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By Root 6377 0

there were dark. An attitude of expectancy was growing in the crowd; they were waiting for something. For what, he did not know. The entire afternoon was tense, poised, ready to fall. At the top of the street a huge automobile suddenly appeared, glistening in the sunlight. It came careening over the crest and down the hill, swerving savagely from one curb to the other. A great yell rose up from the crowd. He turned and frantically sought a doorway. At the corner there was a pastry shop, its windows full of cakes and meringues. He fumbled along the wall. If he could reach the door…. He wheeled, stood transfixed. In the tremendous flash of sunlight reflected from the glass as it splintered he saw the metal pinning him to the stone. He heard his own ridiculous cry, and felt his bowels pierced through. As he tried to topple over, to lose consciousness, he found his face a few inches from a row of pastries, still intact on their paper-covered shelf.

They were a row of mud wells in the desert. But how near were they? He could not tell: the debris had pinned him to the earth. The pain was all of existence at that moment. All the energy he could exert would not budge him from the spot where he lay impaled, his bleeding entrails open to the sky. He imagined an enemy arriving to step into his open belly. He imagined himself rising, running through the twisting alleys between the walls. For hours in all directions in the alleys, with never a door, never the final opening. It would get dark, they would be coming nearer, his breath would be failing. And when he willed it hard enough, the gate would appear, but even as he rushed panting through it, he would realize his terrible mistake.

Too late! There was only the endless black wall rising ahead of him, the rickety iron staircase he was obliged to take, knowing that above, at the top, they were waiting with the boulder poised, ready to hurl it when he came near enough. And as he got close to the top it would come hurtling down at him, striking him with the weight of the entire world. He cried out again as it hit, holding his hands over his abdomen to protect the gaping hole there. He ceased imaginin and lay still beneath the rubble. The pain could not go on. He opened his eyes, shut his eyes, saw only the thin sky stretched across to protect him. Slowly the split would occur, the sky draw back, and he would see what he never had doubted lay behind advance upon him with the speed of a million winds. His cry was a separate thing beside him in the desert. It went on and on.

The moon had reached the center of the sky when they arrived at the fort and found the gate locked. Holding Tunner’s hand, Kit looked up at him. “What’ll we do?”

He hesitated, and pointed to the mountain of sand above the fort. They climbed slowly upward along the dunes. The cold sand filled their shoes: they took them off and continued. Up here the brightness was intense; each grain of sand sent out a fragment of the polar light shed from above. They could not walk side by side-the ridge of the highest dune was too steep. Tunner draped his burnous around Kit’s shoulders and went ahead. The crest was infinitely higher and further away than they had imagined. When finally they climbed atop it, the ereg sat with its sea of motionless waves lay all about them. They did not stop to look: absolute silence is too powerful once one has trusted oneself to it for an instant, its spell too difficult to break.

“Down here!” said Tunner.

They let themselves slide forward into a great moonlit cup. Kit rolled over and the burnous slipped off; he had to dig into the sand and climb back after it. He tried to fold it and throw it down at her playfully, but it fell halfway. She let herself roll to the bottom and lay there waiting. When he came down he spread the wide white garment out on the sand. They stretched out on it side by side and pulled the edges up around them. What conversation had eventually taken place down in the garden had centered about Port. Now Tunner looked at the moon. He took her hand.

“Do you remember our night