Chapter 12
XII.
Teaching Baró the dialect of the Rivanic tongue that she spoke did not present as much of a challenge as anticipated.
Despite whatever disuse affected his memory and impeded his aptitude for linguistics and although halting and unsure at times, he grasped the fundamentals with ease.
As they muddled through phrases and commonplace identification of objects, it was not that he had forgotten Rivanic, but that he needed outside stimulation to recall.
Without the benefit of company and in the absence of reading materials, Baró’s skills had gone by the wayside.
Although he claimed to know Rivanic second-hand, his almost immediate understanding of the language impressed her.
She did not tell him of her suspicions, but she believed that he could regain any language he had once known provided that he had the proper tools to inspire it.
When he asked about declensions or conjugations, she had no idea what either term meant until he demonstrated them in his tongue.
He had the learning of the scholar, not of the self-taught or accidental student, and she did not know how to answer far too many of his specific questions.
Still, he did not appear to be put out if she told him that she did not know.
Due to the early onset of her courses, Baró’s departure during her ovulation occurred far too soon after lessons began.
However, when he returned, he named all his little gifts to her in Rivanic, demonstrating his dedication to his learning and putting it into practice at every opportunity even if she were not there to inspire it.
His ability and memory had also not been affected by her absence and he flawlessly resumed the lessons and his usage of Rivanic.
They fell into a tranquil routine of cohabitation. Every pleasantry and every easy moment of quiet companionship lulled her into contentment.
The first time he applied himself with gusto to the rib bones of a freshly felled deer threw her.
Settled in the solar, she had been agreeable to him joining her with his own quarry.
Unlike the meals from the platter, he sprawled out before the fire like a hunting dog with coveted table scraps, legs wide behind him, claws grappled into the meat, his teeth making an assortment of sounds as he gnawed bones.
Although animalistic in approach and crude in description, he had a level of method, cleanliness, and skill that made her feel like her table manners left much more to be desired than his.
She found that she liked watching him eat due to his unrestrained enjoyment of the activity.
She had sat beside him and attacked a rib of lamb that had come on her evening platter with a great deal less finesse and grace.
When pleased, he snuffled and emitted low purrs that delighted her in their candid expression of contentment.
He kept his word about not touching her, but with each passing day, she found herself thinking about what it might be like to touch him. His strange unnatural appearance mattered little. To her, he was not a monster but a god.
One night between bites he began to ask a question and then stopped, switching from his language to hers. Speaking in Rivanic did not yet come instinctively, but he had been conscientious about correcting himself.
“Did you do much today?” He always sat, or sprawled as was the case now, to her right as they had the first time she had invited him to share her breakfast. He glanced up at her, content to make small conversation to aid his use of Rivanic.
“Not as much as I would have liked.”
If the kitchen cabinets could serve as a scale of comparison, then she downplayed her accomplishments. She had filled yet another few shelves with dehydrated vegetables rooted out from the garden. Her industriousness constantly impressed him.
“Did you?” She asked.
“No.”
“You collected a great deal of fruit for me.”
“Little enough.” He gave an awkward shrug.
He returned to eating and paused. Although he could not see her, she studied him. The intensity of her attention forced him to turn his face away. Then her fingers combed through his hair and he stilled under her caress.
“I’m sorry. I should have asked.” She withdrew her hand just a hair’s breadth away. “Sometimes I have to remind myself that you’re real.”
He abandoned his food and sat upright, drawing his legs under him. His eyes barely left hers.
“Thou art...” He stopped, took a breath, and then tried to put it in Rivanic words. He formed several soundless attempts before he just nodded to answer the question she hadn’t asked.
“Yes.”
The corners of Rivani’s mouth lifted and this time, instead of petting, she slid her hand across the back of his neck and combed her fingers through his hair.
“You have beautiful hair, Baró.”
He shivered and melted under her touch. Nothyng as beautyful as thee.
You’re a pet to her, you realize, came the unwelcome Intruder. That’s why you couldn’t bear to remain lying down while she stroked you.
“Baró, what’s wrong?” Rivani withdrew her hand.
Tell her about Me, She taunted. She will think you mad and then you will never have to worry about telling her anything else.
He paused and shook his head, just a little, not having words.
“It’s the Magic, isn’t it?” Rivani put her hand on Baró’s shoulder.
He nodded but held up a hand, hoping she would understand that he needed a moment. Rivani kept silent, but her grasp on him tightened.
She may know that you were once a man, but she deserves to know that you are a monster in every way, She said. The girl may forget now, this moment, but she need only look at you to see all the reasons you are as you are.
He willed Her away but She did not go. My face remayneth my gyft. She cannot be deceyved by me. She beholdeth what Y am and behaveth kyndlie anyway.
You mean, she pities you, the Voice responded.
Very lykelie. ‘Tis enough. Y am grateful for even that.
And what of your pride?
What pryde? He asked. Yf pryce of her attentionne cometh at cost of every humylyationne great and small, Y would endure yt gratefullie. Her gyfts, even yf borne of routhe, art fer more than Y deserve.
His Tormentor left. He had surprised it and it had gone away. His hand lowered and he turned to look at Rivani, to study her as she studied him. After a long moment, he asked, trying not to be accusatory, slipping into his old language.
“Am Y thy pet?”
“Baró!” Rivani’s hand slid down to rest on his shoulder. She leaned forward to maintain eye contact.
“Y mean not to thee affront. Y know not where thou art at, between begrudgyng cyvylytie and kyndness. Y am an anymal and ‘twolde be natural. Y wolde understand. And,” he added lest she thought that his inquiry would affect his feelings, “Y wolde styll be grateful for thy attentionnes.”
“You are not my pet. You are my Baró. I am your Rivani. We are friends.” She stroked his shoulder and back, squeezing his arm where her hand came to rest.
Friends. That statement should have filled him with elation. Someday she would regret thinking of him so dearly, but for now, he would hold onto that and hope.
He deluded himself if he thought he had quieted Her when She retreated.
The quiet had been a matter of tactics, not surrender.
In the morning after the visitation, he destroyed himself with uncertainty.
Did he present himself to Rivani or stay out of her way for a few days to lick his wounds in private?
Eventually, he went down to the kitchens to begin the fire and await Rivani’s arrival.
Amplifying his anxieties, he had again changed during the night.
“Good morning, Baró.”
Rivani had not yet braided or bound her hair and though dressed and ready to start the day, Baró imagined a vague morning haze around her inspired by the loose cascade of her hair and the sleepiness lingering in the corners of her eyes.
He had the desire to curl up with her somewhere like contented cats.
He regretted that he would be cause for that endearing morning languor to flee.
He stood from the bench like a naughty child and held out the bruised wrists and cut arms.
“Y need thy assystance.” He added in Rivanic since he had slipped back into Varnasian, “Please.”
“Oh dear gods.” She let a breath escape as she found his eyes. “Baró, what has tormented you again?” She took him in, all the changes of him, and he bowed his head under the study. “More gifts, I see too.” She crossed the room to extract her jars.
He stayed silent, resuming his seat after she surveyed him.
She brought the jars to the table and sat beside him on the bench, her legs tucked up under her as she opened her concoctions. She dipped her fingers into the boarberry salve and began applying it to his new wounds.
“Baró,” she said as she worked the balm into his fur and flesh, “what does this to you? I could understand scratches from your claws but....” She brushed her fingers over the bruised wrists and up his neck, bruised too.
Baró did not know how to explain. The Magic had told him to tell Rivani about Her, knowing he would sound unhinged and dangerous.
“The Magic here.” He kept silent for a moment, waiting, listening, before he continued. “I would believe it only my nighttime fancy if I did not have such tokens in the morning.”
“Even if you dreamed such things and then harmed yourself in sleeping, it would not alter your shape.”
His hair that she had just so recently discovered the courage to touch no longer grew like hair.
Still curly and black, instead of hanging, it adhered to his head, neck, and back, framing his face in a way that only made him look more predatory.
It traveled down his shoulders and back like sprawling vegetation.
His back had changed also, humped now, not altering his posture, but expanding the breadth of the musculature in his neck and shoulders, accentuating the hair, now fur, that tapered into the tufted mane along his spine.
“I am driving myself mad with worry and fear over what harms the one I look to for protection.”
Her admission caused him a moment of gratitude and pride, both sensations fading just as abruptly.
With his size and appearance, she would view him as a guard dog, a mythical guardian the creatures of the forest respected and fled in the expectation of his arrival.
The Rivani even elevated him to a god in their stories.
“You need have no fear or worry for yourself. The Magic has no ill intent toward you.”
“Why does the Magic have ill intent at all?” Rivani applied the julica to the bruise forming on his chin.
“I earned this,” he admitted, the confession of a weary creature who had long embraced the consequences.
“You must have done something dreadful.”
“Yes.” He bowed his head. “And I did not do some things. Passivity itself can be an act of cruelty.”
She bit her lip. “One day, will you tell me?”
“One day, I will have to.” His mouth grew tight, the muzzle pulled in as if assaulted by an unpleasant smell. He put his hands out before him, palms up. “May I?”
She had already touched him multiple times. She had stroked his shoulders and back and played with his hair, but she hesitated at the offer of his hands. She grazed the callused pads of his hands with her fingertips and then nodded.
“I am leaving again, soon.” Baró enfolded her hands and brushed his thumbs over the backs of them with reverence. He kept his gaze on them and not at her.
“It is not my time yet.”
“It will be. Your cycle is irregular. I can smell it coming.”
“I find it a little unsettling that you predict my cycles better than I can.”
“I will be at your disposal the next few days to obtain anything you might require.” He squeezed her hands. “Devote yourself to your food stores, your balms, your oils, anything that you would desire if you left.”
“Are you sending me away?”
He glanced at her and then back down to her hands in his. “No. I desire your company above all else. When I return, I will tell you of my misdeeds as I know them. You may wish to be away from me then.” His shoulders dropped. “I would not have you go back out into the world unprepared.”
“You’re letting me go, after only a couple of months?”
“It has never been my intent to see you miserable. If you can no longer bear to be with me, I will break our contract if necessary.”
“I suspect that breaking the contract will come at a high price for you.”
“That would be between me and the Magic,” he shrugged. “You need not worry about that.”
“Can I stay if I choose?”
“Yes.” He kept his eyes fixed on their clasped hands.
“You were a man once,” she whispered. “These misdeeds,” she ventured, “they happened then, didn’t they?”
“I have always been a monster,” he said.
“I forgot — you can’t say that, can you?” She rephrased it. “They happened when you did not look as you do now. How long ago was that? A hundred years ago?”
“I look so young? Thank you.”
“My vain Baró.” She arched a brow. “Am I close?”
“Much more than that.” He released one of her hands and set it on top of the two that remained clasped. He reached out slowly, so slowly that she would have time to object. With his claw, he lifted a long tendril of her loose hair and ran his thumb over the silken strand.
She gave a sharp intake of breath. “All alone?” she whispered.
“I had visitors, like you. Not many. They did not stay for long.” He could have stopped there. He should have stopped there, but honesty compelled him to be more explicit about the other Occupant of the fortress. “And then there is the Magic, who, to me, often takes shape. I am never alone.”
“Are those,” she asked, placing her free hand on the networks of scars on his side, “from the Magic?”
“No. The wounds from Her do not scar. Her enduring marks are the gifts.”
“She’s the one with whom you bargain when your attention drifts.”
He confirmed Rivani’s suspicions with a nod.
“Can I do anything?”
He let the strand of her hair slip through his fingers before he put his hand over their joined ones. Of all the things he wanted and needed, he could only think of this current blessing — her hand in his, her willingness to be touched, her willingness to touch him.
“Continue to be begrudgingly civil.”