Challenge Read Online Free PDF Page B

linen, and set
with silver and crystal. The courses were served on delicate china
by their servants. The atmosphere was romantic; the parlor soft
from candlelight and mandolin players strumming their melodies. The
Patron and his wife sat close at one end of the table. They
preferred to feed each other with their fingers, touching hands
while talking and laughing.
    After the last course, they adjourned to her
favorite parlor, a spacious room facing the west where three
windows stretched from floor to ceiling. During the summer months,
the parlor came alive from the evening dusk. The troupe of
musicians followed and the evening would end with dancing. The
Patroness was as graceful as ever, melting in her husband’s
arms.
    The Wanderer resented these dreams. Instead
of being with his grandfather, all his sleeping hours were spent
with the Patron and his bride. He also envied them and the blessed
vision of their lives. He couldn’t understand why the Bard insisted
he go to them, but every morning when he woke up, his resolve to
leave the girl behind in No Man’s Land had disappeared.
     
     
    ****
     
     
    He couldn’t believe his luck when he found
the pool. After exploring the woods for weeks, he thought it must
be his imagination when he glimpsed steam floating into the rays of
morning light. The Wanderer sniffed the air. The odor of spoiled
eggs was faint but distinctive, drifting from the eastern woods
where he seldom went. He found a stream running downhill to the
south, and dipped his hand in. The water was still warm, proving
this came from a hot spring.
    The Wanderer rushed back to camp, savoring
the thought of a bath while collecting his soiled clothes and
bottles of soap and oil. As he followed the creek uphill, the
pungent aroma grew stronger and the drafts of steam left a film on
his skin. When he found it, he recognized the intervention of man
in nature. The origin was in the center; bubbles broke along the
surface and revealed where the fissure was, the opening where water
heated in thermal depths of the earth came up to make a hot spring.
The pool was dark in the middle, and the trail of bubbles led to a
small cave from which clouds billowed. Only a violent disturbance
of the earth could have made such a crevice. But there was a lower
shelf built round the center, the water so clear he could make out
the fine mineral grains at the bottom. Just above the shelf, flat
stones were arranged to form a ledge over the pool. Another stream
poured in from the northwest where the water numbed his fingers in
less than a minute. He followed the stream and found dry beds where
water had once flowed before being rerouted. Any doubt he had that
this spring was the work of fellow travelers disappeared.
    The Wanderer undressed and lowered himself
where the warm creek left the pool. There, the water was perfect,
stopping below his hips. Then he dove into the black depths and the
heat grew intense. The temperature was more than he could bear
along the fissure and he didn’t dare go towards the cave. Instead,
he swam against the incoming stream, reveling in the fluid caress
of hot and cold. It wasn’t long before dreaminess overtook him, a
sensation unique to mineral springs. Before he melted into
perpetual laze, he dove under and swam through varying degrees of
heat to the other side of the pool and back again. When he came up
for air, the woods were spinning. Already, he’d been in the water
too long.
    But the girl had come. He knew she was there
from the quiver in his flesh and the tension in his limbs before he
even saw her. She must have approached from the north. Her arms
were folded casually and she leaned against a tree to the right of
the incoming stream. Their eyes met for an instant before her gaze
swept over him, her mouth parting in a near smile.
    The unabashed roguishness of her look
startled the Wanderer. He even had to resist the urge to dive back
in the water, holding her regard for a moment before he got out