Hesta arrived at the spring with a split boot, a guide she no longer liked, and the cup she had brought from home to drink forever out of.
The cup was enamelled blue. She had paid extra for the enamel. If she was going to live forever, she did not want to spend it looking at a poor purchase.
Her guide, Ulm, knelt beside the water and filled his skin. A black tree shaded the pool. Beyond it, a row of white stones circled a low house. A man came out carrying a kettle.
“Tea?” he asked.
Hesta held out her cup.
“The spring first.”
The man looked at Ulm. “You told her?”
“Everything you told me.”
“Then she knows the second cup is different.”
Hesta had listened to the explanation on the way. One cup from the spring, swallowed within the circle, removed one day of age. A second cup on the same day stopped the drinker ageing altogether. It also bound that person to the spring. The previous guardian could leave only when someone else drank the second cup knowingly, without being forced or deceived.
Ulm had described the first cup as a pleasant way to waste a day crossing the desert. Hesta had described him as an expensive way to be discouraged.
“I know,” she said. “Show me where you stop.”
The man set down the kettle. His name was Paret. He looked about thirty. He had lived in the house for ninety-three years.
He walked toward the white stones. At the nearest gap he raised a hand. It stopped in the air as though against a window. He leaned forward. His coat flattened across his chest. With his shoulder pressed against nothing, he looked at her.
“I can see the whole ridge from the roof. I can’t get to it.”
She reached into the gap. Her hand passed his. She caught the sleeve at his wrist and pulled gently. He did not move. She let go.
“Could we move the stones?”
“Move one.”
Ulm rolled a white stone out of the line. Paret’s outstretched fingers remained fixed in the same place. Ulm put it back. He brushed the grit from his hands and asked where they should sleep.
Paret had two spare beds. People came every few years. Some wanted eternal youth; some wanted to see a man who had it. Hesta slept poorly, listening to Ulm snore through the wall. She had been an acrobat for forty years. Her partner had retired to a town where nobody asked him to climb anything. She had kept performing until the proprietor of their travelling show offered her work selling tickets.
He had meant it kindly. That had made her leave faster.
In the morning she watched Paret draw water, mend a hinge, and scatter seed for birds. None came.
“Wrong season,” he said.
She drank her first cup. There was no blaze of youth, no loosening of all her joints. One day was one day. Her feet still hurt from the walk.
Paret poured another cup and put it on the table.
“You can learn the seasons here,” he said. “Everything has one.”
“Except you.”
He took the cup away again.
Hesta went outside. She tied a length of cord between the black tree and a post beside the house, low enough to step on without climbing. It was her old balancing cord, braided wide for bare feet. She tightened it, then laid one foot along it.
Paret came to watch.
She got as far as the middle before stepping off. The ground was near. That was the point, although she hated that it was the point.
“Again,” Paret said.
“I decide that.”
He sat on the step.
She made a second attempt. This time she reached the post. Her last movement was ugly, a grab followed by a stumble, but she had crossed. Paret clapped twice, then stopped when she glared at him.
“I used to cross above people’s heads,” she said.
“I used to be a terrible dancer. I thought time would fix it.”
“Did it?”
“Nobody has seen me dance for ninety-three years.”
Ulm came out with his pack. He wanted to leave before noon. Clouds on the far ridge had frightened him more than the empty sky; if rain reached the dry channel they had crossed, their return would be longer. He had been paid to bring her here and back. He had another job in five days.
“You can leave without me,” she said.
“Yes. I want you to say that before I do.”
She untied the cord. Paret watched her coil it.
“If I stay, somebody will come,” she said.
“Somebody will.”
“And want what I wanted.”
He took a long time to answer. “I won’t promise that.”
She sat beside him on the step. From there she could see a small path where he had walked along the circle for years, turning before the same invisible wall. He had grown something with narrow leaves in the shade. There were three young shoots.
“I want more time,” she said.
“So do I. Somewhere else.”
She kept her cup empty. Paret did not reach for the kettle.
At noon Ulm shouldered her pack as well as his own. She told him she could carry it. He said she could pay him the extra carrying fee or take it back at the ridge. She chose the ridge.
Paret walked with them as far as the stones.
“Will you come again?”
She almost said she would. Instead she said, “I don’t know.”
He nodded. That seemed to cost him more than her answer had cost her.
Beyond the circle she stopped to retie her split boot. Ulm waited, facing the clouds. When she stood, the house was still close enough for her to call back. She asked Paret whether the post could stay where it was.
He said yes.
She left him the balancing cord. Her blue cup hung from her pack, knocking against a buckle as she climbed.
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