Author's Note: I'm bumping the rating to M and I'm giving the second half of this chapter a trigger warning. My hubby says it's "not that bad" but I'd rather err on the side of caution. I'll be good again in the next chapter, I promise.
Chapter 10: LessonsThere are so many things that have happened and that we should talk about that we don't find a start. Instead, we travel silently and deep in thought until someone gives the command to stop for the day.
I help him with the horses. I'm not very practiced, but they like me anyway.
Afterwards, he disappears.
He doesn't want me to follow so I don't.
Instead, I sit on the front bench and stare into the gathering dark.
As if one life-time wasn't enough trouble for us. As if we needed to add eternities to that.
"Bari-chey?"
A young girl comes up to me.
I need a moment before I recognize her. "Kara. You look so much better."
She holds a small bowl. "Here, I wanted to give you these. I collected them for you."
The intense red of wild strawberries catches my eye, not even dimmed by the dusk.
"Thank you." Carefully, I take the bowl from her. Her hands are warm and there is a nice rose color to her cheeks. "How do you feel?"
"My legs tire fast."
"That is to be expected. I didn't actually think you'd be up and collecting strawberries already. So, you're ahead of schedule."
She smiles shyly. But I can already see the strength in her that both her mother and her grandmother possess.
"Want to sit with me and eat some strawberries?"
She looks uncertain.
"Don't worry, he's not here."
Her blush intensifies but she climbs up next to me. "I'm sorry."
"What for?"
"You're bound to him. And you like him."
Her face is open and innocent. Did Puri Daj talk to her?
"I do. It doesn't change things for you."
"I have been dreaming of him while I was sick."
"You have?"
She nods.
"What did you dream?"
She fidgets a little.
"Strawberry?"
She takes the offering and munches on a few strawberries before she answers. "He's shrouded in blue crackling mists. It is hard to make out his face at first. But when I go closer I can see it clearly. His hair is red but the blue drains the color out of it. He is so tall that I have to look up. He doesn't see me, though. He is waiting."
She breaks off.
Yeah, she is describing him quite well.
"Is that the end?"
She shakes her head.
"So what happens?"
"The red fire explodes."
She draws her knees close, a frightened look in her eyes.
"Give me your hand." I hold out my hand to her.
She gives it to me with the trust of a child that has not yet been hurt.
Remembering summer days long ago, when I was a child, I sing a song of old. It is a soft song, a warm song, speaking of good days, of sunny days, of harvests that are plenty and friendships that endure. By the second verse, she's humming with me and by the third she has picked up a few words of the old language.
"You have talent", I tell her when the song ends.
"Are you not scared?" she asks me. But she is calmer now, the song having done what it was meant to do.
"Dreams rarely come to pass as we see them, little one. And even true dreams do not show us everything."
She leans into me, her slender form holding little weight. "Will you sing something else for me?"
I spend the next hour teaching her the nursery songs of my childhood.
She laughs at them more often than not. The educational value that they were supposed to have for me and my siblings is lost on her, unusable for her way of life.
Finally, she crawls completely on my lap and falls asleep.
I stroke her hair softly, for a moment just rejoicing in the fact that she's alive. That there is something that is good and right with the world.
But worry creeps back in.
Maybe her dream wasn't a vision. Maybe it was just a dream. An unusual dream, describing someone she couldn't know in such detail.
Why didn't Puri Daj tell me if the child has her gift? Or does the child have her gift? I see Puri Daj's energy melding into the child. A side-effect? A way to transmit powers?
I feel the blood drain out of my face. If the healing can meld powers from one person to the next… Wouldn't they love that, a way to get their hands on my gift before disposing of me.
I stop myself from that train of thought. Maybe it is a one-time fluke. Maybe she dreamt while Puri Daj's hands were on her.
And Puri Daj's power is obviously not drained. So whatever it is, it was shared, not severed.
Could that even be done? It would be violent, snapping someone's powers like that.
I think back. I didn't concentrate on Puri Daj. Could I feel her powers? Are they a separate part of her being? Something that can be cut like I can tell flesh to separate and knit together newly?
My own power seems intricately woven into my being. Yet so does my hand. It doesn't mean it can't be severed.
Can I ask Puri Daj to let me look? To let me search her energy to find out?
"Hey."
I jump as he climbs up on the wagon next to me.
I breathe a few deep breaths to slowly my heart-rate. Kara shifts in my arms. "You startled me."
"Didn't think I could. New friend?" he asks with a nod at the sleeping girl on my lap.
"New friend", I agree.
"Her mother will be worried."
"Yeah. I should get her home."
"Do you want me to?"
I shake my head. "It's ok."
She's heavier than she looks, when you have to carry her.
The set-up of the wagons is the same as in the last place so at least I don't have to search for the right wagon.
I gently lay her down on her bed, pulling the blanket tight over her small body.
"Dream something nice tonight, little one, you have earned it."
When I come back, he is still sitting on the stairs outside. A small ball of blue fire appears and disappears between his fingers, the power surging and ebbing through the bond with it.
He stops when he notices me.
I know nothing profound to say so I concentrate on the practical. "It's like flexing a muscle. You'll get better at it the more you use it."
"Use it for what?"
"I don't know. Burning things?"
He laughs a bitter laugh: "Now that's going to help my case."
I look around and find a small reasonably dry stick. "Come on, humor me. Let's find out whether the lightning holds some heat."
He shakes his head in exasperation but he complies.
"It doesn't burn you?"
"No."
I hold my own fingers near the blue flashes. No heat is radiating off of them.
Then I hold the stick inside. It explodes in a shower of splinters and sparks and smoke.
"Argh."
The pain is immediate and intense through the bond.
He shakes his hands out.
"Let me see."
Blisters start forming already where the hot splinters have hit him. A few of them are stuck in his flesh.
"Damn it", I get up to get my kit. "Don't move."
I get an oil lamp and pincers.
"It'll hurt."
"It already hurts."
Still, he winces when I start pulling the little missiles out of his hand. A few of them have dug themselves in deep.
"There was force behind the explosion."
"Great, so now we know I can kill my hands if I want to."
I look up at him for a second before bending over my work. "I don't think you quite understand. Making a little ball of lightning is the start, but it's not your power. It's the equivalent of me singing a nursery rhyme."
He doesn't answer.
When my eyes start failing me I use the song to guide me to the final few fragments. I pour the cleaning liquid over his hands and soothe the blisters and burns.
When I'm done, he flexes his fingers. "Feels almost as if nothing had happened."
"Yeah, lucky you." Only of course that shouldn't be the case. He should still be hurting. Because my power is strong, but not like this. I hesitate. "Deadman, your power can bring down whole cities. It is that strong."
"How do you know?"
"I've seen it. She's shown me. I don't think it was you who made the city burn. But it was this power."
He draws his hand back. "Maybe I should just forget that I have it. It would be safer."
I shake my head. "You can't. And it wouldn't." My voice is more agitated than I want it to be, so I continue softer: "When I was young, when my gift was just settling in… When I was angry and wanted to lash out at a nurse or my sister… Sometimes… Sometimes I lashed out and it was more than words. I hurt them."
He says nothing.
"You don't want to do that. Not with this power. You need to control it."
"Because otherwise I'll burn down whole cities?"
"No. Because otherwise you might burn down this clan."
Again, he doesn't answer.
"Deadman?"
He shakes his head. "You should have let me die in the storm."
The wave of despair is so strong that I have to struggle against it to force air into my lungs.
He notices my pain only a heartbeat later when the bond is feeding it back to him. He clears it of his emotions.
"Don't", I say it even though I'm still clenching my teeth. "I want to know."
"I'm hurting you."
I can't negate that so I don't try. "It doesn't matter. You can hurt me all you want. I will always want to know. And I will always save you."
"You shouldn't."
"I don't care."
"You're risking many lives for one that is worth nothing."
"I don't care!" It makes me angry, so angry that he still thinks his life is worth nothing. "A thousand lifetimes and you are the one. The one soul that is bound to me and I to you. I will not let you do this to yourself."
I scream it at him so that the force of my sudden anger blows him backward, the bond literally bending him as if I had punched him.
I lean forward and lay my hand over where I know the scar is on his chest. I let my anger fuel the song, a wild song, untamed and unpredictable.
He screams before he pushes me off, hard.
I bite my tongue and taste the blood in my mouth before I spit it out.
When he puts his hand on his shirt, it comes away red.
I make no effort to slow my heart-rate or to keep the feedback of pain from reentering the bond.
"This is my gift, Deadman. This is my gift if I choose it to be this. And believe me, I can make it hurt a lot more."
"You…"
"It is not evil. Your power. It is not good and it is not evil. It is what you make out of it."
He holds his hand to the wound to keep the blood from dripping when he gets up to go inside.
Only after he's gone does my anger finally subside.
I follow him in a little while later.
He is sitting on the bed. He has dressed the wound using his own skills and a few of my herbs. It is neither deep nor dangerous. I wasn't angry enough for that. Now, I'm just weary. "I will apologize if you want me to. I will also find someplace else to sleep if that is your wish."
"This is your wagon, Bari-chey. You can ask me to leave and I will go. It does not work the other way around."
"Deadman", I'm too exhausted to have this discussion, "I have hurt you. On purpose. To prove my point. Whatever rules bind you, you have a right to be angry. So if you want me to go, just tell me and I will go."
His smile is weary, too. "I do not want you to go. If you teach me a lesson that hurts, it is your right, Bari-chey."
When I only shake my head, he continues. "Not even because of my status. Travelers abhor violence. They cannot risk strife to make their group fall apart. But they use force to punish or to teach if it is necessary. Tamara can slap Rana if she deems it necessary. You can rip open an old wound if you deem it necessary. Both of us, Rana and me, are expected to try to understand the lesson, not to fight back."
"And do you? Do you understand what I wanted to say?"
He nods. "Yes. You are saying that my power does not make me a bad person. That I can choose for what purpose I use it. But Bari-chey, all I want to be in my life is a traveler. A power born from battle makes me even more someone I have only become because all other ways were shut."
"You do not want to be a warrior."
He shrugs: "I am many things that I do not want to be. I will live with this as I do with the rest."
Suddenly anxious, I ask him: "What about being with me? Is that also something you just do because it is your fate to live with things you do not want?"
That gets me something that approaches a smile, if one that is weary and self-conscious: "No, Ghost, no. Puri Daj may say that it is fate that is binding us together, but to me it feels selfish and rebellious. Like something I take just because I want it. Without any regard for the consequences."
"Will you let me heal what I did?" I ask very quietly.
He shakes his head. "No. A lesson that is meant to hurt should hurt."
I have not really expected anything else. Not that I would trust anyone to heal me after pulling a demonstration like that on me. But still, I long to make things better. "Will you let me be close to you at least?"
The moon has barely risen, so I can't see his expression and have to rely on my instincts and on whatever the bond tells me. He wants to draw away, as he always does.
"Please. Let me soothe the pain this way at least."
There is something stirring, quivering at the edge of the bond. Like the lightning, it feels powerful. But I'm fed up with being afraid. "Please. Trust me."
When he still hesitates, I bend forward enough that I can catch his hand. He may not be able to come to me, yet his will is not strong enough to resist when I draw him close.
I let my fingers glide from his hand along the muscles of his arms until they find his shoulder and then the bend of his neck. His short beard softly tickles under my thumb. It feels good to me and so I smile at him.
His eyes are so dark, so serious, so guarded. So beautiful.
I give him no advance warning, just lean forward until my lips brush his.
It makes my heart stumble. I haven't kissed before in this life.
He draws back as he always does, but there's a change here, too. His attention is focused on me in a way I have not been aware of before. His body is tense, his pulse fast and his eyes are following my every movement.
I lean in again, the feeling of his lips against mine too intoxicating to listen to the warning.
He is utterly still for a moment, but then, suddenly, his hand is in my hair and he presses me against his body. I'm taken off guard but I let it happen. His lips part and he forces mine to part with them. Scared, I try to retreat, but he holds me in place.
The kiss turns hard and demanding and before I know it, I find myself under him, crushed by his weight.
I struggle but to no avail. He is so much stronger than me.
So I concentrate on my breathing instead, one lungful of air at a time, while his mouth is still pressing down on mine, forcing me to follow his movements if I want to get air at all.
I have my hands clutched in his hair, holding on or ripping at it, I don't know. With a growl, he bends my hand back, not caring that I'm still holding on to his hair, until my joint hurts too much and I have to let go. The second hand goes even faster and he traps them both, crushing my wrists in one of his big hands.
Using his weight to keep me in place, his other hand starts to rip at my blouse until it comes free from where I had tucked it into my skirt. It finds my skin, finds places no one has ever touched before.
I squirm and squeal and a small scream escapes my mouth, a tiny sound, broken off when his mouth covers mine again as he pushes me down harder.
I feel limp, unable to hold on against this attack. Quietly crying, I do what I perceive is my only other option.
I submit.
Instead of squirming away from him, I arch my back towards him.
Instead of fighting against his mouth, I open my lips willingly.
He doesn't let up and he doesn't get any gentler, but still, the tone of what we're doing changes.
His breath is hot in my face and I suck it in eagerly. His mouth is hard and his tongue is filling me to the point where I can't breathe. It makes my heart beat faster.
He gives my hands free and I sling them around his neck.
He growls when I hold on too tightly and he doesn't have enough room to roam under my shirt.
I give him what he wants, loosening my grip just enough for him to be able to roughly rub my breasts.
I scream again, but it is different this time. The scream itself lower, more guttural. The feeling not one of panic but one of surprise at the feelings his touch elicit.
He shifts his weight away from me and I know I'd have the chance to get away if I wanted. But I find that I don't. Instead I follow his motion, follow him over. He is hiking up my skirts and again a small scream breaks from my lips when his hand finds my thigh.
A kiss, a small kiss, just to know how it feels, was all I had wanted but now I find myself shuddering and shivering under his touch and I know that he won't turn back from what I started.
I let myself fall, fall through time and space even as he finds the wetness between my legs. I know what will follow, know it with the certainty of something that always comes to pass, even though I have never lived it. I give myself to him, crying at the sudden spike of white hot pain as he takes me, but moving with him, not moving away.
A small whimper escapes my throat when I try to sit up afterwards. I'm bruised and sore and bleeding. My wrists are already turning a darker shade against the pale light. I let myself fall back on the bed.
He is snoring beside me, his arm heavily slung about my hips.
I cannot describe what has happened.
I have been in charge all my life. Yes, I defer to others if I have to, to my father, to Puri Daj. But I'm still Princess Eliza.
Not here. Not now. Not while with him.
My heart starts beating harder in my chest again.
No matter what our roles in the outside world, it is abundantly clear that here they don't count. I swallow hard. Submission does not come easy for me.
But then his heavy hand on my hip reminds me of his weight on top of me, his mouth on mine and his body taking me and I know that I'm giving myself freely. I have been his before. I am his again in this lifetime.
Finally, I get up to clean myself up.
He finds me outside, at a small lake, my clothes disregarded, the cool water soothing my pains.
I make no effort to cover myself up.
He wades into the water, stopping a few feet away from me. The mix of emotions coming through the bond dizzies me for a moment. He's confused and worried and feels guilty and at the same time, he is content and feels like the world is right and like I should be naked. Which confuses him all the more.
"I am yours, Deadman", I state what is obvious to me and give him my belated consent with it.
He doesn't answer right away, just looks at me in the moonlight, to the hips in the still, dark water. "You are beautiful."
I blush.
"I didn't want to hurt you."
An echo of the sentence vibrates through the ages. "You never do", I say it with a smile.
"It is only the first time that hurts this much."
He can feel it through the bond, how sore I still am.
"I do not care." I wade the few steps towards him. "I am yours."
He circles his arms around my back. I rest my forehead against his chest.
We have found something that is ages old and brand-new.