After sword practice the next morning, Jeswyne left the clearing. “I’ll be right back,” she promised, and a minute later she returned. She had picked a sprig of delicate flowers, which she tucked into her hair. “We are supposed to wear only the finest clothes we have when we initiate a tea ceremony,” she explained. She made a gesture down at her filthy, torn gown. “This is about the best I can do.”
Jeswyne stooped into the hut and came out with her arms full of items, which she took time to arrange. “Now, the first thing you have to do is remove your weapons,” she told Alec. “Ideally you would be facing east if you’re initiating the tea ceremony, but that isn’t absolutely required.”
Alec withdrew his sword, and laid it on the ground. “No, that’s not right. I’m sorry, I didn’t explain that, did I?” and she showed him the proper way to present the sword before placing it aside. “And you do that for every weapon you have, to show that you will come to the table unarmed, without intent to do harm.”
She explained the various steps. You steep the tea for exactly sixty seconds, then pour it into the cups,” she said.
“But I like my tea stronger,” he protested. “Can’t I steep it longer?”
“The tea isn’t supposed to be strong. Your character is supposed to be the strongest element in the ceremony,” she said patiently. “And you pour for your guest first, with the spout pointed directly at him,” she held her dried clay pot over a cup and motioned as if pouring. They continued for another hour going over the intricacies of each step that was required. “We’ll see tomorrow how well you remember,” she said at last.
The next day they began their routine again, Alec teaching sword work in the morning, and Jeswyne teaching imperial etiquette in the afternoon; it was a pattern they fell into easily for the next several days, with each gaining proficiency in their new knowledge.
“What are those up there in that tree?” Jeswyne asked the following afternoon. Alec craned his neck.
“Those are juice pears,” he told her. “They are delicious; we have to get some down!” He examined the narrow branches of the tree the fruit was growing on. “That tree won’t hold me – I’m too heavy. If I lift you up into the tree, would you pick them and throw them down to me?” he asked.
She looked at him with wide eyes, then looked up at the tree. “Could I fall?” she asked.
“Not if you hold onto the branches and step carefully,” he assured her. “Take off your shoes so you can feel the footing better,” he said.
Obediently, she removed the thin sandals she still possessed. Alec cupped his hands together, and as she placed her foot in the stirrup, he began to lift. With a squeal, Jeswyne rose and grabbed wildly for the tree trunk, then began to climb onto a branch as Alec raised her higher. He looked up at her feet to make sure she was stepping appropriately on the right branch, and his view of her feet led to a view of her calves within the folds of her gown, and then further upward to her thighs.
“What are you looking at down there?” Jeswyne called in a very imperial voice. “I’m ashamed of you. Stop that.”
“If I don’t look up, I won’t know to catch you when you fall,” Alec said, embarrassed to be caught in the unintended voyeurism.
“Well, alright, but just watch my hands,” Jeswyne said, as she began to climb up another branch. She reached the appropriate level, and began to inch out on a limb. “Here’s one Alec!” she called triumphantly, grabbing a fruit with one hand as she maintained a death grip on the tree branch with her other hand. She dropped the fruit, and two more, down to Alec.
“Now what do I do?” she asked, looking down at Alec.
“Just climb back down,” Alec began, but was interrupted by a shriek.
“Look at that snake by my foot!” she said. She danced. She fell.
Alec caught her high above his head, and pulled her into a cradle against his chest as the momentum drove him to the ground.
“I’ve never been that close to a snake before,” she whispered to Alec. “Thank you for catching me. You’re very handy to have around,” she admitted as she rose from atop him and pulled her shoes back on.
One day Jeswyne sighed as she scratched her head, “I want to take a bath so badly.”
Alec looked at her. “We could go to the shore and bathe in the ocean water. I won’t have soap, but it will be better than trying to get clean in the river water.”
Jeswyne looked at him dubiously. “We’ll go tomorrow. It’ll be fun. We’ll call it a holiday!” he insisted
The next morning they each took a sword and a wooden spear, and Alec led the way towards the ocean beach, intending to go to the site of the village where he had found Cassie. The journey was slow going as Alec had to hack his way through a part of the forest they had never blazed a path through before. By lunch time they were past the foot of a prominent hill, and Alec could smell salt in the air. The hill was Ingenairii Hill he realized, and he thought of the many things that would come to occur there in the far off future. Shortly thereafter they burst through a final screen of grasses and beheld the beach, pristine and empty.
“It’s amazing!”Jeswyne exclaimed. “How far does it go?”
Alec had sat down to remove his boots, and Jeswyne copied him as she took off her nearly useless shoes.
“I don’t know. There’s no end in sight,” Alec answered. He realized what he was about to do. “Lady Jeswyne, I apologize for not thinking of this sooner, but I do not intend to go swimming in my clothes. Of course, you’ve seen me without them before. If it makes you uncomfortable, we can take turns.”
Jeswyne looked at him. “I’ll follow your lead, Alec, under one condition,” she said solemnly.
“Promise me that you won’t tell anyone in Michian that you saw me skinny-dipping!” she burst out laughing. But it was only several minutes after Alec had streaked across the sand to the water that she made up her mind to really do the same. She removed her gown, and then began running.
“You didn’t tell me it was so hot!” she shrieked as her feet burned in the sand, and she sprinted even harder to reach the water, determined to hide her naked body in the water as quickly as possible.
“You didn’t tell me it was so cold?” she sputtered as she reached the water and took her first steps in. She stopped, and then felt extremely self-conscious as she stood with her arms crossed in front of her while Alec floated nearby, looking at her.
“Just get it over with,” Alec urged. “It will feel fine within a minute. Don’t torture yourself thinking about the cold, just plunge in.”
“I can’t!” Jeswyne wailed. “Alec, what are you doing? Oh! Stop it!” she gasped, as Alec stood up and ran towards her, then began splashing water onto her.
He reached her, and suddenly scooped her up in his arms. He was very conscious of the feel of her body against his arms and his chest, and he stared at her face, just a foot away from his. Then he turned and carried her out into the water, running fast, and submerged himself, pulling her down completely before letting go of her.
Jeswyne gasped and stood up immediately, sweeping her hands across her face and sputtering. The water only came up to her chest, and she crouched down, highly aware of Alec standing next to her, and thinking about the feel of his embrace.
“That was so mean!” she shouted, and struck at him, then punched again, and again. Her blows hit him unchecked and unnoticed, and she stopped to see what he was staring at so intently in the water, his attention focused out away from the land.
“What do you see?” she asked, standing and turning to stare at the horizon with him, a horizon that looked empty to her.
Alec grabbed her and spun her around, and she saw extraordinary joy on his face. He pulled her against him in a hard embrace, and bent down and kissed her lips passionately. “Jeswyne! I think I know how to cure my ingenairii wounds! I think we may be able to go back to our own time!” he said elatedly. “Come on!” he said, and he began pulling her back to the beach.
Ch
apter 34 – Jeswyne’s Tea Ceremony
They sat next to each other on the beach, and Alec explained his plan. “There is a kind of fish called a blue belly. I’ve used part of it for a remedy before,” he told Jeswyne, who was hanging on his every word. “And there is a sea weed called watergreen. We can get those if we make a boat and a net,” he thought. “On ingenairii hill there was a quarry on the north side, and we can find yellow quartz there, but it will take a little work. And the only other unusual things we’ll need are a feather from a bird, and a drop of your blood.”
“A drop of my blood? Why not your blood?” Jeswyne asked, but then didn’t wait for an answer. “You really believe you can mix those things together and be able to take us back to our own time again? Oh Alec, that is wonderful!” she began to cry, and leaned over to kiss him.
Alec felt her body against his, and her lips on his, and he shared her joy at the hope of return. He placed his arms around her, and leaned forward so that their bodies slid downward, and the kiss became a passionate one as he lay atop her on the beach. He raised his head and looked down at her. Jeswyne looked up at him and smiled, then brought her hands up to his face, and pulled him back down for another long, alluring kiss.
But Alec thought of Bethany at that moment, and raised his head again, then rolled off the girl and onto the sand beside her. “Jeswyne, I’m engaged to be married to a good woman, and I can’t break my vows to her. You are so good, so pretty, so desirable, that I can’t help myself from thinking about loving you. But it wouldn’t be right. I can’t do it,” he said. “Especially now that I think I can get us back to a time where I might be able to see her.”
Jeswyne lay in stunned silence for a moment, feeling whiplashed by the sudden turn of events. “You shouldn’t have started that kiss if you thought that!” she said quietly. “I’ve never kissed a boy before.”
“You kissed very well for a first time,” Alec tried to jest. “I’m sorry. You’re completely right. I shouldn’t have done that; not any of it. It is my fault. I saw you and I desired you, and then I realized there is a way to become healed, and I lost my head in the joy I felt.
“Don’t think about it anymore. Please trust me. I’ll take care of you, and I’ll behave as a gentleman from now on, and I’ll take you safely back to the Michian empire and restore you to your family,” he promised.
Jeswyne sighed a heavy sigh, not sure what to say or think or how to respond. She felt miserably confused and deflated.
Alec stood and went back to the clothes they had left at the top of the beach, and he pulled his pants on, then lifted Jeswyne’s dress and brought it down to her. “We ought to move down here, closer to the beach and the quarry. We’ll need to build a new hut in this area, so we don’t spend so much time having to walk back and forth,” he pretended not to notice the tears in her eyes, still embarrassed by the scene he had created.
“So you want to build a new home, and a boat, and make fishing nets, and dig a quarry?” Jeswyne said after she shrugged into her dress. “How long is all this going to take?”
“I imagine it will take weeks,” Alec admitted. “But then it will be done, and we’ll be able to leave. And in the meantime, we can relax on the beach and swim all we want to when we’re not working.”
“I don’t know how to swim,” Jeswyne said automatically, before she even realized she said it.
“You don’t know how to swim? Let me teach you,” Alec pressed. “It will be less useful than sword work, but more relaxing.”
“If you’re going to teach me something, I’ll have to teach you something in return,” Jeswyne answered. “I will teach you the name of every state and noble land that belongs to the empire.”
Alec put on a cheerful face, although he had no desire to know more about the Michian empire.
And so they began the next phase of their life together, living with a purpose and an agenda. That afternoon they returned to their hut for the night, and the following morning they gathered the few things they had accumulated, a couple of spears, some food they had prepared, and Jeswyne picked up the pieces of her ceremonial tea set.
“You really want to take those?” Alec asked, eyeing them dubiously and trying to figure out how to carry them
“Yes, there’s no question,” Jeswyne said emphatically. “Don’t even ask again!”
Alec eventually arranged his shirt as a carrier between two spears, and hauled everything to the bottom of Ingenairii Hill.
“Let’s find a level spot around here,” he suggested as he placed everything next to a tree stump. By mid-afternoon he had found a spot, hauled rocks to it for a fire pit, and fashioned a crude lean-to they could temporarily use. That night, as they sat by the fire, Jeswyne began her lessons in Michian geography and history.
“Five great clans united to form the first empire,” she began. “Each came from their own duchy. There were Canare, Indige, Scarle, Emeral, and Navill,” she began.
“I never heard of Navill,” Alec interjected.
“They do not exist any longer,” Jeswyne told him.
“Why? What happened to them?” Alec asked.
“During the third dynasty, they tried to withdraw from the empire. They were exterminated. Everyone in their duchy was killed,” the girl explained, and the lesson went on.
That night, a heavy rain moved in from the ocean, and Alec and Jeswyne huddled together in the only dry corner of their shelter. Alec wanted to put his arms around the girl, but refrained, still too aware of his transgression the day before.
Over the following days, they began their busy activities. Alec simultaneously built a better hut and began assembling timbers for the boat. He knew he could only build a raft, and he wanted to make sure it would be sturdy enough to withstand the action of the waves. He also began pulling down vines, and showed Jeswyne how to weave them to make a net.
“I remember the first raft I made,” Alec began a story about building a raft, and discovering it was too heavy to drag to the water. “So we had to take it apart and move the pieces to the water’s edge!” he laughed at himself.
“So now you know better?” Jeswyne asked archly.
“I do; I can learn from my mistakes, most of the time,” Alec agreed.
They practiced swimming in the ocean, though both kept their clothes on, and after Jeswyne commented on the state of her clothes, Alec explained the need to regularly rinse the salt out of the cloth, so they took turns going to a small brook where they could rinse themselves and their clothes in fresh water.
When the boat was ready to assemble, three weeks later, Alec paused in that chore to go in search of the yellow quartz. He led Jeswyne to the site that would one day become a quarry. There were rocky outcrops all along the north side of the hill, which was steeper than the rest of the hill. Alec and Jeswyne used sharpened sticks to begin digging near one outcrop that Alec thought looked promising, but abandoned it several days later without any success. They began in another location, and found success within three days.
“These will have to be ground into pieces as fine as sand,” Alec said as they harvested nuggets and carried them back to their hut.”
“How much will we need?” Jeswyne asked.
“A lot, maybe three times as much as we’ve got here,” Alec said as they dumped their load on the ground.
“You need that much medicine? Your stomach will explode if you have to take all that,” Jeswyne exclaimed.
“It’ll work, don’t worry. We’d be best off making too much instead of making too little,” he answered, aware of the dangers of the cure he planned to try, though he wasn’t willing to share the details with Jeswyne yet.
Even while they spent days gathering the quartz, their other lessons continued, both swimming and fencing for Jeswyne, and history and geography for Alec. Neither of them ever spoke about their kiss on the beach.
“Let’s launch the boat today,” Alec said one morning as they stepped out of their hut. Jeswyne looked at him with eagern
ess.
“You think we’re ready?” she asked.
“We’ll only go out a little way, as a test,” he answered. They walked down to the beach and dragged the pieces of the raft together in front of the approaching tide, then assembled the segments and waited for the water to reach it. Together they pushed it into deeper water, holding onto the sides as they swam and pushed, until Alec thought they were far enough. They scrambled up, and Alec pulled out the nets Jeswyne had woven. “Let’s see what’s out here,” he said, and he heaved the net outward as he remembered watching Plad do during Alec’s apprenticeship.
Jeswyne helped him haul the net back to the raft, and he began picking through its captives, releasing most but keeping a few.
“See this?” Alec asked, holding onto a small fish. “This is a blue belly. We need to catch a whole bunch of these. But now we know we can do it! Let’s head back to shore and eat some lunch.”
“What about those other fish?” Jeswyne asked. “Why are you keeping them?”
“I will fix those for your dinner tonight!” Alec exclaimed. “You in particular need some protein, a lot of it actually,” he said speaking as a healer.
“Why do I need protein? Don’t you need it too?” Jeswyne asked.
Alec pretended not to hear her as he dove into the water and began pushing the raft back to shore. Jeswyne rode atop the raft for a few seconds, then slid in the water and helped him push, so that within minutes they were wading and dragging the raft up onto the beach.
Alec pulled out the blue bellies and began to slice them open, seeking specific particles of flesh, which he laid on the raft, while he pitched the rest of each carcass far into the water. Gulls soon gathered and began raucously diving for the scraps of food. Once his few blue bellies were quickly eviscerated, Alec turned to the small cod they had caught, and cut several generous fillets from the bodies, then tossed aside the wastes from them as well.
“Those birds are so noisy!” Jeswyne commented, after sitting quietly and catching her breath.
We’ll need their feathers,” Alec told her. “It’s good for them to get used to thinking of us as a restaurant they can come to. Here,” he unceremoniously dumped the fillets in her hand. “You carry these, and I’ll bring the rest,” he said as he picked up the small glands and organs from the blue bellies.
Preserving the Ingenairii Page 25
