97. Now Wishful
NOW: WISHFUL
Ilsit, Fox, and I had been sharing a room.
One night, when I came to bed, they were both sprawled out on the wide mattress and there was no room for me.
I had spent an evening in the stables, rubbing Zara down, kneading her, and cooing in her ear.
She seemed content in Eccleston, grubbing on the grains provided by the city and happy to be led up and down the street to stretch her old legs.
I had never lived in a city this large, this noisy and busy, and I felt like she was a touchstone to the beauty of Nyossa for which I longed.
I had not seen a tree in more than a week, and it felt wrong.
I tiptoed across the hall to Reed and Dermid’s room. They were both asleep on their narrower mattresses. I slipped in next to Reed, and he stirred and pulled me close to him without question.
“I’ve missed this,” he whispered into my ear, his lips on my brow. “And I’ll miss you even more next week.”
He explained that Thane had found a week’s work for him and Dermid in a mine.
Then he explained that Keir had the idea to buy the house from the city and not just rent it, and that Reed and Dermid could earn much more in a mine than in the city.
We spoke in whispers for nearly an hour.
Reed said he was going mad amongst all the buildings, that like me he missed forests and rivers.
But mostly, he worried for Dermid and did not want him going to the mines alone.
“He says he wants to be by himself, but I can’t let him. We are all wrecked by the loss of her,” he said, his hand stroking my hair. “I feel a rending in my chest, when I turn my head to say something to her and Evangeline is not there. At times, I feel like I won’t weather it.”
I held him close and wiped away the tear that slid out of his eye.
“There’s tattooing done here,” he went on. “It’s common. I’m—I’m going to have someone finish putting her name on my hip.”
“I think that is a fine idea.”
“When I return,” he began, after some more time had passed, “I have things I want to speak about to you. About us.”
Ignoring the dip of uncertainty in my belly, I asked, “What about?”
Reed exhaled through his nose. “Give it a week. I need time to make my argument, present my case to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m going to ask you to be mine,” he answered. “However you’ll have me. And do not answer me tonight. Let me have a week of hope.”
“Reed. We have only known each other a season or so. I am—”
He placed his fingertips over my mouth and then kissed me. “Just a week of wishful thinking,” he whispered. “Let me have that, won’t you?”
I fretted for a week while he and Dermid were gone.
So many conversations of importance were had in that house during that time, but I was barely present for them.
Jade announced that Keir had asked her to marry him, that they had applied for citizenship in Eccleston, and that she was registered as a woman, so they could legally marry.
Tessa and Thane decided they would rent a smaller house nearby with Adelaide, from which Thane could run his business.
Ilsit left the chandler’s and had found work in the public school the city was slowly rebuilding for Eccleston children.
“Right now they just need people who can read and write, and I can do that. I think I’d make an exemplary teacher,” she had declared at our surprised faces and then went on to complain about having lost Magda’s pipe in Skow.
While shopping for food with me, Fox met a woman in the market covered in tattoos.
This woman also did not speak and, though their gestures differed, they quickly began conversing with each other.
The woman came to visit our house and asked Fox to draw a series of things on a slate with chalk.
Then she asked Fox to apprentice to her as a tattooist.
It is good, interesting work, and something I would prefer to other labor, she justified. And tattoos are popular here. I liked foraging, but you never really trained me in the midwife part. Nor did I want to be trained.
She said the woman did not need Fox to live with her, and as Fox had reached her majority, I conceded, tried not to cry, and kissed her forehead.
Soon, during the day, it was just me and Jade cleaning the house. In the evenings, subdued by labor and grief, we ate together. I avoided Thane’s looks that hardly masked his longing for me. I knew I would have to confess to being a party to both his father’s and brother’s deaths.
When he quietly referenced that he knew they had both died, that one of his men had heard this and reported it, I told him, leaving out the magic, what had transpired in the chamber of Fear’s tongue. I implied a torch had been used to set fire to the fate’s spittle.
“I overlooked so much about them,” he said when I had concluded my retelling. “I do not hold anything against you, Robbie. I must now learn how to grieve people who loved me but seemed to hate so many others. And I must eradicate any of that hatred from myself. I have been weak because of this.”
We were sitting at the rickety table where we took our meals, just he and I. I took his hand in mine. I said, “Your daughter loves you. And that is something for which you should have pride. Not all daughters have good fathers.”
Thane’s head was bent, but he looked up at me and asked, “And does her aunt love me still? What if I were to repeat, correctly this time, my question I first asked more than half a lifetime ago? What if I asked you to be my wife?”
I took him in, handsome, refined, kind, rich by some folks’ standards, an ideal husband.
Age had only enhanced his looks, adding a silver to his raven-black hair, more definition to his face.
It was a vision I had avoided for so long, not allowing myself to see him, my head always turned.
But now I looked. And what I saw was the man who had likely saved my sister from burning.
I saw a man who had done his best. All the love I had left for Thane in my heart took on the shape of gratitude and admiration.
All I saw when I looked at him was Rowena, safe and happy.
That long-suffered heartache was gone from me now. I shook my head. “Our time as lovers is far behind us. Don’t you think?”
Thane ran a hand over his mouth. “No. I think what truly prohibits us is that your heart belongs to someone else. And I cannot begrudge him for that. Not if he gives you joy. And freedom. I want you, Robbie, but I think more so, I want you to be free. For once in your life.”