The Ugly Magpie
The forest had already sunk in the dark when wooden buildings emerged from between tall pines. Geralt glanced at the milky window panes, cleared his nostrils hopeful to catch the smell of roasting meat, strained his ear to the sound of laughter or quarrels he became acquainted to hear in such places. Without any outcome.
There was no living soul around, he concluded. Nobody but the owner, he corrected himself, spotting a lonely light coming from a chamber downstairs.
The inn was three floors high. Entirely made of wood, decorated with timber framing and a screen of wild ivy. There was also a stable, a well and a little shed and some other buildings the function of which Geralt couldn't guess. Above the main entrance hung an old signboard with awkwardly written letters forming words The Ugly Magpie.
"An ugly magpie indeed!" his companion snarled, pulling the leather reigns. Vigorous movement of her hand made her brown mare halt and neigh piercingly. "We could be in Vengerberg already. Or Kovir. Or anywhere. Yet your preposterous aversion to portals makes us meander again." Yennefer expostulated.
Geralt stopped Roach, glanced again at the rotten logs and sighed. Despite his reluctance to continue the journey, the sorceress had a point. Rather than overnight stop and decent repast, the façade suggested a breeding ground of lice and other grime. "I was assured this is the best inn in the vicinity," he replied, without going much into detail. It wasn't a lie. The inn was indeed the best one around. More precisely, it was the only one.
Although Geralt wasn't certain of his words, he wasn't eager to test his hypothesis either. He was weary of foul weather and being a feed for midges. And he was sick and tired of the enchantress, shooting her scathing comments like arrows each time they passed a suspiciously similar tree. In other words, he needed refreshment and he needed it now.
"I dread to think what the other ones must look like." Yennefer chuckled.
"It's just for few hours. We'll get some rest and take the road immediately. I'm sorry it doesn't match the concept exactly." He exhaled slowly and sized Yennefer up. To his surprise, she didn't appear to be disturbed with the situation even slightly. She was almost amused.
"Don't be, " she interrupted him. "Simply keep me away from thinking too much. Until now, you've never been out of ideas how to. " Saying that she bit her bottom lip suggestively. The view made the witcher swallow faster and as he assumed, it was its exact purpose.
Despite insisting he was perfectly able to pay for his own maintenance, Yennefer ordered Geralt to attend the horses and betook to the inn alone.
"I know," he directed to Roach already in the stable. The mare's chestnut brown eyes were looking at him sadly. She seemed to understand everything. More than understand. She seemed to disapprove his decision.
He never liked when Yennefer was doing it, when she was trying to take away his already numbered traces of masculinity. He was not her henpecked husband, and certainly did not aspire for the role of kept man. The sorceress seemed to be oblivious of that fact however and tried to make him happy with that function with obstinacy. He hated it, yet he had never found the courage to say a word. Instead, he had bottled up until things had gone too far.
He wouldn't make that mistake again. Still the timing was anything but good. They deserved some peace after the recent storm. Both of them.
"Beautiful mare," Geralt heard someone say behind his back. He turned around and noticed a man, twenty, maybe thirty years old, tall and dressed from head to toe in silks and velvets. Without asking, the man walked closer and placed his skinny fingers on Roach's forehead. "I was almost born on the horse. So was my father and grandfather. One can say it runs in the family." The man added as if something in witcher's body language suggested necessarily of such explanation.
"What does a knights' pet in this cow town?"
"Exactly what twenty others do. Hunting season started this Wednesday. My father's castle is four days away. Besides, my lady fancies new pelts. How could I say no to that?" the man replied, grinning. His unnaturally white teeth reflected the candlelight, distracted him.
"Couldn't find any place better to lay your head down, your Majesty?" Geralt asked, connecting the lad before his eyes with Hubert Vann, second son of King Boromir.
"Impossible!" the man hollered. "These forests home a rare species of white foxes. White as first snowflakes. Exactly like those Isadora Maria desires."
"Always do what your lady says. Rule old as the world itself. If you excuse me. Mine awaits." Geralt apologized kindly.
"Will you and the lady join us at the supper? Little chat and delicious meat never killed anyone. My company should return any time now with delicious partridges and geese and who knows, maybe even with a dove. I would trade my mother for a genuine dove broth."
Geralt thanked the Prince for the invitation with a gentle nod, poured fresh water into the drinking trough, once again glanced at the feeding horses and headed to the inn.
He decided to call at the kitchen before joining Yennefer. As he assumed, there was little left in the pantry after few days of feasts, but the owner still found some groats and drumsticks. Geralt, handed the man few coins, this the sorceress did not manage to take away from him, waited a quarter or two for the meal to be ready and headed upstairs with small baking pan in his hands.
They got a room at the attic. Quite inconvenient if any of them needed to go make water in the middle of the night, but it wasn't what bothered Geralt most. He looked at cracked walls, at moulded ceilings and numberless beakers with rain water and could not comprehend how it was possible the inn was still running.
Then he was astonished again, grateful Yennefer wasn't with him. A fat, ginger cat sat beside the door to their room and ate unhurriedly small, putrid magpie. Seeing Geralt approach, the animal grabbed the corpse and run away, leaving behind a significant piece of still-feathered wing.
Geralt kicked the object aside, placed the baking pan on the floor and knocked quietly on the door. He'd never dare to enter the room without knocking. It drove the enchantress wild, and there was nothing worse than mad Yennefer. He found the sorceress already in her nightdress, her hair was marvellously wet after the recent bath. She was sitting on the bed with her face turned in his direction and had creamed her wounded ankles. The intensive smell of the medicament she was using was in the air, mixed with the scent of her perfumes and lavender soap.
"How is your leg?" he asked, more out of concern than lack of knowledge. He knew the answer. Even with magical intervention, spots where his spell hit were still clearly visible, glistering before his eyes with ardent crimson. "I should have been more careful," he whispered as she covered the wounds with fresh bandages.
Yennefer looked at him from beneath her long, black lashes, put the ointment box aside and crawled under the covers. "You did what I asked you to do." She said with no single note of emotion in her voice.
"Still, could have tried better." He sighed while taking off his shoes and jacket. He glanced at her and at the tub in turns and breathed out a sigh of relief when she predicated it was perfectly in order to skip bathing ritual for now. "I should have been slower, estimate the force better. I acted like a greenhorn."
"It's just a surface wound."
"Nowise, I know a surface wound when I see one. This is a deep burn. A rather nasty one."
"I said I am fine," she cut him. Her violet eyes brightened. "Besides, when did my health begin to be one of your concerns?"
"It's always been. Your well-being is not less important than mine. Quite the opposite in fact." He replied without giving the statement much consideration. Not that there was much to think about anyway. Yennefer could not count and rather did not expect poems and ballads from him, he had some self-respect after all, but his feelings for her weren't worth any less than those knights showed their beloved ones.
"Four years ago too?" she snapped, and rolled on her side. Her attack was short but faultless.
She was still angry and how could she not be, he whispered under his breath while getting changed into fresh undershirt. He had only fooled himself by assuming things could be like before. Once lost, trust could not be regained, he was just proven. Nothing was like before.
Resigned, he laid down beside her and focused his entire attention on the shadows dancing on the ceiling. His thoughts drifted involuntary towards the vastness of the forest they were in, endless rows of centuries-old pines and nothing else, and then to the miles they were about to cover the next day. Terrible mixture for before sleep contemplation.
For a moment it helped however, quelled the growing need of conversation and physical contact. He slowly forgot that there was a body next to him, nicely warm, oozing the smell he would recognize everywhere. Its scent burst into his nostrils, irritated sensitive sensors, did not allow to think clearly. Lilac and gooseberries.
"Witcher?" he heard a quiet whisper. The mattress shifted. "Are you asleep?" the voice asked again. This time a bit more courageously.
Geralt bowed his head and spotted her, now only inches away and looking straight at him. She wasn't mad, this he could tell. Her eyes did not dazzle with violet flame he often saw on such occasions. She was calm, chillingly calm.
"We have to learn how to live with it," she blurted. "It happened. Pretending it did not is the most ridiculous path we can choose."
"I know."
"Yet none of us has a clue how to begin."
"I know," he repeated. The conversation languished.
"I'll do my best." She avowed after a while as if she was weighing every word. He listened. "I'll do my best to abstain from jibes and whingeing. We may never talk about it ever again if that's what you want. I won't make it hard for you, Geralt."
"Thank you," he replied. He accepted her offer tamely and without hesitation, yet something in his words seemed to trouble Yennefer. She smiled at him and it wasn't a happy smile. Yennefer's smile never was.
"I'm sorry I misled you. I was truly convinced it would be easy. That I would be able to just forget. But I don't think I can. And I don't think something like this should be forgotten. I won't rebound on you - this I promise. Everything else however: my trust and affection and whatever else you hope to get from me, these you'll have to earn yourself."
"Thank you," he said again. Then they both went silent. The only sound was the wind pushing against wooden scaffold of the roof. And meowing of a cat. The critter wailed as if someone was skinning him.
Give me a moment, you crummy rat. I'll hit you so hard, you'll lose interest in hunting. Third guinea hen this week. Vicious animal! Some woman cried outside. The cat started to yowl.
"One day," Geralt begun, not even sure of his intentions. "It took me exactly one day before I yielded. The very same evening I was sitting by the fireside, longing to come back, regretting I'd ever left." Words were escaping his mouth aimlessly. Maybe he tried to gain her compassion? Maybe he wanted to show her there was a trace of humanity still in him? The reasons lost their importance. The only thing that mattered was that they made Yennefer think.
"Why haven't you come back then?" she asked him.
"I was afraid."
"Afraid of what?" she burst out laughing. "The consequences? That glowing with pride Yen may not take you back? That I replaced you already with some lawyer or earl, or anyone just because I wanted? Because that was my caprice? Because you were one of them?"
The counting seemed to have no end and he knew all the items before she even started to name them. He had thought about them too. They were the topic of his pondering so often, he could recite them. "We've met by a chance. You did not show repentance. You did not bow and scrape, and I still forgave you. And I would have done it four years ago . You were wrong about me, after all."
They stayed still for a good while, waiting for the other one to break the silence, waiting and hoping the other one had a solution, knew how to mend something that most likely could not been amended. And one of them lived to see it.
Not saying a single word, Yennefer took his hand in hers. It was simple gesture - a delicate, miserly brush of her skin on his. It wasn't much yet it meant no less than their kisses and embraces. In fact, it was worth more than most of them. Because it brought hope.
Geralt didn't dare to speak, only peered and waited, watched as her tense features soften. She was again how she had used to be, how she had been when she had offered to come away with him earlier that day. Although he knew it was a transient state, he couldn't say he did not enjoy it. It was more than that. He needed it.
Slowly, he brought their intertwined hands to his lips. A shy smile sneaked through Yennefer's face when they gently touched her knuckles. "I was a fool. I should - "
Yennefer didn't let him finish. She pressed herself to him and sealed his lips with a lingering kiss. A kiss that could make words lose their meaning. A kiss that hardly ever did not lead to armistice and so very sweet reconciliation. A kiss that could fix anything.
"Try to escape again and I'll kill you." She warned him then, snuggling to his chest. It wasn't an order but a pleading, Geralt noticed, hoping she wasn't reading his mind in that moment. He would not forgive himself if she realized that he knew, that he had seen the part of her she so desperately wanted to hide, that he had started to believe he was falling for that part.
He didn't vow and promise, just closed his arms around her and kissed her again. He was gentle and attentive, thanked her and did not demand more, and it seemed to be exactly what Yennefer desired. She sighed and huddled up even closer.
Then exhaustion set in. Muscles hurt. Weary eyelids pleased to ease them. Nonetheless, Geralt did not sleep just yet. He watched her spread her fingers, how she was nuzzling her face to his undershirt, sniffing and gulping, purring like a cat. How the periods when her eyes were open gradually shorten.
He watched this tiny show she prepared only for him and contemplated. And though he knew she would not believe him even if she had read it in his thoughts, he wasn't going to try again. This he was sure of.