I will not go with him. It sounds stupid, but I did not want to approach that camp, with the people so close and so bright but in a different world. I could reach out and touch them but not really feel them. Kartik grows impatient, but I think I sense a flicker of guilt and ... and fear, I suppose, at what he has done to me. What he is capable of doing to me.
"Why will you not just heal it with your magic?"
Because I want you to clean it. I want you to touch it and make the flesh smooth again. I want your fingertips on my skin and your whisper in my ear telling me you love me. I want to see your face serious and working, the studious intensity of your gaze.
"It makes me very tired."
"Funny. I would have thought getting up in the middle of the night and proceeding to cause such disturbance would make you tired also, but I digress." The wicked smile is back: not fully, but I see its ghost playing with his lips.
I try to smile, but it is twisted with tears. He sighs, shakes his head and departs, returning soon with a piece of muslin and some water in an earthenware dish. The moon is almost full, a badly drawn circle of waxy yellow. It lights us.
He dips the cloth in the water and bites his bottom lip gently as he moves his hand towards me. The fabric is icily cold and I yelp, pulling back and gasping. His face is a mask of concern. "What is it?"
"Nothing, it's just ... freezing." I look down, slightly embarrassed, but he smiles and tilts my chin up gently with his thumb. It is what he used to do when he wanted to kiss me, and I gazed at him, wide-eyed and fearful, preparing myself for the wonderful feeling of heat and forgiveness. But he does not kiss me, not even a little. His voice, disembodied, floats out of the darkness. "I need the light shining on the cut, Miss Doyle."
of course he does. I am a fool to think otherwise. I am a fool to think I can kiss him and then, my lips still warm from his, kiss Felicity, right in front of his eyes, and then flit back to him, back to her, back and forth. The water stings almost as much as his rough touch earlier, and tears spring to my eyes. I try desperately to blink them away, but instead they decided to spill hotly down my cheeks. The flat of a finger rests against the top of my cheekbone and he flinches when he feels the heat seeping into his skin. He removes the fabric and we sit for the longest time in the darkness, the stillness, the sinister peace that surrounds us. Dawn is coming. I feel the world slowly begin to stretch into consciousness, the sky yawning the rosy blush of morning. You cannot hide under this open gaze. This wide blue gaze. The gaze of the gods that do not exist, and the gaze of the girls that do.
"Miss Doyle. I do not mean to make you cry. I am sorry for the way I ... the way I hurt you earlier. I was angry."
"I understand."
"No, you don't. I don't think you can, Gemma, because you haven't ever wandered upon me with another woman."
I laugh bitterly. "You make it sound like you've just been hiding well."
He does not join me in laughter, and the gradual realisation that I may have unwittingly stumbled across the truth freezes me to my very core. Prickly heat spreads through me. I can barely breathe, the air is so sparse.
"Kartik, you're not ... are you?"
"You see? Just imagining it and you look freshly risen."
"But Kartik ... I mean, it was Felicity. A... another girl. You couldn't be with a man. That doesn't exist."
He throws back his head and laughs loudly then. A proper laugh, like he used to. When I used to tell him stories of my childhood, how I 'entertained' father's dinner guests for him one night by dancing, as graceful as an elephant, too near the desserts tray. A proper laugh. But this time, I do not understand.
"What? What, Kartik?"
"You. You're unintentionally hilarious."
"I most certainly am not!" Indignation floods through me. He is mocking me, once more. And I hate it. I hate him.
"You're painfully naïve, Gemma. 'That doesn't exist'. It's ... it's sweet."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Of course it exists, Gemma, just like love between man and woman and just like love between-" and here he pauses and looks at me archly, "-woman and woman. Some men find they love only men. But of course, society will not accept that. They will not accept any aspect of the human nature that they find less that pleasant. It's bigotry."
I cannot believe that some men ... kiss men, touch men, fall in love with other men. It is too big and dark a concept for me to accept, and the thought of stumbling upon Kartik kissing another man is just too ridiculous. I burst out laughing.
He does not ask me what is so amusing, but gazes at me with his mouth closed and his head slightly titled in a way that makes me feel as though my cut is being cleaned by someone who is dead. Gone. Elsewhere. He resumes his work, the water numbing my skin into indifference. The cloth comes away pinky-red. Fresh blood. It is still bleeding. Odd.
Eventually he stops, places the cloth in the casserole dish of water and smiles at me quickly to let me know he is done. My legs have gone weak with sitting so long, and he helps me to my feet. The words are out in a rush before I can stop myself, control my thoughts.
"Kartik, have you forgiven me?"
"Forgiveness is not black and white, Miss Doyle. Not on or off, up or down. It is shades of grey. Anger, sadness, love, lust, trust ... they are all factors."
Lust. Why would he say lust? Did it make him love me more, seeing me kissing Felicity? I am so far from understanding the complex twists and turns of the male mind. It seems a labyrinth of honour and shame and pride and vanity and jealousy. Of uncontrollable rage and uncontrollable desire.
He leans forward and kisses me at the corner of my mouth. A soft kiss, a gentle kiss, a achingly sweet kiss that means so much and is so painfully empty all at the same time. He steps back, puffs out his cheeks and rubs his arms to get the warmth of blood tingling back through his veins.
"Please kiss me again, Kartik."
He will not, and this makes me love him even more.