I find myself thinking of her in ways I shouldn’t.
“You were in the Outlands previously?” she says in a quiet voice.
I look away from the fire. From her.
Above us looms the universe in a cloudless and black night sky. And like fated chance, the two moons dance together as they set in tandem against the rip-bare towering black silhouette of the Range, a moorage for the Initiated.
And the brave.
But no matter.
“Yes,” I say. “I was.”
She senses my reticence. “Then tell me about the Machine. I read your journal.”
I throw a log onto the fire. A shower of sparks flows skyward only to burn out against the black of the night. Like so many dreams from a past of regret.
“Please,” she says, simply.
“I was a boy,” I start, “the first time they told me of the ‘Forever Machine.’”
She leans forward. “My father encountered a Machine on his first expedition to the Outlands.”
I chuckle. “It doesn’t exist. A fable. Nothing more.”
“Entreat me then, Mister Bloodworth,” she say.
I hesitate. “Very well.”
And I tell her how, on those long-ago nights, I had listened to the old men and my Father debate the Subject of the Machine as the old men, silver bearded and grizzled, spun out the tales of the Machine during those High Summer evenings when the sun died late and the stars gradually came out, then the fires were lit and dazzled and sent forth into the sky the choking wood smoke that smelled of burnt rosemary and cedar and roasted meats, and the fires sent orange-colored sparks heavenward under a canopy of cold white stars that shone down on us as if Familiars.
And how on one of those nights, I’d had my initiation into manhood by means of a first taste of the bitter wine; and as I eventually grew into a man, I would have my first taste of a woman on one of those nights after the fires had died down, and our lips found each other’s, and the embers glowed a dull red in the quietude of the night.
I stir up the fire.
I say, “A part of me, of my soul, had been taken and sacrificed to the gods on those nights. But that was our way in Avalon.”
“This woman,” she says, “what was her name?”
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