She choked back a laugh, or a sob, he wasn’t sure which. ‘Are you …?’
‘Back.’ After a moment his face stopped feeling like there was a flea nest underneath his skin and he managed to part his eyelashes a crack. He saw her eyes clearly then, wide dark pools of fear. But around her was still a jumble. He wasn’t fully returned. ‘Speak again,’ he said and strained his hearing to lock onto her voice.
‘Speak again …’ she repeated,’… bright angel, for though art as glorious to this sight, being o’er my head, as is a winged messenger of heaven unto the white-upturned wond’ring eyes of mortals …’ She trailed off, pressing her lips together tightly. He could see her lips now, small and pink, could tell that the blur of green behind her would resolve itself into trees. Trusted that it would. He had the template back in his mind. Magoria. He knew how it was put together and now his brain could make sense of it.
‘I owe you one,’ he whispered, smiling up into her eyes. He closed his own for a moment to take a deep shuddering breath out of relief and the incredible feeling of knowing his life would go on. What a surprise that he’d struggled so hard against death. Or limbo. Or wherever he’d been. He opened his eyes again. ‘You saved my life.’
‘Twice,’ she said solemnly.
‘Then I owe you two.’ Vandal wasn’t ready to take his eyes from hers yet, although he saw the periphery of his vision firming, felt his mind settling.
‘Two lives?’ She frowned, twin ridges between her eyebrows.
Such a narrow face. He could see her hair now, black as his own, straight with a severe middle part and tucked behind her ears. The dark skin of her Aboriginal ancestors.
‘You’ve got flecks of gold in your eyes,’ he said.
She turned away. He heard a scrabbling sound and then she was putting her glasses on one-handed. She turned back to him, the pretty dark eyes obscured by thick lenses, her cheeks as red as sunburn. ‘Took them off to do CPR.’
‘Right.’ Cheese anyone? The impersonation was complete. He remembered now that they called her Mouse. She’d looked so different without the glasses. His gaze wandered And out of her shapeless school tunic and in shorts and a T-shirt, there were other improvements he could see. Not in the league of the swimming class girls he fantasised about, but still, a long way from ugly.
‘Can you walk?’ she asked stiffly. ‘I could help you up.’
His attention returned to her face and the dreadful glasses. He could fix that. Fix her eyes so she didn’t have to wear them. It would be within his power. Not now of course. He’d need to rest for a couple of days, do some self-healing rituals. But later. Would she appreciate that? Could she keep quiet about it? And more pressing at the moment, how much had she actually seen?
‘Why are you here?’ he asked.
She held his gaze but not a word came out of her mouth.
‘Petra?’
‘I’m here … to rescue you,’ she said and kept looking into his eyes, as though the answer to his question lay there. ‘I thought you’d be grateful.’ she added softly.
‘I am,’ he said quickly as guilt overrode his curiosity It didn’t matter why she was there. Call it destiny. Luck ‘But what did you see?’
‘I saw …’ Her pupils were so dilated Vandal couldn’t see the gold flecks any more. ‘… you were drowning. I pulled you out. You had difficulty focusing your eyes. I don’t think it’s brain damage. It was barely a minute that you weren’t breathing. Maybe … you hit your head when you fell. Concussion.’ Her soft voice trailed off and he had the distinct impression she was hiding something. Her cheeks were still red. ‘Do you want your shirt,’ she whispered.
‘I don’t know if I could put it on,’ he said and closed his eyes again. ‘I feel like a truck hit me.’
Silence; then, ‘One nearly did. A month ago.’
Vandal considered that statement from behind closed eyelids. She’d seen him on his bike playing chicken with the semi. Had she also seen him healing the cuts and bruises he’d got out of it? ‘Did you tell anyone?’ he asked.
She said nothing so he opened his eyes and was surprised to see her bottom lip trembling.
‘Petra?’
She shook her head, lips pressed tightly together now.
He felt a tug on his hand, remembered he was holding her, and let go. The trees behind her were trees again. His head hurt but everything looked normal. He didn’t need her any more, but, ‘Are you okay?’
She nodded, a jerky movement. Then a tear ran from behind her glasses down her cheek. She turned away.
‘Wait.’ He struggled to sit up and caught her arm before she could escape. ‘What’s wrong?’
She wouldn’t turn back to him, but instead mumbled into the hand that was covering her face. ‘I was so scared —’
‘Of me?’ The idea horrified Vandal. She’d saved his life. He should be thanking her, not —
‘Scared you were going to die,’ she moaned and tried to get her arm back. Her hand wavered into his line of sight and Vandal felt as though someone had punched him in the gut. The brown skin of her tiny wrist was purpled with bruises.
He immediately spread his fingers in shock, releasing her, and she snatched the wrist away, cradling it against her chest as she rocked, her back still turned towards him, her breath hiccupping between sobs. She looked small and defenceless, like a sparrow with a broken wing.
Vandal could barely comprehend what he’d done. In his desperation to keep hold of his world, to find his way back, he’d selfishly used Petra’s arm as if it was a safety railing. Any more pressure and he’d have snapped bones. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He felt dizzy and wasn’t sure whether it was weakness from his ordeal or guilt at the damage he’d done to her. ‘Let me …’ heal that, he’d wanted to say. To hell with keeping his secret. He’d hurt her. He’d hurt a girl. He had to fix that. But he couldn’t because the darkness was closing in on him again, buzzing in his ears, making him feel hot. And this time there was no fighting it. ‘Wait!’ he managed to say before the discordant sound grew louder and he swayed, then heard the thump of his body landing back on the dried mud. His hand flailed beside him to find water as he focused on the words of the self-healing ritual.
Ancient powers find in my hand the sacred element of our land. He couldn’t say it aloud and hoped that repeating the words in his mind would work.
This water that gives Magoria its hue, restore my strength to that I knew.
‘Vandal?’ A soft sound coming from outside his consciousness. A sniffle. Then later a sensation of cold on his forehead, the back of his neck. More water. She was unwittingly helping him perform the ritual. He repeated the invocation in his mind, trying to block out her words. Failed. ‘I’m so stupid,’ she whispered, and inside himself Vandal winced. ‘Feeling sorry for myself. You’re the one who’s hurt.’
No, he wanted to say, it’s you, but he was sinking deeper into the trance. He hoped she’d wait until he came back to himself so he could tell her. But the last thing he heard was his own voice inside his mind saying, You’re right, it is her. She’s the one.
CHAPTER TEN
‘You wouldn’t listen to me last time I told you there was something strange about my brother,’ Khatrene whispered, brushing aside a thin vine that had blown into her face.
‘The King was drugged then,’ Talis whispered back, hating to argue with his beloved but determined to set her thoughts along the path his followed. ‘What you see in his eyes now is not the same.’
‘I just said that.’ Her voice was overloud and she put up a hand to show that she’d realised. ‘It’s nothing sexual,’ she said more quietly. ‘But it feels dangerous.’
They both glanced back to where they’d left Breehan and Mihale in a misty forest clearing a half-day climb from the royal Volcastle. The old Plainsman rested on the fungus-covered ground, his gaze locked on the talisman that hung from Mihale’s neck. Their king stood in dappled sunlight with his back against a tree. Neither man showed they had heard
Khatrene’s remark.
The rest break was to refresh them before they reached the steep mountain trail and were hopefully aided past the Northmen and into the Volcastle. But the smoke code Talis had planned to send aloft when they reached open ground would not be as easily read by the Volcastle sentries now that the wind had strengthened.
Only that morning they had come across the remnants of a Raider snagged in the twisted branchings of a spirewood, dropped there by a capricious wind. His shredded body had been all but severed from the misshapen albino head. Probably caught in the open. As they now were. Though Talis was near to exhaustion, he knew he would have to move them on soon.
‘He’s acting as if he mistrusts us,’ Khatrene said quietly.
‘Or is displeased.’
‘About what?’
Talis took a slow breath, preparing himself for his beloved’s reaction. ‘It could be that he wishes your love given to one who is of a station to accept it.’
Khatrene said nothing, simply stared at him, her beautiful royal-hued eyes wide with disbelief. Her snow hair had fallen again from its restraint to tumble around her face like the curling white water of a river rapid. Her aura, like a weak copy of the rainbows of Magoria she had described, bled into the forest around them. At last she found her voice. ‘What has that got to do with anything?’
‘Your brother is brusque in his manner.’ Talis tried to sound calm but the fear in his heart was difficult to overcome. ‘I believe it is displeasure that makes him so.’
‘Displeasure that I’m in love with you?’
‘I am not of noble blood —’
‘Please.’ She looked so stricken Talis wished he could recall his words. ‘I can’t believe we’re having this argument. Again. I love you.’ Seconds ticked by as a frown grew on her forehead. ‘But if you don’t love me any more …’
‘No.’ He took her hand and drew her behind a thicket. ‘My heart has not changed,’ he said softly, ‘yet grows each day as the love between us feeds it.’
She looked up into his eyes, her own full of concern. ‘Show me,’ she said.
Talis knew only one way. He lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers, knowing he must be careful that they were not seen, yet losing that care the moment her breath meshed with his and her lips parted. It had been so long. Her hands went to his hair, his shoulders, grasping his arms as she pressed against him, and every thought to protect them from her brother’s eyes fled his mind. Her body felt hot beneath his hands and her mouth was like a whirlpool of sweetness, drawing him towards pleasure and away from grief.
Such was his fear that she could not be his, Talis almost lost himself in that moment, almost lay her beneath him on the soft leaves underfoot to claim what his heart had told him was his, theirs. But instead, when she tugged on his arms to do just that, he resisted and pulled her away, looking down into her darkened eyes with more confusion and grief than before.
‘I cannot take what is not mine to claim,’ he said.
She blinked. ‘Claim?’ The word sounded bitter on her lips.
‘We are not wed.’
‘We couldn’t wed,’ she reminded him, ‘because I was already married to a man who’d killed my parents and was planning to kill me, a man who stabbed my brother right before my eyes.’ She jabbed a finger towards the clearing where Mihale stood but Talis could not look away from her eyes. He ached for the pain he saw there. She drew in a deep shuddering breath before she continued. ‘None of that mattered when we were running away from him. We made love every day. We love each other.’ She pulled on his hand to lead him back to the clearing. ‘I’m not going to let Mihale stand in the way of —’
‘No,’ Talis hissed, and used his superior strength to keep her at his side. ‘Please. Let us not tax the King’s mind when it may yet be weakened by his return from death. Perhaps that is why he speaks strangely. We will reach the Volcastle this very day and there we can devise a plan to reunite you with your daughter.’
Khatrene was distracted by this as he had known she would be.
‘Once we are settled there …’ His eyes pleaded with hers to see the sense of his words.
Her expression lightened and he could see she was swayed. ‘Alright. No obvious shows of affection, but I hate that I have to wait.’
He smiled to encourage her, relieved that she had softened and could understand his fears. ‘As do I,’ he reassured her. ‘Not a moment goes by that I do not ache to …’ He trailed off as a slow smile touched her lips.
‘Claim what belongs to you?’ Mischief lit up her eyes and she kissed him again, this time slowly and with such deliberate seduction that Talis found he was in no fit state to return to his king when she eased away from him. ‘I’m not waiting forever,’ she whispered. ‘You’re mine, and I intend to claim you,’ her hand brushed the front of his breeches and Talis knew real torture then, ‘whether my brother approves or not.’ She tucked one of her many errant curls behind her ear and gave him a knowing glance before strolling off towards camp, pausing once to glance over her shoulder at him and smile.
Talis moved back behind the hedge to compose himself and wait for his ardour to soften, but her wicked sense of humour and the deliberate way she had teased him did not aid his cause. She could not sway him with words so she had used her body. Yet rather than being angered, Talis loved her all the more. She had proven a formidable enemy to her husband, and now Talis was discovering that her love was as invincible as her determination had been.
Yet much though his thoughts craved to dwell on his beloved from sunrise till nightfall, they inevitably returned to their king and the duty Talis owed him. Since the moment Mihale had awoken from his semblance of death and seen Talis kissing Khatrene, there had been awkwardness between them all. He could only hope that their fast return to the Volcastle would set that to rights.
If not, at least it would afford him privacy in which to break the law.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Vandal sat in semidarkness in the last row of a hot auditorium staring at the back of Petra Mabindi’s head, five rows in front. The tired airconditioning unit behind him wheezed so loudly he could barely hear his science teacher, Mr Comma, prattling on about stars. The slide show on the screen behind him was equally forgettable — Hubble Telescope pictures that had been old when his father had arrived on Ennae a decade and a half ago.
Not that it mattered. Vandal didn’t believe what his teacher was saying anyway. Oh, the facts about their own universe, maybe. But not his assumptions about time and the nature of space. Ennae had no stars. Vandal knew that from the Brown Kingdom stories his father had told him. A world with two moons and no stars in its night sky. Wonder which corner of the universe Mr Comma thought that lay in? Then again, maybe Mr Comma didn’t believe what he was saying either. He was probably prattling on simply because he was paid to.
Vandal’s attention strayed back to Petra. He hadn’t been able to catch her alone to speak to her all week. He wasn’t sure where she’d hidden during lunch hours, maybe in the girls’ toilets, but he’d searched everywhere else: the library, the tuckshop, the sports rooms where the older girls went to borrow hover hoops and drool over the new sports teacher. Naturally she hadn’t been there. She hadn’t been anywhere.
All his exertion had gained him was the usual contemptuous glances from his peers. But now he and Petra were in the same class and he had the seat closest to the door. He’d get out first and confront her. Then she’d have to talk to him, explain why she’d left the lake before he’d regained consciousness.
He was pretty sure she hadn’t told anyone. At least, no one had come to take him away. His father was the true alien, but Vandal had seen enough sci-fi movies to know that if the government found out about him he’d end up in a lab somewhere having his Guardian blood drained for analysis.
Keeping his powers secret had been a terrible burden, made worse by his mother’s stony silences. Petra discovering him should have freaked him out, but instead he’
d been swamped with relief and the desperate desire to finally talk about it, to tell Petra how amazed he’d been when he’d healed his first cut. Maybe one day he’d tell her how he struggled with anger at his father for leaving them, how hard it was not to be crushed by his mother’s indifference. But sharing the secret of his powers came first. He only hoped he could get past his reputation as a loser. And if that was why she was avoiding him, he’d have to convince her otherwise, because he was determined to heal her bruised arm.
He knew nothing about Petra apart from the fact that she was in the same year as he was, had made the debating team, obviously knew CPR and was appallingly short-sighted, but he wanted to trust her. He was going to trust her. If only he could pin her down.
The auditorium lights snapped on and Vandal blinked. ‘Next Friday, last session,’ Mr Comma said over the sound of bags being dragged off the wooden floor. ‘We’ll come straight here for part two of “My Galaxy, My Universe”.’
Kids were already standing up, girls plucking their sweaty tunics off the back of their legs and whispering about God only knew what, boys jostling and shoving each other.
Vandal, who always sat alone, was up and on his way to the door, trying to find Petra’s dark head in the crowd, but she was shorter than the others. Not that it mattered. There was only one exit. He stepped through and waited two steps past it, his eyes searching the sweaty throng as they emerged. Finally he saw her, obviously trying to hide in a pack of taller girls.
Without compunction he leant in and grabbed her hand. ‘Petra,’ he said, hauling her out, to the stunned surprise of those watching. The girls around her stopped and stared, blocking the doorway. Petra snatched her hand back and kept her eyes on her feet, but her falling hair couldn’t hide the red blocks of colour on her cheeks. For a horrible five seconds nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Even the mob trapped in the auditorium grew quiet, as though sensing the scene outside.
Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 Page 7
