AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She moved back a step, sending another cascade of sand like a veil over the entrance.
‘Is this better?’
‘No, it is not. What are you doing now?’ he demanded as she rooted around in her cloth bag.
‘I want to sketch those mushrooms.’
‘Rocks.’
‘They cannot possibly be natural rocks. Only look at them. That one looks like a parasol run amuck.’
Despite himself he turned. ‘Which one?’
‘You cannot see it from down there.’
Edge surrendered before he even began the fight this time. Clearly she had no intention of coming down and he would likely have an apoplexy waiting for her to fall. At least if he was close he could grab her before she did something foolish...again...
Oh, Sam. What the devil am I going to do with you?
‘There. See how beautiful it is from up here?’ she whispered when he stopped beside her. They stood so close the wind was wrapping her skirts about his legs like a morning mist.
‘We are barely ten feet off the ground standing on a pile of stones. Hardly an Alpine peak.’
‘It is not a ‘‘pile of stones”. It is a magical temple that can be moved by the power of one’s thoughts. Where would you command it to take you, Edge?’
‘There is nowhere I would rather be.’
The words were out before he could think and he very much hoped she interpreted them as apathy. It wasn’t that he wished to be here beside her, precisely. It was merely true that there was nowhere he would rather be.
After a moment’s silence, she returned to the view.
‘That formation looks like a tipsy mushroom, doesn’t it? And that one like a rabbit with one floppy ear and a bad squint.’
‘It looks like a rock.’
‘So do you, at the moment. Surely they are not natural, are they?’
‘They are. The stone around here is soft and the wind has sculpted it over millennia in an Aeolian...’
‘Oily Inn?’ Sam asked, sitting down and unwrapping a cloth parcel. The scent of honey and dates snaked around him and his stomach tightened with another form of hunger. Blast Sam.
‘Aeolian. Named after the Greek god of wind, it means quick-moving wind and sand scour away the softer rock to reveal harder stone beneath. According to Hutton’s Theory of the Earth...’
‘Do take a seat.’ Sam patted the sand next to her and Edge surrendered again. He sat, brushing his hands on his dusty trousers, and took the slice of cake Sam offered. She smiled and licked her fingers and a little earthquake roared through him. The memory of his mouth on hers in the dark—her taste...
‘So. What is Hutton’s theory of the earth?’ she coaxed and he wished it was polite to snarl.
‘That the earth is balanced on the back of a camel stumbling about inebriated with raki which is why there are earthquakes.’
She laughed, handed him the cloth-wrapped cake and began sketching.
‘That is a marvellous image, but I thought you were constitutionally incapable of mouthing an untruth.’
He held the warm parcel in his hands, wishing his conscience was less developed. For a moment he considered telling her the truth about the scope of his powers of confabulation.
‘I know how to lie when I must, Sam.’
‘About what?’
Her smile faded, her pencil poised above her drawing. Already in a few strokes she’d outlined the horizon, the twisted rock formations rising like billows of smoke from the ground. He could already see the finished illustration—that mysterious foreign landscape, beckoning the reader, drawing them in to a world promising adventure...and eventually salvation. What would she do if he told her that he was the author of the Desert Boy books? That all these years...
He gathered air for the admission, but the foolish image he’d created faltered, the camel stumbling, the earth rolling off its unsteady back and down a crack to...nothingness.
No, that was one Pandora’s box best kept sealed. It simply was not worth the risk.
When he didn’t answer she returned to her sketch and for a while there was no sound but the muted voices of al-Walid and Poppy from inside the temple and the scrape of Sam’s pencil on paper. It had always been a puzzle to him how mercurial Sam could be as still and precise as any watchmaker when she was sketching. He knew he’d disappeared for her, he felt he himself was disappearing a little into the world she was weaving for him without even knowing it was for him.
Ever since he’d asked Durham to commission her as illustrator of his books he’d seen again and again how precisely she captured what he wasn’t even certain he’d conveyed in words. There was a terrifying gap between what he saw in his mind and what he was able to write. By some strange magic Sam closed that gap as if she could crawl into his mind and harvest the first vivid images that stood at the heart of each chapter, the sensations that gave it the beating heart and drew the readers in. That sense of encroachment had even made him suggest finding another illustrator, but Durham would have none of it.
