by Joseph Fink
There weren’t many questions the first week. He fed me. He let me sleep. He went about his work. His work was simple but exacting. It required his entire attention, but there was no betrayal, no unintended consequences. Every year the trees grew a little more. Every year they bore fruit. It was a natural rhythm that I had forgotten could exist in a world with so much subterfuge and deception.
Sometimes I would join him for his rounds, but often I would sit by his cottage and look at the ocean. It was never the same view from one moment to the next, the exact formula of ripple and froth and cloud rearranging itself into infinite possibility. I would hold my small hand up against the view, and feel calm in its stillness against the moving background. I loved the calluses on my palm. I loved the dirt under my nails.
I began to understand that there never needed to be questions from Albert, not if I didn’t want to answer them. And for this I was more grateful than I was for the food and the shelter. A space where I didn’t have to explain myself. Where nothing was required of me. That is what I needed more than anything. Quietly, that is what Albert gave me. As a child, I had loved him. And deep within, under the layers of self-protection that years of survival and revenge had necessitated, I started to find that emotion again. Over yet another dinner of bread and cheese I stopped eating and I watched him.
“What?” he said, after he noticed I had been staring at him for several minutes.
“This is the only nice thing to happen to me since the last time I saw you,” I said.
He laughed and shook his head. “You’ve gone soft,” he said, but he kept grinning as he went back to his food.
We established a pattern. I started to help him with the work. Especially during the harvest, he needed a lot of labor. Usually he hired some men from a nearby village, but I convinced him we could do it ourselves. I phrased it as a challenge, but really I just didn’t want anyone from the outside world to break the fragile bubble we were living in, and I think Albert recognized that. He agreed, even though he shouldn’t have, even though every day became an exhausting race to get the fruit off the trees before the birds did. He couldn’t seem to say no to me. I wouldn’t have said no to him either, but he never asked.
An entire year passed like this. The two of us working the farm, and never talking about where I had been since I kissed him and rode away from my charred home, and never talking about what his life had been like all this time, or what was happening here between us, or what would happen next. It was so easy to merely take each day as it came, and deal with that present, and then shuffle the day away with the setting sun until the sky took on its predawn blue again. And I thought: Could I do this forever? After years of traveling all over the continent, and sailing through the seas. After all of my adventures and all of my crimes. Could I wake up and go to sleep and push my hands into the earth and against the leaves of the trees, just a few miles from where my mother and father had died? I thought I could. If we never talked about it. If we never questioned, I thought that perhaps I could live like this for however many decades until I died, basket of oranges in hand, on a slope that was visible from my bed.
So one night, after dinner, as he retired to his mattress and I turned to sleep where I usually slept, a cot in the corner, I stopped. I took his arm. We looked into each others’ eyes, not saying anything, each waiting for the other to start.
“I think,” I said, and then didn’t know what to say next.
“Oh, god, me too,” he said, and shifted his arms so I could enter his embrace if I wanted to, and I wanted to. I kissed him for the first time since we were children, and it was so different. Then, that had been the limit of the possible, and now it was merely the start of the unfolding of our bodies.
I had wondered if I could do this forever. That night I knew I could.
From that night, many nights. We settled into each other, the way a house settles into its walls. Through a simple repeating movement of dawn and dusk and harvest and pruning and eating and kissing and sleeping, another year passed, and I found that I was able, in certain moments, to let some of my past go. I let go first of what I had done when I had thought I was on a ship belonging to the Order of the Labyrinth. I let go of my blindness, my foolish trust in Edmond. I let go of the mistakes, of the crimes, of the pain.
“It’ll be harvest again soon,” Albert said, as a question.
“Yes,” I said, “we can hire some workers this time.” He breathed relief.
Another year, and I wondered at how much I had aged, and I let more go. I let go of André and Lora and Rebekah. I let go of the final screams of Lady Nora, and Lord Fullbright’s frozen face as he fell. I let go of Vlad holding my wounded body above the water. I let go of the pain still present in my belly. I let go of every moment back to that first moment, a moment I could only approach as a white light too bright for me to look into.
“You didn’t have to be ashamed,” I said up into the silent dark one night, knowing that Albert was awake too just by the subtle pattern of his breathing. “You could have told me where you lived. I didn’t care.”
He said nothing for so long that I began to think that I had been mistaken about his being awake. And then, “That’s easy for you to say now.” His voice carried the pain and shame of having to hide the basic fact of who you are even from your childhood best friend. I put out my hand and found his. We didn’t talk about the subject after that.
A fourth year, and now this is where I lived, and where I always would live. I thought about what it would be like to die so close to where my mother and father died, whether that would in any way make up for the years we never had together. But I was starting to realize that there was no death that could make up for any amount of life. When I thought about my fruitless years of revenge, I shuddered. I had chased after death, and in doing so, squandered life. I would never do that again, I vowed to myself.
So I finally approached the moment that was so difficult for me to approach. I looked at the memory of my father’s death. And I looked at the knowledge of Edmond’s guilt. I sat alone, tucked away a little from the orchard, on a rock with an expansive view of the sea. Almost everything in front of me was blue, but almost no patch of it was quite the same shade of blue. I marveled at how many forms of blue could exist, even in this little corner of the rapidly growing known world. As I thought about that, I let go of my father. And I let go of Edmond. I could not stay with Albert if I continued to hold my revenge, like a flimsy mask that stood in for all that my face could express. I let slip that mask. It was just me now. I stood and returned to where Albert was working and I wondered if he could see the difference in me, but I didn’t suppose it mattered.
Once I had reached that first flame of revenge deep within myself and stomped it finally out, I felt free, as I had not felt since I had smelled the smoke that terrible night so many years before. I fully embraced the long-dormant person I had once been. I let myself love Albert, and I accepted his love in return.
And so:
“You’ve hardly touched your oranges.”
“Albert, I love you, but I can’t eat any more oranges.”
“I suppose you’re right, I suppose they’re better used . . . for throwing.”
“Hey! Stop it! Okay, well you started this.”
And so:
“I miss you when we’re asleep. It feels like all those years you were away and I lived here all alone again.”
“Well, let’s meet in our dreams.”
“Where should we meet?”
“You know when we jumped into the cove as kids?”
“I could hold my breath way longer.”
“Quit bragging. Let’s meet in the moment when you first jump in the cove, and your entire body goes underwater, and you haven’t yet opened your eyes so you can’t see the water around you, but you know it’s there.”
“You want us to meet inside that one second?”
“Yes. Don’t be late.”
And so:
; “We should get married.”
“Why would we need to get married? You came back to me. You live at my farm. Who cares about what it looks like to anyone else?”
“But that’s exactly it. It’s your farm. I want it to be our farm.”
“That’s sweet.”
“I want property rights, buddy.”
“Still sweet. Okay, let’s get married.”
“Okay then.”
And so.
Two nights later, I thought I saw a man in the distance, a man I had seen so many times throughout my life, lurching stiffly in the moonlight, but when I looked closer it was only the branch of a tree, moving innocently in the Mediterranean breeze.
2
It might seem strange, living so close to my old home for so long, but I never went and looked at it. What was there but pain and memories, and didn’t I have enough of those? But having finally let go of the idea of revenge, I found that I could now walk through those woods and look at the corpse of my childhood, that stone and wooden wreck, and feel nothing but the smallest twinges of pain. The pain felt as though it belonged to someone else, as though it sprung in someone else’s chest, and all I was experiencing were the faint twinges of sympathy.
Walking into the house was a transition of light, the Mediterranean brilliance of outside becoming the dusty dim of inside. I was surprised by how much of the furniture had survived. Here was the table where my father and I had eaten dinner, blackened but still standing. Here was my bedroom where I had sat at the window waiting for my father’s return. My bed was mostly undamaged. From there I went into the rest of the house, the parts my father never really visited after my mother died. We didn’t often discuss my mother’s family, and as a child I had never thought about it much, but she must have come from extremely wealthy nobility, because the estate was huge. Room after room that my father and I had ignored. Some of the rooms were bare, but others held the remains of well-made furniture and rich household items. I wanted to understand my family, because in that moment I knew that I had never known the shape of my history. And so I went carefully through the estate, room by room. I found a silver necklace, and I have no way of knowing if my mother ever wore it, but holding it felt a bit like touching her. Perhaps my father had given it to her, but my father had come from a merchant family, and wasn’t likely to have the money for a gift like this.
Then I found the most precious treasure in the estate. In a writing desk that had been merely singed, I found a locked drawer. I allowed an aspect of my criminality to stretch its legs again, as I quickly and easily picked the lock. Inside were a stack of letters. They were love letters my mother had written to my father. They were kept in this study that no one entered after she had died. It was the ghost of my parents I was holding, in crackling, yellowed parchment. I took the letters with me, but didn’t tell Albert what they were. He didn’t ask. He respected that there was much about myself I wouldn’t tell him yet, and much more I would never tell him, and he accepted that he had my present, and so he didn’t need to have my past.
I savored the letters, reading them only one every week or two. There weren’t many, and I knew I would all too soon run out. They were sweet, slight things, but each revealed an entire world of my mother that I had never known. Funny, full of love for her family, especially my grandmother who organized the house while my grandfather was off handling diplomatic matters or whatever it was that nobles spent their time doing when they traveled. I also learned from these letters that my mother had a younger sister, who, at least as my mother told it, followed her around at all times, imitating my mother in that kind of worship that can happen between siblings on good terms.
And of course there was my father, who she clearly loved so completely. She found my father deeply attractive, and at times I had to jump ahead in a letter, flushing as though I were a child peeking at them around a doorframe. Perhaps these were not my letters to read, but what else did I have left of my parents? Didn’t I deserve at least this? I wasn’t sure what I deserved but I read them anyway. Because, more than anything, there was the language. My mother turned from concept to flesh as I discovered her sense of humor, and the words she regularly used when she was searching for the right turn of phrase, and what she liked (dogs, bread, sunlight reflecting off water onto the leafy canopy of a tree) and what annoyed her (rats, celery, the short days of winter, her sister sometimes, but that last one with a tolerant love). I was, for the first time, getting truly acquainted with the woman who had died so I could live, although I’m sure if she was given that choice before they had conceived she might have rethought things. Certainly I would not have held it against her.
Meanwhile Albert and I talked through our wedding. It would have to be in a church so that it could be official, although neither of us had much patience for that. His worship had always been around cultivation and soil, the feeling of palm on earth, the drift of pollen in the air. Mine was around the complications of the human mind. I had seen too many permutations of what we are capable of to believe in the necessity of someone else waving the baton. We were far too busy with the harvest to get to the wedding right away, and we decided on six months from then. I don’t know why that amount of time. It’s not like we had family and friends that needed to be arranged. My friends surely thought I was dead, and let them. It was better that the woman I had been stay disappeared. She had little relationship to the woman I was now, I thought.
We were wrapping up the harvest when I picked the next letter from the pile and realized that it was not from my mother at all, but was in fact addressed to her. It was written by her sister and was full of family gossip and stories from the royal court that she was visiting in neighboring Luftnarp. I smiled at the fondness in my aunt’s words—how delightful to get to know my mother’s sister, whom only a few months ago I had no idea even existed. I noted in my aunt a fiercer streak of independence than my mother had perhaps given her credit for. She was a woman who would do fine in the world. I thought maybe my mother’s sister was still alive, and that I may visit her someday, to try to see some of my mother’s face—my own face—in another person. But then I reached the end of my aunt’s letter and saw her name: Nora. Nora who was visiting Luftnarp as part of a marriage arrangement, because the family would not stand for both of their daughters married outside of nobility. Nora, who would become Lady Nora of Luftnarp. My mother had a sister, Nora, whom I had ruined and then murdered.
I felt Vlad’s knife once again piercing my stomach. I had let my old life go, let Edmond go, let the Order of the Labyrinth and The Duke’s Own go, let it all go for my life with Albert. I did not cry upon seeing Nora’s name. I only sat silently with the pain.
3
Harvest passed in a daze. The physical labor was a blessing. The heft of the oranges, and sight of them, clusters of green and orange in these huge stacks, bundled into the brown sacks and loaded onto carts to be taken to the docks and cities. I welcomed these distractions. Because any time I had to myself, I went over and over what I had known about Lady Nora. All of my information had come from Edmond. It was Edmond who told me of her reputation and her crimes. Edmond who reported on her violent responses to what we had done. Edmond, always Edmond. And the men who had acted in the name of Lady Nora? When had I ever seen proof that they were Luftnarpian soliders? Had I paid close attention to the accuracy of their uniforms? Or had I seen men who were paid by an evil man to come after me and my people and claim to do so on behalf of my aunt, so that I could be used as a tool against my own family.
Edmond wasn’t content with my father, or even with me. My father had threatened Edmond’s ambitions in the name of my father’s family, and so it was that family that Edmond had set out to fully destroy. First he made me into his creature, a weapon of criminal intent, exactly what my father always feared I would become. Then, as an act of pure sadism, he had turned that weapon upon my mother’s sister, a noblewoman whose true reputation and personality perhaps I would never know, becau
se I had so fully believed the vile woman that Edmond had created for me. I was a fool. And I was a monster, for what I had done to my own family, as credulous and cruel as a child.
The months passed, and harvest was over, and the summer months were a series of sunny days that I considered blankly, lost in the darkness within myself. Albert surely noticed my brooding and introspection, as he often brought me cheese or fresh pomegranates and sat to talk with me when I was alone and quiet for too long. By that point, he knew so much of my life, my crimes, my adventures, but I could not tell him about Nora. I could not tell him how I tormented and killed a family member out of blind vengeance. Because I could let go of my father’s death, and the loss of our home, and the betrayal of someone we trusted, and the years I wasted as a criminal. I could let go of my need for my revenge, and my ideas about what justice might look like. But with all of that behind me, I still had this guilt upon me. Did I deserve happiness after what I had done to Lady Nora, to my mother’s little sister? I couldn’t let go on her behalf. It wasn’t mine to forgive. I wanted nothing more than to marry Albert, to live out this life around the soil and the sun, but I didn’t think I deserved that. My face burned with anger at myself, at the world, and at Edmond. All I had let go over many years, had returned to me at once. There had to be consequences for my crimes and for Edmond’s. Or else, what hope was there for quiet, simple lives like Albert’s?
On the night I knew I would leave, I made dinner for Albert. I slaughtered a chicken, cooked it with orange peel and wine. Summer vegetables. Bread. I tried to communicate to him through the food I made. Usually he was the one who cooked. He accepted this turn around in our duties without question, simply letting me go about the actions that frankly I was not as practiced at as him.
