Once by James Herbert Page B

for comfort and certainly not for modesty. Her eyes were closed once more as she raised her face to the sun and her breathing gradually slowed, became less laboured.
    Thom was silent and he tried to keep perfectly still, although his heart continued to race and blood seemed to roar in his ears. He had no idea of what to do next. Skulk away? Wait until she left? Now he did begin to feel the shame. He was trembling.
    And then the girl lowered her chin and lazily opened her eyes as she turned her head to look towards his hiding-place. He saw that they were, indeed, almond-shaped, saw that they glittered silver…
    … as they looked directly into his…

A CHASE
    THE GUILT flooded over him. He felt something else, too, something he could not define.
    It was in her eyes, those startling glittering eyes. Those wonderfully oblique eyes.
    He saw something in them - sensed something in them - that alarmed him … yet drew him in. He felt a frisson of emotion that had nothing to do with her allure or his desire. It was … a connection. Thom thought it might even be a recognition. But that would be impossible: he had never seen this beautiful girl in his life before.
    If he thought he might detect some sense of shame also in their expression, or even embarrassment at having been caught in such privately intimate circumstances, he was wrong. The naked girl merely returned his stare, while a slow smile filtered through to her lips. Now she looked at him from beneath her lashes, chin tilted downwards, neither coy, nor coquettish, just a little shy.
    Thom could only remain open-mouthed, not sure what
    he should do, what he should say. If he should say anything at all. The hand that held back the leaves before him was shaking fiercely by then.
    The girl, this lovely abandoned, apparently shameless, creature began to laugh, a small, delicious sound that contained no mockery or derision, only delight, and he felt his heart lift, his senses spin in a different, happier way. His body had calmed, erection already waning, yet there was a yearning in him, a different and purer kind of desire replacing the previous lust. Thom wanted to speak to her but, for the moment, he was speechless.
    And then it was too late.
    The girl’s companions, those strange, ethereal satellites of light, were settling around her, some drifting lethargically as others lay on her body or found leaves to fall upon; but almost immediately they began to stir again as if alerted to his presence. Their odd but sweet whistlings took on a new tone that was not unlike the sound made by agitated insects. Their inner lights brightened again but the colours were somehow fiercer than before, no longer lustrous, flashing violently instead. Thom began to fear rather than wonder.
    They rose as one into the air, dashing to and fro, several sweeping towards him, but retreating after a few feet in the way that certain animals might to warn off their foe. His ears began to ring with the sound and his heart seemed to take on a fresh beat, one that was less regular than before.
    Something he could not see crashed into the other side of the bush he was hiding behind and Thom staggered backwards, surprised and not a little dismayed. His heel caught a root or bump in the ground and he fell awkwardly, the cane dropping from his hand. He floundered on his back and the angry sound rose in volume, drew closer. He felt a sting on his cheek as a light whipped across his face and he held up a hand to ward it off. But others arrived and flew around his head, their excited buzzing becoming hard to bear, the noise increasing his panic.
    ‘What…?’ was all he managed to cry out.
    There was more movement around him, but this came from the debris of the woodland floor itself, a lifting of dead leaves and soil as though things underneath were pushing through.
    Impossible, he told himself. Just impossible. The disturbance wasn’t only in one location but in several scattered moving mounds, brittle leaves