“Thanks for taking care of things while I was gone,” Trevain told his old friend.
“I’m just glad that you’re alive, Captain Murphy,” Mr. Fiskel said with a smile. “I swear I never doubted for a moment that you would survive that wreck. I’m finished with this bag.”
Trevain nodded, taking the suitcase from Mr. Fiskel. The two men began to walk across the corridor together, heading for the stairs. “I’ll need you to collect the mail about once a week, water the plants, and just do a general check up on the place. Your pay will remain the same, of course.”
“That’s not necessary, Captain Murphy…”
“Of course it is,” Trevain said as they descended the stairs. There were two other suitcases already by the door. “I’ll let you know when I return. We can catch up on things then. How is your health, Mr. Fiskel?”
“I’m strong as an ox, Captain Murphy,” the old man said with a grin. “How are things with Miss Aazuria?”
“Great,” Trevain said, with a touch of sadness in his voice. “We’re getting married.”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but shouldn’t you be more excited to be getting hitched to a gorgeous young gal like Miss Aazuria?”
“I am thrilled, Mr. Fiskel. It’s just that a lot has happened recently and she’s not her usual self. We were going to have an elaborate wedding, but it turns out that it’s going to be rather rushed and practical.”
“Why? Did you get her pregnant?”
“No, of course not. Well… I don’t think so.”
“You dog!” Mr. Fiskel said, clapping Trevain on the back with a laugh.
“I’ve never been called that before,” Trevain said with a smile. “Well, let’s get going, Mr. Fiskel. I don’t want to keep you away from your family, and I have to get back to mine too. Wow—that’s also a new phrase. I’m a family man now.”
“Enjoy it while it’s enjoyable,” Mr. Fiskel recommended.
The two men exited the house, lugging the suitcases with them. Trevain briefly popped back into the house to set the alarm before locking up. After he had set the alarm, he heard his phone ringing.
“Damn,” he swore. “I’ll just let the answering machine take it.”
The two men carried the suitcases to the trunk of Trevain’s Range Rover. Trevain found himself looking up at his house with a twinge of nostalgia. Goodbye, terrestrial dwelling, he thought to himself. You were a fine house to live in, but much too lonely.
Usually, the traditional Adluvian wedding was held in a submerged room, but Brynne could not breathe underwater or understand sign language, so it was modified for her attendance. Elandria and Alcyone were adding last-minute decorating touches to the cozy little room, and stressing about the details as is customary for even the most practical of weddings.
“I’m going to be the best man,” Brynne declared, “since Calzone is just a little boy. He can hold the rings or something.”
“Why d’you have to be so emasculating?” Callder complained. “You were so nice when you first learned I was alive.”
“Yes, but then I remembered why we broke up in the first place,” Brynne complained. “Your headlights are out, your wipers are broken, your body is covered in rust…”
“Do not insult the body!” Callder said firmly, gesturing down at himself.
“Your engine is damaged and frankly it costs more to fix you than to buy a new one.”
“Brynne, I have changed since I died. Can’t you see that? I’m a different man, and you should be marrying me. We’ve known each other way longer than Trevain and Aazuria…”
“That’s how I know you’re not good for me. I’ve always wanted a brand new Mercedes,” Brynne said firmly.
“Then you have to stop using me!” Callder told her. “I’m not a sex slave, you succubus!”
Brynne shrugged callously. “Since when do you have self-respect, anyway?”
“Since the world declared me dead!”
“Children!” Alcyone said in frustration. She and Elandria had been doing finishing touches to decorate the room where the wedding would be held. “Can you please stop arguing?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Murphy,” Brynne said apologetically.
“This is a day for the princess and your brother,” Alcyone told them. “Try to behave.”
“Sorry, mom,” Callder said. “I guess weddings always make you think about your own love life. You can only chase after a girl for so many years before giving up.”
“Callder, my boy. Don’t give up on Brynne. She’s only testing you,” Alcyone told him with a smile. “Oh, here’s the priestess!”
The priestess was a small woman who was half Aleutian Inuit and half Australian Yawkyawk. She had a deep scowl on her face. “This wedding breaks every tradition of Adlivun!” she exclaimed. “The groom must not see the bride for a week before the wedding. They must have time to carefully reflect upon their choices in solitude. I will not perform the ceremony without having the traditional Week of Airosen!”
“Please understand, Sybil—this is a special circumstance,” Alcyone reasoned.
“Marriage is forever. There is no divorce in Adlivun. Sea-dwellers create lifelong bonds of fidelity and love.” The priestess looked at Brynne and Callder distastefully. “We are not fickle like those on land.”
“I resent that,” Brynne said angrily.
“So do I,” Alcyone said with a frown.
“Skipping the Week of Airosen curses a union!” the priestess insisted. “Do you really wish for Princess Aazuria to be cursed like her father?”
“Trivial superstitions don’t make a marriage,” Elandria interjected. “The individuals entering the union are not going to change who they are in the space of a week. Trevain is a good man, and my sister is a caring woman. They are both leaders. What matters most is the dedication and kindness the husband and wife give each other.”
“If they cannot dedicate a week of reflection to the matter, how dedicated are they?”
Alcyone sighed. “They’re in the middle of a war, Sibyl. There is no time for them to sit around and think for a week.”
“Cursed,” the priestess muttered. “They will be cursed if they rush into this.”
“I’m not happy about it either!” Alcyone said angrily. “I wanted something spectacular for my boy. This is horrible. This is like a lame courthouse wedding with a justice of the peace. This is just as boring as the way I married John.”
“It is not exactly time to celebrate,” Aazuria said, entering with Trevain.
“See this?” the priestess said, gesturing wildly to Trevain and Aazuria. “They have been with each other before the ceremony. No deliberation, no time to reflect.”
“I don’t need more time to reflect,” Trevain told the woman. “I love Aazuria.”
“Is she with child?” the priestess asked, moving over to peer closely at Aazuria’s stomach. “Is that the reason for the rush?”
“What? Of course not,” Aazuria said. Then she paused. “Well… I do not think so.”
“It’s irrelevant,” Trevain told the priestess.
“Fine,” Sybil said, gesturing to the carpet where there were two urns filled with water. “I will need both of you to take your places beside your own pitcher of Sacred Water.”
Alcyone whispered to Trevain quietly as he walked by her, “When my mother returns, can we have a real wedding? Promise me?”
“Of course,” he told her, kissing her forehead.
When everyone was seated on the carpet, kneeling in the formal seiza position in their respective places, the priestess Sibyl began to speak. “There is an urn filled with Sacred Water before the woman, and another before the man. Both of you are required to breathe the water into your lungs, and hold it there for thirty heartbeats. Then you must expel it into the urn—this will infuse the liquid with the inua from deep within your body, transforming it into the Sacred Breath.” The priestess looked at each of them intently. “Are you both ready?”
When t
hey answered affirmatively, the priestess nodded. “Place both of your hands on the handles of the urn before you.” When Trevain and Aazuria had each gripped their urn, Sibyl closed her eyes and spread her arms. “Repeat after me: Into this water I cast a fragment of my inua—the best and worst of all that I am. With this water I freely bind my inua as I expel the Sacred Breath.”
Trevain and Aazuria spoke together. “Into this water I cast a fragment of my inua—the best and worst of all that I am. With this water I freely bind my inua as I expel the Sacred Breath.”
The priestess lifted her hand in command. “Breathe now.”
Trevain and Aazuria each gripped their respective urn, and lowered their faces to the liquid. They breathed in the Sacred Water, both feeling a tingle in their throats. They knew that this sensation was from some additive in the water, possibly an herb, but it still gave the centuries-old effect of making them both feel like they had inhaled something magic which scoured and scraped at the insides of their bodies. When thirty heartbeats had passed, they exhaled into the urn. They both felt like they were, in fact, blowing a little bit of their souls out into the water.
They lifted their heads from the water, and looked at each other with solemn smiles.
“Now repeat after me,” Sibyl told them. “Please accept my offering of all that I can offer. Please accept all my love and all my strength as your own.”
Trevain and Aazuria repeated these words, never taking their eyes away from each other. “Please accept my offering of all that I can offer. Please accept all my love and all my strength as your own.”
It might have been a rushed and basic ceremony, but it was just what they had needed. A quiet, spiritual moment which somehow had the power to subdue the deafening pandemonium. Sibyl was asking them to repeat another phrase. “All of my worldly goods are yours, and all of my otherworldly goods are yours as well. I give you myself in the Sacred Breath.”
Trevain and Aazuria smiled as they earnestly spoke the words. “All of my worldly goods are yours, and all of my otherworldly goods are yours as well. I give you myself in the Sacred Breath.”
Brynne felt herself getting a little teary-eyed, and she reached up to wipe the droplets away from her lashes. She glanced over at Callder, and saw that he was smiling at her. She could not help returning his smile. It was too sweet of a moment to pretend to be made of stone and fury as she usually did.
The priestess looked to Alcyone and Elandria. “Do those with the blood of the betrothed sanction this union?” When Alcyone agreed and Elandria responded affirmatively in sign language, the priestess gave another order. “You may both exchange the urns—carefully now.”
When Alcyone moved to take the urn from before her son, her hands were surprisingly steady. She looked at him with vast motherly pride as she switched the position of the urn to before Aazuria. She bowed deeply to the princess before returning to her seat. As she did this, Elandria was lifting the urn from in front of Aazuria. Elandria’s quietness gave her the ability to be unusually expressive with her eyes, and Aazuria could clearly see the intensity of her feeling.
It was an unusually quiet and small wedding—Aazuria did not have her parents alive to attend the ceremony, her sister Corallyn, or even her friends and lifelong guardians, the Ramaris sisters. Even Queen Amabie could not attend because she was training with the army and filling the hole in leadership left by Visola. Somehow, all of this did not matter in the moment that Aazuria locked eyes with Elandria—in her sister’s face was all of the familial loyalty and love she could have ever needed. It was evident that the younger woman worshipped her sister, and wished her enough happiness for ten kingdoms, and ten lifetimes.
When Elandria swapped the urn with the one Alcyone was carrying, she also gave Trevain a smile of support and trust. She had not the slightest doubt that this man would love her sister as much as she did, and bring only good things into their lives. She could not have wished for a better brother-in-law, and she easily communicated this to him with her eyes.
“Excellent,” said Sibyl. “Now, the betrothed must grasp the urn holding their companion’s Sacred Breath. Look at each other and speak the following words with sincerity: I accept and absorb your inua into me. I accept the best and worst of all that you are. Your soul will join with mine, and mine will join with yours. We are changed, but unchanging, like the eternal sea.”
Trevain and Aazuria reached forward to grasp the exchanged urns, and they repeated the words. “I accept and absorb your inua into me. I accept the best and worst of all that you are. Your soul will join with mine, and mine will join with yours. We are changed, but unchanging, like the eternal sea.”
“Breathe now, and be married.”
The princess and the captain lowered their heads and followed the instructions, allowing their lungs to be inundated with the Sacred Breath of their loved one. The burning sensation was felt once more, as if there was actually a fusion of souls occurring within them. They held the water in their lungs for the required expanse of time before expelling it. They removed their faces from the water, feeling somehow refreshed and transformed. The priestess smiled as she lifted her hands.
“Above us are the stars, and below us are the stones; as time doth pass, remember... like a stone should your love be firm, and like a star should your love be constant. Princess Aazuria Vellamo of Adlivun, and Captain Trevain Murphy of Alaska, I declare you married before the gathered witnesses of men and nature. Be true to each another.”
A somber silence followed her declaration. Trevain felt like he was still waiting to be given permission to kiss the bride, but that did not seem to be a part of this ceremony. He really wanted to reach out and touch Aazuria, but he did not want to disturb the dense, divine ambience in the room. Aazuria’s chin was lowered slightly, and there was an enchanting blush tinting her pale cheeks. Alcyone was wiping away tears of happiness for her son, and Elandria’s hands were clasped together joyfully. Even the initially-cynical priestess seemed immersed in enjoyment of the moment.
Callder had taken Brynne’s hand during the ceremony, and now he looked at her with an unsmiling determination that was rarely found on his face.
Chapter 18: Scent of Sarcasm
The afterlife smelled like posies. It was a strange scent. A nose twitched, trying to inhale and make out exactly where the scent was coming from, but it felt that something was blocking it from fully exercising its olfactory abilities. A hand reached up to aid the nose and collided with an unpleasant plastic tube. The tube was impaling the innocent nose, and restricting it from doing what it longed to do. The hand discovered, with great disgust at the tactile quality of the synthetic material, that there were more offending tubes traveling into the mouth. The eyes could take no more of this, and they forced themselves to open. The head lifted off the pillow, so that the eyes could squint as they looked around. To their chagrin, they saw the interior of a hospital room.
Visola was surrounded by hundreds of bouquets of violets of every imaginable color. They seemed to be extremely fresh, and their fragrant scent had been able to reach her through the plastic tubes, and even all the way to her dreams. The sight was charming and pleasing until the recent events came rushing back to her mind. It occurred to her that the flowers were a gesture of ridicule. She reached down to her stomach and felt with her fingertips through the blue-patterned white fabric of her gown. The deep cut had been stitched up and was healing well.
Shit. I’m alive, she thought to herself with disappointment. She let out a soft groan and lowered herself back to the pillow. It was impossible to be in a hospital and not think about Sionna. Everything around her, and every machine and instrument attached to her reminded her of her sister’s clever words rushing out in enthusiastic explanation. Why had Vachlan refused to return Sionna? It seemed to her that although he was many things, ruthless among them, he would at least be honest.
Was Sionna even still alive? When she had been making her way down into Zimovia, Visola had been a
lmost sure of her sister’s safety. Perhaps she had needed to convince herself in order to move forward through those tunnels and seek her. Now, it all seemed like it had been pointless. Visola stared at the white square tiles of the hospital ceiling. Her twin sister. She had heard stories about twins having some kind of intense connection that led them to instinctively feeling when their sibling was in danger or dying. She tried her best, but she could not find any hint of this knowledge within her. Visola’s intuition was faulty; the magic was broken. Sionna could be dead.
She began trying to slowly and carefully remove the tubes from her nose and mouth. She grimaced when an ample amount of blood came along with them. Once this gruesome task was completed, she breathed deeply of the air on her own. The scent of the violets filled her nostrils with a rush. It was too pleasant and fragrant to be meant negatively. What if Aazuria had led the attack on Zimovia and rescued her, and it was Aazuria and Trevain who waited outside the hospital? Heartened by this thought, Visola stretched out and tried to reach one of the bouquets nearest to the bed. There was a note inserted among the flowers.
Violets for my violent one.
Missing you terribly, dear wife. Get better soon!
Love, Vachlan
“No,” Visola whispered. She clenched her hand into a fist and pounded it weakly into her mattress. “No, no, no, no!” The mattress winced under the weight of every word.
The profusion of fragrant, lovely flowers was intended purely as insult. She should have recognized the scent of sarcasm. Visola considered, and began, throwing the flowers across the room, but she paused mid-swing. She did not wish to create a ruckus and draw attention. She needed to slip away unseen before she was forced to be reunited with Vachlan. She looked around the room for materials to use in her escape, and she was angered when she noticed that each bouquet of flowers had a different note attached to it, filled with more mocking wisecracks to abuse her upon her awakening. She growled in frustration. She needed to get away from that place.
Fathoms of Forgiveness (Sacred Breath, Book 2) Page 17
