36. Then Games
THEN: GAMES
We spent two summers like that. And Sheridan summers lingered, so it felt like a drawn-out seasonal gathering that extended from one day into the next.
As long as we had chores done, my twin and I were allowed to roam free.
Our mother knew the best thing she could do to prevent an eruption in our household was to keep me and my father far apart for as long as she could each day.
His rages seemed to be more frequent with each season.
The six of us developed a strange camaraderie.
While our father was an elder of the church, he was not as rich as their fathers were.
But what Rowena and I lacked in coin, we made up for in knowing Nyossa.
We showed them how to find the snails that had white-and-brown shells that changed to pink and red when warmed by a human hand.
We pointed out lizards that blended into the tree trunks, white- and gray-spotted coneys, songbirds, foxes, and each kind of moss that glowed.
We showed them which mushrooms, nuts, and berries were good to eat and which would give them a stomachache.
We showed them fruit that only grew in the forest and not outside of it.
Ilsit never quite warmed to me, but she seemed to tolerate me for Rowena’s sake, having been unable to resist my sister’s sweetness.
The boys were easier to understand. I listened to them, a bland expression on my face, when they wanted to impress us.
And I never let them cow me. In return they were mostly nice to me.
Wynne and Kent liked to swagger and boast, both excited at their increasing size as young men.
Sometimes Thane would act like that too, but mostly he asked me questions about the forest and blushed whenever he looked at me for too long as we entered or exited the waters.
Towards the end of that second summer, lines were eventually crossed, boundaries breached that could never be undone.
My twin and I stepped entirely out of our childhood with the brush of another’s lips.
For she too had a heart in love. We were all fourteen or fifteen, full to brimming with curiosity about ourselves, about our friends, and about sex.
There was a new tension with every forest excursion that last moon.
Ilsit pretended to be disdainful whenever Wynne, the most daring of them, would say things meant to provoke the rest of us. Rowena adopted this disdain too but was kinder about it, glaring at Wynne with more warning than annoyance.
I remained silent, watching Kent swallow a grin, his eyes on my sister and Ilsit, as Thane flitted his eyes away from mine.
Hide-and-seek was played one day. I cannot remember who the seeker was, only that I was a hider. Thane found me wedged between two enormous trees that sat on the bank of the river, their eroded roots nearly covering me like a lattice.
“Hah!” he proclaimed, laughing when I hushed him. He slid down next to me and shoved me to one side where I was sitting on my rear, arms around my knees. The spot was barely big enough for the two of us, and he grew shy once his laughter had subsided.
We looked away from each other across the river into the green thick of the forest, his hot side pressed into mine.
“This is my spot,” I said, wanting to break the silence.
“Well, I got bored in my spot,” he said, a smile in his voice.
I turned to look at him and almost gasped at how close his mouth was to mine. He smelled like grass and honeysuckle and boy. And I wanted him so much I thought I would die from it.
I was startled from my naked adoration by the sounds of my sister’s and Ilsit’s voices from the opposite bank. They were picking their way along a footpath that ran parallel to the river.
“Swimming?” Rowena was squealing. “No! Not here at least. The water’s rough here. It makes me too tired to swim.”
“Alright, well somewhere else! We can dip under if we hear voices!”
“Ilsit, no! It’s too late in the day, and my mother doesn’t like it when we return home with wet dresses. It sticks too much to our figures—”
“It does, doesn’t it?” said Ilsit, grinning.
Rowena’s face was bright red. “Stop that,” she said. “You have to stop.”
Ilsit stared at her, still smiling. If the look on her face was a dare, a question, my sister’s helpless answer was a rushed step, a fast grasp of the front of Ilsit’s dress, and a hard kiss on her mouth.
Then I did gasp. I could not believe what I was seeing.
Next to me, I heard Thane inhale too, though his breath was quieter.
“What is she doing?” I asked and then felt the light slap of Thane’s hand over my mouth.
Ilsit and Rowena were still kissing, arms now entwining about each other.
“Don’t startle them,” he whispered. “Actually, this makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” I said against his hand, momentarily distracted by his touch, though my eyes were still trained on my sister and Ilsit.
Thane’s neck was pink. He withdrew his hand from me. “I mean. Well, all three of us have tried to flirt with Ilsit.” Now his face was pink too. “Especially Wynne. And to no avail.”
“So you’re saying a girl couldn’t possibly resist all three of you,” I snipped. I was flush with envy that Thane had ever even seen Ilsit like that.”
“You know what I mean,” Thane corrected me, his tone of familiarity softening the spike of jealousy in my heart. “I mean I cannot remember a time when I did not know Ilsit. And she’s never shown much interest in boys.”
I turned to him. “This is a sin. They will be boxed.”
Confused, he said, “Do you really think it a sin, Robbie?”
I felt shame rush in at my words. I truly did not mean to judge my twin by the standards of a church I despised.
But I also knew of only one way to see the world.
As much as I loved The Life of Una, I had never seen the manifestation of a life lived in worship of another god.
I had only seen the people of my town. So I answered, “I—I don’t know.
Maybe not. But Starling does! Starling thinks a girl and a boy kissing is a sin.
What will he say of two girls doing that? ”
Thane shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe we should let them have something they won’t ever be able to have again. Not once they grow up.”
We sat there in a sad silence, watching the two girls across the river disentangle themselves, giggling and leaning into each other. Ilsit threw her arm around Rowena’s shoulders and steered her away from the river, into the woods.
Then Thane said, a sort of breathlessness to his speech, “Well, if everyone else is sinning—” And he turned towards me, his shoulder jostling into mine, and gave me a determined, graceless kiss on the mouth.
His lack of skill was the last thing on my mind. This was the most marvelous thing I had ever experienced. I was a bird in a cloudless sky, adrift on the wind with the sun on my wings.
Thane pulled away and stared at me, as if he was making himself courageous enough to look me in the eye. “Was that alright?”
I did not reply with words.
The last weeks of summer sped by like that soaring bird that took flight in my mind whenever my mouth was on his.
Every time the six of us were in the forest, someone would suggest another game of hide-and-seek.
This must have perplexed Wynne and Kent, as they were not using it as a ruse to meet up with the objects of their affection.
But they were of course outvoted by two couples who could not wait to kiss up against trees, sitting on riverbanks, or lying in patches of fragrant grass and moss.
The more Thane and I kissed, the better we got at it.
Our hands were more cautious, but our mouths were bold with each other.
Though our first attempts may have been clumsy, by the end of that last moon of warm, thick heat—before harvest days called even the boys of wealthy men to fields—our lips were intimately acquainted.
Rowena and I dreamed of our sweethearts at night, but we never shared them with each other. I was afraid that if I spoke about Thane aloud, I would wake from a dream and realize it was all fancy. And I knew Rowena must have been scared to death to admit to her trysts with Ilsit.