by Lisa Daniels
When I slept, I went back to the place that I had never really left.
I had been born in a small island country that was far from the shores of any countries. When a huge storm destroyed almost everything, many of the survivors left. I was only four at the time and did not remember much. A neighbor had found me cowering against my dead father and took me away. I wish I could say that it was out of the kindness of his heart, but the man definitely was anything but kind. Eight years after leaving that island, I ran away from the abusive home and wandered along the streets, keeping to the forest whenever I heard anyone on the road. I was not going to return to that man.
When I reached a small city, I found it much easier to survive on the streets. As long as people thought I was a boy, the abuse was easier to manage. I learned to fight and scrap like anyone else who lived in the gutters of a city.
Then came the war. I was 15 at the time, and thought that joining the military where I would be fed regularly and have a bed to sleep in would be a welcome change. If I had to fight with a weapon, that was more than what I had on the street. It could not possibly be any worse than the life I was living.
I was very wrong.
The next two and a half years I spent fighting in far-off places with people I didn’t know and who spoke a language I could not understand. The daily scenes of dismemberment and death ate away at me, and I found it nearly impossible to pull myself up in the morning to face it again. I learned that to protect myself from worse, I had to hide the fact that I was a woman. I began to bind my chest to make myself appear muscular instead of busty.
During one skirmish, I was critically injured, and my comrades left me for dead. I waited for the vultures or the enemy to finish me off as I lay there staring into the clear, blue sky. It was the first peaceful moment that I could remember. The belief that it was the end, and that soon I would no longer want or need anything.
A warm voice spoke, and I tried to lift my sword as my eyes tried to find the source. A sword came into view as I felt pressure on my own sword. I felt it be kicked away as a man stood over me. His clear grey eyes looked down at me, then he tilted his head. I did not understand what he said, but he quickly put his sword away and yelled something to people behind him. Seconds later, he lifted me up.
Despite the pain it caused me, I screamed and tried to push him away. The man merely sighed and looked down at me. His words meant nothing to me, but the tone was gentle, almost calming. The anger, resentment, and cruelty that I was accustomed to seeing was lacking from his eyes. At the time I did not recognize pity.
Looking at him later, I would realize that the man wasn’t that much older than me. He dressed my wounds and chatted at me in his strange language. I kept waiting for him to decide that I was well enough that he could claim me. But he didn’t. Months passed and his only interest in me was nursing me back to health and getting me away from the fields of battle. He took to calling me his little falcon. I was slightly taller than the average woman, so I had no idea what about me had made him select that epithet. I never even thought to ask.
I would later learn that he was not actually a soldier, but a healer. He had been asked to help in the fight when it reached his lands, and the man had obliged.
Over time, I began to understand bits and pieces of his conversations, mostly because he would gesticulate wildly to make sure I understood what he meant. Occasionally he would get visitors, and it was when they were present that I learned his name: Phinean Falmen. The look of shock on his face when I first called him by his name had been imprinted on my memory, and I could still recall it at will, even if the edges of that memory were a little blurred.
When I was able to move on my own, he refused to let me return to the fighting, stating that it was no place for me. Even with a dagger to his throat, the man insisted that I couldn’t leave, his gentle tones more disarming than any weapon a soldier carries.
After a while, I began to understand that I didn’t have to return to the fighting. That Phinean was not only willing to let me stay, but that he would never kick me off of his lands. His parents had died the year before the fighting reached his home, and he had been left in control of a large place. Of course, his parents had taught him what he needed to know, but that did not lessen the pain of losing them. Servants bustled around the place, which I did not even realize until I had been there for months. Phinean would not let anyone else take care of me, and he made sure that I was well before introducing me to anyone else. Later I would suspect it was because he was afraid of my reaction if I woke to a room full of people, but he never offered a reason. He was thoughtful, kind, and compassionate, none of which made any sense to me. Wild and unapologetic, I treated him as I had the other people of the streets in the city and my fellow fighters on the battlefield. He took it all with a smile and a look of pity in his eyes.
More than a year passed before I began to act more like a human than an animal. When I started to speak haltingly in his language, Phinean was shocked and pleased. Setting me up with a tutor, he made sure that I learned well enough to get by with the essential phrases.
My thanks was to ask him what he wanted with me. Having moved around often in my first decade of life, I had a knack for learning languages when it was needed, a skill that I had never shown anyone before.
Phinean’s laugh surprised me. “I just want you to be you. Why should I want anything else from you?”
“Because people always want something. No one does anything without expecting something in return.”
“Well, you have known the wrong people.”
“There are no right people or wrong people. There are only people, and they are all the same.”
“So if you were to find me wounded, you would want something in return for saving me?” His eyes twinkled as he asked.
“No. Because I would kill you. You are the enemy.”
He looked surprised for a moment, then he let out a heavy sigh. “Am I still your enemy?”
“No. You are someone that I owe now. I could not kill you now because I owe you.”
“So if you were to find me bleeding in the fields tomorrow, would you expect something in return for helping me?”
“Of course not. It would mean that I repaid you. We would be even.”
“After saving me, would you leave me to die in the field if I were injured next week?”
“How stupid are you to get hurt again in the fields?”
He watched me for moment, then broke into laughter. “Obviously, I am a special kind of stupid. Okay, let me try something else. If you were to find your tutor injured in the city, would you help without asking for anything?”
Rolling my eyes, I cursed. “Of course I would help because I owe her, too. She has been teaching me. Though it would have to be a minor injury because she has also tortured me.”
Phinean laughed again, “You are making this far more difficult than is necessary.” He looked at me with an expression that I would later realize was amusement. “What if you found an injured child?”
I opened my mouth to say something offhanded, but then stopped. My mouth hung open as I considered what I would do if I found a child. When I was young, I still tried to help the kids who were smaller and weaker than I was. “I would help a child.”
“And what would you expect in return?”
“For the child to live. A child has nothing to offer me.”
“Maybe not now, but that child may grow up. Would you expect repayment later?”
I frowned, “No, because I would never see that child again.”
“What if you did?”
His questions were starting to give me a headache. Knocking over the pitcher of water, I jumped up and screamed, “No more questions! You are hurting me!”
Servants ran into the room. I don’t know how he dismissed them, but I heard them leave without any words being uttered. A warm pair of hands held my shoulders and pushed me gently back into the chair.
“I am sorry
that have hurt you. It was not my intention.”
“Then you shouldn’t ask so many questions. You have too many questions,” I mumbled.
“I just wanted you to understand that I don’t want anything from you. When I feel that you are healed, I will let you leave.”
“But I am healed. Look!” I jumped up and moved as if I had a sword. “See? I can fight, yet you won’t let me leave.”
“Your body is healed, but not your mind. It is going to take some time before that is better. I doubt you will ever fully be restored, but I can at least get you down a different path.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“And yet that is still more than you know.”
I cursed and swore in a different language. I told him that he couldn’t keep looking down on me because I was the better fighter. I had proved that.
“But you didn’t kill me. And you didn’t leave.”
I glared at him when he pointed that out.
He patted the top of my head as I glared up into his clear grey eyes. “You are always welcome here. You are not my prisoner—you are my patient. I don’t expect anything from you.”
“You must want something, and you will spring it on me when I don’t expect it.”
“You have already said that you would not ask for repayment.”
“Not from a child. Of course not.”
“And I feel the same way about you.”
This made me angry. “I am not a child! I am a full-grown woman. I can even have babies now.”
He chuckled a little before saying, “I have no interest in having children yet. There is still too much I need to do before I can offer a woman and children a safe home.”
This baffled me because I had seen where he lived. “What more could you need? This place is safer than anywhere I have ever been!”
“That is both sad and alarming. But I was not speaking of the physical things I have to offer. I meant that I am not yet man enough, I am not the person I need to be to take on a home life.”
This made no sense to me at the time. “Is your manhood broken? Did somebody cut it off?”
His eyes opened wide and his mouth was agape. Then Phinean let out the loudest laugh I ever heard from him. When he could finally talk, he brushed the tears from his cheek. “I assure you that my manhood is still very much intact, and that it is likely one of the most functional instruments any man has claim to. No, my little falcon, that is not at all what I mean.” He changed the subject, but my mind lingered on the curiosity of what he meant.
I would soon learn about the world that Phinean inhabited when he wasn’t at home. While he took good care of me and his servants, to the outside world he was someone else entirely. When I no longer required his attention to heal me, Phinean would go out to brothels and bars, living the kind of life I had no idea existed.
When I first encountered him outside of his home, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of him. I had followed him out of the home, mostly out of curiosity. As peaceful as it was, his home made me restless. I snuck away from the place without anyone seeing me leave. I followed him and was able to enter all of the same places as I was dressed as a man. I could never enter as far into the places as he did because I had no coin, but what I learned from the women who fawned over me upon entry told me more than enough about what went on inside. I panicked and fled from the brothel to the jeers and laughter of the women inside.
I followed him a few times after that, but was disappointed that he always seemed to go to the same types of places. It seemed as boring to me as his home. And a part of me was angry that he did it.
Several months passed before I found myself brave enough to confront him about it. Even I had to admit that my approach was sorely lacking, though.
“Why do you go to those places?” I stood in front of him, my hands on my hips, my bound chest heaving.
“What kind of places, my little falcon?” His look was amused as he hung up his hat and coat.
“The kind of places with smelly women and lies.”
This caused him to freeze. His face turned slowly to me. “I’m afraid that does not help me to understand what you mean.” That was a lie, and I could see it in his eyes. I didn’t know what he was trying to do.
Marching forward toward him, I ran a finger down the side of his face and held it under his nose. “That kind of stench. You reek of those women.”
He grabbed my wrist. To my surprise, he took out a handkerchief and wiped off my finger. “Be careful, my little falcon. That smell has no place on you.”
I pulled away, the anger in me rising. “It has no place on you either.”
His tone was as calm as ever as he moved further into his home. “It has had a place on me for my entire adult life.”
“Why would you do that? What makes you go out to see those women?”
“Companionship. A yearning for the touch of a woman. They are not things I would—”
“They don’t love you. They love your money.” I thought saying this would make him understand.
“Of course. And I don’t love them. I love the feel of them. That is all that they are to me. And all that I am to them. Lust and greed.”
“You are better than that. I thought you were better, different than other men.”
“I am no more or less than the flawed person you see before you. Whatever you have made me to be in your mind is not who I am.”
“Then why did you lie to me?”
“I did not lie to you, little falcon. I simply did not show you the side of me that brings me shame.”
“But you saw all sides of me. You never let me hide from you.”
He gave me a sad smile, “No, but I did not find you in a state where that was a possibility either. Healers always see the worst sides of people, and it makes us more aware of our own failings. ”
“You know it is wrong, then?”
He pursed his lips, “I know that it… does not help me.”
“Then don’t do it.”
With a shrug of his shoulders, Phinean conveyed his feelings on the matter. “That is easier said than done.”
“But you have me here. You have servants here, too. Other women,” I pointed out, not thinking through my words before blurting them out.
His eyes took me in for a moment as he let me realize what I had said. Slowly he shook his head, “That is not what servants do for their masters. I would never take advantage of the women in my home. Never. I may be flawed, but I will not stoop to that.”
“I am not a servant,” I said, glaring at him.
His eyes looked at me for what felt like forever before he said, “I do not think you understand what you are suggesting.”
“You saved me. You could use me for repayment.”
He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. “I told you, you will never owe me for saving you. I didn’t save you to use you.”
“Do you find me so repulsive that you cannot consider me as a woman?”
Phinean’s eyebrows shot up at the question, and for a fraction of a second, he really looked at me. For the first time, I felt he was looking at me as something more than a patient. “Your physical attractiveness has nothing to do with anything. I didn’t save you to be repaid or for you to feel that your body should be debased. You can choose to do with your body what you will, but I will not accept it as payment.”
“Other men have. Are you trying to say you are better than them?”
His expression shifted for a second, and I recognized pity. Not waiting for a response, I turned and stormed out of the room. I heard him say, “Little falcon,” but I refused to turn to look at him.
That night I slept fitfully, my mind constantly on Phinean. I was angry and upset, but the tears confused me the most. By the next morning, I was gone.
I wound up in a large city far from Phinean’s home by the end of the year. I had met Mrs. Teasdon, who learned what I was, a strange woman who dressed and acted like a man. It was
she who helped me understand that I had fallen in love with Phinean, and she tried to persuade me to go back. When I flat-out refused, she let me stay with her family until that fateful day when I decided to become a member of the city guard. I knew that women weren’t allowed to serve, that in this country women had fewer rights than almost anywhere I had been.
But I didn’t want to be a woman, weak and needing the protection of a man. To prove to myself that my heart had been wrong, I had joined the guard, and worked my way up the ranks.
When I slept I still saw the fighting, dying, and blood of the streets that I grew up on and the war that I had fought. But I preferred them to the memory of that handsome face with the expressive grey eyes. The way his hands had taken care of me when I was wounded and ill, and how he instructed me after I had healed never went too far from my mind. I had loved him, and it had been the most painful experience of my life.
I never learned what happened to him, if Phinean had ever settled down and finally had his family. If he continued to live that debaucherous life. Or if he even bothered to look for me. Over the years I would come to suspect that I had been a way for him to prove to himself that there was more to him than that empty life he lived. That he would never love me because that was not what I was to him.
Instead of dwelling on it, I had moved on with my life. I had presented myself as a man, the kind of man that I felt the world lacked. The only times when I allowed myself to remember what I had left were moments of panic or sorrow. Only then would I pray for Phinean’s help one more time. In my mind, he had become something else, too—not quite a god, but no longer a human. At some point he ceased to be the man that I loved.
