City of Ruin - Mark Charan Newton [70]
Beami began to cry into his shoulder, a gentle relief so it seemed, letting out the pressure of her situation, of her lack of control.
*
Later in this otherworld, night fell – and it seemed even more sudden with that fantastical yellow sun.
They lay on long grass throughout the balmy evening, staring up at the skies, while a warm wind came from the coast, and the trees had begun releasing perfume into the evening, smells he had never before known. Beami lay with her head on Lupus’s chest, and his compound bow and quiver lay just to his right side, within easy reach. They watched the stars for some time, and it felt to her as if there was only the one moon here, the larger and brighter one. Sure it might look a bit out of alignment, but still . . .
‘We should probably sleep here, tonight,’ Beami suggested. ‘If we return to the same moment in time in Villiren, then we’d need to appear fresh and not tired else people might suspect there was something up with us both.’
For a moment he thought a comet flashed at the periphery of his vision.
‘The star formations,’ he whispered, ‘they’re more or less the same as when we’re back in the city, aren’t they? Perhaps they’re out of sync a little.’
‘I’ve not noticed,’ Beami replied. ‘I’ve not spent too many evenings out here on my own.’
Perhaps it was a soldier’s obsession for these things but, after studying the stars further, he became convinced of their location. ‘We’re actually in Villiren. This is still the same place. We’re just at a different point in time.’
Beami said nothing for a moment, then, ‘That makes sense. The topography has been reasonably identical and we’re near the coast still. There are those higher cliffs sheltering the natural harbour, just like in the city. How far back in time do you think we are?’
Their conversation continued in such speculation until Lupus drifted into sleep, leaving Beami to regard the stars serenely.
*
She didn’t know how long she had been staring upwards when a block of the sky began to change texture. The wind altered fractionally, calming a little, then the stars in one quadrant became obscured by some massive translucent presence. In a precise shape looming above, a huge oblong the size of a small town, the stars became hazy, almost vibrating, and then were blocked entirely by something that was darker, more textured. Wind gathered momentum, the trees in the distance fizzing, and birds burst cover, startled. Beami’s heart beat rapidly, but she was too stunned to wake Lupus. She merely stared dumbly upwards.
An utter silence fell as the presence loitered in the sky above some distance from the ground. How far away it was, she couldn’t be sure, but for a moment it did appear to be a town of sorts, because it reminded her of the windows seen nightly in the city.
And hardly had this entity appeared when it disintegrated into nothingness, leaving the starscape exactly as before. She eased herself away from Lupus’s sleeping form, and for the next quarter of an hour she paced the nearby meadow, all the time craning her neck upwards waiting for the shape to return.
*
Their affair was locked safely in another place, another time, another dimension entirely. But now they were back in her house, in Malum’s house, the guilt came storming into her mind, like a raid on her senses.
Lupus tried to nuzzle against her neck, offering a comfort too far. With the tips of her fingers she traced the crispness of his uniform. He was so organized and neat for such a laid-back personality, so well groomed. The army must have taught him this discipline, she decided.
Suddenly Beami pushed him away and said, ‘Not here, not while we’re so exposed.’
She couldn’t even meet his eyes. Over his shoulder she could see the snow descending outside the window, nothing like as harsh as it had been, but still a constant reminder of the troubles everyone in this city faced.
‘What’s wrong now?’ he growled.
How could he not understand, despite all that she’d already said? ‘Don’t you even care if we get caught?