Very Midsummer Madness

Unstaid and skittish

For such as I am, all true lovers are:
Unstaid and skittish in all motions else
Save in the constant image of the creature
That is beloved.
Orsino, II.4

Stillness. Fleeting kiss of air.

Prickle of grass beneath your wrists. Your head in my lap and a drizzle of sunlight spattered over your waist.

Open your eyes.

Late afternoon, the Duchess Orsino's orchard. The afternoon sunlight is a tangible substance, don't you think? With its golden tint and its liquid thickness. We could be looking through cider. Can you taste the sweetness of fruit?

Overhead, a snowfall of tiny seeds borne on their parachutes of feathery silk. Let me brush away the grain that has fallen onto your cheek. See how its strands disintegrate at my touch? Think of it. In its own ancient way, a tree has just made love to your face. Your face and my fingertips. Look again and know this snowfall for what it is. The flirtation of trees. A moan of desire from dumb creatures whose only manifesto is: flourish. It's all around us, this wild orgy of blossom and seed pod. The air itself is thick with lust.

And you thought this place was innocent.

Sit up and cast your eye over the rows of alder which sprawl behind the castle. A lithe-limbed figure with capable shoulders and her head swathed in muslin is striding through the trees. You want to call her Madam Hooch, but in this place she has no name. She is the Second Gentleman, or the Messenger, or - today - the Gardener. She is tending the bees, loudmouthed whoremongers who encourage the flowers in their come-hither scents and courtesans' colours.

Mollified with smoke, they hum a drowsy cloud around her head as she withdraws the shards of honeycomb and the bucket accepts them with a thud. As she puts her finger to her mouth to suck off a smudge of honey, what do you suppose she is thinking? What do you suppose the honey is thinking? They go together, appetite and consumption, desire and surrender. They are older than blood. They will have their dominion.

Look carefully. Feel the warmth of the earth under your thighs. Perhaps now you understand what this place is.

There are footsteps at the gate. Watch for me, be my vigilant eyes as I brush the grassblades and crumpled petals from your back. A figure coming into view? Of course. From here, he will be dwarfed by the granite lions which guard the path, let alone by the mass of the castle itself. It's Harry, isn't it? He will be tracing a winding way, the hem of his dress catching in the grass and dragging the burden of the news he has to bear. Do disbelieving fingertips search the corner of his lips where he can still feel the clumsy mouth of Draco, Lord Olivier?

He walks briskly, you say? With hands clenched at his sides. How delightfully unexpected! Even here, he refuses to tread the path laid out for him. Still, how long does he expect his resistance to hold when the first smug peaches of the season are already losing their grip and falling?

We must see where this strange mood leads him. Make haste now and we can catch him inside the doors.

Harry strode up the first four steps and stopped with his foot on the sixth. Firing his glare up the curved length of the staircase, he put his hand on the banister, gripping hard. The veins in his head throbbed, but then he had walked hard and the Mediterranean heat was a form of attack - the heat and the olive saplings which seemed to sidle up to the path to make tears in his skirt as he passed. He pressed his palm into the marble until the coolness soaked in. Then he turned and descended.

The entrance hall and the vast dining room echoed emptily as he hurried through them, fabric still whipping behind him, until he reached the sanctuary of his little bedchamber beside the kitchens. There he stopped still and forced five deep breaths down his throat.

They weren't enough. A certain silver ring shot through the air, clinked angrily off the back wall and the right, then skittered across his blanket to land in the centre of the floor, where it glinted insolently in the slab of light which fell from the doorway. The obliteration spells he hissed were wandless and impotent. It twinkled. He seethed.

The slick rustle of silk approached and then halted.

"Viola?"

Ginny was holding herself cautiously just outside the room, her skirt catching the loose threads from the embroidery frame which dangled forgotten in her hand. Despite his determined silence and the unwelcoming turn of back, she spoke his name again. One last chance, he decided and pressed his teeth together until his jaw hurt.

"Did you deliver my message?"

"Yes."

Only the walls could see his disgust, but it must have tainted that one barked syllable because he heard the fleshy sound of swallowing before she went on.

"Did you receive a response?"

His laugh had a nasty edge.

"Oh yes. He made himself pretty bloody clear."

When he forced himself to face her, she had clasped her embroidery behind her back, chin raised to meet the news. Well then. If she was determined to make herself a martyr, he could build her a pyre to climb onto.

"There must be thousands of men in Illyria and you've chosen the worst of them."

It was an unfurling of banners, that one half-truth, and it ought to be accompanied by the cry of battlehorns.

"This bloody Greek god Lord Draco, he's - oh, where do I even start with him? He's vain and he's selfish and he doesn't think about anything except what pleases him. He's never happy unless he's making someone miserable. He is the worst sort of snob." Harry's pulse galloped, he knew his voice was rising, and as he spoke his hands made jerky, emphatic swipes in the air. "It's as if everybody was put here just to entertain him. He's manipulative - no, that's too kind - he's a downright liar, and he's never done a day's work in his whole bloody spoiled life. He's a coward and he's a cheat. And you can dream all you want, but he will never, ever feel about anybody the way you say you feel about him."

He punctuated his verdict with a triumphant silence.

Wide and glossy though they were, her eyes stayed on him. His skin itched. He tugged at his shawl and wiped away the sheen of sweat which had collected around his hairline, but something about him still felt unkempt.

"I know what he is," Ginny said levelly. She came into the room, sat on the very edge of his bed and smoothed her skirts. "Now tell me the precise words of his message."

He had burned all his anger to launch that tirade and had nothing left to fuel another attack.

"He -" Harry closed his mouth. Every way he framed the words they sounded sticky, too intimate to be spoken. He touched ... He breathed ... His fingers ... He kissed ... No. The way Malfoy had ... the way Malfoy had done those things, that was a secret he would have to keep.

"What was his message?" she asked again and turned her gaze to her lap. He remembered the ring that sneered unseen on the floor between them and he stepped forward so that his hem concealed it.

"There's no light in here. We should do this outside where it's brighter."

"If you wish." Though she looked at him strangely, she went ahead down the short passageway which led to the kitchen.

The ring clinked helplessly as he kicked it under the bed.

At this midpoint between meals, the kitchen was quiet. A blackened copper pot bubbled on a trivet above the stove's glowing coals, the table beside it piled with baskets of berries. At the workbench which bisected the room, a sweat-slicked Oliver Wood was using all the power in his famed Keeper's biceps to grind almonds in a massive stone mortar. With a swift glance at his mistress' demeanour, he gave a curt bow and disappeared through the door to the herb gardens, turning at the last moment to venture a shy smile in Harry's direction.

Harry ran his fingers over the filmy scarf which tucked into the top of his bodice and camouflaged its lack of curve.

"No more delay, Viola. Tell me his message, as precisely as you can remember."

Standing by the stove, Ginny took a handful of berries and waited for his answer.

"He didn't give me anything you could call a message. He mostly asked questions, and then he bit my head off every time -" A trilling laugh interrupted him. Despite all logic, it appeared to come from Ginny, who put a strawberry to her lips and watched him with glittering eyes. "I don't see why you think it's funny. He didn't like my flattery and he wouldn't even listen to the poem."

"You saw him face to face." The first small steps of a dance possessed her feet. "This is far better than I hoped. For weeks, that snarling hound Malvolio has stopped everyone at the gate and turned them away with a message. Those curt words you endured are pure spun gold to me, my dearest Viola. Now come here."

She stilled herself as he approached.

"Tonight we will drink to your triumph." He accepted the berry she held to his mouth, small though it was with its shade more white than red. "There will be fine wine and cheese and pheasant roasted with apples and nutmeg and all the pastries you can eat."

As she leaned up to feed him, the folds of their skirts fell together in one shower of cloth, and the memory came to him unwanted of silk-clad shins making the same impression, of warm breath and the smell of lemons. With deliberate slowness, he took the second berry clumsily, his lips closing on her fingers. The briefest ripple of curiosity washed the blue of her eyes before they hardened and she pulled her hand back. The way she stepped around him, he could have been a piece of furniture.

"You performed a small miracle for me today," she said from the door and gave him the empty smile she used on petitioners and visiting priests. "We mustn't let it go to waste. Tomorrow you will return with another message."

He hurled the profanity of his protest at the empty room.

*

We must travel again. Eastwards. The afternoon wanes swiftly as we pass - it is dusk, it is twilight, now evening, now black midnight as we follow the winding path along the edge of the Olivier villa.

The rosebeds loom as one tangled mass in front of you; their fragrance still lingers faintly in the darkness. Beyond them, you can just discern the outline of Count Olivier's villa, pitch against charcoal for the moon is veiled tonight. On the topmost floor, the milky light in one square window suggests candles burning distantly, and on the ground floor there are unmistakable signs of life.

Loud voices pierce the silence, then laughter. Follow the sound, through the garden, through the scullery window into the kitchen, where two figures are warming themselves by the roasting fire. Take your seat on the bench, here between the enormous mushrooms and the odorous heads of cabbage. Listen.

"It's late, it's late," Percy observed with his trademark exactitude from where he stood at the fireplace, staring into his drink, lips shaping the words only loosely. "Toby, I tell you it's late. It's too late to be going to bed."

Amid a litter of forgotten foodstuffs - a hunk of cheese, handful of dried apricots, chicken leg, a ragged end of bread - Ron sat cross-legged on the kitchen table, his long calves bonier than ever in their white stockings and dinner crumbs clinging to the ruffles at his collar and the mustard coloured silk of his doublet.

"Nonsense!" he bellowed. "It isn't late at all. I think we've missed late and gone straight to early."

Another mouthful of liquid wisdom and the eloquence flowed through him.

"In fact, unless I'm very much mistaken, it's almost time for breakfast. Mmmmm .... breakfast!" And with that one lascivious syllable, he threw back the last contents of his mug.

"That's not breakfast." Percy was filled with a sudden certainty. "Breakfast doesn't cause you to expose yourself to strangers. It's not breakfast that makes you put on a petticoat and insist that the servants call you Nelly. That would be ale."

Ron held up a pointed finger on which his eyes could barely focus. "And that's where you are in error, my dear Sir Andrew. Firstly, no-one calls me Nelly and lives to see daylight. And thirdly, you're looking at it wrong. This ale we see before us is only barley left to go sour. It's a grain. In another life, it might have been bread. Think of it that way. Think of it as bread - it's bread in a mug!"

"Father, give us this day our daily ..."

"Oh, I'm very religious, more religious than St Peter's left buttock. Daily is not nearly often enough for me. I say: take, eat, this is - Feste! Do come in, Feste! You too, Feste! Pick up a mug!"

Two orange and purple caps sailed onto the table and Fred and George Weasley slid their sturdy bodies onto the bench.

"Evening Nelly." Fred tipped an imaginary hat.

George inspected the empty mug and grinned. "Here's a sight - the honourable Sir Toby Belch reduced to ale! The world has gone mad."

Ron balanced the mug upside down on the table, not without difficulty.

"I'm in pain, Feste. A man like me wasn't made to be denied. That's it - I'm going to lick the inside of the barrel."

Percy spluttered into the fire.

"Don't be an ass!"

"Where's the sin in a little licking?" Ron protested. "The twelve apostles drank blood. Chronos the Titan swallowed five of his children."

"Jonah ate that whale." Fred winked.

"Exactly! And I can lick the inside of a barrel!"

"Don't be an ath," Fred mumbled into the tabletop.

"An ath? What's wrong with him?"

"Splinter in the tongue."

Ron laughed so hard the chicken leg rolled onto the floor.

"What good's a mute fool? It's like a ... a juggler with no arms. "

"Feste," George said ominously. "I believe that's a challenge."

And Fred began to hum. And George hummed with him. And then they broke into song:

Mary was a buxom lass and wicked were her eyes,
But the first time that I kissed her I was in for a surprise
"Your cheek is rough beneath my lips," I said. My hands grew bolder.
She laughed a little deeply and she threw me over her shoulder.

Oh Mary Oh Mary
A little too hairy
They laughed and they jeered
Cause my girl wore a beard.

She tossed me on the sand. I said "Your strength is unbefitting"
She said she wrestled sailors but the muscle came from knitting.
I asked her 'bout the solid shape that pressed against my thigh
She said she'd picked a carrot and I did not spot the lie.

Oh Mary Oh Mary
Her muscles were scary
They laughed till they choked
Cause my girl was a bloke

Yes Mary gave me many things, the first one was a shock,
That summer's night beneath the pier when she -

"It's three o'clock!"

Hermione appeared in the doorway, her face framed by an aureole of hair making its escape from sleep-loosened braids. The door slammed behind her.

"Ah, Maria, my very own Mary," Ron was beaming when she clamped her hand over his mouth.

"I was woken by Lord Olivier storming about upstairs, and God strike me down if he hasn't ordered that ghoul Malvolio to come and make you keep quiet." She lessened the pressure of her hand but let one finger rest on his lip. "Toby, if you provoke him, his lordship will cast you out, and I don't know what would become of you then. You live here only by his grace."

Ron scowled and spat: "I know that. He never lets me forget it."

She brushed the crumbs from his collar and removed a smear of grease above his eyebrow.

"Well, perhaps you could sing only during daylight. That would go a long way towards mending things. Maybe if Feste and Feste learned to sing a different song, not that women with ... well, not that they can't be funny. Some of the time."

"For you, Maria." Ron gave a small smile and turned his lips into her palm.

"Ah Mary!" George sighed.

"Oh Mary," sang Fred and with that they plunged into the chorus again.

Oh Mary Oh Mary
I gave you my cherry
They laughed all night long
Cause -

"Desist from this song!"

Professor Snape stormed into the room with a swish of cape and glowered down at them, a fearsome sight with his eyes red-streaked from interrupted sleep.

"It is past midnight, you lunatics. What is the meaning of this clamour?!"

The effect might have been more fearsome still had he not fastened his cape over a threadbare nightshirt which revealed a little too much of what lay beneath.

"Verily," George commenced and sent a grape on a flamboyant high curve to his mouth. "Verily forsooth, my esteemed Malvolio. The meaning of our clamour is thusly. We were singing what is known as a lay."

"Or a shanty," Fred clarified helpfully.

"Or, more colloquially, as a drinking song. Our particular genre was what is nomenclated in the trade as a bawdy ballad. Forsooth-"

"Marry forthooth."

"Marry verily forsooth, should you require elucification as to the specific verbature used therein, to whit: "girl" or "woman"..."

"We recommend you attend the Elephant on Friday night with a bag full of florinth and a very hopeful thmile."

"In your case," George inclined his head thoughtfully. "Two bags full of florins. And a disguise."

Snape paced around the table, cape and arms folded like dormant wings around him, averting his eyes from the midden which covered it and his ears from the familiar ditty which Fred and George were humming anew.

"I have, in all modesty, a tolerable ear for music, and I can assure you that the fowl on slaughter day make a more harmonious sound than that with which you have assaulted our ears." He sniffed the air between them and delivered his conclusion with a snort. "I would expect no better than this base carousing from a fool and the rabble which follows him. However, I am shocked to see a gentleman of my lord's household behaving no better, and at a time when his position in the household is ... shall we say, precarious -"

"Malvolio, Malvolio," Fred sang under his breath as Ron caught Hermione's indignant straightening and realised the barb had been aimed at him. Before he could locate his legs, let alone stand, George and Fred had dashed their mugs together and raised the volume.

"Malvolio, Malvolio
He might die of polio."

"He'll never be droll-io."

"His mother banged a troll-io."

"He's limp down below-lio."

"Go jump in a hole-io."

Percy began to make white-faced, apologetic shrugs as Snape's expression curdled.

"I shall inform his lordship that you do not care for his comfort, no matter how generous the patience with which he prevails upon you." Snape graced them with a starved flicker of smile. "Sir Toby, in all affection, I advise you to retire and comfort yourself with a good night's rest. Particularly since this night may be your last in this house."

And he swept out of the room.

"Oh, go f-" Hermione's lips closed puritanically and strangled the offending syllable, but all present agreed. Her eyes on the space where Ron's long fingers were tearing the bread limb from limb, she spoke slowly. "We needn't worry about his lordship. Since the new messenger came from the castle, he has been too distracted to care for discipline. As for Malvolio, however ... yes, I think I can see to him."

"Do we smell a plot?" George asked, and Percy nodded enthusiastically.

"I have it in my nostrils as well."

"Perhaps." Hermione's voice lowered, making four red heads lean in to her. "Do you not suspect that Malvolio has a very particular regard for our young master - a regard which is well above his station? And have you not wondered what might happen if some encouragement were placed in his path? I can make my handwriting a precise copy of Lord Draco's. I could forge a letter that even he himself could not swear was false."

Ron stopped mauling the bread.

"Maria, excellent woman, you go to my head like a gallon of ale." Fred nudged him and whispered. "Do you think so? Very well then. Like three gallons of ale!"

That she coloured was certain, but in the shifting light from the fireplace it was impossible to be sure of the cause.

*

In time, the room empties and the fire curls up to smoulder sleepily. Clear away the mugs and the apple cores and sit with me. Let the story run along without us for a moment.

How often do you find a silence like this? Outside, the darkness is so complete that even the trees are dreaming. If an owl swoops here or there, it moves with reverent care as if it would add to the silence rather than break it, and without the irregular sputter and hiss of disintegrating wood you might wonder if your ears had failed.

It isn't just the story that matters. This room heats quickly, with its low ceiling and the lumpy plasterwork which rounds out the corners and seals off invading drafts. Stretch out your hands where the vault of fireplace narrows into chimney, here above the spit which decades of carcasses have made black and murky with grease, and let the heat wind into your knuckles. Close your eyes. Tell me about the kitchen smells, deeper and more animal than anything you are used to. Even from the dairy, the sheepsmilk cheese oozes a rancidity to compete with the cured meat in the coldbox and the wilting dandelion leaves under the window. A faint powder of soot is everywhere, and the acid blast of lamb's flesh has soaked into the very grain of the wood.

You see, it isn't just the story that matters. Sit a while and learn to separate out the scents - the dryness of cumin undercut with sweet basil, the musty stench of feathers from the ducks strung in the larder, the living yeast and the small pastries soaked in rosewater. Linger all you will. Time is free here, and malleable. When the day is a few hours old, we shall throw open the front door of the villa, and he will be approaching with grim determination along the seaward road, a borrowed coat hoisted over his shawl to keep out the rain, his hair disordered, his lips a pale line: Harry.

*

Roasted pheasant and fine wine and an early night had only stoked his foul humour. In the blurry moments where an unblemished night's sleep faded into wakefulness, he had lain boneless in the warmth of his fortress of blankets, too contented even to articulate the emotion, before the memory of yesterday had crashed upon him like so much iced water. Twenty four hours had passed and he still had no wish to remember the detail of his first encounter with Draco, Lord Olivier. Every time the memory approached, he batted it away, but with each eastward step he took, the memory more resembled a horde of swooping pixies.

It didn't help that he had woken to find his hair a good two inches longer and undeniably sleeker than the day before. And then today, the action of turning his head to protect his face from the rain was so familiar that, whenever he looked up, he expected to see three goal hoops in from of him. By the time he reached the Olivier villa, the constant raising and dashing of his hopes had worn his patience to a thread.

The entrance to the villa gaped open with all the allure of a crypt, but it was dry.

"Hello?"

Though it echoed around the atrium until it sounded foolish, his call drew no response from the stone walls or the busts with their familiar haughty mouths which looked down on him from either side. He shook out the coat and folded it over his arm - at least the dress was still dry enough to hang loose from the flatness of his chest - then followed the long passage which ran down the middle of the villa and called again.

As he opened his mouth to try a third time, a pale arm reached out from a side door and pulled him inside.

In the darkness, he panicked. He should never have let Malfoy get him into a confined space in an empty house. He'd already had a taste of what Malfoy liked to do with messenger girls in isolated places. A hand laced around his wrists and pinned them against his stomach and there was hot breath against the back of his neck. His snarling and kicking tightened the arm around his waist, pulling him closer against the body behind him, and brought a hand down over his mouth.

"Stop thrashing about! You'll ruin everything!" It was Ron's voice and it dispelled his panic. "Swear not to make a sound and you can stay and see something funny."

As soon as Harry nodded, the multiple arms released him. The streaky light struggling through a high sliver of window gradually revealed a cramped storage room which, rather improbably, contained Hermione, Ron, Percy, George and Fred, who removed his silencing hand and wiped it on Percy's sleeve.

"Beg pardon, good Sir Andrew," he said to Percy's stammer of protest. "Thought it was mine. It's dark in here."

Hermione made hushing noises at them both and went back to standing on tiptoe to peer through a rectangular grate.

"Are you certain you left it where I described?" she whispered. "I can't see it at all!"

Crouched at her feet now, Ron was taking advantage of a hole bored through the mortar.

"It's under the smallest jug, just as you said."

Harry leaned forward and put his eye to the slit where the door jamb didn't quite join the stonework. It led onto the kitchen, framing a narrow stripe of plasterwork, cupboard and yellow glazed tiles. A dark shape cut off his view. Black cloth and hair swished across his aperture of vision, then the figure span to show a section of white face: brow hanging furtively, dark eye, sparsely fleshed cheek and top lip turned up in unconscious displeasure. Snape.

With one last glance around the kitchen, he turned to reach for an earthenware jug on the shelf above. Too intent on his purpose to notice the neatly folded piece of parchment which tumbled down, he tipped the jug to layer green-tinged olive oil on his hand, and, in one practised movement, he slicked it through his hair. Harry had eaten his last olive.

It was just as Snape turned to leave that the parchment crackled underfoot and he disappeared from sight to pick it up. There was silence, then a low triumphant laugh, and he began to pace back and forth, gripping the paper tightly before him.

"Oh, I know this writing. His lordship's hand is unmistakable - I know the very curve of his 'f's and his 'g's. 'To the Unknown Beloved", it is addressed. Could it be ... no, only a fool would dare hope. And yet he says 'I may command where I adore'. That could be ..."

"We have him!" one of the twins hissed and Hermione kicked him into silence.

"Maria, ingenious wench, I could marry you for this," Ron breathed against the wall and Hermione didn't kick him.

Snape continued to think aloud in his anticipation.

"'I do not dare to speak my love plainly', he writes. 'But do not forget wo commended your yellow stockings.' Ah, yes. Then it is clear. Only I, proud Malvolio, wear my stockings in yellow. My master would have me as more than his steward."

With a lazy smile, he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back on the wall.

"Finally, it has come to pass. A count he may be, but I too have a nobleman's dignity and it has drawn him. How long, I wonder, has he hidden his desire? He need hide no more. Let the household grumble the first time he disrupts the dinner table order to have me sit by him. In public places, he will find slender reasons to have me touch him, and in a darkened room my hands will burrow under those layers of silk. The evenings will be best, long evenings when Sir Toby and his comrades will be cast out of the dining hall so we can discuss the great philosophers and discover the taste of claret directly from his skin. But then in the mornings the maids will gasp as they enter his chamber to see their master's fair head making a trail along my belly."

Such shuddering filled the closet that, on the shelf outside, a plaster cherub tipped over and lost its wing. Snape's attention, however, was far from the present.

"He bids me give my answer by action. 'If my affection is returned,' he writes, 'Wear your yellow stockings, wear them bravely cross-gartered, and bless me with your smile which lights up my dreams.' Very well then, my most dear lord. I will come to you cross-gartered and smiling. And when I have caressed you into compliance, there will be changes. That bumbling idiot, that weak-livered cur-"

Ron lurched towards the door. "I'll break his-"

"Do pay attention, Toby," Percy admonished. 'Tis me he means."

"... that peerless ninny Aguecheek, he will be sent away. Toby's ale will run dry. I shall suffer no more pert little messenger girls, no more casual glances at the thighs of the pageboys. Oh, yes. There will be changes."

Snape and his army of grievances marched from the kitchen. No sooner had the door closed than the little storage room exploded in laughter until Percy's eyes were streaming, Fred and George clutched each other for support and Ron was forced to smother his mirth in Hermione's neck. Harry laughed until he was breathless and the muscles in his ribs and shoulders were loose; he chuckled right up until the moment where George wiped his eyes, straightened and said:

"Well, lovely Viola. I suppose you have come to deliver another message to his lordship. Let me take you to him."

As he was led through the kitchen and directed up a narrow staircase by the courtyard, Harry shuffled a plan together. Say little, keep to the point, don't turn your back, don't let him provoke you - he repeated the lessons with each step and straightened the line of his bodice. Finally, the stairs opened out onto a long, airless gallery, empty but for some dusty suits of armour and a collection of scimitars mounted on the back wall. Its length was broken in the middle by a wide set of doors whose promise of air drew him closer. Beyond the doors lay a covered balcony, and as he stepped onto it his breath stopped.

From a height, Harry looked down on the courtyard, but behind it the land fell away to give a perfect view over the curve of hillside and the rumpled sheet of the plain below. He could see the whole grey-green chessboard of pastureland and crops, the majestic avenues of fruit trees and the far mountain peaks cut down to molehills by vast distance, and over them all the silvery sweep of mist. Inside, the summer air was warm, yet the rain still fell sparkling before him and, unthinking, he reached out to catch the tumbling jewels on his fingers.

"Magnificent, isn't it?" said a quiet voice behind him.

*