[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
across the countryside, when that same hair was twined with smoke trails of
gray. Saw all of these things, but felt, above all, the warm, soft pressures
of her body in those few glorious moments when he had once held her on this
very millstone floor, and the hot, amazing reality of the taste of her lips
and mouth against his own.
The mill roared and Nathan roared with it. Axles smoked, joints screamed, cogs
flew, and then, as something final sagged and broke, the top face of the
millstone itself bore hugely down on its lower half, screaming a brilliant
cascade of
sparks.
* * * *
That memorable night, the villagers of Stagsby were already swirling like ants
around what was left of the steam mill when they looked up and saw that the
windmill up on Burlish Hill was also burning. Amid the chaos, a ragged line
was established to pass hand by hand, slow bucket by bucket, what little was
left of the waters of the lake. But the distance was too far, and the mill was
already massively ablaze, its flaming sails turning against the night in what
seemed to be no wind at all.
The heat soon grew far too ferocious to approach, although many stood back to
watch, such was the terrible, beautiful sight it made like some great, mythic
bird.
Afterward, there were many rumors. Most popular in Stagsby itself was that the
steam mill had long been in decline, and that the grandmistress had been
purposefully engineering its destruction to claim on the insurance when she d
been caught out by the suddenness of the blast. Also popular, especially
amongst those who had little idea of what insurance was, was that she d been
doing some extra overtime with one of her workers, if you get the meaning,
when things had got, well, just a little too hot. And as for the old
windmill most likely it had been caught by a spark flown up by the blaze, and
everyone knew that the place was half ruined anyway, and doubtless tinder-dry.
All assumed, for want of any other sightings, that the miller himself had died
inside his mill. The perfunctory official investigations gave people little
reason to vary their views. The other theory, which was that the wealthy
Page 26
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
owners of the latest self-condensing machines had used the so-called Men of
the
Future as a means of destroying competition, received little credence, and
then only amongst those who were in their cups.
Soon, as the wind lifted the ash and bore it westward, and the rain dissolved
the charred wood and the grass regrew, nothing but a circle of stone was left
on
Burlish Hill. Nor was the steam mill down in the valley ever reconstructed.
Farmers now sold their harvests on wholesale contract to the big new
factories, thus giving up their financial independence for what seemed, for a
while, to be a good enough price. Stagsby Hall was acquired by one of the
leading families of the steam guilds as a country retreat. Soon, its lawns
were reestablished and the lake was dredged and gleamingly refilled; the
interiors were extravagantly refurbished in the latest style.
The ruins of the steam mill were shored up and prettified with vines and
shaggy moss. Five years on, and they could have been a bit of old castle; a
relic from an entirely different age. But much of this was hearsay. To judge
by all the chuffing, huffing modern carriages that came and went that way
through the village, parties were frequently held at Stagsby Hall, but they
weren t of the sort to which anyone local would ever be invited. You really
had to climb up to the top of Burlish Hill to get any real sense of how fine
the big house now looked. From up there you could still watch the clouds chase
their reflections across the lake, and see the sunflash of its windows, and
breathe the shimmer of its trees, but few ever did, apart from stray couples
seeking solitude for what, otherwise, would be the point?
* * * *
Weevils, woodworm, fire, and rats are the four apocalyptic demons in a
miller s life, and, of these, fire is the worst. But, Nathan reflected as,
burned and breathless, he looked back up at the river of flame that steamed
westward from
Burlish Hill, there were worse things still. At least, he told himself as he
walked on, he hadn t left his mill, for there was nothing left to leave.
Following no particular direction, he kept walking until morning, and came
across a railway station that he dimly recognized from his journeys as a Man
of the
Future. He sat and waited there, and took the first train, which bore him all
the way to the coast. It was a bright day. Even this early in the summer
season, families were camped out on the beach behind colored windbreaks.
Laughing children were bathing in the ocean s freezing shallows, or holding
the tethers of snapping kites.
Nathan watched and felt the bite of the salt against his face, happy to see
that the world still turned and the winds still blew, whether or not there was
a mill on Burlish
Hill.
The rails went everywhere now. They took you places it was hard to imagine had
ever existed before the parallels of iron had found them. Even when the
timetables ran out and he discovered himself sitting on a empty platform at a
time when he knew that no train would be coming, their shining river still
seemed ready to bear him on. He traveled. He journeyed. He leaned out of
carriage windows, and looked ahead into the fiery, smoking sunset, and licked
the salt smuts from his lips.
Had he the breath left within him, he might have sung to the teeming air.
Another summer was coming, and the fields were ripening across the wide and
heavy land. He sat on the steps beside the bridge of a riverside town where a
mother and her daughter were feeding the crusts of their sandwiches to the
geese and swans. They were both red-haired. Nathan s fingers bunched the
knotted lock he still kept in his pocket. He often longed to release it, and
to feel the special giving of a final wind-spell. But he remembered the look
Page 27
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
in the last embers of Fiona s eyes, and he wondered what he truly had trapped
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]