Meeting

Illumina had a sense of disappointment when they carried on up the trail; now they just followed the path followed by the people, no longer following their own path. Illumina felt a desperate need to return but she also recognized they could not without something that had some hope of turning the people away from their current path.

This following of a new path seemed to make the whole journey that much longer and made it that much harder to see through to the end of it. Time dragged by. Illumina felt as though she were dragging the day behind, as though it resisted her passage through it and pulled her back, getting heavier and heavier as time wore on.

Finally, she could stand it no longer and called out to the third straggler that they should stop for the day. He had been walking ahead of them and turned, smiling at her as though she had just done or said something terribly clever. Illumina was struck by how incongruous his expression was, almost patronizing, a complete change from when they first met, though even then he had never been as cowed by the personification of death as the people in the crowd. He came trotting back, saying there was a good spot to camp just off the path from where they would be able to see anyone passing by.

The third straggler led the way and they camped a little up the hill and, as he promised, they had a clear view of the path; even so, they did not see anyone come down it. Illumina and the Prince were busy with the horses, Cosimo and Felice had gone hunting and taken Daisy with them; Nina was setting up the camp, she had just walked over to the horses to get something out of a pack. She had a fire built and a pot over it, warming a mixture of vegetables that would be the dinner for the evening.

Manueline and Wals had been walking all day and Manueline was tired, not being used to walking after all the time spent in the boat. They and the guide had left the old woman and the four other people acting as bearers for them some distance behind and came down the path just as Illumina and the others were setting up camp. They walked quietly accompanied by the wolf. Stopping on the edge of the clearing where Nina had set the fire.

It was still broad daylight as Illumina had called a halt early in the afternoon; they were not missed through lack of light but simply by virtue of the fact that no one looked. Nina saw them first and thought she was looking at Illumina and the Prince but dressed in some outlandish clothing. Illumina dressed like the men, making no concessions to gender or fashion, wearing boots, pants cut simply for riding, a shirt and jacket. This woman was dressed in what looked like a single piece of cloth wrapped round her with sandals on her feet. Incongruously, the man was dressed in a skirt of some kind with nothing on his feet at all and a crude sleeveless shirt. Nina had seen men among the crowd dressed the same way but the idea of seeing the Prince dressed that way confused her for a moment and besides he was too tall.

Then it came to her who he was and who the woman was. She saw the wolf for the first time. It hit her again who he was and looking at him, she had no doubts at all about who he was. She screamed, a terrible, raging sound in the stillness of the afternoon. The sound was all the more terrible because it was totally unexpected by all those who heard it. Wals and Manueline stood frozen in place, not knowing what could have provoked the woman; Illumina and the Prince looked round at first just seeing Nina collapsing on the ground; Cosimo and Felice were a long way off and heard it and started running back to the camp, wondering what in the world could have happened.

Illumina was about to run to Nina when she saw Wals, Manueline and the wolf. Like Nina, she was stunned for a moment by what she saw. The resemblance between Wals and the Prince and between Manueline and herself was uncanny. In the time she stood frozen by what she saw at the edge of the clearing, Wals came to himself, saw the woman on the ground and ran to her, bending down and taking her in his arms. The scream had such a note of desperation and anguish in it and he was so appalled at the idea that people might now die simply from being in his presence that he ran to her, seeking to reassure her and reassure himself.

He looked up as Illumina ran to them and he spoke in the language he learnt from Mab, the language Manueline barely understood, saying, "It wasn't me, I didn't touch her." To her astonishment, Illumina understood him. The accent was strange and the construction odd but there was no denying she understood him. He understood her when she replied, responding as much to the anxiety on his face as anything else, "No it wasn't you, she has been under a terrible strain for days now and seeing you was an even greater shock than I had imagined it would be."

Illumina gently took Nina from him, finding her cold and still as death. Illumina was shocked at how still she was, there was literally no life in her, as though she had abandoned herself and gone off somewhere else. Illumina looked around at the people gathering round her, the two guides, the other woman who looked like her, the man who looked like the Prince and the Prince himself. The Prince said, “Here give her to me,.”

Illumina called to her, “Nina, come back.” She held Nina’s face, calling to her insistently. “Nina you cannot go now, come back, Nina wake up!” She felt the same urgency and spirit in herself as she felt when they pulled the Prince out from under the ice, the sense that she could not and would no let go. Illumina continued to call to her, watching her face, completely oblivious to the other people around her. She was holding Nina’s face when she felt some movement, something in Nina’s body that came from within, a kind of long shuddering gasp, though there was no sense of her breathing or drawing air in.

Illumina grabbed the Prince's arm saying, "Wait, something's happening." He sat back and took Nina's hand. The two of them sat looking at her just as Cosimo and Felice ran back into the camp, calling out, asking what was wrong. No one responded, they just joined the circle of people round Nina and stood looking down at her asking again, what had happened.

Illumina had a brief glimpse of the huge wolf and Daisy greeting each other, before another shuddering gasp from Nina called her back, only this time there was a real intake of breath. Illumina shifted herself round, cradling Nina in her arms and looked up at Cosimo, asking him to go to the horses and bring Nina's blankets; they needed to keep her warm.

To follow this thread in the story go to: A Quiet Part of the Garden

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