The Smoke-Scented Girl

by Melissa McShane

  “I can’t see anything. It’s not safe to move on if it’s possible we could leave the road.” Evon ducked under the warm, heavy folds of his cloak and made a space where he could safely pull out the map, then conjured a tiny light. His heart sank. They had made hardly any progress. It would be hours before they reached the village, and Kerensa, who already shivered now and then, would be frozen before that. He wouldn’t be in very good shape himself.

  “I think that’s a light,” Kerensa shouted, tapping Evon’s shoulder. He put the map away, dismissed the light and looked around. He saw nothing. “There, that way, it looks like lamplight,” she said.

  “It’s probably the snow blinding you,” Evon said.

  “No, I’m certain of it. Isn’t there some way you can look ahead, or look closely?”

  “I don’t think I’d see anything but snowflakes, even if there were something there.”

  “I think we should take the chance.”

  “Kerensa, if we leave the road, we could wander until we freeze to death.”

  “We’re already doing that. Please, Evon, I know what I saw.”

  Evon chewed on his lip. “All right,” he shouted. “Point me the right way.”

  She stuck out her arm and pointed. Evon turned the horse and once again began their slow progress.

  There was nothing but snow. Evon wondered if it would be possible to make their way back to the road using the map. There were so many obstacles the horse could trip over, and break a leg, and then they really would be doomed. He wondered if Kerensa could be killed by something like this. Would the spell’s creators have built some sort of safeguard into it, to protect the host from dying in some pointless fashion? He blinked hard to clear his lashes of snow. There was a light—no, it was gone. Evon strained to see anything in the encompassing whiteness. There it was again. A lamp in a window, and someone passing in front of it, blocking it out occasionally. Evon urged the horse onward, feeling his despair begin to drop away.

  “Did you see it?” Kerensa asked.

  “Yes, and thank you for not saying ‘I told you so.’”

  “I wasn’t even thinking it.” Kerensa shivered again, a hard, convulsive movement. “I’m just glad I was right.”

  “So am I.”

  The rectangle of light grew larger and stronger until the outline of a house loomed up out of the whiteness. Evon had an impression of rough framing and two stories and then he saw the door. “Don’t get down,” he told Kerensa, and slid off the horse to go and bang at the door. Nothing happened. Whoever had been moving around behind the window stopped. He banged on the door again and shouted, “Can you help us?”

  The door opened a crack. A suspicious-looking eye that might have belonged to someone of either sex squinted up at him. “What do you want?” The voice was old and pitched low for a woman or high for a man.

  “My wife and I need shelter from the storm,” Evon said, deciding at the last minute not to risk another Holdplain incident. “Can you help us?”

  “No shelter here. Get along.”

  “We’ll die if we don’t find a place out of the storm. Isn’t there anywhere we can stay? A spare room? We can pay, or—I’m a magician, I know many useful spells—”

  “Don’t need none of that. Get along, I said.”

  “Please,” Evon said. “My wife isn’t well. We’ll take anything. I swear we don’t mean you any harm.”

  “I ain’t seen a wife. Ain’t seen nobody but you. You could be a murderer, kill an old woman in her sleep.”

  “Wait.” Evon went back and helped Kerensa dismount. Her shivering was coming more rapidly now. Evon led her to the front door, then conjured a light so the old woman could see them both clearly. The suspicious eye flicked from one of them to the other. Kerensa smiled. Evon tried to smile, but felt his face was frozen.

  “You can sleep in the barn around back,” the woman said finally. “No fires. And don’t think of tryin’ to get in here once I’m abed. I got a little magic of my own.”

  “Thank you, ma’am, we truly appreciate it,” Evon said. They went back to the horse and, clutching its harness, made their slow way around the farmhouse, then struck out toward the dim shape of the barn. Snow was packed against the base of the doors, and it took some shoving for Evon to pull one of them open wide enough for them and the horse to fit through. It was less cold than in the heart of the blizzard, but still freezing inside, and empty except for a swaybacked mule, though stalls and rusted pails showed that this had once been a dairy farm. The floor was swept clean, but a ladder led up to a hayloft which appeared to be full of messily stowed hay.

  “I’ll take care of the horse. Why don’t you see if you can turn that into bedding of some kind?” Evon said. Kerensa nodded and gingerly climbed the ladder, careful of her footing in the near dark. Evon found a scrap of old blanket and rubbed the horse down, then led it into one of the empty stalls far away from the mule, which looked at him with a vicious eye. He could hear Kerensa up above, and the rustling of hay being shifted. “Would you push some of that over the edge for the horse?” he called up to her, and moments later large clumps rained down. He put the hay into a convenient trough, then scooped up several armfuls of snow into another trough and cast a furtive forva to melt the snow and warm the resulting water. He repeated the action, awkwardly, to fill the canteen hanging off the horse’s harness. They didn’t have any food, so water would have to do until the storm blew itself out. He tried not to think about what he would do if the storm lasted more than a day or so. He might become desperate enough to invade that woman’s home and raid her larder.

  He clambered up the ladder, hauling their bags with him, to find that Kerensa had piled some of the hay into two large heaps and was sitting on one of them, her cloak wrapped around herself. She was shivering hard now and looked miserable. Evon swiftly removed her cloak, spread it on the haystack, and sat on it, then pulled her down to sit with her back against his chest and wrapped his own cloak around them both. He held her tightly as she shook and only then realized what he’d done. It made sense, he told himself, she wouldn’t have gotten warm on her own, and I promised I wouldn’t light a fire. I should have started a fire anyway. This is madness, holding her like this. Her shivering body felt good against his, and he had to quell the impulse to kiss her hair, to turn her so he could cradle her against him and be filled with her wonderful smoky scent. As she gradually became still and warm, he desperately tried to think of reasons not to let her go. Shared warmth against the frigid barn? They could still freeze to death, on their own. He couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t make his true motives obvious. He ought to let her go, call up a light so they could see more clearly to settle into their separate hay piles, and try to sleep the storm, and his desires, out.

  “More comfortable?” he said, hoping he sounded casual.

  She sat silent for a moment, then turned sideways, put her arms around his neck and leaned against his chest, her head on his shoulder and her fingers brushing the hair at the nape of his neck. “I am now,” she said.

  At first he didn’t understand. Kerensa’s dark dress made her nearly invisible in the dim light; he could see only her hair and the lighter oval of her face, which she now turned up toward his. She seemed to be waiting for something, and suddenly he registered the feel of her body pressed against his, how her arms tightly circled his neck, and he thought he might have wandered into a dream, because what was happening was impossible. He laid his hand along her cheek and felt her lean into his touch, shifting so his fingers trailed across the smooth skin of her face. A million questions rose up in his mind, but then his lips found hers, and he forgot every one of them.

  Her lips were still cold, but warmed with his kiss, parting a little in response. She drew him closer despite her awkward position, half in his lap and half on the floor, so he put an arm low around her waist and hitched her up to a more secure position, and felt her smile against his mouth. This was nothing like the chaste kisses
he’d exchanged with certain young women of his acquaintance, proper and socially acceptable; nothing in his experience had prepared him for holding the woman he loved and feeling her heart beat faster with desire for him. She was beautiful and he was kissing her and, even better, she was kissing him with a wonderful eagerness, and that told him this was not a dream because it was something he had never dared dream of. He put his free hand to the back of her head and began pulling pins out of her hair until it fell in one glorious sweep to her waist, and he ran his fingers through it and shivered with joy. “Kerensa,” he murmured, and she kissed him so fiercely that it burned all the way down his spine.

  When they finally separated, Kerensa laid her head on his shoulder and sighed with such pleasure that another white-hot wave went through him, and he held her close and felt again the rapid beating of her heart. He ran his hand down her silky hair again, but paused when a horrible thought occurred to him. Surely she wouldn’t...? He was trying to frame the words Did you only do that because I was available? as a more delicate question when she said, “Did you only kiss me because I was forward, or did it mean something more?”

  He felt the fist around his heart relax. “Shouldn’t I be asking you that question, since you were the forward one?”

  “I was so afraid of making a fool of myself, but I couldn’t bear it any longer, not showing you how I feel. I figured if it was dark, at least I wouldn’t have to see you when you rejected me.”

  Evon laughed and stroked her hair. “I would never have had the courage to do what you did. I intended to take my love for you to my grave.”

  She drew in an astonished breath. “You say that as though...Evon, how long have you felt this way?”

  “According to Piercy, practically from the moment I first saw you. I was just too dense to realize the truth until you were kidnapped.”

  “That’s still a long time for you to carry those feelings around. You couldn’t have told me?”

  “Not while you might think you should return those feelings out of gratitude.”

  “Oh. I suppose that makes sense.” She shifted. “You were good at hiding your feelings. I thought you cared for me only as a sister.”

  “I thought you cared for me only as a brother.”

  “I’m glad you’re not my brother.”

  “So am I, because this would be illegal.”

  “Immoral, certainly.” She intertwined her fingers with his. “You came into the bar and started telling that story to those men that made me sound either crazy or whorish, I wasn’t sure which, and I thought, He really is going to follow me anywhere, and I knew I never wanted to be without you again. And I hoped it meant you might feel something more for me than friendship.”

  “I had no idea how you felt. I nearly went mad when Speculatus had you. I’ve wanted to kiss you ever since then, and run my fingers through your hair, and hold your hand—” Evon lifted their joined hands and kissed the back of hers. She laughed, and the sound made his heart beat faster, so he bent and kissed her again, over and over until, laughing, she pretended to push him away and said, “Now I wish I’d said something sooner.”

  “I intend to make up for that lost time, so don’t feel too much regret.”

  “I could think of it as being even gladder that I didn’t wait longer.”

  “I agree.” He kissed her once more, just because he could and because she loved him. In the darkness, with the snow howling around the barn outside, it was hard to believe it was real. He conjured a light and Kerensa winced against the sudden brightness. “What did you do that for?” she asked.

  “Proving to myself that you are really here. It seems so unlikely, someone like you deciding to fall in love with me.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” She leaned away to look at him more fully.

  “Well, because I’m stubborn, and difficult, and I say stupid things because I become absorbed in my work—”

  “And you’re kind, and smart, and you’ve never let me down, and you are so handsome I can’t stop looking at you.”

  “I am?”

  “Of course. You’re much better looking than Piercy, for one. You have those blue eyes, and that square jaw—”

  “And yet Piercy is the one all the girls follow around.”

  “That’s because Piercy is satisfied with flirtations, and you have been waiting for the right girl, and I imagine all of them knew that girl was me, so they didn’t bother trying to attract you.” Kerensa snuggled close again. “Evon?” She sounded unexpectedly shy.

  “Mmm?”

  “Do you think...would it be wrong for you to hold me while I sleep tonight? Because I would really like that.”

  “Wrong as in, we’re not married, or wrong as in, we might do something only married people are supposed to do?”

  “Either one.” She ducked her head lower against his chest. “Evon, I have been alone for so long, and I trust that you will find a way to keep me alive, but I am still so afraid. I would just like to have that comfort for one night. And it is really cold in here. But I understand if you think it would be a bad idea.”

  He tightened his arms around her. “Kerensa,” he said, “you would have far more trouble convincing me to let you go.”

  They shoved the two piles of hay together and made a bed from their cloaks, then nestled together, Kerensa falling asleep almost immediately. Evon lay wakeful for a while, surprised that he was untroubled by the impulses that had tormented him ever since he discovered he loved the woman in his arms. Perhaps the overwhelming surprise and relief at learning she felt the same way had satisfied him—for the moment, anyway. He kissed her beautiful hair, then turned his face so he didn’t have to breathe through it. She loved him. It was like a miracle. Now, he thought as he drifted off to sleep, I just have to perform a miracle for her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Evon woke the next morning to find the storm had not abated, that the barn in the daytime was only slightly less dark than it had been the night before, and that he was starving. Kerensa lay peacefully asleep beside him, her hair tangled and a line across her poreless cheek where she had slept on a crease of the cloak. He gently shook her awake and saw her expression go from momentary confusion to awareness of where she was and then, wonderfully, such happiness when she saw him that it was impossible for him not to kiss her. She made a pleased sound when he did, and when he drew back, said, “I didn’t say it last night, but I love you, Evon Lorantis, and I hope you’ll always kiss me the way you did just now.”

  That, and the look in her shining eyes, made more kissing essential, until Evon had to release her because the desire that had been banked the night before was rising up in him again, and it seemed to him that Kerensa felt the same way. He was determined not to press his attentions on her, however willing she was, on a makeshift bed in a hayloft in the middle of a blizzard. So he kissed her one last time and retreated to arm’s length while she sat and picked hay out of her tangled hair. “I never understood why you braided it at night,” Evon said.

  “This is why. Though usually there’s less hay. Would you hand me my brush? By the Gods, but I’m hungry.”

  “The storm hasn’t let up. I was thinking of approaching our unwilling landlady. I don’t want to starve to death in this barn.”

  They bundled up and went over to the house and knocked on the door. When the suspicious eye appeared, Evon said, “Thank you so much for the shelter, ma’am, you’ve saved our lives. We were wondering if we could buy some food from you. We were planning to eat at the next village we came to, but you know we never made it that far. My wife would certainly appreciate it.”

  Kerensa jerked a little when he came to “wife,” but said, “We really are very hungry. Don’t you have anything you can spare?”

  The eye examined her. “Show me your coin first,” the woman said.

  Evon pulled a handful of coins from his trousers pocket. The door opened a little more, a plump wrinkled hand reached out and scooped up all t
he coins from Evon’s palm, then the door closed with a loud thump. Evon and Kerensa looked at each other. “She’s worried about us robbing her?” Kerensa said in a low voice.

  “I can break this door down. It would be easy.”

  “I’m beginning to think you might have to.”

  The door opened again. “Ain’t got more to spare,” the woman said, handing them a sack, then a keg the size of Kerensa’s head. “And no fires. Don’t need that barn burnin’ down.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Evon said, not daring to waste time opening the sack for fear she might change her mind. They retreated to the barn and discovered their reluctant benefactor had given them two round loaves of barely stale bread, a chunk of cheese as big as Evon’s doubled fists, half a dozen slightly wizened apples, and a jar of preserves. The keg turned out to contain fresh cider, only a little hard. Evon found his pen knife and hacked off chunks of bread, which they smeared with the preserves and ate until Evon felt he could never eat again. Kerensa’s appetite was better than his, and she finished off her meal with half the cheese, two of the apples, and a long draught of cider. “I’ve never known anyone to eat quite so much,” he said, teasing.

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and said, “I’ve never been so hungry in my whole life. I’m going to give one of these apples to the horse. Poor thing.”

  “I’m going to study, if you don’t mind,” Evon said, pouring a little of the cold water from the canteen over his sticky fingers and rubbing them dry on his trousers.

  “I wish I had something to do other than watch you study and groom the horse,” Kerensa complained. “Not that I don’t enjoy watching you do things. You get this furrow to your brow when you’re studying that makes you look fierce, like a warrior out of Alvorian myth.”

  Evon grinned. “No one’s ever mentioned that before.”

  “Probably no one’s ever watched you as closely as I do before.” She leaned over and kissed him. “I like that I can do that whenever I want.”

  “You are welcome to do that whenever you want. I positively encourage it.” He shouldn’t encourage it; as far as society was concerned her honor had already been compromised just by spending the night with him. But he could still feel the warmth of her body curled close against his, could still remember that look in her eyes when she’d woken next to him, and knew he didn’t give a damn what society thought.