Black Knight

by Svetlana Ivanova

  "She's too intimidating. I have never seen a girl like that," Jordan said again.

  "Yeah, me, too," I agreed wholeheartedly. I didn't tell her I had witnessed that first hand.

  "But I'm just relieved that she's being protective of you. That must be something, eh?"

  "Well, I'm not so sure." I shrugged.

  "What? Didn't you notice how she marked her territory with me?" Jordan said. "That 'I promise nothing bad will ever happen to Nina while she's with me. You can rest assured.' It screams, 'Back off, she's mine.'"

  "No kidding?" I looked cluelessly at her.

  "Oh, Nina." Jordan sighed and shook her head. "The sky might fall and the earth might crumble and you still wouldn't feel a thing!"

  "Aw, Jordan, stop!" I smacked her lightly on her arm. She laughed and I laughed with her.

  "So are you going to be serious with Allecra Knight now?" she asked later.

  "I can't tell that yet," I sighed. "It's complicated."

  "Nina," Jordan said, making me look at her. "To like is to want, but to love is to give. It's just that simple."

  I looked at my friend long and hard.

  "You know what, Jordan, you should have been an amazing love expert," I said. She laughed.

  "Such a shame I missed my true calling."

  We laughed again.

  "Alright, let's go to class."

  She nodded and we turned to leave together.

  After my classes were over, Jordan went to the cafeteria with some other friends. I told her I already brought my lunch and would like to eat outside. Jordan understood and let me be. She wasn't like most people. That was the thing I liked most about Jordan. She didn't hover or pressure me into things.

  As I walked along a quiet sidewalk of the school building, a sharp whistle startled me. My head snapped to the direction of the piercing sound. To my utter shock, Allecra was sitting high up on a window sill, looking down at me. Her long slim legs dangled over the edge. Her messy blonde hair fell over her face, swaying in the afternoon breeze. A tiny smile curved on her perfect pink lips.

  "Oh, my god! What on earth are you doing up there?!" I cried from the ground with worries.

  Allecra just smirked. Then she jumped right off. I clasped my hands over my mouth, ready to scream. Instead, I froze in wonderment. Allecra landed onto the ground with a cat-like ease. She straightened herself back and grinned at me. I should have expected the unexpected with Allecra Knight by now.

  I tried holding back the overwhelming urge to hurt her. How many things could she do that I have to lose my mind over?

  "Sorry if I scared you," she said sheepishly and came to my side. She was careful not to get too close as if there was an unspoken rule between us.

  "You better stop that alien behavior of yours. I don't want my hair to turn prematurely gray."

  I began to walk again and Allecra followed me.

  "Where are you going?"

  "Somewhere that gives me a little peace of mind," I muttered back and strode on.

  "I know such a place," she said. "We can discuss our project together."

  "Oh really?" I scoffed.

  "Don't you want to get an A with this?" She pointed to herself, smiling so beautifully I couldn't think straight again. Wait, was I actually thinking straight right now, considering it was Allecra? I brushed the thought aside before my head started to spin in confusion again.

  "How do I know you won't kidnap me this time?" I said.

  "Why can't you accept the fact that I have no wish to harm you in any way? And stop being so paranoid and pessimistic already!" Allecra rolled her eyes at me.

  "How could I not when you walk around with that thing between your legs?"

  Allecra stopped walking and turned her face to me with a glare. Her eyes froze me on my track. My heart jumped at the look on her face.

  "I'm sorry, Allecra," I said in a small voice.

  Allecra pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut. Then she let out a loud exhale and looked at me again.

  "For the last time, Nina, you have to believe that I will never ever do anything to hurt you," she said. "I thought we were over that."

  I nodded like a misbehaving child. Allecra sighed again and lifted her hand to my cheek, stroking it gently. Her expression was almost pleading. I felt horrible for having said what I said.

  The trees blocked the sunray, casting dancing shadows on the ground around us.

  "You brought your lunch along with you, right?" Allecra said to change the subject.

  "Yes."

  "Good, share it with me," she said. "I'm hungry."

  After that, we sat down on the dry grass under the big pepper tree. The other trees and flower bushes surrounded us. We could see the sky and little clouds above. It was a perfect day. The sun had dried the moisture from the land and the grass we sat on as we ate my lunch. I made ham sandwiches and brought a bottle of grape juice with me, all of which Allecra had half of.

  "How did you know I like this tree?" I asked when we finished eating and taking turn sipping the remaining juice. Allecra shook her head.

  "No, I didn't know you like it," she said, gazing up at the flowing canopy of leaves hanging above us. "It happens to be the tree I like the most here, so I wanted to share it with you."

  "Oh." I nodded, blushing slightly again.

  "Trees here are so different from where I was from," she said. "They have good shapes and nice leaves, some of them look like women. It's beautiful."

  I realized I'd never found anyone who talked about trees in that way. Hell, no one would even want to share their appreciation of something like this.

  I sat there listening to her and looking at her. Then Allecra turned to me and our eyes met. The silence deepened.

  "Tell me something about you and your home planet," I said.

  "Want to get ahead of the class already?" she teased.

  "I want to know it for myself," I snapped. Allecra chuckled softly and then she lay down on her back, folding her hands behind her head as a pillow. She closed her eyes as if to recall the memories.

  "We landed on Earth when I was twelve. Our planet, Arzuria, is pretty much like Earth. We also have our sun to orbit around, but Arzuria is much bigger than your planet. It has four moons."

  "Four moons?" I said in astonishment.

  "Yes." She smiled, enjoying the impressed tone in my voice. "Ceyron, Piero, Acera, and Oraes are our moons. Each rises at different times. They have different colors, too. The pastel-pink one comes out in the morning, aqua blue in the afternoon, violet in the evening, and pale silver at night. Sometimes, when the sky was clear enough, we could see two moons at the same time."

  "Wow, it must be beautiful there."

  It was pretty strange that what Allecra said seemed too parallel with my dream. But how could I dream of Arzuria without having been there?

  "How did you meet your first potential then?" I asked before I could chicken out from hearing the answer. "What was she like?"

  Allecra looked at me with a frown. She obviously did not want to talk about it.

  "Maybe I'll tell you their stories later," she said and she sat up again, facing me this time. She took my hand in hers.

  "Why not now?"

  "Nina," she sighed. "I need you to know that you are the first human I feel this way with. It might sound odd, but where I came from, this complicated feeling doesn't exist."

  "So are you sure you can be in a complete sexual abstinence with me?" I said, turning to look at her directly in the eyes.

  "Not that I am not tempted, Nina. You have no idea. I was born purely for this one ultimate goal. It's still difficult even while I'm talking to you right now, but it got easier over time."

  She gave me a sad smile. I remembered her untimely outburst of affection and understood.

  "It got easier? How did it really make you feel before?"

  "A bit uncomfortable," she said with a helpless shrug. After she said that, I remembered the day we first
met and I asked Allecra about her cramp.

  "Oh! That thing hurts you!" I blurted out.

  Allecra lowered her face and let those impossibly long black lashes hide her iridescent eyes from mine.

  "Please, Nina," she said. "That 'thing' you keep calling is a part of me."

  "That's why you did it with your sister?" I went on and suddenly felt irritated. "So now that I wouldn't have sex with you, you could do it with her instead, right?"

  "No!" Allecra's eyes widened in alarm. "No, Nina...Gosh! How could you say that? It's—it's hard to explain. You just don't understand!"

  "Right, Allecra, I don't," I said and pulled my hands away from her roughly.

  "Oh, Nina, please, don't be like that again," she said pleadingly, looking pained and afraid. "I did what I did with her because that's how it has always been for me. My body is genetically designed for doing this breeding thing. It's like a cow that has to get milked or it'd die. Same way with me. It would be unbearably hard if I didn't...if I didn't...get off."

  "So what makes you think you could stand it with me?"

  "Because it doesn't matter that much anymore," she said, "especially since there are other pains."

  "Other pains?"

  "Like this pain right here." Allecra pointed to her heart. "But it's a good kind of pain, so sweet and warm. Yet it also agonizes me. It’s been aching ever since I saw you. It used to scare me out of my mind. I didn't know what kind of a disease I had caught. It keeps troubling me in my sleep and haunting in my wake. My heart no longer feels like my own, and the strangest thing is, it's you who seems to have more control over it. It's like you own me, and I just want to be completely and utterly yours."

  Everything went silent. I could hear her heavy breathing mixed with mine. I sighed and went to wrap my arms around her. I wished one thing she could have done to preserve my sanity was to be a little less perfect so that I could concentrate on keeping my resistance.

  But now, I was so far gone.

  She hugged me back tighter. Her hands roamed over my back. Then she pulled me with her, and we both let ourselves fall to the ground. Allecra lay there looking up at my face. The craving, that had been caged inside me like a bird for so long was now free and wild and strong. It made me dizzy with joy. Allecra raised her head to kiss me on the lips, so softly and sweetly, but she pulled away too soon, which left me a little disappointed.

  "The way your cheeks blush, how your eyes shine when you look at me. It makes the pain grow sharper," she whispered. "But oh, Nina, if the sweet throbbing stops, I think I could die."

  This time, I kissed her again, only not quite so sweetly yet with more passionate feelings. Her sweet delicious mouth opened under mine. I devoured her lips as every inch of me that was alive was consumed by hunger.

  And I was still craving, craving, and craving for Allecra Knight.

  CHAPTER 20

  Who would’ve thought a physic lesson could ever come in handy? It turned out to be true that an object in motion stays in motion. Now understand that my falling into emotional thrall with an alien hermaphrodite hadn't exactly been on my list of what to expect when I moved here.

  But I was coming around to embrace the belief that whether I liked it or not, things happen. And once they start happening, you pretty much just have to hold on for dear life and see where the motion drops you when it stops. I believed no one with half a toehold on reality would think my life was ordinary anymore.

  The feeling I got when I was around Allecra was so intense, I was afraid she could hear the hum coming from me. Now, I had come to a conclusion that maybe I wasn't that persistent in the first place. I guessed I should just let myself go through the motion.

  Allecra drove me home. After what had happened under the pepper tree, she didn't actually try to touch me or tease me again. I considered the silence as her way of not wanting to interrupt my thoughts.

  The car finally stopped. I looked up and was surprised that we were already at my aunt's house. When I turned towards Allecra, she was staring at me with her measuring gem-like eyes.

  "I'm sorry if I upset you," she said, her golden voice laced with so much sincerity it wreaked havoc with the rhythm of my heart. "I won't come to pick you up randomly anymore. Don't stress out over what I said."

  I felt the back of her slender fingers came to brush over my cheek. I looked up at her again and noticed a kind smile dancing on her lips. After all her confessions, it went without a doubt that she was in love with me.

  "Allecra," I said. "It's not you. I was being so mean to you this whole time. It's just my inability to decide what I truly want with you."

  As if to testify my statement, my hands reached around her neck and pulled her head in until our lips merged together again. Like always, our kiss made my mind woozy and my nerves prickling. Allecra was startled by my sudden boldness, but she returned my unannounced affection. Then came the heavy breathing and gasping between our frantic sliding lips, which were soon joined by wrestling probing tongues. Neither of us intended the kiss to be deep and desperate, but some passionate force inside us seemed to be at work.

  I could sense the familiar hunger begin to awaken from the pit of my stomach again. It was like a dying ember that could always be rekindled or some witch's curse where the more I tried to suppress my craving, the more starved I became. With great reluctant effort, I broke away from Allecra's lips soundly.

  We were both staring into each other's bewildered eyes. Our chests heaved in a simultaneous rhythm.

  "Please—just give me time," I told her promisingly. Her face was warm against my palms. "It won't be long until I am sure this is what I want."

  "You don't have to ask me for the time," she said. "I told you I'm not pressuring you into doing anything with me."

  "But this isn't fair, especially to you."

  "As long as you're happy, I don't care."

  "But I do," I insisted. "Just wait until I'm ready and I'll let you know, okay?"

  Allecra put her hands over mine, squeezed them a little, and then she nodded. Although I knew time was just an excuse to help me adjust myself to her, it was already crystal clear that I wanted Allecra — no 'if', no 'but', and not even a 'maybe' anymore. After all, wasn't I the one who hoped for something as miraculous and cliché as love at the bottom of a bad box?

  Now that love had presented itself, all I could do was to grab it by the horns and lived it to the fullest.

  As soon as I entered the house, my reality came back to me. The house, the feeling of normalcy floated in and wrapped itself around me. It was as if I existed in two different worlds. The world I saw before me here looked as it always had been. There was no sign of change, yet it ought to have been the world distinctly different from the one where Allecra existed. It was where my dark and untamed desire came into existence. Somehow, it was hard for me to believe that I could maintain such a fair balance between those two realities. I could end up in either world. It was just a matter of where my foot happened to fall.

  I finished my bath and was ready to go make dinner. When I got downstairs, there was a phone call all the way from Moscow.

  "Robert Black's residence," I spoke into the cordless receiver.

  "Nina?" said a familiar male voice. "Nina, it's me!"

  "Me who?" I said, knowing full well it was my dad.

  "Pyotr Volkov," he said. "Your father, remember?"

  I gritted my teeth at his sarcasm.

  "Who do you wish to speak to, sir?" I said. "No one is home at the moment I'm afraid."

  "Nina, please." My dad breathed. "I just want to talk to you to see if everything is okay. So how's America?"

  "The country is doing fine," I said.

  "Nina..." he was about to say something else but then let out a sigh instead. There was a long silence on both ends. I was thinking about putting the receiver down, but the voice sounded out again. This time, it was more resigned.

  "I miss you, my little devushka," he murmured. "I'm sorry. I know you'
re still mad at me, but this is for your best interest. I wish things can be reversible. I promise when everything settles down again, we can get back together as a family..."

  "Forget it, dad. You chose her over me— it's already too late," I cut him off in a bitter tone. What I hated the most was how he didn't stand up and fight for me.

  "Nina, don't say that," my dad groaned. "You know it's not how I want you to feel."

  "You want me to feel that you're ashamed to have a gay daughter," I spat, the anger flaring up again as I remembered Dominika's look of disgust and his helplessness in defending me. "That's why you sent me away so that you can have your new family all perfect with no spoilt part."

  "God, Nina!" he cried. "Do we have to go through this again?"

  I heard some movements in the background. My dad was pacing as he always did when he was upset.

  "I will call you later if you don't want to talk to me right now," he finally said, his voice strained with control. "But I want to let you know that I'm always thinking of you. You're my daughter and will always be. And I still love you no matter what."

  I wanted to point out that he had a new child to love now. There was no need to think of me, but I held back my tongue. Then he sighed.

  "Goodbye, Nina," he said and waited for a moment before he finally hung up.

  I put the receiver down and looked at it for a while. But just as I was about to walk away, another ringing sounded. I picked it up and noticed it was my aunt by her voice. We exchanged pleasantries and then she told me they were at the airport ready to come home from their delayed trip. I told her I would ask John to pick them up, but she said she already informed him.

  That evening, I prepared dinner for the whole family. There was nothing but some chicken and salmon in the fridge, so I fried the fish and made a chicken enchilada. Seeing it was still little food, I made steam rice and scavenged around to put together a decent bowl of mixed salad, which used the rest of the cottage cheese that was left.

  Soon afterward, Piper and Jay returned home surprisingly early like a mouse sensing the presence of a returning cat. Piper came to help me cook or at least tried to, while Jay tidied up the house as if to rid of all evidence of a crime.