by Dawn Steele
Aein tensed, genuinely afraid for the diminutive woman. Although he had witnessed her fighting prowess firsthand, the very idea of a pygmy woman against four huge louts twice her size made his skin crawl.
Ivar and the others dropped the pimpled boy. He landed on the deck in a tangle of limbs, and then scurried away crablike.
“Begging your pardon, Mistress,” Ivar said, insolence brimming in his voice, “but it’s really none of your business.”
“I own this ship, so everything is my business.” Ravanne reared herself to her full height.
She does? Aein wondered.
“You may own the ship, but you don't own us.”
“I pay your wages. If you don't like the way my ship is run, you can either get off in the next port or jump into sea. There’s a gangplank over there. Feel free to walk it anytime.”
Aein marveled at her courage. Something hard and mean flitted over Ivar’s face. The fists of his crew members were clenched and their postures defiant. Their eyes glinted in the single flickering lamp. Ravanne held her stance. Her feet were set apart, braced for action, and Aein had no doubt she could catapult into a whirlwind of deadly motion at the first sign of danger. Her backbone was straight and proud.
She was so tiny. So . . . some might consider . . . defective.
His legs suddenly felt wobbly and he had to clutch at the wall for support. His lungs felt deprived of air. Somewhere in the cavern of his skull, he heard Ravanne’s voice echo: “Go sleep off the wine, Ivar. Don't do anything rash. You’ll thank me in the morning.”
Aein turned his back against the wall and stared out into the night sky. Clouds obscured the stars.
The good, the bad, the proud, the spirited. The dreamers, the seekers, the scoundrels, the murderers. The Blue Planet was an exact mirror of Spora.
Denial was a terrible thing. It was the softest of non-actions, but as bad as hewing the axe himself. It justified terrible deeds, like genocide.
He heard the scrapes of shoes on the deck. Ivar and the others were walking off. Ravanne had won this round. Perhaps she would win another one. Perhaps she wouldn’t. But it only mattered that she stood up for what she believed in.
Heart pounding, he gathered himself and ran lightly down to Snow White’s cabin.
#
In the soft lamplight, Snow White’s skin was as white as the sheets around her body. Aein gazed upon her, his fervor causing him to clasp her hand tightly against his tie bone.
“Snow White,” he said urgently, “I know what I have to do, but I want you there with me.”
The flickering light danced upon Snow White’s cheeks. It was a hellish image, a premonition of things to come. She did not stir.
“Please.” The fear so palpable in his head now it was like a helmet of thorns. “Wake up!”
Snow White’s chest rose and fell. Was it his imagination or did her breathing turn more labored? He placed his ear against her heart, and he couldn’t be certain, but he thought her heartbeat was fainter than it had a right to be. Her skin was so hot that he gently prized open the collar of her nightgown, exposing the ugly new scar above her breasts. It was a deep purple and brimming with yellow and green pus. Again. After he had cleaned it.
He had to do something. He didn't know if it would work. It was something Sporadean mothers did back when they were uncivilized a thousand generations ago, back before modern herb lore and medicines and extrasensory healing. Way back before they colonized other people.
But the consequences might be dire for a non-Sporadean.
Aein took a deep breath. Once again, he had to make a choice. A trickle of pus oozed from the wound in Snow White’s breast. The infection was sinking in, or perhaps it was breaking out, having reached fever pitch in her blood.
There wasn’t much time.
Aein raised his right wrist to his mouth and bit into his flesh. He tore at the skin with his teeth, and when the blood was not forthcoming, he further dug into the new wound and ripped open the artery. The flimsy vessel’s walls, made via metamorphosis in a fledging Wormhole, shredded. His blood spurted in bright gusts onto Snow White’s flannel nightgown and spattered it with a violent patchwork of red.
Wincing at the pain, he held his opened wrist above the infected wound in Snow White’s breast, and watched his blood sizzle as it melted into the pus and raw edges. The wound lapped greedily at his blood. When he was satisfied that he had filled it to the brim, he did the same for the wound on her scalp.
The scene was grisly. Snow White looked as though she were a murder victim.
Aein sank back onto his haunches, drained.
What have I just done? he wondered despairingly.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
For a long time, Snow White floated in and out of sleep. Whenever she opened her eyes, she was lying on a bed in an unfamiliar room. The ceiling was low and the window round. Every time she tried to look at the window, it receded, like a telescoping eye.
Figures and voices clamored around her. She heard fragments of conversations that sometimes made sense, and oftentimes didn’t. Most of these conversations were in the same foreign tongue. Sometimes she heard Aein’s voice clearly, like the clanging of a bell.
A hand clasped hers. Icy to the touch. Or maybe her own hand was burning up.
The dreams merged into waking images. Gretel standing beside her with a carving knife, her features once again granite. “Your heart for my place as First Chef.”
Gretel vanished and in her place was Gustav, eyes reddened, teeth on his chewed lower lip. “I didn't mean to cry. But I didn’t think she would leave me after I’d found her and all. She wasn’t there completely as a mother, but she wasn’t somewhere else either. Do you I understand what I’m trying to say?”
Snow White tried to say, “I understand,” but the wind stole her voice and brightness at the window consumed her.
Then one day, she woke up, and stayed up. Daylight flooded the porthole. She looked down at herself. Her arms were limp sticks. Her nightgown was open at the neck, and the skin just above the swell of her breasts was marginally red, but otherwise unblemished. She remembered the tip of the knife scoring it. Her hand crept to her scalp. Not only was there no scar, but her hair was lush and full.
How long had she been out?
She began to feel the stirrings of panic. There were things she had to be doing. But what, what, what? She felt as though she were a feather – floating in a large, white void that masked as her bed. But there was no gravity, and she was adrift, unable to cling to anything.
The door opened, and the smell of the sea wafted in. Aein paused at the doorway, smiling. She looked at him in wonder. Her throat caught. There were dark circles around his eyes, and his clothes clung to his frame, but he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Suddenly, the room had an anchor and the pieces began to fall into place. She did not allow herself to pull her eyes from him for fear that he might be an apparition.
“I knew you would be awake today.” He beamed. “We have so much to catch up on.”
#
There was a lot to catch up on, Snow White found out. The introduction of Bambenga names left her in a whirl. Her world was turned inside out, and outside in, and she wasn’t even sure she was herself anymore. Now and then, she had to grab the ship’s railing to catch her breath in more ways than one.
I’m Snow White, she repeated like a mantra to keep herself sane. I’m a princess. My stepmother wants me killed. I’m going to Lapland.
I love Aein.
This last stopped her.
He had given her space the past few days. Space to get her sea legs. To wander the deck to breathe in the healing salt air. To learn the names of the Bambenga. To get acquainted with the ship‘s crew, who all ogled at her as if they had never seen a woman before.
At the same time, she could not help but marvel at her own recovery. She had been easily fatigued for most of her life, unable to run long distances without going into punishing wheezes.
But now, health coursed in her veins. Her lungs had expanded. She slept much better and felt more invigorated, more alive than she had ever been.
What happened during her convalescence? Did someone give her a new tonic? She asked the Bambenga, and they showed her their pounded medicines.
“We had given you up for dead.” Maise shook her head. “It’s a miracle.”
“Did Aein do anything?” Snow White asked.
“He rarely left your bedside.” Maise took Snow White’s hand and gently squeezed it. “Perhaps he gave you his strength.”
He’s a god with the power to heal himself, Snow White thought slowly. Perhaps he healed me. But how?
That night, Snow White and Aein went out onto the deck. The stars burned overhead, but not as furiously as the turmoil within her. She remembered very clearly how she had gone up to the barmaid to betray Aein.
Shame coursed through her.
Here he was, once again her savior. That would be three times now. She owed him plenty, and she had nothing to show for it but deceit.
Aein stood beside her, his hand resting lightly on the rails. His legs were apart, tensed. She was unable to look him in the eye. There was a restless hole in her chest she ached to fill, and never had she felt more alive, or more fearful.
“Snow White,” Aein said in a low voice, “there is something I need to tell you.”
Here it was. The moment of accusation. She felt its blow as keenly as a fist to her gut. Did he know what she had done with the barmaid? Was he angry? She sucked in her lower lip and tried to pretend to be nonchalant.
“You were right about me,” he admitted. “I am not a spy, but I did come to your realms with the intention of bringing your people harm.”
At first, she thought she hadn’t heard properly, then a wall slammed into her full frontal. Here he was, finally admitting what she had been trying to get him to admit for weeks, and all she felt was a bewildering weightlessness. She had to grab the cold railing for support. Beneath her, the floor boards felt like quicksand.
“I am a Judge from a different realm. My people wish to colonize your land. But an ancient law prevents us from simply coming in to wage war.”
Snow White’s tongue shriveled.
I know you’re the enemy, and yet I love you, she thought desperately. What’s the matter with me?
“So you need a pretext,” she forced herself to say for the sake of something to say. Her nerves were clawing at her fingertips, causing them to flutter to her throat.
“What is that?”
“An excuse to wage war against us. Such as taking sides with a kingdom’s fugitive princess and declaring war against her Queen.”
“It is not what you think,” Aein said hotly. “I did not rescue you so that my armies can swoop in to retake your kingdom and occupy it thereafter with you as a puppet regent.”
She did not reply.
“I have an ancestor called Fytenach the Fair. This is his law. Before we take a realm as a colony, he mandates that several chosen Judges, usually royal princes, must travel through the land and mingle with the natives.”
“So you’re a prince,” Snow White accused.
Aein’s expression was sober. “Should a Judge encounter more evil than good among the natives, the scales of his justice will tip towards colonization. We call it the negative balance.”
“I hope it works both ways,” Snow White said sarcastically.
Aein sighed. “More often than not, the Judges are tasked to find the would-be colony guilty. I know it is against everything my ancestor preached, but as our resources dwindle, it is beginning to be common.”
Although the waves crashed against the bows, Snow White swore she could hear a pin drop.
“I suppose,” she finally said, “you’re going to say that we're in the negative balance.” She thought of all the things that had gone wrong in her world where Aein was concerned. Dread clung to the sky like a thundercloud.
“No.” Aein turned to her. “As well as my ancestor meant, we have no right to judge your people. We have no right to judge anyone or declare any race inferior. This is why I must find the mountain on the green lake, the rendezvous point my brothers and I agreed to meet. I must persuade them of my reasoning.”
The hairs on Snow White’s arms rose at the thought of more godlike young men roaming the Enchanted Forest, prey to all kinds of cruelty that would sway their balance to the negative.
“How many of you are here?”
“Five. We were each dropped off in different . . . ” Aein paused, suddenly unsure.
“Go on,” Snow White urged. Different places in the Enchanted Forest? Different cities?
“There are some things I cannot reveal.” His voice was desperate.
She shook her head slowly. “I feel like I’m beginning to know you, and then you pull away. That makes me so . . . ” she searched for the word, then shook her head again, despairing.
“I am sorry. I have something else to tell you.”
Snow White felt as though she were drowning. “I don’t think I can take much more tonight.”
Aein’s face was filled with pain. “I was just going to tell you . . . what I told you when you were asleep.” He took a deep breath, and flinched, like he expected her to physically strike him.
She hesitated for a long while. “I don’t remember anything.”
He stared out into the sea. She noticed his thumbs massaging the railing absently.
“Where I come from,” he finally said, “I’m not considered attractive. I loved someone – my cousin. But she is betrothed to someone else.”
The sea air felt sharper all of a sudden, as though the salt wind had shards. Snow White braced herself for pain, but kept her face straight.
“Do you still love her?”
Aein shifted on his feet. “You do not fall out of love with someone that easily.” His eyes did not meet hers. “I would lie if I said I no longer love Gnomica. But my love for her has been encompassed by something greater.”
He looked down at floor boards, then gripped the railing again. His gestures were a mess of stilted movements and tics. She had never seen him so uncomfortable before.
“I promised myself that I would tell you,” he said, “even if your answer is like a knife to my chest.”
“Tell me what?”
“That I love you.” He muttered this last quickly, as though the words burned his tongue.
Below, the waves crushed against the bows and receded. She trembled.
“Why tell me now?” she demanded.
“Because I have loved you for a while, only I refused to give in to it, thinking we would have no future together.” The moon played on the angles of his face and made him seem ethereal. He was so uncertain, so desperate, like an angel being told he was cursed with mortality.
“I needed to tell you before I continue my journey to the rendezvous point,” he continued. “I do not know if I would be alive in two days or two weeks. But I do know that I will do everything in my power to keep you safe.”
Laughter floated from aft. Ivar and his crew were having a party.
Snow White’s shaking hand left the railing. Before she lost her nerve, she took his face in her hands and kissed him fiercely on the lips. She could feel the blood draining from her head into the soles of her feet, which felt like they were floating above deck.
The kiss was different this time, something that took her by surprise. There was purpose in it, and texture, and a dozen nuances in the movements of his jaw that made her desperately hunger for more. His lips molded into hers, their pressure firm, their feel like the soft flesh of a peach. She greedily sucked him in and threw all caution to the softly blowing breeze on the deck. Her plain cotton caftan, a gift from Ravanne, fluttered against her bare ankles, but she barely felt anything but his warmth. His arms left his sides and crept around her quivering body. She drew him close, running her fingers through his hair and the smooth contours of his neck. A hole ached in t
he center of her body.
When they both came up for air, he whispered, “I liked that . . . very much.”
Her head hung limply from her neck. Her knees buckled as he held her close.
“So where do we go from here?” she asked him.
#
In the warm nest of his cabin, she removed her gown before his burning eyes. Her newfound vigor pulsed in her veins, suffusing her skin with health. A single flame glowed upon a candle. It lit the entire room into a soft amber. She could feel his eyes raking her flesh, and the wanting core of her unexplored body opened wider to his gaze, melting into a pleasurable warmth she recognized as desire.
His eyes. The bridge of his nose. His lashes. The smooth turn of his cheekbones. His full, lush lips. His beauty tore at her eyes, made her shudder profoundly.
When she was naked before him, she flushed a deep scarlet. Fire lit every part of her body.
“You think me not beautiful,” she said, conscious of the soft light playing on her skin.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “I am used to a different kind of beauty, but yours is beginning to grow on me.”
“Your honesty never fails to astound me.”
Haltingly, she went to where he sat on the bed. He laid his hands on her smooth belly, now tinged with a healthy pink, and roamed them upwards to cup her breasts. Her flesh tingled with the unaccustomed sensation.
She reached out to lift his tunic over his head. His glorious body was now even more toned with hardship. She ran her fingers lightly over the sleek muscles of his chest and arms, the ridges of his torso.
The blood rushed to her cheeks. “I must confess,” she said, “that I don’t really know how to do this.”
“I have not given it much thought either. But maybe it is not something one thinks about, but feels.” He touched the center of his chest lightly.
With that, he took her in his arms and lowered her gently upon his bed. She felt his mounting pressure on her, the weight and promise of his body as ripe as a forbidden apple.
