“Besides she fucked up, she don’t want to.”

“Yes she does. You know Zo, she always has a reason.”

They laughed and moved nearer to the fire. A woman poked out a charred steak, waved it on its stick until it cooled. “I eat all of you, little sister.” And bit into the steak.

Nirgal ate with them, lost in the wet hot taste of the meat, chewing hard but still bolting the food, his body all abuzz with trembling light-headed hunger. Food, food!

He ate his second steak more slowly, watching the others. His stomach was filling quickly. He recalled the scramble down the ravine: it was amazing what the body could do in such a situation, it had been an out-of-body experience— or rather an experience so far into the body that it was like unconsciousness— diving deep into the cerebellum, presumably, into that ancient undermind that knew how to do things. A state of grace.

A resiny branch spit flames out of the blaze. His sight had not yet settled down, things jumped and blurred with afterimages. The spear thrower and another man came up to him, “Here, drink this,” and tilted a skin’s spigot against his lips and laughed, some bitter milky drink in his mouth. “Have some of the white brother, brother.” A group of them picked up some stones and began to hit them together in rhythm, all their different patterns meshing bass to treble. The rest of them began to dance around the bonfire, hooting or singing or chanting. “Auqakuh, Qahira, Harmakhis, Kasei. Auqakuh, Mangala, Ma’adim, Bahram.” Nirgal danced with them, exhaustion banished. It was a cold night and one could move in or away from the heat of the fire, feel its radiance against cold bare skin, move back out into the chill. When everyone was hot and sweaty they took off into the night, stumbling back toward the canyon, south along the rim. A hand clutched at Nirgal’s arm and it looked like the diana was there beside him again, light in the dark, but it was too dark to see, and then they were crashing into the water of the reservoir, shockingly frigid, dive under, waist-deep silt and sand, heart-stopping cold, stand up, wade back out all the senses pulsating wildly, gasps, laughter, a hand at his ankle and down he went again, into the shallows face first, laughing. Through the dark wet, freezing, toes banging “ow! ow!” and back into the henge, into the heat. Soaking they danced again, pressed to the heat of the fire, arms extended, hugging its radiance. All the bodies ruddy in the firelight, the sequoia needles flashing against pinwheel stars, bouncing in rhythm to the rock percussion.