Chapter Twelve – Korr
Chapter Twelve
Korr
I’m putting the plates away when my hands stop cooperating.
Both seize at once, every joint locking rigid, fingers splayed open around the plates I’m holding.
They slip and shatter on the floor, and I leave the pieces where they fall because I can’t bend down.
My wrists lock, then my elbows. My knees go stiff on the walk to the nearest armchair, and I barely make it, dropping into the seat so hard the wooden frame groans under me.
My jaw grinds when I try to open my mouth to test if I can still speak. I push against my own joints and try to flex my fingers, but nothing gives.
I watched my mother go through this. She had episodes when everything seized and held for hours, and when it let go, something that used to move didn’t move anymore. I know how this works, and I know where it ends.
But what I’m thinking about is Sorina. The Stillhalls aren’t far, and Irrva won’t keep her up there all afternoon.
When they come back, she’ll find the broken plates on the floor and me frozen in the armchair, unable to explain myself.
She’ll see exactly what I am, a boulder that can’t walk, can’t stand, and can’t even answer her when she asks what’s wrong.
She had lunch with me today. She bought a pie, carried it up to the Highhalls, sat on a stool at my workbench, and ate beside me.
She touched my arm. She was looking at me the way you look at someone you might want to spend time with, and I can’t let her walk in on me in this awful, embarrassing situation.
I try harder. I push until sweat runs down my forehead and the back of my neck.
The effort sends my temperature spiking, and a fever rolls through me, hot and thick, until my shirt soaks through across my chest. I keep pushing because if I can get my legs working, then I can get to my bedroom and close the door before she comes back.
I need to lock myself in and ride it out.
My legs refuse to cooperate. I can’t wipe my own face.
The door opens, and my heart sinks. I close my eyes because I can’t stand to see the pity in her eyes when she realizes what’s happening to me.
Sorina walks in first, then Irrva behind her. Sorina is mid-sentence, thanking Irrva for taking her to the Stillhalls. She turns to me, and I open my eyes and try to act normal. Maybe she’ll go to her bedroom quickly, as she always does, and I won’t have to pretend I’m fine for more than a minute.
“I learned so much today,” she tells me.
I try to answer. My jaw works, but what comes out is a low, scraping sound with no words in it. The grimace that follows is involuntary, and I watch her expression change. The color drains from her face as she steps closer.
“What happened? Are you all right?”
I shake my head. The movement is barely there, but she sees it.
Irrva moves fast. She puts her hand on Sorina’s shoulder.
“Go get him a glass of water,” Irrva says.
Sorina hesitates, looking between us, then turns and disappears into her room.
The second she’s out of sight, Irrva hooks an arm under my shoulders, braces her legs, and hauls me up.
I lean into her, most of my weight on her body, and my legs cooperate just enough to shuffle forward in stiff, grinding steps.
She gets me down the hall and into my bed, and once my back is against the pillows she leans in and whispers:
“You need to tell her, Korr.”
“No.” The word is a scrape through my locked jaw.
“She deserves to know what’s happening to you.”
“If she finds out I’m dying, she’ll stay because she thinks she has to.”
The effort it takes to speak in a full sentence makes me sweat harder. I’m burning up.
“Anyone can see she cares about you. Tell her the truth and let her decide.”
“I’d rather turn to stone than make her feel like she owes me.”
Irrva goes quiet, and I can see how affected she is after the visit to the Stillhalls. She goes to see our mother every week. Now, she’s witnessing me going through the same ordeal our mother went through and has to respect my wish to keep silent and let it happen.
“You’re not protecting her,” she says. “You’re protecting yourself. You’re afraid of what she’d choose if she knew.”
I don’t answer. She might be right, and we both know it, and the argument ends there because Sorina appears in the doorway carrying a glass of water.
I’m in bed, Irrva is smoothing the blanket over me, making it look ordinary, but Sorina doesn’t look relieved. I’m soaked in sweat and completely rigid. I try to shift my body so I look less stiff, but the effort doesn’t fool anyone.
Sorina comes over and sits on the edge of the bed, and my heart kicks hard enough to send a wave of nausea through me. I can see the bracelet I made her catching the light filtering through the sheer curtains.
“Here,” she says. “Drink a little.”
She tips the glass to my lips, and I sip. The water is cool as it runs down my throat, and the relief is small but real. A drop runs down my chin, and she reaches up and wipes it away with her fingertips.
The tension in my body lets go. Her fingers on my skin ease the panic that’s been clamping around my organs, and I feel my muscles unclench the way they do when a cramp finally passes.
“I should go,” Irrva says. “Jarrvik is probably back from his shift.”
I thank her, my voice rough but audible.
Sorina thanks her too, then turns back to me.
“Don’t worry,” she says to Irrva. “I’ll take care of him.”
I lie there and let the words settle over me. She wants to be here. She’s sitting on my bed, in my bedroom, and she just told my sister she’d take care of me. This woman who flinched when I moved too fast, who kept her door shut for days, who almost refused my gifts… She’s choosing to stay.
She presses her hand to my forehead.
“I didn’t know golems could have a fever,” she says, and before I can answer, she’s on her feet. “I’ll get cold water and a cloth.”
She disappears into my bathing room, and I hear her opening cabinets, filling a basin from the tap, moving through the space with purpose. She comes back and sets the basin on the nightstand. She dips a cloth in the cold water, wrings it, and presses it to my forehead.
I close my eyes and let my head sink into the pillows.
She moves the cloth down to my cheek, along my jaw, slow and careful, paying attention to where she puts her hands and how hard she presses.
The cold seeps into my skin, and I let her do it because I don’t have the strength to pretend I don’t need her.
Pretending feels pointless when she’s already here doing the one thing I was afraid to ask for.
She shifts on the bed to reach me better and leans close.
“How is that?” she whispers. “Feeling better?”
“It feels amazing,” I say. “Thank you. You’re so good to me.”
She looks away as her cheeks go pink, but her hands keep working.
She wets the cloth again and brings it to my forehead, then moves lower, drawing it down the front of my throat and across the slope of my shoulders where the cracks run deep and the stone is rough.
No one has touched me like this in years.
I shudder, and she pulls the cloth away.
“Would you like to rest now?” she asks. “It’ll do you good.”
“Can you stay? You don’t have to.”
She looks at the armchair beside the bed, then back at me, and nods. She settles into it, pulls her legs up, and picks up a book from the stack on the nightstand. She opens it, and the lamplight catches the side of her face and makes her hair look like spun gold.
I watch her read. Sleep is pulling at me, dragging me under, my body desperate to recover from the fever.
But I don’t want to close my eyes. I want to keep looking at her, sitting in my armchair with her feet tucked under her, reading one of my books, breathing the same air as me because she feels safe in my presence. My exhaustion is stronger than my will.
Later, I jolt awake and notice the room is dark.
The lamp is turned off, and through the window I see the moon.
My stomach drops. My first thought is that Sorina left.
Why would she stay after I’d fallen asleep?
But I turn my head and see her in the armchair, curled up, her head resting on the armrest at an awkward angle. The book is closed in her lap.
“Sorina,” I whisper.
She blinks, lifts her head, and pushes her hair from her face.
“Sorry,” she says. “I fell asleep.”
“It’s fine. You must be tired.”
“Are you feeling better?”
“Getting there.”
She brings the glass to me again, presses it to my lips, and I drink.
When I’m done, she sets it on the nightstand and looks at me, then at the door, then back at me.
She pulls her lower lip between her teeth, biting on it lightly, and by now, I’ve figured out this is what she does when she’s thinking hard about something.
“Would you like me to sleep here tonight?”
I stare at her in wonder. My jaw is not flexible enough to drop, but in my head, I’m gaping at her like a fool.
“Yes. I’d love that. But only if you want to.”
“I want to be here in case you feel worse later.”
She sits on the edge of the bed and takes off her shoes, then pulls the blanket back and lies down next to me, leaving a wide stretch of mattress between us. She turns onto her side, facing me, and tucks her hands under her cheek as she draws her knees up to her chest.
“Is this okay?”
“Perfect.”
She closes her eyes.
I’m feeling sleepy, too, but I refuse to give in this time. I will not waste a single second of her lying in my bed, beside me. Her breathing slows and evens out. I watch her chest rise and fall until morning light fills the room.