A Summer in Amber

by C. Litka

  Chapter 25: Friday 9 August

  01

  The midnight sky was ablaze in the cold fires of the Aurora Borealis. Glowing curtains in icy greens and blues waved in the solar wind while pale violet dragons silently wove in and out of them. Just the first gusts of a strong storm on its way earthwards. I'd walked Nesta home and then returned to continue working for an hour more before stepping out to unwind a little before retiring.

  I've been putting in long hours to finish the project. With Learmonte not arriving before next Wednesday, there was no need to pace my work. I could just finish the transcription and wait for him to arrive to sign off on it – a simple matter of courtesy, though neither of us would believe that. Having read the pages several times already and having them in what I believe to be their original order, I spent most of my time slowly typing all the half words on the chewed edges – putting my guesses as to the missing letters in italics. Less than a day's work remains to be done.

  Without Flora about, Nesta and I spent much our days together, working, reading and hiking during the day, biking, fishing, then back to the cottage for a cup of tea, conversation or just company in the evening. I've mindful of keeping a certain physical distance and never being overly familiar, and I think she watches that too, though you'd not know it.

  A wagon mounded with hay was parked on the edge of my lawn, so I walked towards the lane to get a better view of the aurora arching far overhead. Its colours were intense – blowing curtains of cold flame entwined with twisting streaks of light, a display ignited by the series of strong solar storms slamming into the earth. News reports warned that this series of storms might surpass the intensity of the first catastrophic solar storms of the Storm years – putting the systems we've built to cope with these storms to the test. And indeed, the aurora was stronger, brighter, and more active than I'd ever seen it. And eerie too, in its silent intensity. I suspect that on nights like these, everyone wonders if they shouldn't be a Morlock.

  I had just reached the parked hay wagon, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the darkness from beneath the wagon suddenly stir and streak towards me.

  I may have yelped.

  Thankfully it wasn't the hounds of hell, only Willie and Watt.

  'Down you mutts!' I exclaimed as they bounded cheerfully around me. 'What are you doing out at this time of night scaring me half to death?'

  'They're guarding me,' said a soft voice from above.

  I looked up to see Nesta, wrapped in a dark blanket sitting up on top of the filled wagon.

  'Did my dear pets scare you, Sandy?' she asked innocently.

  'Hardly. Merely a year or two off my life, but what's a year or two?' I replied. 'What are you doing up there?'

  'Oh, I couldn't fall asleep with the sky so bright, so I came out to watch it and this seemed the most comfortable seat. It's too spectacular tonight to sleep through it. The lads had to be included, of course,' she said, and asked after a short pause, 'Care to come up and keep me company for a while?'

  'I'd be delighted,' I replied ignoring my better judgement and walking around to the front of the high sided wagon, climbed up into the soft mound of fresh and fragrant green chopped hay.

  Nesta, with a pair of wellies on her feet and wrapped in a blanket had been lying snuggled in the soft hay. I carefully scrambled over the packed hay to reach her.

  'I'll share my blanket,' she said lifting it to reveal she had come out in her pyjamas.

  'Oh, I'm fine,' I said as I settled next to her.

  She moved a bit closer.

  'Just finishing your work?' she asked.

  'Aye. Couldn't keep my eyes open, still, as you say, this isn't a sky to be missed.'

  She said nothing more, and settled back into hay.

  When I followed suit, she lifted her head and I took that as an invitation to slip my arm under it and she rested her head on it, and snuggled closer. We shared a quick glance that said, well, I'm not sure what it said, but it wasn't a further invitation, more of a quiet warning, so I looked back to the sky shimmering overhead.

  If she had turned to me and started something. Anything. Even an inviting look and I'd have been lost.

  But she didn't.

  Amazing the amount of self-restraint women seem to find in themselves in my company.

  And as for me. I'll make cowardice a virtue and say that I've already come to see this summer as a memory. One I hope to cherish my whole life. Unspoiled. No doubt it'll be tinged with regrets, but regrets of omission rather than commission. Could have been however sad are far better than never should have done. And, I'm certain, good memories will far outweigh the regrets. That, anyway was the idea I clung to as I held Nesta close by my side in the fragrant hay and watched the glowing dragons in the sky swim amongst the constellations.

  After a while I noticed that she was breathing softly and regularly, and slowly glancing aside, I saw her eyes were closed. I realized I'd never been more right in my life than to hold her close, and only hold her close.

  'Are you sleeping?' she asked, perhaps for the second or third time.

  'Maybe,' I muttered and opened my eyes.

  She was on her elbow watching me, her pale face impossible to read in the darkness. 'It's getting late,' she said softly, as indeed, it likely was.

  I looked around. A thin layer of clouds had covered the sky and my clothes were damp with the falling dew. I looked at her and smiled, 'Yes, I believe it is. You were sleeping.'

  'So were you. It's time to be going home,' she said.

  'Right,' I said, sitting up, thinking how lucky we were that Flora wasn't about.

  We scrambled over the damp hay and I helped her down. The dogs bounded about us and ran ahead as we made our way up the dimly seen lane.

  When we reached the door of Hidden Gardens she turned to me, 'Good night, Sandy,' she said and absently kissed me. Nothing more than a good night kiss, but our first.

  'Good night, Nesta,' I managed to say as she turned away.

  She took a step up to the door step and paused for half a second. I suspect she only just realized what she'd done, but she continued on, holding the door for the dogs and slipped in after them, with perhaps a glance my way from the deep shadows.

  I found my way back to the Groom's Cottage. Somehow. I may have floated back.

  'Grow up, Alasandr Say,' I told myself. 'It was only a thoughtless good night kiss.'

  But then, one mustn't overlook even the tiniest gift of the gods.

  02

  'Did I wake you up? Again?' she asked, after it took me a time to wake up and climb over the sofa where I'd been sleeping to reach her ringing watson.

  'I was just dozing,' I admitted, glancing at the time – just after nine. 'I should've been up by now.'

  'Well, you're up now. I have to go to Ordmoor to do a bit of shopping for cook and Aunt Regina. I was wondering if you wanted to ride along?'

  'I'd love to. Give me ten minutes and I'll be ready.'

  'Make it more like half an hour, I have to get ready too,' she laughed.

  We drove to Ordmoor, arriving before ten and did not get away before noon. Nesta is a well-known figure, either as Lady or Doctor Nesta, and she spent a good deal of the time cheerfully talking to friends and patients.

  'Thanks for being so patient,' she said as we loaded the last of the supplies into the back of her Rover. 'I'm taking you away from your work.'

  'Not at all. I've more than enough time to finish everything and I can always find interesting things to look at in the market, though I don't think my landlady would appreciate that 15 stone sow I was offered at a special price... Think of all the bacon...' I laughed.

  'You'd have to butcher it first,' she pointed out.

  'Well, yes, and as you see, I did, in the end, give it a miss.'

  'I thought we might stop for a picnic lunch along the way since it's that time.'

  'Sounds like a grand idea,' I said as we climbed into the Rover.

  We pulled ove
r past Maryfield, where the highlands just start to rise, and walked up through the woods to a clearing that had a clear view across the rolling farmland, dappled with woods and the shadows of clouds. Nesta brought out rolls and ham, with cheese, ginger beer and ginger biscuits from one of the shopping bags and we lunched and talked of this and that, but not of the previous night. I realized that the goodnight kiss was really a thing of no consequence, save that it marked the comfortable completeness of our friendship. Lying so close to her in the hay, well, that's harder to explain. A strange combination of intimacy, innocence, and principles, I guess, but with an equally strange blindness to propriety as well, I suppose. But then who's to judge, Willy and Watt? It was, however, something I'd come to expect in the strange world of Glen Lonon, beyond the pale.

  'What do you propose we do this weekend?' she asked as we sat against some warm rocks staring through the trees on the land that stretched out and away from us to be lost in the moist air miles away.

  'I'm wondering about something. Did the Lonons ever come across TTR's receiving station when you were running wild?'

  'No, but then how would we recognize it if we did?' she replied. 'Never had any reason to look for it. I take it you've some interest in it?'

  'It's just a prefab shack and only to tie up a loose end. I'm going on the theory that the field around TTR's lab is due to both units being in close proximity, so that the space between them is somehow saturated with electrical energy that seeps out. But just to make sure, I'd like to see if the receiving station still exists and if it does, if it's empty.'

  'You know where to find it?'

  'It will be exactly 10 kilometres from TTR's lab. I've gathered from the notes and very vague tables I've read in the papers that TTR tested the devise starting with placing the two plates a millimetre apart and progressively increased this distance up to 10 kilometres. Since it could be placed precisely 10 kilometres, back in the GPS days, it should be easy to locate it by drawing a ten kilometre arc on a map.'

  'A 10 kilometre circle still covers a lot of ground.'

  'Well, there are still people about who remember the old days, and the story I hear is that it was last set up in the Old Forest above Minton, which, as it turns out, matches the 10 kilometre radius. Plus, TTR needed to run power lines to it, I don't think he'd located it in a very out of the way location. If it was placed in the woods, that might explain why it has disappeared from memory.'

  'We weren't strangers to the Old Forest. There were several nice and remote picnic places along the burn that runs through it. We spent many a day up there, and we never saw any sort of hut in the woods.'

  'Well, yes, it was likely taken down. Still, I'd like to be certain,' I replied. 'So I'd still like to look for it.'

  'I could just ask one of the gillies. They'd have come across it at some point over the years,' said Nesta.

  'True, but what do you say if they ask why? I'd like to keep my knowledge of TTR's lab a secret from your father, so I'd prefer to keep the gillies out of it – they may keep your secrets, but as for me, well... I'd rather word did not get back that I was even looking for it. Besides, we really haven't done much hiking during my stay. I should get up into the heather at least once.'

  'You should. We'll make a picnic of it, then,' she replied.

  After we packed up and returned to Glen Lonon, we took a ride up the Maig and did some preliminary scouting, but by three, a storm was building, so we headed home. I got an hour of actual work done before supper and all but finished it this evening while Nesta read her medical publications in the club chair. A haze of brightly glowing clouds obscured the aurora display, but the lane to Hidden Garden was as brightly lit as on a clear night with a full moon.