Kristin Cashore

by Graceling

  And she would protect him as fiercely, if it were ever his need—i f a fight ever became too much for him or if he needed shelter, or food, or a fire in the rain. Or anything she could provide. She would protect him from everything.

  That was settled then. She closed her eyes and slipped into sleep.

  KATSA DIDN’T KNOW what was wrong with her when she woke the next morning. She couldn’t explain the fury she felt toward him. There was no explanation; and perhaps he knew that, because he asked for none. He only commented that the rain had stopped, watched her as she rolled her blanket, deliberately not looking at him, and carried his things to the horses. As they rode, still she did not look at him. And though he couldn’t have missed the force of her fury, he made no comment.

  She wasn’t angry that there was a person who could provide her with help and protection. That would be arrogance, and she saw that arrogance was foolishness; she should strive for humility—and there was another way he’d helped her. He’d gotten her thinking about humility. But it wasn’t that. It was that she hadn’t asked for a person whom she trusted, whom she would do so much for, whom she would give herself over to. She hadn’t asked for a person whose absence, if she woke in the middle of the night, would distress her—not because of the protection he would then fail to give, but simply because she wished his company. She hadn’t asked for a person whose company she wished.

  Katsa couldn’t bear her own inanity. She drew herself into a shell of sullenness and chased away every thought that entered her mind.

  WHEN THEY STOPPED to rest the horses beside a pond swollen with rainwater, he leaned against a tree and ate a piece of bread. He watched her, calmly, silently. She didn’t look at him, but she was aware of his eyes on her, always on her. Nothing was more infuriating than the way he leaned against the tree, and ate bread, and watched her with those gleaming eyes.

  “What are you staring at?” she finally demanded.

  “This pond is full of fish,” he said, “and frogs. Catfish, hundreds of them. Don’t you think it’s funny I should know that with such clarity?”

  She would hit him, for his calmness, and his latest ability to count frogs and catfish he couldn’t see. She clenched her fists and turned, forced herself to walk away. Off the road, into the trees, past the trees, and then she was running through the forest, startling birds into flight. She ran past streams and patches of fern, and hills covered with moss. She shot into a clearing with a waterfall that fell over rocks and plummeted into a pool. She yanked off her boots, pulled off her clothing, and leaped into the water. She screamed at the cold that surrounded her body all at once, and her nose and mouth filled with water. She surfaced, coughed and snorted, teeth chattering. She laughed at the coldness and scrambled to shore.

  And now, standing in the dirt, the cold raising every hair of her body on end, she was calm.

  IT WAS WHEN she returned to him, chilled and clearheaded, that it happened. He sat against the tree, his knees bent and his head in his hands. His shoulders slumped. Tired, unhappy. Something tender caught in her breath at the sight of him. And then he raised his eyes and looked at her, and she saw what she had not seen before. She gasped.

  His eyes were beautiful. His face was beautiful to her in every way, and his shoulders and hands. And his arms that hung over his knees, and his chest that was not moving, because he held his breath as he watched her. And the heart in his chest. This friend. How had she not seen this before? How had she not seen him? She was blind. And then tears choked her eyes, for she had not asked for this. She had not asked for this beautiful man before her, with something hopeful in his eyes that she did not want.

  He stood, and her legs shook. She put her hand out to her horse to steady herself.

  “I don’t want this,” she said.

  “Katsa. I hadn’t planned for it either.”

  She gripped the edges of her saddle to keep herself from sitting down on the ground between the feet of her horse.

  “You … you have a way of upending my plans,” he said, and she cried out and sank to her knees, then heaved herself up furiously before he could come to her, and help her, and touch her.

  “Get on your horse,” she said, “right now. We’re riding.”

  She mounted and took off, without even waiting to be sure he followed. They rode, and she allowed only one thought to enter her mind, over and over. I don’t want a husband. I don’t want a husband. She matched it to the rhythm of her horse’s hooves. And if he knew her thought, all the better.

  WHEN THEY STOPPED for the night she did not speak to him, but she couldn’t pretend he wasn’t there. She felt every move he made, without seeing it. She felt his eyes watching her across the fire he built. It was like this every night, and this was how it would continue to be. He would sit there gleaming in the light of the fire, and she unable to look at him, because he glowed, and he was beautiful, and she couldn’t stand it.

  “Please, Katsa,” he finally said. “At least talk to me.”

  She swung around to face him. “What is there to talk about? You know how I feel, and what I think about it.”

  “And what I feel? Doesn’t that matter?”

  His voice was small, so unexpectedly small, in the face of her bitterness that it shamed her. She sat down across from him. “Po. Forgive me. Of course it matters. You may tell me anything you feel.”

  He seemed suddenly not to know what to say. He looked into his lap and played with his rings; he took a breath and rubbed his head; and when he raised his face to her again she felt that his eyes were naked, that she could see right through them into the lights of his soul. She knew what he was going to say.

  “I know you don’t want this, Katsa. But I can’t help myself. The moment you came barreling into my life I was lost. I’m afraid to tell you what I wish for, for fear you’ll … oh, I don’t know, throw me into the fire. Or more likely, refuse me. Or worst of all, despise me,” he said, his voice breaking and his eyes dropping from her face. His face dropping into his hands. “I love you,” he said. “You’re more dear to my heart than I ever knew anyone could be. And I’ve made you cry; and there I’ll stop.”

  She was crying, but not because of his words. It was because of a certainty she refused to consider while she sat before him. She stood. “I need to go.”

  He jumped up. “No, Katsa, please.”

  “I won’t go far, Po. I just need to think, without you in my head.”

  “I’m afraid if you leave you won’t come back.”

  “Po.” This assurance, at least, she could give him. “I’ll come back.”

  He looked at her for a moment. “I know you mean that now. But I’m afraid once you’ve gone off to think, you’ll decide the solution is to leave me.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I can’t know that.”

  “No,” Katsa said, “you can’t. But I need to think on my own, and I refuse to knock you out, so you have to let me go. And once I’m gone you’ll just have to trust me, as any person without your Grace would have to do. And as I have to do always, with you.”

  He looked at her with those naked, unhappy eyes again. Then he took a breath and sat down. “Put a good ten minutes between us,” he said, “if you want privacy.”

  Ten minutes was a far greater range than she’d understood his Grace to encompass; but that was an argument for another time. She felt his eyes on her back as she passed through the trees. She groped forward, hands and feet, in search of darkness, distance, and solitude.

  ALONE IN the forest, Katsa sat on a stump and cried. She cried like a person whose heart is broken and wondered how, when two people loved each other, there could be such a broken heart.

  She couldn’t have him, and there was no mistaking it. She could never be his wife. She could not steal herself back from Randa only to give herself away again—belong to another person, be answerable to another person, build her very being around another person. No matter how she loved him.

  Katsa sat
in the darkness of the Sunderan forest and understood three truths. She loved Po. She wanted Po. And she could never be anyone’s but her own.

  After a while, she began to thread her way back to the fire.

  Nothing had changed in her feeling, and she wasn’t tired. But Po would suffer if he didn’t sleep; and she knew he wouldn’t sleep until she had returned.

  HE WAS LYING on his back, wide awake, staring up at a half-moon. She went to him and sat before him. He watched her with soft eyes and didn’t say anything. She looked back at him, and opened up her feelings to him, so that he would understand what she felt, what she wanted, and what she couldn’t do. He sat up. He watched her face for a long time.

  “You know I’d never expect you to change who you are, if you were my wife,” he finally said.

  “It would change me to be your wife,” she said.

  He watched her eyes. “Yes. I understand you.”

  A log fell into the fire. They sat quietly. His voice, when he spoke, was hesitant.

  “It strikes me that heartbreak isn’t the only alternative to marriage,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He ducked his head for a moment. He raised his eyes to her again. “I’ll give myself to you however you’ll take me,” he said, so simply that Katsa found she wasn’t embarrassed. She watched his face.

  “And where would that lead?”

  “I don’t know. But I trust you.”

  She watched his eyes.

  He offered himself to her. He trusted her. As she trusted him.

  She hadn’t considered this possibility, when she’d sat alone in the forest crying. She hadn’t even thought of it. And his offer hung suspended before her now, for her to reach out and claim; and that which had seemed clear and simple and heartbreaking was confused and complicated again. But also touched with hope.

  Could she be his lover and still belong to herself?

  That was the question; and she didn’t know the answer.

  “I need to think,” she said.

  “Think here,” he said, “please. I’m so tired, Katsa. I’ll fall right asleep.”

  She nodded. “All right. I’ll stay.”

  He reached up, and wiped away a tear that sat on her cheek. She felt the touch of his fingertip in the base of her spine, and fought against it, against allowing him to know of it. He lay down. She stood and moved to a tree outside the light of their fire. She sat against it and watched Po’s silhouette, waiting for him to fall asleep.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE NOTION of having a lover was to Katsa something like discovering a limb she’d never noticed before. An extra arm or toe. It was unfamiliar, and she poked and prodded it, as she would have prodded an alien toe unexpectedly her own.

  That the lover would be Po reduced her confusion somewhat. It was by thinking of Po, and not of the notion of a lover, that Katsa became comfortable enough to consider what it would mean to lie in his bed but not be his wife.

  It took more than the thinking of one night. They moved through the Sunderan forest, and they talked and rested and made camp as before. But their silences were perhaps a bit less easy than they had been; and Katsa broke off occasionally, to keep her own company and think in solitude. They did not practice fighting, for Katsa was shy of his touch. And he didn’t press it upon her. He pressed nothing upon her, even conversation, even his gaze.

  They moved as quickly as the road allowed. But the farther they traveled, the more the road resembled a trail at best, winding through overgrown gullies and around trees the size of which Katsa had never seen. Trees with trunks as wide as the horses were long, and branches that groaned far above them. They had to duck sometimes to avoid curtains of vines hanging from the branches. The land rose as they moved east, and streams crisscrossed the forest floor.

  Their route at least provided some distraction for Po. He couldn’t stop looking around, his eyes wide. “It’s wild, this forest. Have you ever seen anything like this? It’s gorgeous.”

  Gorgeous, and full of animals fattening themselves for winter. Easy hunting, and easy finding shelter. But Katsa felt palpably that the horses were moving as slowly as her mind.

  “I think we would move faster on our feet,” she said.

  “You’ll miss the horses when we have to give them up.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “It looks possibly ten days away on the map.”

  “I’ll prefer traveling by foot.”

  “You never tire,” Po said, “do you?”

  “I do, if I haven’t slept for a long time. Or if I’m carrying something very heavy. I felt tired when I carried your grandfather up a flight of stairs.”

  He glanced at her, eyebrows high. “You carried my grandfather up a flight of stairs?”

  “Yes, at Randa’s castle.”

  “After a day and a night of hard riding?”

  “Yes.”

  His laugh burst out, but she didn’t see the joke. “I had to do it, Po. If I hadn’t, the mission would’ve failed.”

  “He weighs as much as you, and half as much again.”

  “Well, and I was tired by the time I got to the top. You wouldn’t have been so tired.”

  “I’m bigger than he is, Katsa. I’m stronger. And I would have been tired, had I spent the night on my horse.”

  “I had to do it. I had no choice.”

  “Your Grace is more than fighting,” he said.

  She didn’t respond to that, and after a moment’s puzzlement, she forgot it. Her mind returned to the matter at hand. As it couldn’t help but do, with Po always before her.

  WHAT WAS the difference between a husband and a lover?

  If she took Po as her husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn’t yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his wife forever. And, no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it was a gift. Her freedom would not be her own; it would be Po’s to give or to withhold. That he never would withhold it made no difference. If it did not come from her, it was not really hers.

  If Po were her lover, would she feel captured, cornered into a sense of forever? Or would she still have the freedom that sprang from herself?

  They were lying on opposite sides of a dying fire one night when a new worry occurred to her. What if she took more from Po than she could give to him?

  “Po?”

  She heard him turn onto his side. “Yes?”

  “How will you feel if I’m forever leaving? If one day I give myself to you and the next I take myself away—with no promises to return?”

  “Katsa, a man would be a fool to try to keep you in a cage.”

  “But that doesn’t tell me how you’ll feel, always to be subject to my whim.”

  “It isn’t your whim. It’s the need of your heart. You forget that I’m in a unique position to understand you, Katsa. Whenever you pull away from me I’ll know it’s not for lack of love. Or if it is, I’ll know that, too; and I’ll know it’s right for you to go.”

  “But you’re not answering my question. How will you feel?”

  There was a pause. “I don’t know. I’ll probably feel a lot of things. But only one of the things will be unhappiness; and unhappiness I’m willing to risk.”

  Katsa stared up into the treetops. “Are you sure of that?”

  He sighed. “I’m certain.”

  He was willing to risk unhappiness. And there was the crux of the matter. She couldn’t know where this would lead, and to proceed was to risk all kinds of unhappiness.

  The fire gasped and died. She was frightened. For as their camp turned to darkness, she also found herself choosing risk.

  THE NEXT DAY Katsa would have given anything for a clear, straight path, for hard riding and thundering hooves to drown out all feeling. Instead the road wound back and forth, up rises and into gullies, and she didn’t know how she kept herself from screaming. Nightfall led them into a hollow where water trickled into a low
, still pool. Moss covered the trees and the ground. Moss hung from the vines that hung from the trees, and dripped into the pool that shone green like the floor of Randa’s courtyard.

  “You seem a bit edgy,” Po said. “Why don’t you hunt? I’ll build a fire.”

  She allowed the first few animals she stumbled across to escape. She thought that if she plunged deeper into the forest and took more time, she might wear down some of her jitters. But when she returned to camp much later with a fox in hand, nothing had changed. He sat calmly before the fire, and she thought she might burst apart. She threw their meat onto the ground beside the flames. She sat on a rock and dropped her head into her hands.

  She knew what it was rattling around inside her. It was fear, plain and cold.

  She turned to him. “I understand why we shouldn’t fight each other when one of us is angry. But is there harm in fighting when one of us is frightened?”

  He looked into the fire and considered her question evenly. He looked into her face. “I think it depends on what you hope to gain by fighting.”

  “I think it’ll calm me. I think it’ll make me comfortable with—with you being near.” She rubbed her forehead, sighing. “It’ll return me to myself.”

  He watched her. “It does seem to have that effect on you.”

  “Will you fight me now, Po?”

  He watched her for a moment longer and then moved away from the fire and motioned for her to follow. She walked after him, dazed, her mind buzzing so crazily it was numb, and when they faced each other she found herself staring at him dumbly. She shook her head to clear it, but it did no good.

  “Hit me,” she said.

  He paused for a fraction of a second. Then he swung at her face with one fist and she flashed her arm upward to block him. The explosion of arm on arm woke her from her stupor. She would fight him, and she would beat him. He hadn’t beaten her yet, and he wouldn’t beat her tonight. No matter the darkness, and no matter the whirlwind in her mind, for now that they fought, the whirlwind had vanished. Katsa’s mind was clear.