The Burning Man

3

As midnight approached, Tom and Shavi went out to sit on the hotel porch. Gas heaters roared but did little to dispel the bitter cold. They braved the temperature for the view: the moon transformed the frozen landscape into a shimmering white dream.

Shavi took a deep breath that filled his lungs with ice. ‘Do you know why I have such hope for us?’ he said softly.

‘Because you’re deluded?’

‘This world is too amazing to be ruled by the essence of despair. Everywhere I look I see wonder — resting beneath the gentle drift of snow, in a city street steaming in the summer sun, in October rain on a factory window. Magic, just waiting for us to release it.’

‘Very poetic. Now, have you turned that incisive human eye on your own comrades?’ The ember of Tom’s roll-up glowed red as he inhaled.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, you have two who are deranged by their own hormones, and two who are facing a rising obstacle between them, which they cannot yet see. If they don’t sort themselves out and focus on what really matters, disaster will creep up like a thief in the night.’

‘You can see that with your precog abilities?’

‘I don’t know what I see any more,’ Tom replied bitterly. ‘When the queen of the Court of the Yearning Heart arranged to torment me through the abilities I was given, I had centuries to adjust to the visions of the future that came to me. Yet there were none beyond a certain time because I was fated to die. Now everything has changed. I see new things all the time — flashes of terrible events — but I do not yet have a context for them. And so I am useless.’

Shavi was saddened to hear the raw emotion in Tom’s voice. ‘Yet you sense something bad is going to happen?’

‘Oh, yes. Very bad indeed.’

Shavi’s attention was caught by a flicker of movement far out across the snowy waste near the dark line of fir trees. He couldn’t tell if it was man or beast, for it appeared to move first on two legs, then on four. With it came a palpable sense of apprehension.

‘I think we should go in now,’ he said.