Not on a night like this.

Close by–on a frame of birch poles towering above a huge fire–the fair-haired May King, dressed in a wreath and coarse britches, was kissing the red-haired May Queen, groping her breasts through her thin, sweat-soaked blouse. The monarch was more than a little drunk and tottered, trying to keep his balance, as he hugged the queen, pressing a fist clamped onto a mug of beer against her back. The queen, also far from sober, wearing a wreath which had slipped down over her eyes, hung on the king’s neck and leaned close against him in anticipation. The throng was dancing beneath the frame, singing, yelling and shaking poles festooned with garlands of foliage and blossom.

‘Beltane!’ screamed a short, young woman right in Geralt’s ear. Pulling him by the sleeve, she forced him to turn around among the procession encircling them. She cavorted by him, fluttering her skirt and shaking her hair, which was full of flowers. He let her spin him in the dance and whirled around, nimbly avoiding the other couples.

‘Beltane! May Day Eve!’

Besides them there was a struggle, a squealing and the nervous laugh of another young woman, feigning a fight and resistance, being carried off by a young man into the darkness, beyond the circle of light. The procession, hooting, snaked between the burning pyres. Someone stumbled and fell, breaking the chain of hands, rending the procession apart into smaller groups.

The young woman, looking at Geralt from under the leaves decorating her brow, came closer and pressed herself urgently against him, encircling him with her arms and panting. He grabbed her more roughly than he had intended and felt the hot dampness of her body, perceptible on his hands through the thin linen pressing against her back. She raised her head. Her eyes were closed and her teeth flashed from beneath her raised, twisted upper lip. She smelled of sweat and sweet grass, smoke and lust.

Why not? he thought, crumpling her dress and kneading her back with his hands, enjoying the damp, steaming warmth on his fingers. The woman was not his type. She was too small and too plump–under his hand he felt the line where the too-tight bodice of her dress was cutting into her body, dividing her back into two distinctly perceptible curves, where he should not have been able to feel them. Why not? he thought, on a night like this, after all… It means nothing.

Beltane… Fires as far as the horizon. Beltane, May Day Eve.

The nearest pyre devoured the dry, outstretched pine branches being thrown onto it with a crack, erupted in a golden flash, lighting everything up. The young woman’s eyes opened wide, looking up into his face. He heard her suck air in, felt her tense up and violently push her hands against his chest. He released her at once. She hesitated. Tilted her trunk away to the length of her almost straightened arms, but she did not peel her hips away from his thighs. She lowered her head, then withdrew her hands and drew away, looking to the side.