Chapter 4 #3
But there were other things I would not write down, like the wistful pang I felt at the idea that you and I had played beneath the branches of the same tree, separated only by a millennium.
I would leave out the plural fathers, too, which had never been in the books or ballads, and which bewildered me; I’d had a vague conviction that homosexuality was a recent invention, symptomatic of modernity, or at least boarding schools.
And, of course, I would not mention the dreams; a courtesy, from one madman to another.
I prompted, carefully, “And why have you stayed?”
You were quiet for so long I thought you wouldn’t answer. You busied yourself at the fire again, the flames hidden by the slab of your cloaked shoulders.
Then you said, “Because it is quiet here, where there is no one to bid me rise or kneel. Because I can sleep, at least some nights, and I am so damn tired.” You pulled a charred body from the coals and studied it. “Because, for weeks now, I have butchered only animals.”
That lost, fearful expression had returned to your face, as if you had been walking for a long time in a country you did not know under stars you could not name. As if you had forgotten where you had meant to go in the first place, and no longer believed it was worth it.
I knew, suddenly, where I’d seen that look before: in my father’s eyes when he sobered up and in my own mirror every morning.
It was the look of a coward, a turncoat, someone with a crack running down the center of them, so that all the honor and courage ran out and left nothing but shaky hands and bad dreams behind.
And I knew, too, why Vivian Rolfe had called me to her office. Why she had slipped her blade between my knuckles and sent me tumbling into the past. It wasn’t because of my articles or my Medal of Valor or my uncommon grasp of dead languages.
I wasn’t here to translate or transcribe your story; I was here to make sure there was a story to tell.
She needs you, Vivian had said.
You had lost your way. And I—who knew every turn and twist in your journey, every step you must and would take—was your compass.
I crouched at your left side, near enough that you turned your head sharply. I wondered if you had learned to guard your blind side yet, or if it still startled you, the way I was still taken unawares by the frailty of my voice.
I held myself motionless, palms loose, trying desperately to assemble the right words. I wished I could retire to my office for a week and return with a typewritten speech. I wished for the first time that I were more like my father, who never stuttered or second-guessed.
Eventually I began: “I know you don’t believe me.
I don’t blame you, really. But imagine I was telling the truth.
Imagine I really had seen Dominion nearly a thousand years from now—still strong, and growing stronger, all because of the foundation laid by you and Yvanne.
Imagine I could tell you that all of this—the fighting and the killing, everything you’ve done—is worth it?
” It was not possible to say the words without thinking of Colonel Drayton: of his big pink jowls and his big pink hands, the way he clapped us on the back as if we were choking on our dinners and the way he looked at me just before he died.
I dragged again on the cigarette, although it had burned down nearly to my knuckles.
I went on: “Every queen since Yvanne has worn the crown you won her. Every war since the First Crusade has been fought beneath your flag. The highest military decoration is named after you, for God’s sake, and do you know what they call the very best and bravest soldiers, at the front?
Red knights.” Technically the term only applied to men who died in battle, but I thought it might be poor taste to say so.
“Now, you are legendary. One day, you will be a legend.”
You looked away again, but not before I saw the hunger in you. That same burning, aching desire I’d felt as a boy, and again when I stood in Vivian’s office—to matter, to make something good and great out of the pitiful meat of my life.
“Listen, I grew up not far from here. I was—still am—nobody. Nothing. I was lonely and frightened and foreign, or foreign-looking, which is just as bad. But then I found you.” I was glad for my thin, wisping voice, which disguised the tightening of my throat.
“I read your stories—I mean, everyone does, but I read them over and over. And I found the courage I needed to serve my country.”
I reached for the collar of my jacket, hands shaking, and folded it down so you could see the wreckage of my throat.
It was not the handsome, dashing sort of scar that every soldier privately hopes for.
It was fat and wormy, stretching the skin unevenly over my collarbone and knotting over my windpipe like a badly tied cravat.
The first civilian who’d seen the whole of it had gasped once before pressing her hands over her mouth.
But her shock had transitioned quickly into fawning admiration, as if the scar were a medal I couldn’t take off.
She’d kissed it—sweetly, even eagerly—as if she had been appointed by the state to thank me for my sacrifice, and I’d escaped her flat seconds before the shaking fit began.
You did not gasp or fawn. You considered me steadily, like a woman who had both suffered and committed much worse. I experienced such a keen rush of gratitude that little spots danced briefly in my vision.
I blinked them away. “This was the price of my service. Of my loyalty.” This was an absolute lie, but it was such a familiar lie by now that the words tripped out of my mouth like soldiers in a line. “But I swear to you: It was worth it.”
And, for the first time, I thought maybe it was true. Maybe my whole life—my shame and my torment, my bad dreams and my pitiful manuscript—had been in service to this moment, when I recalled Una Everlasting to her duty.
“Please,” I said, and you looked at me as if you, too, felt some grand design at work, the invisible thread of fate tugging you toward your destiny. Your eyes were a dark and lambent amber, without grain or variation. “We need you.”
I reached, impulsively, for your bare hand.
I had time to think: I should not have done that, before I found myself looking up at you from the cold ground, your knee on my breastbone, your hands pinning my wrists on either side of my head.
There followed my first moment of real terror: that I might respond disgracefully. That you might notice. I twisted beneath you, suddenly frantic. “Let go—”
You threw yourself away from me and sat staring, breathing hard, so obviously horror-stricken that my pride suffered a slight injury. You climbed slowly to your feet. “Four times, now,” you said, almost to yourself.
Then, louder, “You may stay if you like. I will share my fire and food, in memory of my fathers, who let no one go cold or hungry in this wood. But do not touch me unawares, and do not go unarmed in my presence.”
You drew a slim knife—Vivian’s letter opener, which I had forgotten about entirely—and flicked it so that it buried itself point-first in the dirt, bare inches from my head.
I blinked at it. “Why?”
“So that you might feel … safe.” You looked at your own hands as you spoke, as if you mistrusted them. I did not think a letter opener, nor even a revolver, would greatly extend my life if you desired to end it, but I didn’t say so. I reached for the handle.
You nodded stiffly at my hand. “And tend to that. The blood will draw beasts.”
You turned and strode into the trees.
“It will come to you in a dream.” I threw the words at your back, a prophecy lobbed at an unwilling subject. “That’s what the stories say. God-the-Savior speaks to you in a dream, and you follow His word to the last dragon.”
You stopped but did not turn. “I have not dreamed since I came here.”
“You will,” I said.