big, powerful, yet childlike hand; but she was prevented by having flinched away from his touch a few minutes before. She wanted to deny his self-denigration but did not know what to say.

His eyes were closed or closing; he had leaned back against the fallen tree. She said nothing, locked in self-consciousness and a deepening depression of spirits. When she glanced at him again he was asleep, his face slack, the hand on his thigh lax.

They ought to go on. They had to go on. They couldn’t sit down and sleep, or they would never get to the gateway. “Hugh,” she said. He did not hear. Then her anxiety melted in the fearful, passionate tenderness it had risen from. She went to him and pushed him over gently to make him lie down. He roused. “Go to sleep,” she said. He obeyed her. She sat beside him a while. As she sat she listened to the sound of the stream nearby, which she had not paid attention to before. It ran quiet here, flowing softly on sand or mud, the gentlest murmur. She began to realize that she was tired. She got the red cloak, which he had not worn once he had warmed up in the leather coat, and put it over them both as a blanket, and fitted herself against Hugh, and went to sleep.

When they roused up both of them were stiff, slow, unready. Irena went back down the bank to drink from the stream. She washed her hands and face, and the cool water was so pleasant, and she felt so ingrained with travel-dirt, that she found a shallow pool downstream and took off her clothes and bathed. She was shy of Hugh’s seeing her, and got dressed again quickly. He came down the bank farther upstream, where it was low, and knelt ponderously to drink. “Have a swim. I did,” Irena called, buttoning up her shirt, shivering pleasantly.

“Too cold.”

“You still feel cold?” she asked, joining him on the ferny, muddy shore.

“All the time.”

“It was that—the dragon thing—It was cold. I felt it.”

“I just want to see the sunlight,” he said. There was a ring of despair in his voice that frightened her.

“We’ll get out, Hugh. Don’t—”

“Which way?” he asked, standing up. He used a knotty bush growing from the bank to help pull himself upright.

“Follow the stream, I guess.”

“Good. I don’t feel much like mountain climbing,” he said with an effort at jocularity.

She took his hand. It was stone cold.—Cold from the water, she realized: but that cold touch had shocked her beyond the reach of rational explanation. She was in fear for him. She looked up at him and said his name.

He met her gaze, looking at her as if he saw all of her with a longing he could not speak. He put his right hand on her hair and drew her against him. He was a wall, a fortress, a bulwark, and mortal, frail, easier to hurt than heal; dragonkiller, child of the dragon; king’s son, poor man, poor, brief, unknowing soul. His desire for her stood up and throbbed against her belly, but his arms held her in a greater longing even than that, one for which life cannot give consummation. She held him so to her, they stood there together.