Noriko and I are sitting at the dining table sipping on tea Duchess de Gilenee has made and poured for us. Hanna is pacing. "Alef, you said that the darkness is getting worse and more good men are being forced out of government offices."
Roki nods. Ah, he was using an alias also. I wonder if Hanna is as well. "It's been the worst in the last month. Many people were removed from many countries all over, according to the stories I've heard in town. Most people are saying it's because a vast evil force is at work." That's how long it's been since the Source of Evil moved to capture us and lost. It hasn't stopped influencing the world. It will try to capture me again.
Hanna looks distantly, worried. "I wonder how our Zago is doing now?" She paces to the wall and slams a fist on it. "I want to protect Zago also against this evil, but how can I do that? I'm just one woman, not even in that country any more to make a difference. I want to do something, but I feel so small and insignificant."
Noriko perks up. Hanna's frustrated, but she's stirred the Teacher. "Um, Hanna," Noriko hesitantly offers, "your father felt the same way. It was hard to see him frustrated and depressed, but while he was with us, he found an answer that helped him." Hanna turns to look at Noriko, sitting next to me.
"I don't know if it will help you, but he said that when he chose to accept that he was only one man, rather than be frustrated by it, that it allowed him to see what he could do. He realized that even if it was a small thing, if every day he did what was possible to him, then it would add up with what everyone else was doing around him. As the efforts of everyone combine, the overall effect can be large.
"Like here. I can only cut four rows of grain in a morning, and sometimes longer. But that is four rows the farmer didn't have to cut. All of the grain cut by all of us becomes a large basket. His grain goes to the market - through Roki who is only doing what he can do in buying it from the farmer and selling it at the market. From there it goes to feed a house. Maybe it's a house of a person who can help you in some small way because they had the nourishment necessary to perform their work for the day.
"My effort was small, but it has helped others through the small efforts of others working with mine. I learned to understand this from your father. Maybe it can help you, too." Hanna is thinking through Noriko's words.
I offer what comfort I can. "When we left them, they were going together to find others like Grand Duke Jeida who'd been removed from their offices but who still wanted to help their countries. Gaya's sister, Zena, felt that if they could all be brought together, maybe together their efforts could have a positive effect on our world."
Hanna stares at me, then slowly says, "If there were anything I could do, it would be that - to join them and help them. Would you come with us and help us find them?"
I look down at my cup. It's a job falling in my lap, but there are other considerations that I'd like to discuss with Noriko first, and Hanna needs to discuss with Alef if he'll welcome additional travelers who are also being looked for. It's his responsibility to keep these two women safe for the Duke.
"It's true we need to leave this place as soon as possible, and if we could work out a paying arrangement, I would consider it. But...we also bring possible danger with us. I'm not sure if it's a good idea."
I stand and Noriko rises with me. We've discussed this as a group enough. "Grand Duke Jeida is a friend and we would help you for his sake. Let us think about it and talk to Barago. You must also decide if you really want us to come with you." I take Noriko's hand in my arm and escort her to the door.
"Um...," Alef interrupts, "just who are you and what are you running from?" I suppose he would want to know in order to make his decision.
Obviously I'm not going to give him the truth. I smile. "Geena is a princess and I was her country's most gallant knight. We eloped." I close the door behind us before they can ask questions.
When we get far enough, Noriko says, "You liked that one best, huh?"
Noriko has rather automatically taken hold of the back of my jacket again. I think it's the habit from before, now that we're going to leave again. "You are my princess, Noriko."
It seems that she's playing - now that she's explained she does that too - since she doesn't blush but she's not really teaching either. "I suppose, but if you're really my knight, then we should do that proper, you know." I don't know what she means by that.
She clarifies, with a bit of dramatic flair. "I don't know how that's done here, but since it's all storybook anyway, I'll tell you that. The knight kneels in front of the person they're going to pledge loyalty to, takes the hand of that person like this," she demonstrates, "and pledges their loyalty, then kisses the back of the hand. If I had a sword, I'd knight you, too, but we can assume that's already been done if you want."
I want to see if she really is playing, and if it's because she's uncertain about our future again, or perhaps she may just enjoy it. She did call it "all storybook" although it's related to the rumors. Of course any false face we put on for others somewhat fits into that category. I stop her and go down on one knee in front of her. I take her hand in mine and look up into her face. She looks a little stunned that I've chosen to play along and her other hand drifts up to curl in front of her heart.
"Noriko, I pledge my undying loyalty to you for all of my life." I lift her hand to kiss the back of it gently. Her hand is suddenly warm and when I look up, her ears are turning very red. Then the heat must reach her eyes, for they begin to drip tears. That wasn't really what I expected at all, nor what I really wanted. I stand and wipe her cheek. "Noriko, I didn't mean to make you cry."
She swallows, opens her mouth, then closes it. I'm a little surprised she's so moved as to not be able to talk aloud, since she can usually always talk. "No, Izark. My heart is so full, that's the only way it can express all the things in it. ...If anything you've set the heart connection completely. It will never be broken."
I don't know if that's true, nor how it could have happened from us just playing, but she is everything I want at the moment - the Noriko who loves to be loved - and I can only answer with the right response. Holding her head gently, I bend close to her and when my lips touch her warm ones, our breaths mingle and there is only her and myself in the world in that moment.
I can feel her strength leaving her and I need to get us off this little road, out in the open, and away from eyes. I pick her up and carry her away until we are up in a small woods on a hill in this area. She rests her head on my shoulder and her hand over my heart, silent. But I feel her there with me, and everywhere. I am drowning in her, and perhaps she is also drowning in me.
When I gently lay her down in the shade under a tree, she doesn't complain and her eyes close. She can't hear me and that worries me. I sit under the tree and put her head in my lap. She still doesn't react when I place my hand on her forehead and then run my fingers through her hair.
She said the heart connection had changed with my words at her play, and now she's this way, and even I feel differently. How can words suddenly and unexpectedly have such strength? If Noriko was only playing, has something been set she'll be unhappy with having happened to her? ...What have I done?
-o-o-o-
Norkio is breathing slightly deeper breaths and then her eyes slowly open. She still doesn't see me at first, then her eyes clear. Awareness brings a few emotions to her face: confusion plus a few others that flit through, then her eyes fix to my face and she comes to some decision.
She takes one deep breath in, then lets it out fully, slowly. A second one, then she asks softly, "I'm sorry. Have I been gone long?" She reaches for my hand to hold it lightly since I moved it away, afraid.
"Noriko...have I done something you're unhappy with?" I'm sad, uncertain, wishing I could go back and undo what I've done, whatever it is. It feels like I've made a similar mistake to the one of leaving her alone with Gaya, only to immediately have troubles find her.
"No, Izark," she answers gently.
But... "If something I did has made it so you can't ever be free if you want to be..."
Noriko gently squeezes my hand and reaches for my face with her other to lightly caress my cheek and jaw. It's very hard to not flinch away. "Izark. I've told you. I don't need to be free. Since I came, I've been happy to be with Izark. I chose it already, when we talked before, remember?
"I said it - if I chose to love you, it would be for the rest of my life. Just because your sincere words may or may not have added to the strange magic of our connection, that didn't change my decision from before. It's only strengthened the feelings of my heart."
My heart gives one hard thump and I swallow. This is such uncertain ground. I feel so unsteady, wanting yet afraid.
"I'm more worried about what you've done to yourself if you're immortal. You've pledged yourself to me for your life. You've disallowed yourself from ever having happiness later with any other princess you find." A tear drips from her eye and rolls down her temple. "It would make me sad if you couldn't find happiness later, once you were no longer sad at my passing."
All I want is her. Eternity is rather vast and distant. I can only blink at her and how she can jump right to such vast thoughts. I sigh and try to calm that worry of hers. "I'll assume for now I'm not immortal. It makes things easier to think about."
Noriko pauses, then smiles. "I do agree with that. Right now there's something else to think about that's not so easy, I think." I'm not sure what she's talking about again, but as usual she keeps going so I can catch up. "If we help Hanna, her mother, and Alef - and I think we should because the force of good wants us to - we'll likely have to face everyone else again. Can you do that?"
How can she all of a sudden ascribe a living presence to whatever it is that may have been influencing us to do good things, even if we didn't know we were? I suppose if there's a Source of All Evil, there might be a Source of All Good. Would that be what she's talking about? I'd like to see more evidence it exists, I think. And having to face the others who traveled with us and suspect what I am? It was hard enough to face them and not run before. She's right that it will be difficult to face them again.
"I still say they aren't going to turn you away, Izark. They fought with you, helped us, stayed with us, even knowing or suspecting before then." Before they saw me change they might have known what we were?
That shock must have shown on my face, because Noriko gives a nod of confirmation. "Geena knew, although I swore her to secrecy. I'm sure her father suspected from the beginning, since he asked her to see for him. Gaya doesn't care. She's known you for years. Zena will follow her lead, and her girls will follow hers.
"Barago will follow you just because you're strong and showed him a better path. Banadam will haunt us both if we let him. If we bring Duke Jeida his family, he won't be able to harbor any more thoughts of worry." While most of this is new to me, as usual her arguments are incontrovertible.
"I can't believe the force that leads us to do good would put people in place to support us that would turn against us." She pauses for me, but even then I don't know how to put everything together, it's all so hugely vast to my mind.
She finishes with, "Even Doros knows exactly what we are and is helping us, the same with Irktule. There are people who see that you aren't evil and want to see that the good you're doing is supported and helped. If you can trust me, I think you can also trust them."
I run my hand through my hair, making the long locks fall in waterfalls. I take a deep breath, trying to find the surface, trying to comprehend without being completely overwhelmed.
I finally have to complain. This was larger than all of her other firm statements of conviction put together, it feels like. I'm really only just now being able to find peace within myself and my own long years of self-hatred. "Noriko, sometimes you make me swim in deep water and I wonder where the air is." She blinks, not really understanding.
For this entire day until now something has been pushing on me and it's so massive, so new and different, I don't know what to even see. It almost seems as if whatever it is that stands behind her and her conviction has said that because I've taken that one step I now must face the next one. As if I'll be forced to continue to see myself in a way I never have before, and it will be the way Noriko sees me. But what she sees is so vastly different than what I'm used to being. When she makes these statements I want to flee back into the darkness I know and understand.
Am I really to learn something so large before, or as, we begin to make this next step? I'm rueful as I remember some of the students I passed in the university town one time on my caravan travels. They were wishing their vacation was longer, complaining that they weren't ready yet to work so hard as their professors were going to push the knowledge onto them. That's how I feel. Like this place has been a vacation and suddenly today I'm back in school before I was prepared to be, and Noriko - the Teacher - is my professor, and she is relentless.
"I'm sorry, Izark. Neither of us will really know until we arrive. That's just how I see it." She frowns at me, a scolding look. I figuratively back away, not wanting it. "But I don't want to run from it either, Izark. Just like the saying good-bye. Some things need to be faced. Otherwise the never knowing leaves too much pain behind. Even if they do reject us and we have to leave, at least it's [closure]. It's complete. We know not to return again." She looks up into my eyes, hers clear and open, having had her say.
I sigh and put my hand on the top of her head and gently caress it, more to give myself courage perhaps. "The strength of Noriko, to look fearlessly into the face of the fearful and accept the answer it gives." I'm not sure I can do it, but I know she'll drag me with her. If the force for good in this world is acting on me because I've chosen to fight evil with all my being, then I'll be pushed along by it also until I can walk where Noriko walks.
I can only slump in utter defeat and let a small part of myself complain that perhaps I shouldn't have made that declaration as I fell into the very depths of the stronghold of evil itself. I've somehow been claimed by its opposite. I can only hear in my ears that it's my own fault, and cringe.
Noriko grins in response to my comment. "And then to tell it it's wrong and I'm right. I'm afraid a lot of pride goes into that strength, which is not always a good thing."
I have to smile with her. "That's true. You do that, too. I was very surprised the first time you did that to me."
She laughs, embarrassed at her actions in the first lecture I received from her. "I was very determined, yes. I'm afraid I went too far, though, that time."
She has beautifully opened herself up to me. I tip my head at her. She braces herself for it, her eyes rolling just a little, since she recognizes that also. "It was an interesting lesson. I learned more about you in that time than I would have ever learned, I think. I was thinking, 'What a strange creature I've found, to not even be embarrassed to talk about such a thing before there are even words past a simple introduction'."
Her face flames satisfactorily, and properly, too, since that was too much for a first meeting of anyone, for all it well prepared me for everything that happened after it. "Oh, I was embarrassed - after the lesson. When I'm teaching I'm not present - not my heart and sense anyway. Just the knowledge and the need to teach it. I felt that in order to present my case I had to make sure everything I wasn't sure you knew was known, then an understanding could be reached."
I nod, my teasing smile on my face still. I'm not done repaying that time yet. "I was surprised when you said you would be a doctor. I would have thought lawyer instead." I grin.
Noriko groans. "No. Almost anything but that."
I raise a mocking eyebrow. "You would be very formidable."
Noriko sits up, then holds still until her dizziness passes before she answers me. "Perhaps, but I know nothing about law, particularly the laws of this world. I would rather serve by being a doctor, a researcher, and a teacher...after I'm done helping you with your work, when things are peaceful again."
It's surprised out of me. "You think peace will come?"
She frowns at me slightly. "Of course. That's what you're here for. It might take a while, but -"
Ah...oh dear. I've done it to myself this time, letting something slip to make the force for good and Noriko push me again when I'm still reeling from the lesson already given. I quickly put my fingers on Noriko's lips to halt the tide threatening me yet again. "You will make me drown again." Noriko asks questions with her expression, respecting my request to not say it.
I hesitate, then must tell her, or I'll continue to drown daily until I suffocate or survive out of desperate self-preservation. "I have lived in darkness and self-doubt for so long that to have your light shine so brightly on me and my life is...difficult. I appreciate it, even need it, but I need to come to it more slowly."
The sun quickly comes out for her at that explanation. "Oh. Well. That will be difficult, I suppose. Please keep telling me when I've gone too far. You are already light to me."
She has come out and said it directly, what she sees. It's so foreign I can only gape at her, then shake my head. Only Noriko. That's what I can believe for now. Perhaps some day I'll be able to believe it more for others, even if today I have to begin to understand that the others have already known. That will take me many days of pondering, I think, in order for my heart and being to believe it.
I rise to my feet and offer Noriko my hand. "Let's go find Doros." Noriko rises, but when she's on her feet her breath catches and her eyes go wide. She's still unstable. I thought she might have recovered by now. "Are you okay?" I ask, still worried about what's happened to her and not understanding it.
"Ah," Noriko looks away from me and ducks her head. "I'm feeling like a new bride," she admits. "My heart still hasn't settled." Her face heats again, making the admission.
She has captured me with the pale blush on her cheeks and the shy look. Her words entrap me and I am suddenly needing to hold very still. I just as suddenly want to pull her close to me again, and not just to hold her, but to kiss her and then to not stop. I struggle to distance myself by focusing on the hand in mine. How small it is and how it's become calloused from the farm work, but how delicate it is even still. It isn't helping. I try to let her hand go, and can't. I don't want to. That's the opposite of what I want to do. I have to bring all my will to bear to hold myself very still.
"Izark?" Noriko asks timidly, unsure.
I blink a few times, trying to return to the present, then turn my face away from her, feeling my own face turning red. What have I done? It's a gentle need to love her fully - desperate, but gentle. I really don't know what to do about this. I need to protect her, and to respect her family, and her, but I can't let her hand go.
She's waiting for me to answer her, though, so I finally take a deep breath. "That... that is rather unsettling, isn't it?" I can't meet her eyes. I don't know if she wants it, and I'm afraid if she says she does I won't be able to continue to say no. Is this also a testing lesson to go along with the others of the day?
Noriko grips my hand tightly which helps me recover some, but then she steps into me, putting her forehead on my chest. I jump and yelp slightly in surprise. That was dangerous. Her hold on my hand is so tight I can't escape. I can only breathe until I can recover. When I think I have the strength to separate us instead of anything else, I reach for her shoulder with my free hand and push her back a little.
She looks up at me through her eyelashes, and has her teasing grin on her face. I groan. "I should have known." I'm going to lose again. She looks up at me properly, the evil grin still in place. "You can love me, and I can love you, but you can't run away, Izark. Not any more."
I lose to compassion. Her tears cause me to hurt sympathetically, although I also find it surprising that again tears come for this. I wipe them from her cheeks. "You're doing it again, Noriko," I say quietly.
"Yeah," she agrees. "I'm a water fountain. But you've known that since the beginning, too."
I have. From even before the lectures of the Teacher, Noriko the girl has been sad, lonely, lost, and it hurts to think that I will run, even if it is to protect her. I take her in my arms to comfort the pain. "Yeah," I answer softly. "I remember. ...I promise, I won't run away."
Noriko nods in my chest. "I'll be holding you to that."
I chuckle a soft sound. I can count on that. "I'm sure you will." A light shudder goes through me, though. Even if she needs the comfort, I do not need the close contact right now.
Noriko sighs. "Damn emotions. I really prefer to let my head do the leading out, not my heart. The heart just gets things all tangled up. I'm sorry."
Focusing on the conversation is good right now. "...No, I may not have understood what I was doing, but it was still my fault. I'm sorry."
"...Please don't be. That's how we got here. I want to know you love me as much as I love you, or it hurts too much. I just wish it wasn't going to make us both afraid."
I freeze and a lump is instantly in my throat. I want to shiver in nervousness, to unhear what I just heard. My arm tightens around her slightly to hold myself, but really there is only one solution if we aren't going to be let out of this strange place we are suddenly in, and we can't stay standing here like this all day, and irritatingly we haven't been able to change our situation for all we've tried multiple times now. I say gently, "You know, there is really only one way to solve that."
She turns her head slightly, to look out at the woods around us and fields below us. "Yeah. I know. Do you know how many gossips are watching us right now?"
I grasp at the one thin straw she's just offered. "Ah, good point. Postponement until tonight?"
She gives a small nod. "Probably a good idea. ...We might even come to our senses by then...though I doubt it." She sounds a bit morose for her.
But when I consider it, I'm going to have to agree. I sigh. "Mm. Probably not. It's either that or I'm running."
She snorts lightly. "Yeah. I know. ...I really rather you didn't."
I promise it again with a kiss to the side of her head. "I won't." It still takes everything I have to not move for a while, watching gossips or not.
When my strength returns to me just enough, Noriko leaves my arms which have protected us both until now and takes the back of my jacket in her hand. "We need to see Doros," she says quietly, not looking at me. I don't look at her either. We barely have enough strength for this much - to walk together to find another human being.
Whatever will become of us? I bemoan to myself. What does the force for good want from me, from us, if upon the very first day of being tied together by it as tightly as if by marriage bonds it wants us to live out that very first lecture, also so strongly given and required? I shudder and don't think of anything at all except our immediate requirement - to find Doros and tell him it's time to go.
