A Beggar’s Kingdom

Emotion!

Calm yourself!

Think!

Another bob.

Another gasp.

Oxygen for Julian.

He must keep his mouth closed. If he swallowed water and his lungs filled up, he wouldn’t be able to continue bobbing like a buoy. He would sink. Think! Breathe! Another bob. Another gasp. Oxygen for Julian.

Trouble was, when his mouth was closed, he couldn’t breathe.

How could he save her when he couldn’t even save himself?

Josephine. Mary.

Calm yourself. Think! Breathe.

Oxygen for Julian.

All he could feel was panic for his life.

Finally, Julian found something to grab on to, a churning plank. Pulling himself on top of it, he lay down on it lengthways, grabbed the short edge with both hands, put his head down, gurgled up a lungful of water, and was asleep in seconds. No terror was so strong that it could force his eyes open.

3 (#ulink_b6ba4edd-8a9f-59d4-a7c4-afc17594aa93)

Silver Cross (#ulink_b6ba4edd-8a9f-59d4-a7c4-afc17594aa93)

HE WAKES UP BECAUSE HE’S BURNING. HE CAN’T TELL WHAT’S wrong with him, only that it’s so hot, he wants to crawl out of his skin to cool down. The plank he drifts on is hot, the water underneath him is hot, the air is hot. Not warm like cove water, but hot like near boiling. He falls sideways into the water, and the steaming plank, scorched as a summer deck, drifts down river.

Julian can finally stand, and even though his flashlight is gone, the cave isn’t completely without light. He can see.

Why is it so blisteringly hot? His body itches intensely under the Thermoprene. He unzips the suit, pulls it halfway down, stands against the wall of the cave and like an animal rubs against the rock to relieve his back. He pulls the suit down to his knees and scratches his legs, his stomach. It’s better, but not great. The more he scratches, the more it itches, his skin as if crawling with a thousand mosquitoes feasting on his body.

Now that he’s out of the water, Julian remembers the other three things he learned about cave diving. Posture. Propulsion. And buoyancy. How the hell do you learn buoyancy, he thinks. You either float or you don’t. I know this for a fact. Idiots.

Julian is so excited to be alive even though he is fucking itchy.

No way he can zip up the suit again. He tries. As soon as the foam fabric touches his body, he’s in a frenzy. Both he and the suit need to dry, but as he dries, he starts to sweat, and the salt in his sweat makes his itchy body burn. What a hot mess he is. He’s got to get out, get to somewhere cooler. Where is he? Where did the river bring him?

Leaving the wetsuit dangling at his waist, Julian climbs up the slope, away from the river and toward the dim flickering light. He’s burning the soles of his bare feet and the palms of his hands on the hot rocks. The light that illumines a sliver of the cave is somewhere above his head. He keeps climbing to it, as if up a spiral staircase carved into the rocks, up, up, up, and round and round.

There’s an overhanging wooden ledge above him. Wooden? He pulls himself up and GI Joes through a narrow opening, crawling out into a tight, musty space with timber rafters. It looks like a secret closet under a dormer. It’s half-height, but there’s a door in front of him! The ambient flicker that led him here is streaming through a keyhole in that door. He hears muffled voices. He peeks through the keyhole.

He sees a small section of a shimmering room lit entirely by candles placed so close together it looks like a fire. How long did it take someone to make those, Julian thinks, knowing what a thankless and tedious task it is, and just as he thinks this—he leans on the door too hard. It swings open and he falls through.

As he tumbles out, he knocks over the small table, and the stacked candles fall in a melting waxy jumble onto the floor. The rug fringe catches fire. Someone in the room squeals.

“Careful! You’ll burn the house down!”

Someone else squeals. “Well, don’t just sit there. Put it out!”

Julian swats the rug with his bare hands and blows at the downed candles. With potential disaster averted, his eyes adjusting to the dim remaining light, he surveys the room, still on his knees.

Before he fell into the dormered space, his plans were grand. He was prepared. He’s read, he’s fenced, he’s cave dived, he is a daredevil, he isn’t scared.

But in this room, the plans change. Between two windows there’s a bed, and on this bed sit two naked women intertwined, pressing their breasts against one another and eyeing him with lanquid curiosity. The burning fireplace is behind them. He can’t see the women’s faces, only the contours of their naked bodies. They’re like iridescent drawings. But mostly they’re women’s naked bodies.

“Well, hello there,” one girl says. “Where did you come from? Did you sneak in to spy on us? That costs extra, you know.” The girl has a British accent, not posh—not that he expects posh here, wherever he is. “Look at him, he’s got a beard, how delicious. Maybe we won’t charge him?”

“Well, that would hardly be fair,” whispers the other, also in a British accent, “we charge everyone else.”

“Oh, don’t be a ninny, let him sample the goods. We can charge him double next time, right, handsome? Come here,” the girl croons. “Come here, precious.” Two pairs of female arms reach out to him. “Don’t be shy,” the girl says, wiggling her fingers at him, motioning him forward. “Don’t be afraid of us, we won’t bite.”

Julian gets up off the floor, stands straight. They appraise him, their smiles widening. “Well,” one girl says, “maybe bite a little.” All he can see in the semi-darkness is the whites of their teeth and the length of their brown hair. He is about to ask if he should light another candle—to see them better—but they grab his hands and pull him onto the bed, onto his back, crouching around him, interested and unafraid. They stroke his beard, pat his chest, tap his shoulders and arms, examine his necklace close to their faces, rub his stomach. “Look how warm you are, how damp you are. Why are you sweating? Are you hot?” They giggle. They pull at the wetsuit. To be helpful, Julian mutely shows them how to work the front zipper.

The nubile girls get distracted by the zipper of a commercially made suit. With some chagrin Julian notes that they’re more fascinated by the zipper than they are by the naked man underneath it. They unzip him past his groin, and with delight zip him up to his throat. Instead of playing with Julian, they’re playing with the zipper.

The suit is damp. His skin is damp. He had just been itchy and uncomfortable. He had just been tired and thirsty. Not anymore. He’s less the sum of all other parts than he is of the awakened primal hungry thing. He takes in their curves and dark nipples, their swaying white breasts, their loose hair and limbs amber in the candlelight. One has straight long brown hair, one wavy thick slightly shorter brown hair. One has larger breasts, one has larger hips. They’re both rounded and soft. They’re on their knees on the bed, joyfully running the polymer zipper up and down over Julian.

This is so unexpected.

Julian smiles.

“Ooh, what’s this?” one girl coos.

“Do you mean the zipper?” he asks. “Or …”

“What’s a zipper? No, this squishy black covering all over you. How do you squirm out of it? Oh, look, it stretches. And what’s this around your neck, some kind of talisman?”

“Yes,” he says, pulling the girl’s hand away from it and trying to glimpse into her shadowed face. “It’s some kind of talisman.”

“How do we get you out of this unwieldy thing?”

“You could stop playing with the zipper and pull the suit off my feet.” Julian is on his back. “Or do you want me to do it?”

“No, no, handsome, you just lie there, you’ve done enough, don’t you think? You almost started a fire. We’ll find other things for you to do.”

The women get off the bed and pull off his wetsuit. He feels better now that he is naked himself. He lies on a bed of silk sheets, while two young beauties, bounteous and bare, stand at his feet, lustily appraising him. They’re both delicious, both about the same height. Is one of them his? Julian hopes so. It’s hard to tell in the ghostly light. They’re both so beautiful, and he is so fired up.

“Are you sure we should touch him? Remember what the Baroness said? What if he carries the sickness?”

“Where are you from, sire?”

“Wales. The unknown forest.”