“No. Stay as you are.”
“I thought you had gone,” he said thickly.
A great log toppled in the fireplace, showering its sparks in prodigal display.
“Do you remember our fire, on the river-bank?” said the voice of the girl, Io, across the years.
“While I live.”
“Just you and I. Man and woman. Alone in the world. Sometimes I think it has always been so with us.”
“We have no world of our own, Io,” he said sadly.
“Heresy, Ban; heresy! Of course we have. An inner world. If we could forget—everything outside.”
“I am not good at forgetting.”
He felt her fingers, languid and tremulous, at his throat, her heart’s strong throb against his shoulder as she bent, the sweet breath of her whisper stirring the hair at his temple: