12.
With a Grain of Salt
-x-
They were insomniacs that night, fed by their preparedness anxiety, their fear of each other, the wonder of themselves.
Wyatt would not permit DG to enter the kitchen unless it was on business, and only then if she touched nothing, unless it was one of them. He only allowed Glitch to suffer under his authority. It was only the three of them. They'd returned from their sojourn, of hearts and of feet, to find that Raw had left a note, had gone, and would see them on faire day. Glitch's meticulousness worked best pouring their laborious concoctions into new houses. The countertop, the table, both were covered in the bluish glint of glass. DG ceased to venture into the kitchen, as Wyatt brought her work to do. She was at an old table set up in front of the fire-bellied stove, out of their way, master of her own. Yet the three of them were able to converse. Insurmountable walls two years old were invisible to hours bought by twilight.
Jars flourished under DG's artistic touch. Some bows, a touch of gingham, a label in calligraphy, and then housed in a crate, in a bed of straw. The apple butters and sauces, the peach jellies, the stewed plums, the combination of harvest delicacies, DG chuckled at them, neat from her handiwork, tidy in their compact rows. Such inanimate things were far more ready for the faire than the souls responsible for their creation.
At a break in the routine, Wyatt left Glitch and DG alone. She set fists to hips and stared at Glitch. He knew the course of her thoughts but not the words in her eyes.
"What's going to happen?"
It wasn't that he hadn't read the words, but that there were none. "I don't know. But I know I love you."
"I love you, too. Why does that have to change?"
"It doesn't. It never will. Or it already has in the slightest degree, a variable of a change that means we've changed with it. But…" He draped the alteration there, a timid, fretful thing for her to bat at like a kitten entertained.
DG sighed, resigned to not play as he wished. She breathed the name, and he had, as he had before, as he might again, shift the world around them. "Wyatt…"
"Both of us love him, too. I thought I told you not to kiss him."
"I didn't." If she confessed once, she confessed again. "I wanted to. He wouldn't. Wouldn't touch me. Said he wouldn't…"
"He wouldn't." Glitch blinked slowly; his palate tasted this.
"Said he wouldn't until I begged."
He laughed alone. "Of all the vain, obtuse, reckless things for him to say!"
"You're only irritated because he already acts like he knows me." DG skulked into the forbidden kitchen, beside Glitch, formidable in his crown of power, the one she had donned him with from the first stolen moment, the last lie that had brought them to Wyatt's place. The weight at her hips reminded her of how it had been, what it always would be. She didn't need to explain her remark. He'd already defined it. He cackled, an ornery snide, and fed her an apple wedge.
"You are quite insatiable. Is that your youth? I always wondered. It couldn't possibly be me. I'm just like an old clock, DG, and must be wound in order to go for hours and hours, otherwise I fade and my hands stop, I stop altogether, and the chime won't tell you what you need to know. It would take two of us, wouldn't it, to keep your bedroom desires fed. Between us, I'm sure Wyatt and I have enough stamina to keep you happy, if I'm not able to do it alone, of course. He could step in. That's what he does. He takes over the dance when the proper gentleman has fled—I'm not giving you any suggestions," he hastily added, pressing fingertips to her lips, "only saying that the gears in this old clock are weathered, practised, and still have a lump of an idea or two. The strange thing?"
"Other than your whole analogy about the clock? I can't imagine."
"I'm not jealous. I'm prepared." He poked her in the side, playful, childish. She brought out the vim in him. "You have never begged for anything, would you ever beg for that?"
Verbiage had escaped, and she was left mute but with a shrug and a shake. She couldn't imagine how she would, then couldn't foresee a time when she wouldn't. And earlier, she thought it might've been days instead of hours, that morning, the way Wyatt felt beneath her. The thought of his hands on her skin… She tossed the thought into the infinitesimal above. A lover she already had, already a secret. How would she keep two? With Glitch it had always been the mischievous side of passionate, raucous fun, a chance to laugh, to love, and the only complication was the nest of lies. It was built to suit the delicate gossamers of a family rebuilding. Now that, too, had become a cheapened overcoat scarring the lies.
"Glitch?"
"H'mm?"
"When we get home, I want to tell everyone about us."
"That is something we should let fate do. What we can preclude and what we can tell may cancel the other very soon. On this, best not to make up our minds just yet." Glitch wondered about them: the end of this scene, the end of this act. Before DG told the world about the workings of her heart, she first had to return home with the same heart. Both of them did.
It stung to have her opinion governed thus. During a close nestle, embraces exchanged, she tried to forgive him, only to realise no guilt loitered. Their affections rested, a cosmic rope fused together, ended to end, forever. And though constant, it grew, and soared to find where love must be waiting, and give it then. Wyatt's heart, one day, would have to land.
Hearts were fragile kaleidoscopes: fixed on many things, always changing colours, always changing light, and always distorting the image just beyond the lens.
He didn't know how they would get through the night.
-x-
Excitement permitted limited hours of sleep. DG woke on the couch to the chatter of birds and the footsteps of Wyatt. There came a second voice, Glitch, to her surprise. He rarely rose so early. He roused her, handed her tea, prattled animatedly, cheerfully. They were heading to Meria Maddigan's during what was left of the morning and into the afternoon, to give her samples of what had kept them enslaved. She had taught them all they had learned, taught it in one day before moving on, like an apparition, and they had conquered the world of canning and baking after the fundamentals.
If DG could not be proud of her cooking, she could at least be proud to hand over that first jar of apple butter. She thought it must be pride. Not fear, though the blue-collared vulture breathed heavily and leered.
The witch's tower was a strange place, an energy, a vibration that brought out the heat of light in DG's hands. She couldn't sit still, even as they were given tea and biscuits at an herb-covered kitchen table. DG's senses spiked. She soared upward, dashing the salt shaker with a clumsy wrist. Apologies streamed from her. Meria waved a hand and reached for a broom.
"Don't upset yourself, DG." If she ever made hints that she comprehended the meaning of a princess, she never said such a frivolous thing. It was not in her grandiloquence, but it was in her respect. "Take the spilled salt with a grain of salt."
DG excused herself, asking permission to walk the grounds, and if she should avoid any of the unusual creatures. But Meria grinned, fulsome, beguiling, and would not say. "You will know friends from strangers. Luck has always guided you that way."
With the broom put away, the salt cleaned, the shaker back in place, Meria saw Wyatt toiling his gaze out the door's screen. DG waded through the field, the grass as high as her boot tops, with Chimtu her companionable guide.
"You should tell her," said Meria, a tone unarguable, ripe with the rigidity of her spirit. She bobbed her head at Glitch, who'd stopped stacking spoons and heather bits and sugar cubes to gaze at her hard, calculatingly. "And you should tell him."
Wyatt turned, and Glitch set on him.
"Tell us what?"
The lids of Wyatt's eyes narrowed. Yet he reached for Glitch, found him there, and held him close. The stillness of their bodies expressed the sorrow of their breath.
"I will tell you later."
"How much later? An hour from now? When we get back to the house? A letter in two years? Wyatt, what is it? Meria?" He tried to wrench it from her, the element of surprise. Wyatt's palm coaxed him back. With a quick kiss, he relented. But out of Wyatt wafted the aroma of mystery; the heavy veil of silk that kept mysticism and magic in had been perforated, rent, nothing but threads.
"The orchard. DG was right." Glitch's delicate caress wandered, from chin to brow and neck. "She said your stories are true. She knows magic when she sees it. She feels it there. Something watching her."
Meria set their arms bowing apart, her intensity to blame, her urgency necessary. She raked Wyatt, and gone was any sense of vanity and pride. He knew the dangers. "You must make up your mind. You must. Before they succumb, too. Then all of you will be lost."
Glitch's eyes sparkled in teary dew. "What's she talking about? Wyatt?" His waist was patted a final time.
"Get DG," commanded Wyatt. "It's time for us to go."
The demand was carried out. Later was coming. During the hike home, later was on its way.