Chapter Eleven #2
This time, his laugh was so loud that I threw myself forward and covered his mouth with my hand. His breath was hot and his lips soft, and I snatched my hand back as if I’d touched glowing coals. “Idiot,” I whispered.
“I can’t talk to trees,” he murmured with a smile that made my insides swoop.
“Why is that so absurd? They certainly do what you tell them to do.”
“It’s not words. It’s … it’s a feeling. It’s asking and offering. I don’t know,” he said, studying his fingers.
I wanted to take his hand, but forced myself not to. “Does Beatrice know?”
“No. She’s good-hearted, but I don’t imagine she’d want me around newborn babes if she knew I had wild magic in me. Superstition lingers.”
I knew the nursery songs and the stories meant to keep children in their beds at night. Animators had snatched babes from their cribs to sacrifice them. They called on shadows to steal the breath from those who slept with the window open on nights with no moon.
The stories had frightened me. But then … that had been the intention, I realized with a start. Stories had purpose. They taught you to fear.
They justified murder.
“People called me a witch when I was little,” I offered, patting my curls clumsily and trying not to dwell on the fact that I’d never questioned how Animators could all be evil. “There’s a story about—”
“A woman who killed so many that she bathed in blood, and her children and their children and all their children for the rest of time were cursed with hair the color of lifeblood.”
“I’m not sure it was always told so extravagantly, but yes.”
He leaned toward me. I found myself following his lead, expecting him to whisper a secret in my ear. “Did you ever picture yourself at the mercy of a real witch?” he asked in the gravelly voice of a storyteller trying to frighten a child.
I dumped a handful of leaves on his head. “Ezra! Shut up.”
The leaves floated right out of his hair like oil beading on the surface of water. His eyes gleamed with mischief.
I found that I liked that gleam very much.
So much that I’d once again nearly forgotten why we were here.
Was that his intention?
A little tug of warning made itself known. I refused to acknowledge it. “Do you wish you had a real teacher? To learn more about your wild magic, I mean.”
“You mean like you did? Josephine, you didn’t have teachers.
” His voice changed so abruptly, I shifted my weight, recoiling from the coldness in it.
“Teachers encourage you to discover everything you can, to ask questions. You’ve only ever been told what to do and what to believe.
And never to question anything. You wouldn’t be here otherwise. ”
The buzzing knowledge that he wasn’t wrong did nothing to discourage what I blurted in response. “I’m glad I’m here.”
“In Frostbrook?” He snorted. “Surely it leaves much to be desired after living in Sterling City.”
“Yes, here,” I insisted, sounding far too earnest for my liking. “I feel good here. Like I’m breathing for the first time in my life.”
He gave me a dubious look, and it should have made me angry, but it only made me desperate to be believed.
“I’m glad I’m here with you, too,” I said. “Is that childish? Do you think I’m ridiculous to feel that way?”
Of all the things I thought I might see on his face, pain was not one of them. Still, it flashed there too starkly to be ignored.
Shame rustled against my skin. He was nothing more than a stranger in the woods. And I was laying my feelings bare. Whatever my feelings were.
I wasn’t sure what they were.
But I hated them. Hated the way he reacted to them.
Neither of us said anything for far too long to be comfortable. It became silent enough for me to know that the voices in the trees were gone. The bandits, or whoever they’d been, had moved on. Now it was only me, Ezra, several huge rocks, and a great deal of discomfort.
“It’s not childish,” he finally whispered.
I should have asked him what hurt so much.
I should have questioned how he’d found me in the woods.
Instead, I surged against him, hands on his thighs, and kissed him.
It was a crash of teeth at first. I huffed a nervous giggle against his mouth. I knew how kissing worked. Everyone did. But I was pretty sure I hadn’t practiced enough.
To my relief, he seemed to have had more experience.
His fingers drifted up my arms, carefully mapping their way to my shoulders.
He made a low sound like a sob, but when I pulled back to see if he was upset, he ran his fingers into my short hair and gently held me close.
I stilled, my breath catching. I’d never felt anything like the tenderness of his hold, as if he thought I were made of brittle glass and not flesh and bone.
“Jo.” My name was anguish on his lips, but his kiss was soft and eager. Our lips parted and met again, more daring now. My fingers tangled in his shirt, grasping at him as if I’d tumble into oblivion if I let go.
Heat flooded through me, nothing like the cold fire of radiance. This was pure warmth. Sunlight and hot springs.
I trembled.
“Is this okay?” I managed to ask between what was rapidly becoming something more than a tentative attempt at kissing a boy.
He let his hands drop to his sides and rested his forehead against mine. When it took him a moment to answer, my stomach dropped. What if I’d moved too fast, too far?
“Yes.” His soft puff of breath at my face helped soothe the painful beating of my heart. “I didn’t think you’d do that.”
We remained close. His hands found mine, and this was different—intimate. Terrifying. I felt the calluses at his fingertips and the roughness of his knuckles and the unbearable gentleness of his thumbs brushing over my hands.
With great effort, I asked, “What did you think I’d do?”
This time I tried not to assign meaning to the long silence before he spoke. I didn’t quite succeed. “I don’t know.”
The undertone of regret in his voice was unmistakable.
I straightened so I could see his face, so I could study his deep-brown eyes and the small furrow at his brow.
His cheeks were pink, as if we’d been running, and despite my uncertainty, something in me warmed to see that I wasn’t the only one who flushed with little provocation.
“What is it?” I prompted. “Why are you so troubled?”
He shook his head, but didn’t release my hands.
A few tendrils of vines that covered the boulder at his back curled toward him like a curious little animal.
When I noticed, I smiled, and he turned his head to see the tiny leaves fluttering, as if greeting him.
“Oh,” he said, flushing more. “Sometimes things—do that.”
“It’s not fair that you’re alone.” Despite what the House of Industry had neglected to teach me, it had been a home and haven. “Growing up, I had others like me all around. And now I’ve got Julian. You’ve got no one.”
The corner of his mouth curved up. “Don’t rub it in, Apprentice.”
“I’m not trying to.”
“I’m teasing,” he said, squeezing my hands. His thick eyebrows scrunched together in curiosity. “Do you really think it’s nice having Julian around?”
He asked as if it surprised him, despite knowing nothing about my Senior.
“I thought he was impossibly sour at first, but there’s more to him than that.” I looked at our joined hands, Ezra’s sun worn and mine pale and covered with healing cuts and little scars. Julian deserved companionship. We both did. “He probably needs more practice at being friendly.”
“You are too kind,” Ezra said, stroking my knuckles with his thumbs. It was a compliment, but it sounded as if it made him sad to admit it.
“Perhaps you could meet him. There can’t be too many folks our age in this town. We ought to all know one another.”
“Perhaps,” Ezra said, lifting one hand and kissing it. I had a feeling he was trying to distract me, and it worked. In a moment we were kissing again. It was as if I’d never been touched before in my life.
What I’d flinched from—what I’d felt like a fool for longing for—abruptly felt right. It felt so right to be touched that I wasn’t sure I could ever stop.
I longed, in that dizzy moment, for Gertrude.
To lay my head against her soft belly and wind my fingers into her hair.
I wanted to tell her everything. We’d stolen kisses and called it practice, but we’d never let ourselves be this.
We’d listened too closely to what we’d been taught.
We’d let fear of failure become a wall between us.
As a result, no one had ever touched my hair or the small of my back. Being close like this felt so good.
It felt so good that my breath hitched.
“Josephine?” Ezra asked, worried, pulling away.
“No—it’s … Yes.”
In my eager attempt to continue kissing, I nearly climbed into his lap.
His chest rumbled with a laugh I felt more than heard, and he adjusted me carefully to rest sideways across his thighs.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and decided I was more than happy to sit in the leaves with him for an eternity.
Our kissing eventually wound down, and I found myself with my head on his shoulder and my nose against the warm skin at his throat.
“Surely,” Ezra said, idly playing with my apprentice scarf, “this is against Julian’s rules.”
Julian’s name sounded practiced on his lips, as if he were talking about a friend. Once again, my mind tried to navigate out of the dizzying fog of want. And once again, I ignored all reason in favor of what it felt like to be held. “I assume you won’t be reporting me.”
Ezra laughed. “Most certainly not.”
A shuddery sigh formed in my chest. My body reminded me how tired I was. With a yawn, I told Ezra, “I should return to the Mission and rest.”
He took so long to reply that I began to doze in his arms, the sleepless night catching up to me like a crashing warm wave. His low voice startled me awake. “I will walk you back.”
My heart raced again. Kissing in secret was one thing. Bringing a boy home with me was another entirely. “You can’t come into my room. It wouldn’t be proper.”
“I am not asking to bed you, Josephine. I’m asking to walk you home to keep you safe.”
“Because of the bandits in the woods?” I asked, dubious.
“Precisely.” He wasn’t teasing me, but there was something wooden about his voice that made me want to shake the truth out of him. What was he so worried about?
I reluctantly scrambled out of his lap, letting him give me a gentle boost up, and then I took his hand to wrench him to his feet. I had to muster all my strength, and when we were standing again, I laughed softly.
“What?” he asked, bemused.
“You’re tall.”
“I would argue that you are quite short.”
“I’m not sure that would be an argument.” I grinned, brushing twigs and leaves from my trousers. He plucked something out of my hair and brushed himself off. Now that we weren’t tangled together on the ground, all the kissing felt like a distant embarrassing dream. It had been beyond improper.
He was watching me. “You regret it,” he observed carefully, like an apology.
“I do not! It was my idea!” How dare he presume to know my mind?
“It’s possible to regret one’s own ideas.” Ezra pushed his hand back through his hair and laughed without mirth. “I’ve managed that plenty of times.”
“Well, I don’t regret it. Why do you think I do?”
He snorted. “Your hands are fluttering all over, and you’re not pink anymore—you’re pale. Your gaze hasn’t settled on any one place. I’m sure if I touched your wrist, your pulse would be as fast as a rabbit’s. All these signs indicate mental stress.”
“You sound like a healer,” I said, attempting to sound grumpy.
He beamed and took my hand, leading me back to the Mission. “Good.”
Enchanted by the feeling of his fingers entwined with my own, all I could do was follow.