Chapter Fifteen #2
Jileana’s father just gave a silent shrug of his shoulders. “She will do as she pleases whatever I say. We will see her later tonight. We can discuss it further then.”
“Discuss?” Silan said in disgust. “What is there to discuss? You are her father and she lives under your roof. She must do as you demand.”
“Silan, I said we will discuss it later!” Jileana’s father said, raising his voice in temper.
Silan subsided at last, but it was obvious he was none too pleased about it. He glared mutinously at Jileana and Jaykun the entire time they swam out of sight.
“I’m so sorry,” Jileana said after several minutes, her voice low and contrite. She hovered over Jaykun’s injury, speaking a soft magic to stop the bleeding.
“There is nothing for you to apologize for,” Jaykun assured her.
“There is. Silan’s behavior is inexcusable. He thinks he owns me. He thinks he can map out my entire future for me … that it is his right to do so.”
“Clearly you have other ideas.”
“Yes. I do. I wish I did not live under my father’s roof, but I cannot leave until I am mated.
You see, each level of the caves is occupied by a specific house of the nobles.
The higher the caves, the higher the nobles’ standing in the eyes of the empress and the court.
My father comes from an ancient bloodline, almost as ancient as the empress’s.
That and his role as captain of the empress’s army puts him high in the houses.
It also makes his daughter a valuable item.
For as long as I can remember, men have tried to win me over.
Win me so they may enter my father’s great house. ”
“Barban?”
“He is but one. The most persistent one. Mainly because my brother has made it clear that he would be very much in favor of the match. My father has done nothing to discourage it either.”
“And when do they consider your wishes in the matter?” Jaykun asked.
“They never do. They never will.”
“Is that why you came to my world? To be free of them, if only for a little while?”
She nodded and then swam upward, her hand holding his, her feet kicking in strong, graceful strokes.
Not another word was said until they broke the surface of the water and took strong breaths of the air.
Jaykun did not need to breathe air while underwater, but it still felt more right to take in the air through his lungs. More natural. The habit of a lifetime.
“I wanted to know what it would be like away from them. I knew it could only be for a week, until the moon waned, but still, a week of reprieve from this was like the richest of gemstones would be to someone of your world. Priceless and coveted. To me, anyway. Most selkies want nothing to do with the Overworld. They are afraid of it. Here the selkies are protected from all outsiders. The only dangers here are the sirens and perhaps a few civil factions trying to go to war amongst themselves, as you learned from the empress. Maybe a sea beast here or there, or the grots. The selkies think the world of man is the root of all danger and all evil. They don’t see beyond that.
They don’t see that there is just as much danger here as there is there.
And your world … your world is so diverse.
Oh, I know I saw only some of it … but that’s the adventure of it.
I’ve seen only a small part of it. I want to see more.
I want to see all of it! And I know it would fake me a lifetime to do that.
But what a lifetime that would be,” she said wistfully.
“So full of adventure and newness at every turn. It’s the life that you have, isn’t it?
It’s what you do. You go to all kinds of lands and see many strange people and places. I envy you your life.”
“Do not envy me,” Jaykun said harshly. “My life is nothing you would want for yourself.”
She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes on him. “I know parts of it are unbearable,” she said. “I am not ignorant of that. But surely you must enjoy some of it. You must take some kind of pleasure in it.”
The truth was, he hadn’t taken much pleasure in his life lately.
He had borne it. Had walked numbly through it, doing what he was required to do.
The only joy he’d had was being with his brothers again.
But even that was curbed by the knowledge that there was still one brother missing, one brother living in unending torment somewhere, buried deep within soil and bedrock in a place unknown to them, suffocating and being crushed under the weight of the world again and again and again.
It made Jaykun’s nightly torment seem trivial in comparison.
Until he had met Jileana. Suddenly there was light in his world.
A type of pleasure that he had all but forgotten.
The type of pleasure that could make a man afraid.
Afraid to lose it. Afraid to believe in it.
He suddenly turned from her, unwilling to look at her.
He had nothing to offer her. He had nothing to offer anyone, least of all himself.
His life had ended with a single swallow of forbidden waters and this …
this existence had sprung up in its place.
He had thought he wanted immortality. Now all he wanted was to live a normal, peaceful life … and to die a normal, peaceful death.
But his wants weren’t worth thinking about. His was a cursed existence and nothing was going to change that. Certainly not by wishing his life were otherwise. All of his wishes had long since been superseded by the wishes of another … of a goddess.
Jaykun began to swim. He could see the cliff face in the distance and he aimed himself toward it.
The churning of his arms, the force of propelling himself through the water, made his heart pump harder and faster.
He needed it, needed the violence of it.
He didn’t know if she was following him, didn’t really care in that moment.
All he knew was the need to move hard and fast however he could, and it was difficult to do that in the water.
So he swam. Arm over arm over arm. Swam until his body hit the wall of the cliff face.
Then he dragged himself onto the nearest ledge, and he would have begun to climb just as blindly as he had swum, but suddenly there was a great weight on his arm and he was being dragged about until he was looking down into her concerned face.
“What is it?” she asked him. “Jaykun! What is wrong?”
He was heaving for breath, water streaming from his hair still, his body being baked by the brightness of the sun.
Off in the distance he could see the wall of grey denoting the storms that protected the island, but where he was standing was as clear and warm and sunny as any high summer day.
He found himself inanely wondering if the seasons turned cold in this idyllic place where people lived in the cool waters and ran naked under the sun.
“Does winter ever come here?” he asked.
“What?” she asked, surprised and confused by the question. “What is winter?”
“Does it ever grow cold or snow here?”
“It is always the same here. The storms come from time to time. What is snow?”
He smiled at that and looked down into her pretty, upturned face. He reached for it, touching gentle fingers to the sweet curve of her cheek. “Snow is when the rain freezes and turns to ice.”
“Oh. Mother can make ice. She has a spell for it. I think I might know it. Does it fall in big blocks, or is it small like drops of rain?”
“Small like the drops of rain. You’ve never seen snow?”
“No. It sounds painful.”
“No. Snow can be light and soft, and it can be very beautiful.”
“Oh. I would like to see snow,” she said with a beatific smile. “When does it come?”
“With winter. You see, where I come from, in the Overworld, we have seasons. Four of them. Summer, which is warm and sunny like this. Autumn, when the air grows colder and the leaves of the trees die and fall off in preparation for winter.”
“They die? Oh, that sounds terrible,” she said with a frown.
“They have to. But don’t worry. The trees are only going to sleep a little while.
That is when winter comes. It grows cold …
so cold your breath freezes on the air. Then soft snow comes and lays white over everything.
Every road, every house, every tree … until all you see is a great, vast, blinding blanket of white.
The children come and play in it and their laughter can be heard for great distances.
We build fires and stay warm next to them.
Men and women cuddle up close for warmth and make love to bring fire to their blood.
” He reached for her and drew her close to his body, demonstrating by holding her close and warm.
“Oh,” she breathed, “that sounds wonderful.”
“It is. There’s nothing like it in the world. And then the snow melts and spring comes. The trees wake up and grow new leaves. The flowers bloom and fill the air with the smell of freshness and new life. Then summer comes and it all begins again.”
“Snow. I want to see snow,” she said excitedly. “Why has no one ever told me about this before?”
“So you’ve really never been to the Overworld before this?”
“Never. I was too young. We can’t pass through the portal until we’re of a certain age. It keeps our children from passing through unexpectedly. The storms keep us in just as they keep others out.”
“And you just reached this certain age?”
“Well … no … it was a few years ago. But I confess, it took me a while to be brave enough to venture through the portal. But once I did I saw you and thought what a wondrous world it must be, to have such people in it that they burn like the stars. After that I wasn’t afraid.”
He laughed at that. “Had anyone else seen me they would have been terrified of me.”
“Well, I wasn’t. I thought you were beautiful. That was before I understood how much it hurt you, though. I don’t think it’s beautiful any longer.”
He realized then how beautiful he thought she was.
Not just aesthetically beautiful, but straight through to her very core.
And in his world, a world ugly with war and political machinations and people bent on killing one another, that meant a great deal to him.
It was something incredibly rare and special.
Sure, she was a selkie and that made her rare to begin with, but it went beyond that.
He couldn’t remember the last time he saw such beauty.
Real beauty—not a beauty he had created in his mind, blinded in every way to the flaws within.
He could see her flaws—things like her impulsiveness and her stubbornness.
He was not imagining her to be something perfect and beyond reproach, and he was glad of that.
It told him he was truly seeing her. But at the same time it scared him, truly rocked him to his core.
He didn’t know what to do with these feelings.
They had no place in his life. He could offer her absolutely nothing of value and she deserved to be given everything the world had to offer her. She deserved better than him.