Scotland. Smell the forests; smell the sea in the wind.
The car moved away smoothly. An experienced driver. He was thankful. He could not have been tossed and pushed from side to side clear to Donnelaith. For a moment he saw the glaring reflection of the lights behind him, the bodyguards following as they always did.
A terrible premonition gripped him. Why put himself through this ordeal? Why go to Donnelaith? Why climb the mountain and visit these shrines of his past again? He closed his eyes and saw for a second the brilliant red hair of the little witch whom Yuri loved as foolishly as a boy. He saw her hard green eyes looking back at him out of the picture, mocking her little-girl hair with its bright colored ribbon. Yuri, you are a fool.
The car gained speed.
He could not see anything through the darkly tinted glass. Lamentable. Downright maddening. In the States, his own cars had untinted windows. Privacy had never been a concern to him. But to see the world in its natural colors, that was something he needed the way he needed air and water.
Ah, but maybe he would sleep a little, and without dreams.
A voice startled him—the young woman’s, coming from the overhead speaker.
“Mr. Ash, I’ve called the Inn; they’re prepared for our arrival. Do you want to stop for anything now?”
“No, I want only to get there, Leslie. Snuggle with the blanket and the pillow. It is a long way.”
He closed his eyes. But sleep didn’t come to him. This was one of those journeys when he would feel every minute, and every bump in the road.
So why not think of the gypsy again—his thin, dark face, the flash of his teeth against his lip, so white and perfect, the teeth of modern men. Rich gypsy, perhaps. Rich witch, that had come plain to him in the conversation. In his mind’s eye he reached for the button of her white blouse in the photograph. He pulled it open to see her breasts. He gave them pink nipples, and he touched the blue veins beneath the skin which had to be there. He sighed and let a low whistle come from his teeth and turned his head to the side.
The desire was so painful that he forced it back, let it go. Then he saw the gypsy again. He saw his long dark arm thrown up over the pillow. He smelled again the woods and the vale clinging to the gypsy. “Yuri,” he whispered in his fantasy, and he turned the young man over and bent to kiss his mouth.
This too was a fiery furnace. He sat up and forward and put his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands.
“Music, Ash,” he said quietly, and then, settling back once more, his head against the window, his eyes large and struggling to see through the horrid dark glass, he began to sing to himself in a wee voice, a tiny falsetto, a song no one might understand but Samuel, and even Samuel might not know for sure.
It was 2:00 a.m. when he told the driver to stop. He could not continue. Beyond the dark glass lurked all the world that he had come here to see. He could wait no longer.
“We’re almost there, sir.”
“I know we are. You’ll find the town only a few miles ahead. You’re to go there directly. Settle into the Inn and wait for me. Now call the guards in the car behind us. Tell them to follow you in. I must be alone now here.”
He didn’t wait for the inevitable arguments or protests.
He stepped out of the car, slamming the door before the driver could come to his assistance, and with a little goodwill wave of his hand, he walked fast over the edge of the road and into the deep, cold forest.
The wind was not strong now. The moon, snared in clouds, gave an intermittent and filmy light. He found himself enveloped by the scents of the Scotch pines, the dark cold earth beneath his feet, the brave blades of early spring grass crushed beneath his shoe, the faint scent of new flowers.
The barks of the trees felt good beneath his fingers.
For a long time he moved on and on, in the dark, sometimes stumbling, sometimes catching hold of a thick tree trunk to steady himself. He didn’t stop to catch his breath. He knew this slope. He knew the stars above, even though the clouds tried to