She climbed in the dark, driving snow, seeking each step for the way straight upward. After a time she began to guess that she was on the path they had made in their upward climb.
Yes. This is right. It was a sureness inside her, so that she began to move quickly in the dark, and after a time she saw, without surprise, a small bobbing light, making orange sparks against the snowflakes; and MacAran came straight toward her, and clasped her hands.
"How did you know where to look for me?" she asked.
"Hunch--or something," he said. In the small light of the handlamp she could just see the snow clinging to his eyebrows and lashes. "I just knew. Camilla--let's not waste breath on trying to figure it all out now. It's a long climb still to where we left our packs and equipment."
She said, twisting her lips in bitterness against the memory of how she had flung her pack from her, "Do you suppose they'll still be where we left them?"
MacAran's hand closed over hers. "Don't worry about it. Come," he added gently, "you need rest. We can talk about it some other time."
She relaxed, letting him guide her steps in the darkness. MacAran moved along at her side, exploring this new
sureness and wondering from where it had come. Never for a moment had he doubted that he was moving directly toward Camilla in the darkness, he could feel her in front of him, but there was no way to say that without sounding quite mad.
They found the small shelter-tent set up in the lee of the rocks. Camilla crept inside gratefully, glad MacAran had spared her the struggle in the dark. MacAran felt confused; when had they set the tent up? Surely they had taken it down and stowed it in their packs before descending this morning? Had it been before or after they lay together by the stream-bank? The worry nagged at him but he dismissed it--we were both pretty freaked-out, we might have done anything, and hardly been conscious of it. He felt considerable relief at realizing that their packs were neatly piled inside--God, we were lucky, might have lost all our calculations...
"Shall I fix us something to eat before you sleep?"
She shook her head. "I couldn't eat. I feel as if I'd been dream-dusting! What happened to us, Rafe?"
"Search me." He felt unaccountably shy with her. "Did you eat anything in the forest--fruit, anything?"
"No. I remember wanting to, it looked so good, but at the last minute--I drank the water, though."
"Forget it. Water's water and Judy tested it, so that's out."
"Well, it must have been something," she argued.
"I can't quarrel with that. But not tonight, please. We could hash it over for hours and not be any closer to an answer." He extinguished the light "Try to sleep. We've already lost a day."
Into the darkness Camilla said, "Let's hope Heather was wrong about the blizzard, then."
MacAran didn't answer. He thought, did she say blizzard, or was it just weather? Could the freak weather have had anything to do with what happened? He had the uncanny sense, again, that he was near an answer and could not quite grasp it, but he was desperately tired, and it eluded him, and still groping, he slept.
Chapter
FIVE
They found Marco Zabal after a vain hour of searching and calling in the woods, laid out smooth and straight and already rigid beneath the greyish trunk of an unknown tree. The light snow had shrouded him in a pall a quarter of an inch thick, and at his side Judith Lovat knelt, so white and still beneath the drifting flakes that at first they thought in dismay that she had died too.
Then she stirred and looked up at them with dazed eyes and Heather knelt beside her, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders and trying to get her attention with soft words. She did not speak during all the time that MacLeod and Ewen were carrying Marco back to the tent, and Heather had to guide her steps as if she were drugged or in a trance.
As the small dismal procession wound through the falling snow Heather felt, or fantasied, that she could still feel their thoughts spinning in her own brain, Ewen's black despair... what kind of doctor am I, lie fooling around on the grass while my patient runs out berserk and dies…
MacLeod's curious confusion entangled in her own fantasy, an old tale of the fairy folk she had heard in childhood, the hero should never have woman or wife either of flesh and blood nor of the faery folk, and so they fashioned for him a woman made of flowers... I was the woman of flowers...
Inside the tent Ewen sank down, staring straight ahead, and did not move. But Heather, desperately anxious at Judy's continued daze, went and shook him.
"Ewen! Marco's dead, there's nothing you can do for him, but Judy's alive; come and see if you can rouse her!"
Dragging, weary, his thoughts look like a black cloud around him, Heather thought, and shook herself. Ewen bent over Judith Lovat, checking her pulse, her heartbeat. He flashed a small light in her eyes, then said quietly, "Judy, did you lay out Marco's body the way we found it?"
"No," she whispered, "not I. It was the beautiful one, the beautiful one. I thought at first it was a woman, like a bird singing, and his eyes... his eyes...
Ewen turned away in despair. "She's still delirious," he said shortly. "Fix her something to eat, Heather, and try to get it down her. We all need food--plenty of it; low blood sugar is half what's wrong with us now, I suspect."
MacLeod smiled a wry smile. "I got a contraband dose of Alpha happy-juice once," he said, "felt just about like that. What happened to us, anyhow, Ewen? You're the doctor, you tell us."
"As God is my witness, I don't know," Ewen said. "I thought at first it was the fruits, but we only began eating them afterward. And we all drank the water three days ago and no harm done. Anyway neither Judy nor Marco touched the fruit."
Heather put a bowl of hot soup into his hand, went and knelt by Judith, alternately spooning soup between her lips and trying to eat her own. MacLeod said, "I've no idea what happened first. It seemed like-I'm not sure; suddenly it was like a cold wind blowing through my bones, shaking me--shaking me open somehow. That was when I knew the fruits were good to eat and I ate one..."
"Foolhardy," said Ewen, but MacLeod, still with that openness, knew that the young doctor was only cursing his own neglect. He said, 'Why? The fruits were good, or we'd be sick now."
Heather said, hesitantly, "I can't help feeling it was something to do with the weather. Some difference."
"A psychedelic wind," jeered Ewen, "a ghostly wind that drove us all temporarily insane!"
"Stranger things have happened," Heather said, and artfully maneuvered another spoonful of soup into Judy's slack mouth. The older woman blinked dazedly and said, "Heather? How did I get here?"
"We brought you, love. You're all right now"
"Marco--I saw Marco--"
"He's dead," Ewen said gently, "he ran into the woods when we all went mad; I never saw him. He must have strained his heart I'd warned him not even to sit up."
"It was his heart, then? You're sure?"
"As sure as I can be without autopsy, yes," Ewen said.
He swallowed the last of his soup. His head was clearing, but the guilt still lay on him; he knew he would never be wholly free of it. "Look, we've got to compare notes, while it's still fresh in our minds. There must be some one common factor, something we all did. Ate or drank--"