“I’m a nurse. Officially, that is. I do lots of things.”

“We have nurses,” he said. “In the… where I come from.”

She looked at him with new interest. “Where’s that?”

“A city. In the south.”

“What’s it called?”

“Earth. Although most of the time we just call it the city.”

Elizabeth smiled uncertainly, not sure she had heard correctly. “Tell me about it.”

He shook his head. The horses had finished drinking, and were nuzzling each other.

“I think I’d better be on my way,” he said.

He walked quickly towards his equipment, scooped it up, and stuffed it hurriedly in the saddle-bags. Elizabeth watched curiously. When he had finished he took the rein, turned the horse round and led her up the bank. At the fringe of the trees he looked back.

“I’m sorry. You must think me very rude. It’s just… you’re not like the others.”

“The others?”

“The people round here.”

“Is that so bad?”

“No.” He looked around the river-side as if seeking some further excuse to stay with her. Abruptly, he seemed to change his mind about leaving. He tethered the horse to the nearest tree. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“I wonder… do you think I could draw you?”

“Draw me?”

“Yes… just a sketch. I’m not very good, I haven’t been doing it very long. While I’m up here I spend a lot of time drawing what I see.”

“Was that what you were doing when I met you?”

“No. That was just a map. I mean proper drawings.”

“O.K. Do you want me to pose for you?”

He fumbled in his saddle-bag, then brought out a wad of paper of assorted sizes. He flicked through them nervously, and she saw that there were line-drawings on them.

“Just stand there,” he said. “No… by your horse.”

He sat down on the edge of the bank, balancing the papers on his knees. She watched him, still disconcerted by this sudden development, and felt a growing self-consciousness that was generally alien to her personality. He stared over the paper at her.

She stood by the horse, her arm running underneath its neck so that she could pat the other side, and the horse responded by pressing its nose against her.

“You’re standing wrong,” he said. “Turn towards me more.”

The self-consciousness grew, and she realized she was standing in an unnatural, awkward position.

He worked away, slipping through one sheet of paper after the next, and she began to relax more. She decided to pay no attention to him, and petted the horse again. After a while he asked her to sit in the saddle, but she was growing tired.

“Can I see what you’ve done?”

“I never show this to anyone.”

“Please, Helward. I’ve never been drawn before.”

He sifted through the papers, and selected two or three. “I don’t know what you’ll think.”

She took them from him.

“God, am I as skinny as that?” she said, without thinking.

He tried to take them away from her. “Give them back.”

She turned away from him, and flicked through the others. It was possible to see that they were of her, but his sense of proportion was… unusual. Both she and the horse were drawn too tall and thin. The effect was not unpleasing, but rather weird.

“Please… I’d like them back.”

She gave them to him, and he put them at the bottom of the pile. Abruptly he turned his back on her, and walked towards his horse.

“Have I offended you?” she said.

“It’s O.K. I knew I shouldn’t have shown them to you.”

“I think they’re excellent. It’s just… it’s a bit of a shock to see yourself through someone else’s eyes. I told you I had never been drawn.”

“You’re difficult to draw.”

“Could I see some of your others?”

“You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Look, I’m not just trying to smooth your ruffled feathers. I really am interested.”

“O.K.”

He gave her the whole pile, and continued on his way towards his horse. While she sat down again and began to go through the drawings, she was aware of him in the background pretending to adjust the horse’s harness, but in fact trying to anticipate her response.

There were a variety of subjects. There were several of his horse: grazing, standing, throwing its head back. These were amazingly naturalistic; with a few lines he had caught the very essence of the animal, proud yet docile, tamed yet still its own master. Curiously, the proportions were exactly right. There were several drawings of a man… self-portraits, or the man she had seen him with earlier? He was drawn in his cloak, without his cloak, standing by a horse, using the video camera she had seen earlier. Again, the proportions were almost exactly right.

There were a few sketches of scenery: trees, a river, a curious structure being dragged by ropes, a distant range of hills. He wasn’t as adept with views; sometimes his proportions were good, at other times there was a disturbing distortion that she could not quite identify. Something wrong with the perspective? She couldn’t tell, not having a sufficient artistic vocabulary.

At the bottom of the pile she found the drawings he had made of her. The first few were not very good, clearly his first attempts. The three he had shown her were by far the best, but there was still this elongation of her and the horse that puzzled her.

“Well?” he said.

“I—” She couldn’t find the right words. “I think they’re good. Very unusual. You’ve got an excellent eye.”

“You’re a difficult subject.”

“I particularly like this one.” She searched through the pile, found one of the horse with its mane flying wild. “It’s so lifelike.”

He grinned then. “That’s my own favourite.”

She glanced again through the drawings. There was something about them she hadn’t understood… there, in one of the drawings of the man. High in the background, a weird, fourpointed shape. There was one in each of the sketches he had done of her.

“What’s this?” she said, pointing to it.

“The sun.”

She frowned a little, but decided not to pursue it. She felt she had done enough damage to his artistic ego for the moment.

She selected what she thought was the best of the three.

“Could I have this one?”

“I thought you didn’t like it.”

“I do. I think it’s marvellous.”

He looked at her carefully, as if trying to divine whether she was being truthful, then took the pile from her again.

“Would you like this one too?”

He handed her the one of the horse.

“I couldn’t. Not that one.”

“I’d like you to have it,” he said. “You’re the first person to have seen it.”

“I — thank you.”

He placed the papers carefully into the saddle-bag, and buckled the cover.

“Did you say your name was Elizabeth?”

“I prefer to be called Liz.”

He nodded gravely. “Goodbye, Liz.”

“Are you going?”

He didn’t answer, but untethered the horse and swung into the saddle. He rode down the bank, splashed through the shallow water of the river, and spurred his horse on up the opposite bank. In a few seconds he was lost to sight in the trees beyond.