‘Nothing to report,’ she said, and something in her voice quavered. ‘Nothing worth mentioning.’

‘Don’t do that to me, Yen. Don’t read me. It unsettles me.’

‘Forgive me. It’s automatic. And what’s new with you, Geralt?’

‘Nothing. Nothing worth mentioning.’

They said nothing.

‘Beltane!’ she suddenly snapped, and he felt the arm she was pressing against his chest stiffen and tauten. ‘They’re enjoying themselves. They’re celebrating the eternal cycle of nature regenerating itself. And us? What are we doing here? We, relicts, doomed to obliteration, to extinction and oblivion? Nature is born again, the cycle repeats itself. But not for us, Geralt. We cannot reproduce ourselves. We were deprived of that potential. We were given the ability to do extraordinary things with nature, occasionally literally against her. And at the same time what is most natural and simple in nature was taken from us. What if we live longer than them? After our winter will come the spring, and we shall not be reborn; what finishes will finish along with us. But both you and I are drawn to those bonfires, though our presence here is a wicked, blasphemous mockery of this world.’

He was silent. He didn’t like it when she fell into a mood like this, the origin of which he knew only too well. Once again, he thought, once again it’s beginning to torment her. There was a time when it seemed she had forgotten, that she had become reconciled to it like the others. He embraced her, hugged her, rocked her very gently like a child. She let him. It didn’t surprise him. He knew she needed it.

‘You know, Geralt,’ she suddenly said, now composed. ‘I miss your silence the most.’

He touched her hair and ear with his mouth. I desire you, Yen, he thought, I desire you, but you know that. You know that, don’t you, Yen?

‘Yes, I do,’ she whispered.

‘Yen…’

She sighed again.

‘Just today,’ she said, looking at him with eyes wide open. ‘Just this night, which will soon slip away. Let it be our Beltane. We shall part in the morning. Don’t expect any more; I cannot, I could not… Forgive me. If I have hurt you, kiss me and go away.’

‘If I kiss you I won’t go away.’

‘I was counting on that.’

She tilted her head. He touched her parted lips with his own. Tentatively. First the upper, then the lower. He entwined his fingers in her winding locks, touched her ear, her diamond earring, her neck. Yennefer, returning the kiss, clung to him, and her nimble fingers quickly and surely unfastened the buckles of his jacket.

She fell back onto her cloak, spread out on the soft moss. He pressed his mouth to her breast and felt the nipple harden and press against the very fine stuff of her blouse. She was breathing shallowly.

‘Yen…’

‘Don’t say anything… Please…’

The touch of her naked, smooth, cool skin electrified his fingers and his palms. A shiver down his back being pricked by her finger-nails. From the bonfires screams, singing, a whistle; a far, distant cloud of sparks in purple smoke. Caresses and touches. He touching her. She touching him. A shiver. And impatience. The gliding skin of her slim thighs gripping his hips, drawing closed like a clasp.