by Victor Poole
"For how long?" Delmar asked. "How long before you knew what happened?"
Ajalia smiled at him. His face was earnest and concerned.
"You're cute," she told him. He waited. She put her left palm against his ribs and felt the muscles as they moved with his walk. "I still don't know what happened the first time," she said. "Hopefully nothing."
DELMAR'S SECRET
"Where were you?" he asked. She glanced at his eyes; he was watching the ground.
"The first time," she said slowly, "I was running away from home. My mother was trying to sell me."
"Oh," Delmar said. His voice was blank; he sounded as though he did not know how to respond, or what he was supposed to feel.
"I wasn't very old," Ajalia said wryly. "You're supposed to be shocked or something."
"Okay," Delmar said. "That's horrible," he added helpfully. Ajalia laughed at him.
"You're very strange," she told him.
"Thanks," he said.
"It wasn't a compliment," she said. He nuzzled his mouth against her hair, and she sighed. "I had stolen a horse," she said, "and it threw me. I was all right for a while, but my head hit a rock, and after a few hours I started to get dizzy."
"Did you get away?" Delmar asked.
"No," she said. "No, I didn't."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I got away from my mother," she said, brightening a little.
"Oh," he said, his voice confused. "I thought you meant she found you."
"No," she said. Ajalia didn't say anymore, and after a little while Delmar brought her outside the great hollow. She saw for the first time that it was formed from the long roots of two enormous trees that had joined together in a great twist; the roots were broad and scalloped in the center; they twined against each other, and made a hollow scoop that was large and raised up around the edges.
"I like your hiding place," Ajalia said.
"Yes," Delmar said. "I found it when I was little. No one comes this far into the trees. The screeching metheros live here, so it's pretty safe."
"What are those?" Ajalia asked. Delmar lifted her into the hollow, and set her down. He vaulted over the edge and went to the pile of cut bandages. He brought the pieces of leaf and the knife with him. The needle and the extra bit of thread he had left stuck into one of the bandages. Ajalia still had the red stone clasped in her right hand. Delmar took it from her and began to grind the leaves to a tangy pulp.
"The screeching metheros are pests," Delmar said. "They screech."
"I gathered that much," Ajalia admitted.
"But they're used to me. They don't screech at me," he added.
"Convenient," she said.
"It is," he told her. "You haven't heard them screech."
"Are they going to screech at me?" she asked. Delmar stretched the first bandage, smeared with the crushed leaves, and wound it over the raw gash on Ajalia's arm.
"They would have already," he said. "But you're mine, so they don't care."
"Because I'm your little bird?" Ajalia asked lightly.
"Yes," he said seriously. She watched his face, bent over the deep bloody mess of her arm, and she saw with surprise that he meant it.
"How do they know?" she asked.
"Like what Leed said," Delmar said easily. "You changed hearts with me."
"And the metheros can see that," she prodded.
"Of course they can," he said. "They're animals."
Ajalia watched Delmar add layers to the binding, his fingers smoothing out the cloth to make it even and tight. The pressure on her skin made the wound feel better. Ajalia was surrounded in a haze of heady smells; Delmar's shirt was still radiating a cloud of delicious comfort up around her face, and Delmar's hair was near her eyes. His pale locks fell in a tangle of thick waves against his neck; she could smell his hair, together with the zing of the crushed leaves.
"After this," Ajalia said suddenly, as Delmar added the final bandage, "are we going to stay friends?"
"What do you mean?" Delmar asked. He took the needle and thread, and put a knot in the end.
"What about when you change?" she asked. "Won't you forget to belong to me then?" Delmar looked up at her, the needle in his fingers, the thread pulled taught through the layers of fabric.
"I will never change about you," Delmar said. He went back to sewing. Ajalia felt tears prickling in the corners of her eyes.
"You don't understand," she said. "I meant after I'm not like this, when I can stand up and walk for more than five minutes. I'm going to shut you out, and then you're going to give up and leave me alone." She watched him sew. "What about then?" she asked.
Delmar looked up at her and smiled. His mouth was dangerous, Ajalia thought. His lips made a kind of irresistibly wicked fold at the edges.
"You'll just have to let me in, then," he said, "won't you?" His eyes twinkled a little as he tied off the thread.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Ajalia demanded. Delmar shrugged.
"Oh, nothing," he said, cutting the thread, and tucking the needle back into the remnant of cloth.
"Thank you," she said, turning her arms over. "This is much neater than I could have done."
"Jay," Delmar said.
"What?" Ajalia said suspiciously. He moved closer. "Stop it," she said.
"No," he said. He put his face close to hers, and smelled her neck.
"And that's silly," she added caustically, "because I never gave you my heart."
"Did too," he murmured, nuzzling her ear.
"Did not," she exclaimed. "I would know if I had."
"The screeching metheros do not cry at you," he said.
"That probably doesn't mean anything," Ajalia complained. "And I'm sure they're just sleeping." Delmar put his forehead against her forehead, and closed his eyes. A hot blush had climbed up from Ajalia's chest to her cheeks; she felt terrifically ashamed.
"Are you going to kiss me?" Delmar asked.
"No," Ajalia said. "Why would I do that?"
"Because you want to," Delmar pointed out.
"Go away," Ajalia said.
"No," Delmar said. She put her hands up against his chin; Delmar let out a tiny happy sigh.
"I'm sure the metheros will screech at me tomorrow," Ajalia reasoned. Delmar said nothing. She pushed her lips against his for a brief moment, and then turned away.
"There," she said briskly. "That was it. That was me kissing you."
"Okay," Delmar said. He moved away and stretched out against the rise of the hollow, folding his arms.
"What are you doing?" Ajalia asked. Her wrists were beginning to throb again. She had just begun to think that the swirling pool of ugly darkness had settled down again inside of her, but as she stared at the still form of Delmar, and his shapely naked torso, which was partially obscured by his muscular forearms, she felt the evil knot of fear begin to stir again.
"Are you going to sleep?" she asked. Delmar said nothing. She could not see if his eyes were open. She thought that if she waited until he was asleep, she wouldn't mind telling him about what had happened the second time she had fainted. The thought of falling down made the black pit behind her stab sharply; Ajalia hissed and tried to think of something else. She was no longer thinking about running away from Delmar; she was trying to think of how she would make him talk to her.
Across the space within the hollow, Delmar was smiling gleefully in the darkness; he could feel the balance of power that had shifted his way, and he reveled in it. He had decided that he would make Ajalia love him, and he felt particularly pleased with his progress thus far.
"I'm not asleep," he said. His voice floated across the darkness towards her; Ajalia shivered and pressed her bandaged arms against her chest. She tried to think of something to say to him, but nothing came to mind. She wanted to tell him that she saw what he was doing; she wanted to tell him that it wouldn't work, that she wouldn't get attached, or start daydreaming about him when he was not in her sight. She wanted to tell him tha
t she was not capable of love, but she decided that he was incapable of hearing what she wanted to say.
"You don't have to stay awake with me," Ajalia said. "I'm fine." She was sitting against the lip of the hollow; she rested her lower back against the wide bank of bark.
"Okay," Delmar said easily. Ajalia pursed her lips. She told herself that she was not annoyed, even though she was. She did not perceive how Delmar's presence made an agitation, a distraction, a bastion of defense against the horror that yet pressed, insistent, quietly adamant, within her soul. She was blind to the benefits that Delmar's attractions brought to her; she did not see the state her mind would have been in, if Delmar and his persistent attentions had not drawn her thoroughly out of herself. Instead of reflecting on the good fortune that presented her with Delmar, she meditated upon his insistent mouth, and the consistent manner in which his bare body came into contact with her own. She felt deeply suspicious of the whole situation, and if he had smelled any less like himself, she would have roused herself to action. But, as he smelled precisely as he did, and since his eyes were so particularly intense, and, in the end, since he looked so well with his shirt off, Ajalia contented herself with rebellious thoughts.
She sat still until the bitter ache in her arms became unbearable, and then she stood up and went to the side of the hollow. She was tired, and her body ached, but she didn't feel as though she were going to be sick, the way she had been sick before.
She began to think about returning to Slavithe. An unhappy lick of desire rose up in her; she wanted to stay here, with Delmar, and with his obnoxious questions. She wanted him to draw out all of her secrets, and she wanted him to look at her in the way that he had started to look at her ever since the road to Talbos. She wished she had someone to talk to about Delmar; she realized that Card would hear her out, and she thought there was some possibility that Card would be suitably reticent about her confidences. She liked Card. He had written in the note that she was to take as long as she liked; she would have liked to have stayed in the woods for weeks, but the draw of responsibility was stronger than she expected; she needed to get back. A sort of fire was in the bottom of her body, impelling her to activity. She felt that she was missing something vital by not being in Slavithe.
Ajalia sat against one of the two trees that formed the basin of the hollow, and put her head back against the bark. The trees had rough dark bark that was sharp and uncomfortable; she had been too tired before to notice it particularly, but now that she was mostly awake, and her arms were no longer threatening to gush blood and make messes, she felt the razor-like pricks of the bark that raised up to meet her back. She shifted, and then moved again. She could no longer get into a comfortable position; every way she turned, the bark of the tree bit into her back with unforgiving teeth.
In the darkness, Delmar listened to Ajalia shifting about, and his smile seeped more deeply into his cheeks. He felt positively conniving as he lay still in the dark, waiting for Ajalia to run away. He was sure she would run away, and he was sure she would tell him that she had a litany of good reasons for going. He thought about the way her skin would taste when she fell down, and when he picked her up and kissed her to make her breathe again, and he smiled. A squirm of joyful warmth wriggled down from his arms through his chest. He reflected on the pleasure that taking care of Ajalia brought him. The activity was a sort of double-edged sword of pain and pleasure; he got to kiss her more often than he would have thought possible, and she talked to him more than she had ever talked to him before, but in the back of his mind, he was aware that someday, or in the next ten minutes, she was going to have another attack of the shivers, and her eyes were going to go black, and he was not going to know what to do. He tried not to think about this eventuality; he pressed it out of his mind, and buried his feeling of helplessness up in a pile of bravado. He told himself that he would find out how to help her when the time came; he told himself that his desire to help would show him the way.
He had been nervous enough when he had seen the mass of tangled skin and dried blood, mixed with the smashed leaves and bloodied bandages on her left arm, the arm she had savaged against the bark of the tree.
He did not understand how she could have done that; she seemed to him somehow alien; he could not find within himself a scenario where he would have done such a thing. His mind clawed over the image of her twisting in the woods, pulling her arm as deeply into the tree as she could, and the splash of gore that had spurted at once from the damaged skin. He wanted to understand why she had hurt herself. He had stopped asking her about the fainting, because she had started to tell him. To Delmar, Ajalia was like a wild animal; he could see her fear, and her mistrust; he was content with progress, as long as it was some step forwards. She had started to tell him the truth, and that was enough for him.
He felt his patience growing limitless. Now that he had tasted her lips, and felt her form crushed like winding fire in his embrace, he thought that he would do nearly anything in the world to get her to love him, and to look at him the way she had looked when she was falling asleep to his voice. He held onto that look with all the fervor of a worshipping heathen; he treasured it up in his heart, and wrapped it in lights. When he closed his eyes, that look of trustfulness and reliance, of dependence on his strength and protection, was what he saw. He cherished Ajalia because of the way she made him see himself. He told himself that she would never let him in, and that he didn't care. He told himself that he would follow her until she was dead, and wait for her to open up to him. He did not mind, he thought, if it took until she was old and dying, as long as she someday looked at him, and saw him again, the way he saw himself when she trusted him. He would have died for that look.
Ajalia moved restlessly again; the bark in the hollow of the tree was biting and unbearable against her whole back. She could have stood the irritating feeling any other day, but today, or tonight, with Delmar lying so near, and feeling so far from her, she could hardly have felt at ease on a pillow of clouds.
Finally, she sat up, moving with the stealth of a great cat in the night. She hardly knew what she did as she crept across the hollow, and collected her knife and harness. Delmar had left them lying out against the bark; he was suspicious, and cautious now, but, Ajalia reflected with satisfaction, he was inexperienced. She took up the slim leather book, and put it deep between her upper arm and her ribs. Ajalia went to the rim of the hollow in the tree roots, and looked over the edge. She had not been fully aware of her surroundings the last time she had escaped from the tree hollow hiding place, and she did not have a working picture of how climbing out would work.
The hollow was formed of two tree's intertwined roots; the depression of twisting bark lay within a raised bank of earth. She lifted her leg cautiously to the top of the roots, and Delmar wrapped his arms around her from behind.
Ajalia swore in a whisper; Delmar laughed at her in a friendly way.
"Can I come with you?" he asked. Ajalia did not care for the confident way he asked her, or of the familiar manner in which his arms engulfed her body.
"I was just looking," she said with dignity.
"Liar," Delmar said. He did not kiss her, but she could feel his breath on the back of her neck.
"You're ridiculous," Ajalia told him.
"You smell good," he told her. She twisted around to face him, and he made a glorious happy face at her. She frowned.
"Stop liking this," she told him. "This is not enjoyable, or—" she was going to say "sexy," but she was too embarrassed. "This is not fun," she said instead.
"No," Delmar agreed. He let go of her, and slid down against the rim of the hollow. He held out his arms to her. "Come and talk," he said. Ajalia's heart made an uncomfortable twist. She regarded Delmar with suspicion.
"Why are you acting like this?" she asked.
"Because I love you," he said at once. She stared at him. The last time he had told her that, her eyes had flashed with heavy wet sorrow; she had started to cr
y before she had finished feeling annoyed that he should have told her he loved her, when he was still too useless to discard his horrible parents, or to have his own place, or to eat food regularly enough to look unlike a starved rat. This time she did not cry. This time she felt white rage.
"You don't love me," she said with determination. His arms were still outstretched, waiting. She tried to ignore him, but her skin kept reminding her of how nice it was to sit next to him. She told herself that Delmar was innocent and helpless; she told herself that there was no harm in sitting with him.
Ajalia crossed to the end of the hollow farthest from Delmar, and sat down.
"Are you mad that I stopped you?" Delmar asked.
"You haven't stopped me," she said. He went over to her, and eased the knife out of her hands.
"No," he said simply, referencing the knife. A hard snarl rose into her face, unbidden. "Why do you feel so fierce about things?" he asked. He put the knife though the back waist of his pants. Ajalia watched the line of his waist, where his skin rose up into his abdomen and his ribs.
"You're not wearing anything," she said, staring at his chest.
"I've got pants," he reminded her.
"Pish," she said. "I could get the knife back if I wanted," she added.
"You don't want to lose me," Delmar said easily, "and if you hurt me, you know I would go away."
Ajalia glared at Delmar with a look of hatred.
"That is not true," she said. "I could hurt you, and you would still come crawling back."
"I will talk to you," Delmar said, turning onto his side, "when you feel better."
"I feel fine," Ajalia said. The tears began to prickle at the back of her eyes again. She blinked furiously; she would have rubbed her eyes, but the bandages that ran against her wrists hurt, and she couldn't move them much without feeling nauseated again.
"I feel fine," she said in a louder voice.
"Look," Delmar said, "You have hurt feelings, and that's fine, but I don't want to chase you through the forest. Would you rather that I tailed you for an hour, or for ten minutes, or however long it takes for you to get trapped somewhere without the strength to stand up?"
