18. Garrek
18
GARREK
T he next morning, we fully circumvented the forest. The mountains came into unobstructed view.
I would have been able to hear Magnolia’s gasp of wonder even if she weren’t riding right beside me, and even if I didn’t have such excellent hearing. It was like every sense I had was entirely attuned to her these days.
“Oh. It’s beautiful,” she breathed, clutching Shanti’s reins together in her hands.
The ground rose slowly, up and down like waves, growing steeper and steeper until the vast hills were no longer golden green with grass but the piercing peaks of mountains. In the distance, it appeared a few of them were still capped with snow.
“Do you have mountains where you come from?”
“Yes. But it feels a bit different,” Magnolia said, her gaze still turned forwards. “Terratribe II is mostly agricultural and tourism- focused. Everything is very… manicured, I guess. Everything has humanity’s stamp on it. I’ve never seen anything like the landscapes here. It all feels so untamed and wild.”
I could show you more of the wild places of this world. I could take you anywhere you wanted.
“Why do you look so tired?” I asked. I’d seen her rubbing at her eyes a lot today, and I did not think it was due to dust. I remembered the words I’d spoken to her last night in anger, and hated that something I said might have disturbed her sleep.
“Oh. Nothing. I was just up a bit late working on your…” She stopped, cutting herself off. “Um. I was up late reading.”
“A romance book?”
From the side, I saw her smile, and I briefly felt time halt.
“Always a romance book,” she said, turning that smile on me.
“You could… You could tell me about it. If you want.”
Stupid. So colossally stupid. I’d spent every day trying to drag myself further and further away from Magnolia. I’d limited conversation with her. Made sure there was never a reason for her to touch me, or me her.
It hadn’t done a thing to help.
And now, here I was, looking at all those sacrifices I’d made – and they were sacrifices, because every time I stepped back from her I earned another invisible scar – and I was acting like they had never happened at all. All that work, and here I was falling back into her the way I’d fall from a shuldu. A breathless careen. With a potentially lethal end.
But I could not stop wanting to talk to her. I needed her happiness the way I needed air. I remembered her mentioning how much it had meant to speak about her books with the old man Nelson.
And I wanted her to speak about them with me.
“You want to hear about the romance book I’m reading?” Magnolia regarded me with wide eyes.
“Yes.”
“Oh!” She dropped her gaze, a shyness entering her voice and her posture that made me feel fidgety and feral with the need to protect her.
“Well, alright, then,” she said.
As soon as she began to speak about the story, her eyes lit up as surely as a Zabrian’s would when something deeply excited them.
“The heroine is a veterinarian. That’s a human doctor who treats animals. She gets called out to this farm to treat a horse with an injured leg. And the farmer, he’s this big, brooding dude. Very grumpy, bordering on mean. But there’s this undeniable spark between them. Which she ignores, of course, because she has a boyfriend. But get this. ” She wiggled in her saddle, shivering with glee. “The farmer turns out to be her boyfriend’s older brother! Gah!”
Dramatic gasps. That’s what she said her old friend had done.
I opened my mouth and sucked in a big breath. Unfortunately, I also inhaled an insect. I pulled up on Torla’s reins, giving in to a coughing fit that made my ribs ache and my back burn even worse than before.
“Oh my God, Garrek, are you alright?” Magnolia had stopped Shanti, too. The herd ambled along behind us, with Killian bringing up the rear.
“Fine,” I wheezed. I was never attempting to do a dramatic gasp again. Not even for her. “Continue.”
“OK. Well, that’s about as far as I’ve gotten so far. But they’re just meant to be together, you know? I can feel it. Ugh. It’s so good.”
I would have tried to come up with an appropriate response to that, but I still hadn’t hacked up that blasted insect and now I was too focused on trying not to let my own cursed lungs collapse. I cough-grunted at her, and she seemed to be satisfied with that, if the agonizing glory of her beaming face was any indication.
We continued onwards for the rest of the afternoon, taking the flatter, smoother paths between growing hills. Trees were dotted here and there, which was good, as I would need them for the next part.
“We’ll have to make camp here for a few days,” I told Magnolia as the sun was setting. We’d reached a basin with a clear, cold lake and a big outcropping of stone behind it. “Killian and I will need to build a fence.”
“A fence? Why?”
“Because we cannot bring the herd much further into the mountains,” I explained. “The shuldu can come, but the bracku won’t be able to travel over any uneven or rocky terrain. A fence will give them some protection while we’re gone, and they’ll have access to plenty of water and grass within it.”
“While we’re gone…” Magnolia repeated.
“To find Oaken.”
“Oh.” Her reply was nearly sombre.
“I don’t think it will be long now,” I assured her. She was probably worried about how long it had taken to get here while Oaken was injured. I was worried, too. Despite the complicated mess of feelings that surrounded Magnolia and Oaken’s marriage, I still loved him. I still wanted him to be well.
“I’ve never been to his cabin,” I said, “but the warden told me it was near a lake with a stone outcropping, which I believe has to be this one. We’ll get the bracku set up here and then you, Killian, and I will continue on to find him.”
“Right.” Her voice cracked on the word.
I wanted to touch her throat.
My idiotic hand actually rose to do it. I quickly aimed it back down towards the cannister that was clipped to the side of her saddle. I grabbed it and roughly shoved it at her.
“Drink your water,” I ordered her as I dismounted. “Killian and I will find some food.”
Food ended up being slippery freshwater fish. They were plentiful in this small lake, which was good, as that meant we’d be well-fed as we constructed the fences. Killian and I were seated side-by-side on a wide, wet log, the remnants of some tree that had fallen here long ago. At our feet were the four fish we’d caught and cleaned. They were ready to be cooked.
I glanced over my shoulder to see that Magnolia had set up her tent already. She’d gotten much better at it, quick learner that she was, and had disappeared inside. She’d seemed impatient to get in there when we’d stopped. Maybe she needed to rest before dinner after her late night. Or maybe she wanted to get back to her story. The one with the animal doctor and the angry farmer.
Killian made to get up and grab the fish. My tail snapped out in front of him, stopping him.
“Before we go back to camp…”
How was I to word this? I struggled for a moment, chewing on things unsaid, until I finally just threw it all out there.
“Before we go back, I just want to make sure you understand what’s happening next. For all of us.”
Killian froze. He stared down at the rocks and the fish.
“I think it likely that, very soon, we will meet Magnolia’s husband.”
“He’s not her husband.” His words came out as a vicious snarl, the kind I had not heard from him in quite some time.
“What do you-”
“They aren’t married yet.” He said it with the spitting stubbornness only a child who had no idea what they were talking about could muster.
“Alright, her groom, then. You knew what I meant,” I chided. “I need to make sure you understand that, once we meet him, she will go with him. And we will continue on without her.”
I felt like one of the gutted fish at our feet as I said it.
“We could kill him,” Killian said suddenly. His eyes blazed in the low evening light. “She can’t go with him if he’s dead. And then she’ll need us. To keep taking care of her.”
What in the blazes…
“We can’t kill him, Killian,” I groaned. “That is absolutely not an option.”
“What will the Empire do?” he asked haughtily, as if he’d come up with a completely rational argument and that I was being the unreasonable one. “Convict us again? I’ll do it. I’m still a child. They cannot send me to the mines. We could even make it look like an accident!” He sounded nearly gleeful now, buzzing with optimism. “He’s already broken his foot, hasn’t he? Maybe he also tripped and fell down a gorge. Or off the edge of a cliff. Or-”
“You have put way too much thought into this,” I muttered, rubbing at my jaw.
I probably should have been disturbed by this turn of conversation. But instead, I felt rather worryingly touched by how far Killian was willing to go to keep Magnolia with us. I ignored what that likely said about my own mental state.
For a long moment, I merely listened to the quiet lap of the water brushing up against the shore. Something so pure, so cleansing, so soft, touching the hard and broken things before it withdrew.
Taking a breath, I quietly but firmly said, “She can’t stay with us, Killian.”
Killian dug the claw of his thumb into the log, twisting it until the spot of wood was shredded. His skinny forearm flexed. His hands were shiny with fish guts.
“It’s because we don’t deserve her,” he mumbled. “We aren’t good enough.”
His mouth twisted, and he ducked his head so that his hair hid his face. “ I’m not good enough. Maybe if I was, then she would want to make a family with us instead of Oaken.”
And just like that, my mind was racing, trying to figure out how I could possibly make this better for him. Easier. Less painful when I’d never be able to make it less painful for myself.
I thought about leaving him with Oaken and Magnolia. But they would be a newly wedded pair. They’d be wanting to start their own life unencumbered by the responsibility of an unpredictable convict-ward. I doubted the warden would allow me to shirk my duties and leave Killian with someone else, and that was not even considering the fact that leaving him behind might now break me nearly as much as leaving her.
What other options, then? Move my herd into the mountains? Build a new home, a whole new life near my cousin so that Killian would get to see Magnolia more ?
And so that I would get to see Magnolia, too? Blissfully married to somebody else?
I thought about it, really thought about it. Forced myself to shape the torturously vivid picture of it in my mind. I imagined watching Magnolia bloom with happiness alongside Oaken. I imagined watching her love him, maybe even have a child with him if it were possible. I imagined those eyes and that smile aimed at him, adoring him, and felt something inside my chest begin to splinter.
“Sometimes you don’t get the life you want,” I said woodenly. I did not know if I was speaking to Killian or to myself. “Magnolia just… She just wasn’t meant for us.”
Killian absorbed this for a beat in silence. Then he suddenly flew to his feet. His tail thrashed against the ground, nearly sending the fish flying.
He stood before me, and I watched him sharpen his sadness into anger. This happened often, and I couldn’t say I blamed him for it. It was always easier to defend yourself with a weapon than with a wound.
“You’re so stupid,” he hissed. “Why didn’t you ask for a bride like the others? If you had, Magnolia might have been married to you in the first place! She could have stayed with us!”
“Killian…”
“I hate you. I wish they’d given me to Oaken, too.”
The splintering sensation intensified. With it went my restraint. I rose, towering over my convict-ward.
“You think that I am happy?” I snarled. “You think that I want to give her up? When I said no to the bride program, I had no idea it could be her. If she were any other woman – any other woman, Killian! – I would not feel like my heart is being ripped up and out of my throat every time I so much as look at her!”
Killian’s eyes grew huge. His chest heaved.
“I did not know someone like Magnolia could even exist out there! Had I been tasked with bringing Darcy to Oaken, or Cherry, I would not be falling apart right now. I’d be able to deliver her safely and move on with my life. But now, I just look around and think, what life? What’s left after she goes? I can’t even ask to be granted my own bride now, because it won’t be her and no one else will ever be enough. You think that I don’t feel regret? Some days, it’s all I feel. Some days, it’s like I’m drowning in it.”
Killian was tense, practically vibrating. Without warning, he collapsed down onto his backside, like my words had knocked the strength out of his legs.
“Why don’t you tell her that?” he said, his young voice scorched with longing that mirrored my own. “Tell her you made a mistake before!”
“Because I’m not that blasted selfish!” I dragged my claws through my hair. “The only reason Oaken is here at all is because of me.”
Killian’s head snapped up.
“He is my cousin. Did I ever tell you that? My father’s brother’s son. He was there that day I killed my father. He was in the very room when it happened! He refused to testify against me and we were both convicted.” I sighed, bitterness burning in my throat. “I failed him. I tried to protect him and I couldn’t. I’ve already taken his future from him. I cannot now take his bride.”
I swallowed hard, almost wishing I could shove all those words back inside myself. What good would any of them do me now?
“When you are older,” I said hollowly, feeling entirely emptied out, “when it is time to leave my ranch and establish your own property, you can petition the warden to occupy land near Oaken’s. You’ll get to see Magnolia often that way, and I’m sure she’d be more than happy to have you as a neighbour.”
Killian did not seem wholly miserable with that possibility, which I supposed had to count for something. His burning eyes met mine.
“What about you?”
“I’ll survive.”
I’d survived so much already.
But the words felt like a lie anyway.