Sword and Song

by Kate Story

  “My city doesn’t have fjords!”

  “What’s yours like, then?”

  “Just like you described, only near a sandy beach. On Doctor Bay.”

  “Doctor Bay?” He doesn’t know that place.

  “It’s hot there.”

  “Hot? That’s different. You don’t get northern lights, then?”

  She stares. “Sure we do.”

  “How’s that possible, if you’re on some tropical beach?”

  Her eyes sparkle. “Okay, how about the standing stones? Do you have those?”

  “Yes!”

  He’s only found those recently; they were a surprise. He’d arrived in the other place and found, as always, Ari, but on a barren, beautiful green plain he’d never seen before. The ocean lapped at the cliff edge. It had felt very far away from anywhere else. This is an important place, Ari’d said to Rowan, and indeed, the beautiful rough white stones, pointing at the sky like sentinels, had felt holy. Sacred? Rowan had asked. Ari wrinkled his forehead. I do not know this word. Important. To you.

  “They’re on a flat green place—”

  “A sacred place,” she finishes.

  She knows.

  “Guess we both incorporated a rip-off of Stonehenge,” Ophelia says.

  “What do you mean, incorporated?”

  “We both grew up here. With the same legends, I mean, more or less. So when we started inventing our fantasy worlds—”

  “But it’s . . . Don’t you think it’s a place?”

  “It can’t be one place. Fjords and tropical beaches on one small island?”

  “But . . .” He’s bewildered. Why is this so hard for her?

  A look of pain on her face.

  Rowan almost laughs. “You’ve really convinced yourself that it’s some kind of insane fantasy, haven’t you?”

  “You’re sure that it isn’t? Swords and sorcery? Come on.” Her eyes flash; ah, she’s got a temper, this one.

  “You ever try to stop?”

  “Stop?”

  “Stop going.”

  He sees something in her face, a shadow of dread behind her eyes, swiftly hooded.

  “Yes. Yes, because . . . what’s the use of fantasizing—” she emphasizes the word “—fantasizing about being a sorcerer, really? Here and now?” She shrugs, looks down. “It doesn’t help me.”

  “Well—and I’m not saying I think you’re right about this—isn’t it okay to do something because it makes you feel better?” He feels bewildered. “I mean, most kids invent a place to go, don’t they?”

  She’s still looking down. “Narnia, Pandora, Hogwarts, or the Shire.”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “I don’t know if most kids do that. Most?”

  “And besides, it isn’t a fantasy, Ophelia. I can’t believe that, not anymore.”

  “All right then. Why us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why do we get a real fantasy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we just haven’t found out the reasons yet.”

  “So, you’re saying we’ve been chosen.” Her tone is sarcastic. “That we’re special.”

  “Yes, chosen.” There is so much pain behind her logic. “Maybe we’re sensitive. Or just weird.” He shakes his head then; he wants to be honest, she makes him want to brave it all. “No, not weird. Lonely.” He says it, hopes and hopes she won’t laugh at him. “Maybe we’re just lonely enough to get there. Maybe a high loneliness factor is some kind of requirement.” He’s just met her, and already he finds he doesn’t want to do without her. He needs her; he needs to get to know this serious, goofy, complicated, beautiful girl.

  “Rowan, you know why I can’t believe it’s real?”

  “Why?”

  She sits, twisting her hands together. “It’s too nice. We go there and we’re imagining things—imagining them, right? It’s so beautiful. But real places are like this place.” She stares out across the gully. “Out of control.”

  Her face when she says this makes him want to wrap his arms around her. He wants to taste her lips, her eyelids, kiss her perfect little ears, the nape of her neck, the place where her collarbones meet and there’s that little hollow under her throat. She’s perfect, perfect.

  To his surprise, it’s her who flings herself into his chest, holding him with all her strength. “I don’t want you to go! I don’t want you in this war, I can’t, I don’t . . .”

  Shit. She’s crying.

  She reaches up and puts her hand to his face. He can feel her fingers trembling.

  “Let’s go somewhere,” she says. “Somewhere we can be alone.”

  She wants him. He sees it, burning in her eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Nice

  Sometimes the desire to go back in time and change things is so strong it almost makes you sick.

  “He’s like me, of course,” Rowan’s mother is saying. “Really, at heart, a predator.”

  This isn’t where he’d wanted things to go.

  He’d led Ophelia through the streets, back to his house. All he wanted to do was get her somewhere private, somewhere he could kiss her . . . they’d burst through the front door of his house, Dad was in the study but he didn’t come out, as usual . . . Rowan had put a finger to his lips . . . they began to creep up the stairs.

  Then his mother had come home.

  “Oh. Who are you.” Flat, no interrogative upward flick at the end. “Rowan, what happened to your face?”

  Then his father emerged.

  Offers of coffee in the kitchen.

  Reluctantly, so reluctantly, he’d led Ophelia down the hall behind his poisonous, inconvenient parents. His mother, performing bitterness. It’s like she hates when things are happy, Rowan thought, watching her slowly dissect his father’s bumbling attempts at politeness.

  She asked again about the accident, mocking his bruised face.

  Ophelia tensed up and became quiet, her face closed.

  Then his mother started coming on to his father, using her brittle charm, finding excuses to touch him. It was something she did, Rowan realized, almost every time his parents had a fight.

  It had been a mistake to bring Ophelia here; his parents had sharply honed radar, there was no way to avoid them.

  And then his mother brought up Natalie. The Goth ex.

  “Mom, that was almost a year ago,” he says, quickly, firmly, giving his mother a look—shut the hell up. Natalie was nothing, a girlfriend of three months. They never got close, didn’t even really do much together besides make out; then Natalie would pick a fight and go off with some other guy. Make drama, cry, come back to him. It hadn’t taken therapy for Rowan to see that he was dangerously close to replicating the dynamic between his parents.

  His parents traded glances, amused. “Almost a whole year ago,” his mother echoed.

  “Such a very long time,” his father had said and actually stifled a laugh.

  “Well, Ophelia,” she went on, “I hope you last longer than the last one. You seem like a nice girl.”

  The way she said nice brought all sorts of other words to mind, and Rowan didn’t doubt that Ophelia, with her love of words, heard them all chiming in her head.

  Boring. Unexceptional. Average. Negligible.

  “The thing you should know,” his mother had gone on, “is that he takes after his mother’s side. You can see the physical resemblance. The genes of Hildur Jónsdóttir totally overwhelmed those of David Simpson.” And she gestured at Rowan’s father.

  “As overwhelmed as the medieval English against the incursions of Vikings,” Dad said.

  That’s when she came out with that marvellous phrase: “He’s like me, of course. Really, at heart, a predator.”

  “Me? A predator?” Rowan says. He’s about as predatory as a mouse. Those martial arts classes his mother had made him take—he’d loved the forms, but every time he had to spar, he’d heard the wind of death whistle around his ears.

  And th
en he sees the look on Ophelia’s face.

  “Mom’s kidding,” he bursts out. “And it’s not very funny.”

  The hurt in Ophelia’s eyes pierces him.

  He glares at his parents. “You two are like . . . what’s that play we saw at Stratford?”

  “Claudius and Gertrude?” his father suggests, amused.

  “The Macbeths,” his mother laughs.

  “George and Martha,” he corrects them. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. You’re performing.”

  “Oh, we’re performing,” his mother says. She laughs. “We’re performing, darling. What do you think of that?” She takes his dad’s arm and runs her hand up it, squeezing his bicep.

  “It’s nothing to worry about, my dear girl,” Dad says to Ophelia. “But if it’s too arch, we can bring the level down.”

  “It’s okay,” Ophelia says before Rowan can speak. “I’d never ask anyone to bring the level down for me.” She’s hopping down from her stool. “I’d better go.”

  He wastes precious seconds glaring at his parents with all the hate he can muster, wishing he could incinerate them with a look.

  They’re smiling into each other’s eyes, hot for each other after their fight.

  They don’t care about him, and certainly not about Ophelia.

  Rowan reaches into his back pocket and takes out the yellow letter.

  He places it on the counter.

  It’s cruel of him, he knows. He can remember very few times he’s felt rage like this: cold, bright, unstable.

  “Here’s something you might want to read. Perform about that.”

  Ophelia’s down the hall and out the front door before he catches her. Seeing the hurt on her face sends his rage sliding down, replaced by a sorrow so powerful it makes it hard to breathe.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  She cuts him off. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have met you today.” Her face is agitated, her hands twist together.

  The sweet sunlight from earlier in the day is gone. Dark clouds roil overhead and wind tears along between the houses. Inside the clouds he can see bright lightning, flickering ruddy through the darkness like a flashlight held between your palms.

  “What do you mean, you shouldn’t have met me?”

  “It wouldn’t work out between us,” she says.

  He can’t believe he’s hearing this, can’t speak.

  She mistakes his silence, says, “Oh, was I making assumptions? I thought this was going someplace. Forgive my naïveté.”

  She turns away. She’s walking away through a maelstrom of new leaves torn from trees by the wind.

  He makes himself speak through a dry throat.

  “No! You weren’t making assumptions. I—I really like you, Ophelia.” Wholly inadequate words, but she’s stopping. Is she turning back? “I . . . don’t let my horrifying parents . . . Look, they’re practically psychotic, all right?” Surely she isn’t going to let his mother’s barbs scare her away?

  “I can’t see how it would ever work out. We’re too different.” Her head is hanging, the words jerk out of her like she’s about to cry.

  “But I like that you’re different. We can . . . get to know each other, and . . .” He’s almost stuttering. “We don’t have much time . . . I’ll have to go soon, and I want—”

  Her eyes blaze. “That’s it, isn’t it? You want to get laid before you go off to war?”

  “What?” She changes so fast, he can’t keep up.

  And she’s running. She’s turned and is running away, up the sidewalk.

  “Ophelia, wait!”

  “Please.” She stops, but keeps her back to him. “Just leave me alone.”

  He covers the space between them in about three strides. The wind pushes at them, strong and cold. He puts his hand on her shoulder and to his relief she turns to face him. Not giving himself time to think himself out of it, he reaches out gently and cradles her cheek in his palm, bends down and . . .

  . . . and he’s kissing her.

  Soft. Her lips are soft, and she leans into him, little questioning noises of pleasure coming from her throat.

  I’ve never kissed anyone before, Rowan thinks. Not like this.

  Everything around them—the roaring wind, street noises, a siren, a distant dog barking—falls away.

  Rowan feels the familiar slide.

  He’s being pulled in. He tries to resist, for a moment, then the wild, hopeful thought hits him: Maybe she’ll come with me, we can go there together!

  Cold hits his body like a truck.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Wanting To Believe

  Ophelia runs.

  Pim holds her hand, and they run along the beach through a storm, toward the city.

  This time, the slide in was very fast. That kiss . . . and then she was gone.

  It seems to Ophelia that she can hardly remember a time when it rained in Antilia. But it’s raining now, and windy; the rain whips them in the face. The clouds are so low they almost touch the land.

  When Rowan kissed her, it was hard to remember the way he left her hanging as his parents dissected her. It was hard to remember feeling so horribly out of place in the kitchen. How impossible it was—be logical, Ophelia!—that someone like him would fall for someone like her.

  She stumbles, almost falls. Pim catches her. “I am not letting you go this time!”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Ophelia gasps. They start off again. It’s a long way to the city, to Calabar, the volcano is rumbling again, and Pim has said they must hurry. “You know that. I never know when I’ll go home.”

  “This time, you are home. Antilia is home now.”

  Ophelia snatches her hand out of Pim’s. “Why do you call it that?”

  It wasn’t until Ophelia met Rowan that Pim started calling her other place Antilia.

  “Because this place is Antilia.”

  “No, it isn’t. . . . It’s never been. . . .” Ophelia’s mind whirls. Could the fact that she started calling it Antilia herself somehow communicate itself to Pim? Is everything here just a product of her own imagination? How then, does it feel so real?

  How does Rowan know about it if it’s all in Ophelia’s head?

  Or is she just that crazy?

  Pim and Ophelia face each other, panting. Pim rubs her face with her long, beautiful hands. She’s frustrated, Ophelia can tell. “The Mender, she can answer your questions.”

  “Then I’d better talk to the Mender.”

  They alternate walking and running. They stop at a stream to slake their thirst. Ophelia flings herself down under a coconut palm to shelter from the worst of the rain, panting. The tree bends and lashes under the wind.

  Rowan’s father had moved around the kitchen like he was frightened in his own home. And the mother. She’d looked so very much like Rowan. It was as if the production of Rowan had occurred by mitosis, like the man had had nothing to do with it, this woman dividing cells in a science lab to make her son.

  But where Rowan was quick to smile, quick to worry, and the light in his blue eyes was warm, she was cold. Cold and brilliant. She changed the feeling in the room. Both men—Rowan and his father—they wanted to impress her.

  Ophelia had never seen parents flirting with each other like those two had. It didn’t feel like love, it felt like manipulation.

  A memory, clear, from long ago: Her mother and the man she knew to be her father. He is sitting in the easy chair. Her mother comes from behind and wraps her arms around him. He reaches up and back to embrace her and they hold each other, rocking together. She kisses him. “I don’t deserve you.”

  He was tall, and had big hands and feet with beautiful, square nails. Ophelia’s inherited his hands, she thinks. Yes, those belong to the Miller side. And he’d kept his hair short, square across the back of his neck. His voice was deep; how she’d loved the sound of his voice.

  “Don’t deserve me? Don’t be so foolish, woman,” he’d said. They’d both laughed. But
Ophelia, little girl, could see something sad in her mother’s face.

  Is that how two people love each other?

  Most painful of all was how Rowan had changed. He’d moved away from Ophelia, physically. He hadn’t defended her. Surely if he really cared about her, he’d have defended her?

  Nor had he stood up for himself.

  And gradually, Ophelia had felt the magic of the afternoon, that golden sunlit day, she’d felt it all drain away under the cold kitchen light.

  She saw herself clearly through the eyes of these adults.

  A small girl in cheap clothes, the latest in a string of Rowan’s girlfriends.

  And she didn’t even have any underwear on—that had disappeared, of course, with her slide into the Antilian ocean. She’d be so self-conscious about this, her face perpetually hot with shame.

  But they hadn’t noticed. They’d barely bothered to acknowledge her.

  She’d been stupid to think there was something magic in her connection with Rowan. Someone as good looking as him, he had to have girls hanging off him. Candace had said as much. She kept her ear to the ground; she’d know about that kind of thing. Unlike Ophelia, Candace has had tons of boyfriends. Besides, the signs were there. Ophelia just hadn’t wanted to see them.

  His own mother had said it.

  She remembers how he’d been surrounded by people after that Romulus gig. If she’d left just a little faster he would have missed her. And would he have cared?

  She’d fallen for it. She’d totally fallen for it, kissed him on what was really their first date, like an idiot, so he could think he could use her.

  It wasn’t all his fault. She’d acted like a fool. And that letter, the conscription . . .

  Sure, there was that. But he, being so much like his mother, would know he could use that to get her. Predator.

  The ground trembles. Pim gets to her feet, holds out her hand to Ophelia. They run.

  Rain trickles down her back, her legs; the dress Rowan bought her is soaked. Her feet keep time to her thoughts. What a fool. What a loser. What an idiot. Of course it’s not real, the so-called connection. Only someone like her, who spent thousands and thousands of precious hours making up a dreamland, would think you could fall in love that fast. Someone insane.