A STRONG TOWER
Chapter 5: Campfire Light
He stood just outside the rim of light cast by the campfire watching Bridgid
poke a long stick into the flames. When it caught, she pulled it out, holding
it in both hands, staring at its glowing tip.
"Makin' a wee torch, are ye?" he chuckled, stepping forward.
"Oh, hello, Broch," she smiled. "I didn't see you there."
"I've been walkin' about, enjoyin' the night. Do ye mind, lass, if I come
and bide by your fire
a moment?"
Truly, she was pleased at his arrival. Max and Max had left to go
talk to Himself and she'd just been sitting there pondering the events of the
day.
"Make yourself welcome," she said, tossing her stick on the fire.
"First night in the Nullarbor, will it be?"
"Yes," she replied. "I'm still getting used to it, to even being in epis."
"Mmphm," he said, settling himself just a bit to her left. "I canna say I'm
used to it mysel'...the epi-bein'."
She looked at him, interested. "Can you tell me about this...screenplay, the
one you're in?"
He grinned. "Weel, for me 'tis no a screenplay, ye see. 'Tis what I've lived."
"What's it called?"
He paused, looking deeply into the flames. "Grace Under Fire. Himsel', ye may
be aware, has
a bit of a thing about the trackin' down of grace."
"In one of his songs, yes."
"Aye," he agreed. "There, too."
"Why 'fire'?" she asked.
His hand moved to his left thigh and he rubbed it slightly as he said, "Afghanistan.
Plenty of fire there."
"You were in Afghanistan?" Her brows rose.
"Aye," he said, his voice low.
When he offered nothing further, she asked, "With the army?"
"The Scotsman," he said, lifting his head and looking at the night sky. "Edinburgh
newspaper."
"War correspondent?"
"Aye, that I was."
She was silent, just studying his profile in the firelight. So Himself had set
a story in
Afghanistan, had he? My, my. She was a bit surprised somehow. Broch seemed a bit
quiet
when it came to talking about it. Perhaps if she tried another approach?
"Did someone say you were from near Inverness?"
He turned his face toward her. "Aye, a Highlander born and bred. Balloch is
just a wee place
near the Moray Firth." His gaze moved inward as images filled his mind. "My
mother, she lives there still...runs a small inn where folks stay who come for the
battlefield or the monster."
"Monster? Oh! You mean Nessie!"
"That I do," he smiled. "Ye'll ken it, then?"
"Oh, yes. It's probably the main thing most Americans think of when Scotland
comes to mind."
"Och!" he snorted. "I'm no verra glad ta hear ye say so."
"Culloden. 1746." She looked at him seriously.
He smiled. "Ah! Verra much better!"
She smiled back.
Rose had been gifted with a great ability to appreciate all things beautiful in
the world. Right
at this moment, she was appreciating the way the flames of their fire made golden highlights dance in Aubrey's hair. He had untied its band, run his fingers through it to straighten it somewhat, and intended to retie the narrow strip of leather that held it clubbed at the nape
of his neck. Distracted by what Maximus was saying, the thong lay draped across his left palm as he leaned forward, his hair waving down to his shoulders. Thus it was that the firelight had much to highlight.
She smiled, looking at it, at him. He had walked beside her for hour after hour
this day, well,
this night, actually, his leg healed, sound again. All too well she remembered the
sight of him lying on the pavement of Bridge Street in front of the Museum of
Sydney, his lower leg having been crushed beneath the wheels of a city bus.
(Sons of the Fathers chapter 13).
Her eyes traveled beyond the fire to where the General sat. It had been to save him that Aubrey had made that last, frantic dash. The friendship between the two men was like that. Of all the characters, these two had bonded over their mutual experiences of the command of men. She thought back to Uganda, to when Maximus had nearly given his own life to save Aubrey. ( last half of Saving Captain Jack) Always, the two men were great friends. Well, except for that strange period of time when Sid had been Maximus' best friend. (end of YOOK and up into
Australian Adventures) At least that hadn't lasted long. No one had thought it would, especially not Aubrey. She would never forget Aubrey's shout of horror when Sid had tried to roll the General off the top of Ayres Rock. But even after that, even after Sid had left Joimus alone in the midst of the Olgas, Maximus still liked Sid to a certain extent. It was not until Himself told Maximus about Bunny's baby, not until then, that the General had been able to shake himself completely free of the friendship.
(The Olgas, with Ayres in the center distance)
She smiled to herself, not minding at all that her thoughts were being used to
recap
a bit of storyline. Looking at the General now, she still found it hard to
believe that
when she had first met him on the set of Eucalyptus (YOOK), it had actually been
Sid and not the General at all. No one but Maximus, Joimus, and Sid would ever truly understand what had
transpired that made Maximus not only forgive Sid for the unspeakable things he
had done, but become his friend. But the presence of Livi in Bunny's womb had
not been known at the time, nor that Sid had used the General's body to put him
there. It was...unthinkable...except, well, for the fact that it had obviously
been
thought. Still, she wondered, what would the relationship between
the two be
like
even with the presence of the child had not the iron mound of Ayres done its
work
on the magnetically balanced innards of Sid, bringing back his true nature? Oh,
well,
no good to wonder about such things now. What was done was done. Probably.
Sid himself sat by a fire somewhat removed from the rest of the cast. Bunny,
slumped
tiredly against his side, had fallen asleep, her head on his shoulder. Livi,
too, was
asleep, cradled in
the nest of Sid's folded legs. He, with his keen eyesight and hearing, was well aware of Jack's intent concentration on what Maximus was saying. His lip curled as he recalled the time Jack had looked at him with just that same expression of true male friendship he was now giving
the General. No castmember had ever looked at him like that before, open liking shining in their eyes. Of course, he was wearing Maximus' body at the time. So, he had gotten his wish
to be the General, to know what it was like to
walk
about not only in the man's cape and armor, but in his very flesh. He turned
his lips
into Bunny's blonde hair. Making love to her had been very different with
actual
human nerve endings. He knew his own body was vastly superior in almost every
way to the natural bodies of humanity, yet, still, in their weaknesses, there
were
certain things they experienced that he had never realized until then.
He looked at the General again. Then, too, he had come to know tiredness and
the need for that absence of consciousness that was called sleep. He knew the
wearing-down weight of the armor on his bones and how far a distance could be
run before the breath gave out. It was good he knew these things. It gave him
an advantage, this knowing, that he'd never had before.
His hand cupped Livi's dark head. But this was HIS son! He had put him
in his mother's womb, he and none other. Without seed himself, he had never
thought paternity would be in his grasp. But, now, he had created a human
and no one would ever...ever...take him from him. Without his act, this child
would not exist. He had not known, before Maximus, just how deep his need
went to have some proof that he was 'real'. Now that he, a synthetic nanotech
organism, had
put life in a human woman...his thumb rubbed gently back and forth through Livi's hair...he
felt somehow validated. That the seed belonged
to the General, well, that was irrelevant to him.
"She wouldn't actually have me jump off a cliff...would she?" Ngaio asked,
her eyes large and round in the firelight. "Not so early on in my epilife."
"I doubt it," Alex chuckled, "really I do. I've been in epis for some years
now and have yet either to fall OR jump off a cliff."
"Yes," she continued, strangely not comforted, "but right over there at
the Captain's fire, Rose is busily remembering how Maximus hung by his
fingertips off the side of Ayers."
He chuckled again. "And it was my strangely-disgusting brown tie with its
splotchy patterns that formed part of the make-shift rope that we saved
him with." He rolled the tie a bit between his fingers. Truly he was right.
It was, indeed, a strangely disgusting tie. Mention of the LA cop's tie
would, however, be refrained from at the moment. So don't read that
last sentence.
"Generally speaking," he continued, "it is the male characters who bear
the brunt of creative cruelty."
"HA!" she ha-ed. "Was Bunny not in labor on the roof of the Sydney
Opera House?"
"Well, yes, there was...that."
"Was it not poor Buggie whose basket rope broke, sending her plunging
down the face of the Tower of Pain toward the jagged ice stalagmites
below?" (Lucilla's Party...Elderepi)
"But Biebe saved her, did he not? Is she not right over there, hale
and hearty, her arms entwined about his?"
Both of their heads turned toward Biebe's fire. Buggie was leaning
forward, her body going back and forth as she rubbed her feet.
"Oh.....God," she was moaning. "My feet......my feet!"
"Well," Alex shrugged, we HAVE been walking for the last 45 hours."
"My point exactly," Ngaio agreed.
As there would be no dawn for quite some time, the cast put out their
fires and began again
their trek towards the Bight.
"Watch out for blowholes in the darkness," Broch warned.
"Blowholes?" Loomie repeated, stopping in her tracks since, well, the
Indian Pacific tracks had long gone off at right angles and the only
tracks she currently had to stop in were her very own. But it was much
safer that way as no train would come along and catch her unawares.
She, however, did not currently seem overly appreciative of that wonderful
fact. "Blowholes?" she said again.
"Aye," Broch continued. "There bein' no surface water in the whole of the
Nullarbor, what there is is underground. An' as we near the sea, sometimes
caverns have a hole up through
their top, ye see, an' the air blows out...sometimes e'en the water itsel'."
He frowned in the moonlight. "So be watchin' ye're steppin' as the holes can
come up all sudden-like in the dark an' ye might be gettin' ye're foot down
in one."
"Thank you," Loomie said tiredly. "I really needed to know that."
"Weel, and ye did," Broch said, shaking his head. "Easy it can be to be goin'
an'
breakin' an ankle."
Alex nudged Ngaio (rhymes with 'bio', if that helps) with his elbow. "Blow
holes,
eh? Maybe there ARE whales on the Nullarbor after all."
She didn't doubt it. She didn't doubt it at all.
From about fifty yards away, an absolutely silent dark shape watched them.
ON TO PART 6