by Myke Cole
Heloise was silent at that.
“You never . . . ?” Basina asked.
“Me?” Heloise could feel herself blushing. “Ah . . . No. Well, once one of the Bricker boys tricked me into going behind the shrine with him, and he tried to kiss me.”
“Did you?”
“No. Maybe a little.”
“You were scared? Was he ugly?”
“At first I didn’t mind . . . but then I worried that Papa might find out, and I kept thinking of Mother’s face if she heard I’d been disgraced. Then I didn’t like it and I ran away.”
“My mother says it’s not a disgrace so long as you don’t do it with everyone and so long as it’s just kissing.”
Heloise laughed. Being near Basina in this perfect soft light made her feel like she was floating. “My mother would turn purple at that kind of talk.”
“Well, I never have, and I’m . . . I’m worried about it.”
“About kissing?”
“What if he doesn’t like the way I do it? What if it makes him not love me?”
“Oh, Basina, no one could ever not love you.” Heloise heard the heat in her words, didn’t care. She loved Basina. She loved her so much.
“You’re kind to me. Still, I worry. I’ve asked Mother, but she only says that I’ll know what to do when the time comes. But . . . what if I don’t?”
The heat was back, boiling up inside Heloise and banishing the cold until she felt grateful that she was not standing, for fear her legs would betray her. “We could . . . we could practice.”
Basina looked at her, eyes wide. “What, the two of us?”
Heloise’s mind screamed at her to look away, to say Basina had misunderstood, anything but face the possibility that Basina would be disgusted at the thought. No. You will be brave. You faced a Sojourner.
“We could,” Heloise said. “I mean, I’ll do it, if you will.”
Basina stared, and Heloise found herself blabbering to fill the silence. “You said you’re worried about not knowing how to do it, and I was only thinking that if we tried it here, then you’d know what to do, at least a little bit more than you do now, and that way you . . .”
“All right,” Basina said, sitting up.
“What?”
“All right. Let’s try it.”
The warmth in Heloise’s belly flared, crept lower. It was a strange, new feeling. Her head spun and her vision swam. She felt dizzy, but for some reason she liked it. It was a moment before she could speak. “All right.” Oh, Sacred Throne. Oh, Emperor. I’m going to kiss her. I’m going to kiss her.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Basina said. “If we do this. Just one kiss, just to practice.”
“Oh, of course,” Heloise could hear her words coming quick, tumbling over one another. “I wouldn’t want anyone to know either.”
They were both sitting up now, heads leaning close together. Heloise could smell the sweetness of Basina’s breath, feel it against her neck. Her best friend’s face was hidden in darkness, the edges lit by the soft glow of the crucible. “How do we start?” Basina asked.
“I . . . um. One of us should be the boy.”
Basina nodded. “That’s a good idea. Would you mind doing that? I need to practice being the girl. Not because of anything with you . . . it’s just that you’re not betrothed yet, so I’m the one who’s going to need to do it for real sooner.”
“Of course,” Heloise said. “That only makes sense.”
Heloise froze, terrified to move for fear that it would make Basina change her mind.
“So, you’re the boy,” Basina said. “That means you have to start.”
“Oh, yes. Sorry. All right.” But Heloise couldn’t move, her body betraying her as Basina’s mother had said it would, only in the opposite way she’d expected. The moment dragged out and Heloise feared it would be lost. She would be brave, like Basina was.
She pushed herself into motion, leaning into Basina, walking her hands forward on the packed earth floor.
Basina’s breath came closer. Heloise felt her hair brush her forehead, the tips of their noses gently touching. Their knees bumped together. She felt Basina’s cheek touch her own, realized that her friend was leaning in as well. Was there a part of Basina that wanted more than practice?
The thought sent ripples up Heloise’s belly and out into the rest of her, making her skin tingle and her toes go numb.
And then her body truly betrayed her.
When Heloise was very little, her father had made a small boat for her out of dried leaves and tallow, and set it floating in a brook. The toy boat had been tossed and spun, ripped this way and that by the competing currents, until the fragile structure could take no more, and came apart in a shower of brown flakes.
Heloise felt like that now, the current of her love carrying her helplessly along. Her movements came as if from a great distance, her conscious mind only aware of the wonderful heat that ran from the bottom of her ribs to the tops of her thighs.
Her stomach was full of fluttering wings, her head stuffed with clouds. Her eyes closed and she saw stars bursting, like the fireflowers the Kipti had set off in the market square three winters past. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and didn’t mind at all. Oh, Basina, you are the most perfect person in the world. Oh, Emperor. Oh oh oh oh.
Her hand reached out, grasping the back of Basina’s neck, pulling her in. Every fiber of her body reached for Basina, and she found herself pressed solidly against the girl, amazed by how their shapes fit together. She wanted to be closer, couldn’t get close enough.
Heloise felt as if she were drowning, but she didn’t care. She didn’t ever want to breathe again if it meant breaking away. She straightened enough to lift her other hand from the ground, pulling Basina with her, holding her close. Basina drew back, gulped air.
“Love you,” Heloise heard herself murmur, tightened her grip on the back of Basina’s neck, leaning after her, lips reaching for another kiss.
Finding nothing.
Basina gripped Heloise’s wrist, strained to break her hold.
She was pulling away.
Horror curdled in Heloise’s gut, the slow dawning of the realization that she’d made a terrible mistake. Too slow. For another moment, she refused to let Basina go. The crazy thought rose through her mind: if she could just kiss Basina again, it would be so wonderful that her friend’s resistance would cease and it would plunge them both back into the bliss she’d drowned in just a moment ago.
But Heloise was a factor’s daughter, her hands weak from years behind stylus and tablet, quill and parchment. Basina was possessed of the iron strength forged in her father’s workshop. Heloise’s hand broke away from Basina’s neck. Basina reached out and pushed once, violently. Heloise flew backward, skidding on her shoulders, the rough blanket saving her from tearing her clothes on the packed earth.
For a moment, the two girls were frozen: Heloise propped on one elbow. Basina on her knees, face a pale mask of shock.
Say something. Fix this. The words raced through Heloise’s mind, so many and so fast that they jumbled together, drowning in grief. An instant ago, she had been in the midst of the greatest joy she’d ever known, living a dream she hadn’t known she’d been dreaming. And just as quickly, she was sinking in horror. Had she said she loved her? Basina didn’t look like she loved her back. She looked terrified. As if Heloise had suddenly transformed into a giant spider, or a snarling dog.
“You . . . you . . .” Basina stammered.
The words were tangled in Heloise’s mind, so her mouth finally moved on its own. Heloise forced a smile, barked a hysterical laugh. Somewhere in her panicked mind, instinct had decided that she could pretend it was a joke, all a terrible misunderstanding. Basina couldn’t have really thought she was serious, could she?
“I was just pretending to be the boy. That’s what boys do.” Heloise heard her voice, heard the high, forced laughter, sounding like a madwoman. But she couldn’t stop.
Basina’s expression didn’t change.
“Basina, I was only . . .” Heloise got to her feet.
Basina lurched back onto her haunches, put her hands out in front of her. “Don’t.”
And then the laughter tipped over. The hysteria remained, but the mirth slipped into sobs, and there was no more pretense that it was joke. Heloise had done what she had done, and she couldn’t take it back. And now Basina hated her, and the only refuge she had was gone. Why was she so stupid? What did she think would happen? She deserved whatever was coming.
Yet the tears would not stop, and Heloise stood, crying, while Basina overcame some of her surprise and said, “You said you loved me. Not like friends. Like a girl loves a boy.”
Heloise could only nod, crying harder. I do, she thought, and I’ve been a fool and I’m sorry, and if you’ll only forget this and we can go back to the way things were, I promise I’ll never do anything like it again. Please don’t be angry. Please don’t hate me. Please don’t be frightened of me.
But Basina no longer looked frightened. Her expression had gone hard. “Heloise . . .”
But Heloise had already turned, started running. Maybe there was a chance she could still fix things if she would only stay and try to reason with Basina. It was after dark, she was alone. The Order was out there. She couldn’t go now.
“Heloise!” Basina shouted. “Heloise, wait!”
But Heloise’s body wasn’t done betraying her. She ran, tripping over Bolt and Blade, who yelped and snarled at her as she went down on her hands, scraping them raw.
She rose, went on running, digging in her pocket, desperate for the touch of the mouse’s soft, warm body. She only felt cold cloth, coarse and empty beneath her questing fingers. She remembered that the mouse had been sleeping on Basina’s blanket. He had likely scurried off when Basina had pushed her away. She was alone.
She scrambled to her feet as if a devil pursued her, and ran out of the door faster than she’d ever run. The tree line outside the Tinkers’ workshop was a black cloud settled across the gray landscape, dusted with diamonds from the stars that shone overhead.
The devil on Heloise’s heel was the realization of what she had done and the loss it assured. She ran with all she had to keep ahead of it. Branch tips stretched out to lick at her face as she cleared the first of the great trunks and disappeared into the depths of the wood.
Basina was betrothed. Basina did not love her. Heloise had lied to her, offered to practice kissing to help her be ready for her wedding night. But Heloise was gratifying her own lusts, not helping her friend at all. How could Basina call her a friend now? Now that she had betrayed her?
She forged deeper and deeper until all was darkness: gray, black, and the lashing thorns that were the kiss she knew she deserved.
I’m glad of Clodio. He’s mad as a hare, but there’s fight in him to his roots. After the fighting, he’s always got us laughing, even old Sigir, who’s as dour as iron.
Told us a story (not true, I’ll be bound) of the time he was in the South, and met the Sodan of the Algalifes. A prince of princes there, Clodio said, yet he always wore an iron manacle.
Clodio said he asked the Sodan why, and the great man said, “For all my might, I am a mere slave to the Kali.”
Not so different from us, then, these Algalifes. Even heretics have masters.
—From the journal of Samson Factor
CHAPTER 11: FUMBLING IN THE DARK
Heloise lost track of how long and how far she’d run. The forest was a tangle of rough branches reaching out from the darker shapes of moss-covered trunks. The ground was a treacherous enemy. She couldn’t count how many times she’d fallen, risen, gone on again. She only knew that she had to keep running, that if she stopped, she’d be forced to face what she’d just done. So long as she kept her mind busy with navigating through the rocks, roots, and branches, she wouldn’t have the time to think about it.
The forest grew thicker, shutting out the moon and stars, and the darkness closed in around her like a physical thing, the smoke of a close and greasy fire. She inhaled it, the air as heavy as in the Tinkers’ workshop, but cold now, and vile, stinking of the world taking back the dead into itself: rotting tree trunks and the carpet of dead leaves beneath her feet going slowly to mud.
Her body now launched its next betrayal. Her lungs began to burn, her breath coming in whooping gasps. Her legs went weak and refused to go on. She tried to drive them forward a few more steps, succeeded only in sinking to her knees.
And then the reckoning was upon her.
Her mind viciously recalled all that had happened. The warmth shooting through her body, the delicious drowning sensation, the giddy sense of floating on air. Basina pulling away. Her eyes going hard, her hands coming up.
The storm of memory broke and the tears came, overwhelming her. She pitched forward onto her hands. She gulped air, shrieked out her sorrow, heedless of whether the Order could hear, howling and stretching and finally forming into words. “I’m sorry!”
She heaved, collapsed on her side. Her eyes finally adjusted enough to make out the tree trunks nearest to her. They were giant things, larger than a man could circle with his arms. The moss clung to one in great clumps, giving the bark the appearance of a stern old man.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed again, but the old man’s face in the tree had no forgiveness for her. The wind sighed in the branches and the ground was wet and cold against her side. It didn’t care about her. Even Twitch was gone.
She could not bear the shame. She would close her eyes and will the breath out of her body. She was too weak to move anyway, and only pain awaited her any place she were to move to. Her mother and father both had warned her about wandering off into the woods on her own. The traveling Kipti could come and steal her away. There could be brigands, or bears, or worse. The Order was somewhere out there, probably gathered about their campfires, raising their heads at the sound of her shouted apology. It didn’t matter. Whoever came for her could have her. She stared at the old man in the tree’s mossy beard. The green thickness seemed to ripple.
Rustling leaves told her that whatever danger her parents had predicted had found her. At first, she thought it might be the wind, but then she heard the pause and intake of breath as whoever it was spotted her, followed by the deliberate sound of footsteps.
She was frightened, but the fear washed into a pool of relief that it would soon be over. She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered again, one last time.
“I know you are, child,” a voice answered, soft and gentle, “but there’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”
Hard hands slid under her knees and neck, cradling her head gently, folding her into a chest covered in rough wool that smelled like old leather and leaf mold. She felt the top of a hatchet head bump against her.
“It’s all right,” the voice said again, sighing like the wind, and she recognized it at last. She turned into the narrow chest and sobbed anew.
“It’s all right,” Clodio said. “I’ve got you.
“I’ve got you.”
The ranger carried her in his arms like a baby. He hummed as he walked, a nonsense tune of deep murmurs that only just sounded like words. She imagined herself in the arms of the old man in the tree, only now his face was kind and his moss beard soft and sweet smelling, pillowing her head as his hard wooden arms cradled her gently.
It was a silly, childish thought, but it fit the sound of Clodio’s humming, and for a moment the horror of what she’d done was kept at bay, unable to break through the bubble of safety Clodio had woven about her. He said he had her. He said she had nothing to be sorry for. It was the last shred of a life worth living, and she clung to it.
The ground finally gave up its treachery and went over to a steady, gradual rise, the trees thinning around them until the starlight pushed through the treetops.
One tree stood out above the rest, hugely thick around the base, rising straight
until its trunk ended in a jagged, uneven line in the air, twice as high as a tall man. As they drew closer, Heloise made out a light flickering from inside and realized it was the stone ruin of the roundhouse. Clodio had left a fire burning when he came for her. Out here in the wild with the Order about, that was a bold move.
“How did you find me?” she asked.
The humming stopped. “So, you’ve your wits about you, eh?” he said. “Down you go, then.”
He stopped and gently set her on her feet. She briefly clung to his neck, not wanting to leave the safety of his arms, but life couldn’t be avoided forever. Here, with Clodio, she felt like she could face it.
She tested her legs, found they would hold. Clodio stood back from her, setting his knuckles on his hips. “You don’t look too banged up, I suppose, for a girl running for her life through the wild wood on her own.”
“You aren’t answering me,” she said. “How did you find me?”
He laughed louder than she thought was wise when anything could be lurking in the dark. “I had help from a certain mouse.”
He held out his palm. Twitch stood on his hind legs, nose straining toward Heloise. He let out a small squeak at the sight of her.
She took him in her hand, bent her cheek to his soft fur. “I lost him.”
“He came running, whispered in my ear, told me you were in trouble. Of course, he wasn’t entirely sure where you’d gone, but he does have a better sense of smell than I. Got me close enough to hear you when you decided that you had something to say to the entire wood.”
“Stop it. You’re making up stories.”
Clodio’s face went serious. “Wizardry. Twitch is my eyes and ears, Heloise. I told you he would watch over you. I meant it.”
Heloise’s stomach turned over. “That’s not funny.”
Clodio shook his head, chuckling. “You’re not to be denied, are you? Ah, I should know better than to underestimate you, Heloise. I’m sorry. Let’s get some food in you and figure out what to do next.”
