Pilgrimess (Gods of Tintar #2)

98. Now Book

NOW: BOOK

As the ten days of Reed and Dermid’s absence drew to a close, I could not contain the worry in me over’s Reed’s insinuation of a proposal.

Thoughts plagued me, our age difference, our only knowing each other for a few seasons, and the fact that I really had never desired wifehood, even though I had been happy with Avery.

What would I say to him? What exactly would he ask?

The morning of his return, when he and Dermid would be dropped off by one of Thane’s wagons at the hitching post nearest to our street, I was alone in the house.

Everyone was at their work, and Jade was meeting with an apothecary to recommend herself as an herbalist, having trained alongside me for so long.

“I want my own work,” she had declared. “I’m not just going to be Keir’s wife.” Then she had, saying the word that had spooked me of late and not knowing how much it affected me, left the house with a determined air.

I was restless, going from room to room, sweeping the constant dust that seeped inside.

When I reached Reed and Dermid’s room, I was so lost in thought, the only thing that shook me out of it was when my broom caught the edge of something under Reed’s straw mattress and it spun across the floor, spurred on by my broom’s swipe.

I dropped the broom and bent down to pick it up, recognizing it as the thin booklet Reed always stowed in the pocket of his jerkin.

When I opened it, I saw that most of it was full of bland notations about Sheridan, the size of the population, the bounty of Torm’s crops that past autumn, the amount of townsfolk compared to the growing number of Perpatanian troops, and so on.

The ink was in differing colors, some a dark brown and some reddish, most of it looking as if it came from bark or berries.

I realized this must have been how he recorded what to report back to the Tintarian army in his work as a forest warden.

I flipped through it and then snapped it shut.

I leaned to replace it under the mattress and then hesitated.

Straightening, I opened it again, rifling to the very back of it, certain I had not seen what I thought I had.

Dear Robbie.

The last several pages of the booklet appeared to be a letter to me. I sank down onto his mattress, transfixed. A better woman would have replaced it, would have let him keep his secrets, but the first line of it captivated me.

The first time I saw you, I fell out of a tree.

You were cursing the gods, telling them you pissed on their magic.

You were clearly in the throes of grief, and I would venture a guess that this was when you lost your beloved husband.

But despite your pain and despair, you were a jagged vein of lightning stabbing the earth.

I had never seen something so beautiful.

At that time, I had just left the army and taken up work as a warden of Nyossa.

It is labor that requires stealth and air magic.

I felt this suited me better than soldiering.

I have told you of the Procurer trials that led to me briefly seeing my father.

I could not live in Pikestully after that.

I was happier posted in the woods, in the wild.

I have never cared for cities. I was stationed in the part of the forest just outside Sheridan.

I was told not to enter the town unless necessary but to monitor the growing presence of Perpatane.

I reported back every season, spent my leave with my brothers.

Then I would return to the trees along the border.

There was an old shed I was supposed to live in if I did not want to camp rough, but I could see someone was living there.

Now I know that was Jade. The wardens had designated roosts, marked trees along the border I was to cycle through.

Because of my gifts, because I can see beyond horizons and hear things that are mostly out of range for other ears, no matter what Sheridan roost I took, I could almost always hear and see you.

I feel compelled to tell you that first. I feel guilt for the winters I spent watching you, for the happiness I took in witnessing you at ease in the forest, talking to yourself or the fox or your apprentice or your friends.

But that first day, I fell from my roost. I had the initial reaction a man does to a comely woman.

I wanted you. Your hair was braided away from your face, and I could make out the line of your cheekbones, your proud brow, and the twist of your angry mouth.

You wore a tunic and men’s breeches. Your figure enticed me.

Your brash yells enchanted me. Who was this woman shouting at the sky?

I wish you could have seen yourself then. You were more wild than the wild around you.

I have always been a man of grace. Even in my most ungainly winters, those between boy and man, I never tripped or moved awkwardly.

I have walked along ropes strung between buildings.

I have scaled walls with little to no footing.

I have caught things in midair before my mind understood that something had fallen.

My air magic is strong, and I am so grateful to that god for their gifts.

But that day, I had no grace. I watched you shout a handful of things at the gods, watched you disown them, curse them, condemn them.

You demanded an answer from them. I was so taken with you, so mystified by your strength and spirit, by the perfection of your fury.

I was so taken by you that I fell right out of my tree.

Fortunately, for my pride, I landed on my feet. And fortunately, that was when you decided, shocking me even further, to step inside a god tree.

You talk to yourself a lot. I love that about you.

It does make for a piss-poor criminal, but I will not revive that disagreement.

What I mean to say is, many times you have protested that I do not know you.

It hurt me every time you said it, because, I did know you.

I watched you for so long, watched you fight a lord, a church, even a town that wanted you gone.

I watched women flock to your house, in need, in despair.

I watched them leave with the one thing you often deny yourself: hope.

How could I not fall in love? Do you know that you have a certain crease in your forehead that tells me you are thinking hard?

Do you know you have a dip in the center of your upper lip that spreads when you smile?

There is a freckle near your right eye that disappears if you are happy, sinking in the laugh lines there.

If I cannot see that freckle, I know you are well.

I was already drawn in by your beauty. But to witness this continual fight, a resistance to not only your oppressors but those who would seek to harm others, stole the entirety of me. By the end of that first handful of weeks, I was yours.

I saw it all, Robbie. I saw you offer the act of care.

I saw you harvest mother’s moss, risking your neck for the women of Sheridan.

I saw you raising a girl not your own. I saw you with your banned books.

Perhaps you are blessed by Father Fire, not for your ability to enhance a flame but because for so many others you were a star in a dismal sky.

I toyed with the idea of approaching you, though it went against my orders.

But I reasoned with myself that you were in grief for your husband.

After that, I told myself you did not seem in want of a man.

Eventually, I thought perhaps a Tintarian, so loathed by the church, would only bring you more trouble.

And then, I quit the wardens the day after they burned your books.

I did not see it or I would have intervened.

I would have abandoned all policy. I had been ordered to monitor Carver as well as Sheridan, and it was, of course, bad luck I spent that day elsewhere.

When I returned to your spread of Nyossa, I witnessed your loss of hope.

I understood what had been done to you. My heart broke to know you were breaking.

I could offer you nothing. I had never had any right to adore you from afar, to find solace and joy in watching you. So I quit. I reasoned I may as well rejoin the infantry and serve my country in that way.

I had not ascertained that the influx of soldiers in Sheridan was for the preparation of a mass deportation.

I and other wardens reasoned they were merely occupying border towns of Tintar.

When I was in Pikestully, I learned of the pilgrimages.

A spy reporting in the office of the wardens told me that any townsfolk who did not join the pilgrimages would likely be later cut down by occupying Perpatanian soldiers.

I fled back to you. I sold myself to Thane as a scout, nearly begged for the work and then later for the employment of my friends. I was fortunate that he, a discerning man, already questioned the motives of the church and took us on.

Then, I learned you were not signing the penitents’ list. Do you remember when I first stopped you in the street? You kept saying that we did not know each other. I was unseated. How could I explain that I felt that I knew you? Your easy dismissal and lack of interest threw me.

When I learned that you had chosen to sign, I was grateful as my next step would have been to give Thane my apologies and camp out in Nyossa until your lives were threatened by either Perpatanian or Tintarian armies. My only plan was you. I had no other purpose.

But, and I should have known, you persisted in your outlawry.

Though I was unsure as to why, I noticed that the church and their soldiers had eyes on you.

When I was on night watch, I tried to impress upon you the danger you were putting yourself in.

And you laughed at me, scorned me, and seemed to care little for me.

I guessed that perhaps you did not see me as desirable, that I was but one more man who wanted you or wanted to harm you.

I saw other men notice you, talk to you, flirt with you.

You continuously mentioned your age, almost as if you wanted me to know you saw my own as something that would bar me from courting you.

After long observation of your wit and cunning, your wellspring of kindness and courage, I was not prepared for the nearness of you.

I knew you were comely, but I did not know that your skin glowed, that your scent was intoxicating.

I did not know that the very outline of your figure would devastate me.

I did not know that watching the curve of your fiery mouth speak would reduce me to ash.

I knew what it was to love you. I was not prepared to want you.

And so I resorted to near boyhood. In my effort to prove myself to you as a man on our journey, to recommend myself as a partner, I exhibited the pettiest jealousies and insecurities.

I was beside myself with envy. I returned to the practices of a younger Reed.

There is a study of air magic that says suffering comes from wanting and caring too much.

This aided me in the last winters of my boyhood when I lost my eye, when my mother chose her husband over her son.

I chose not to care. I adopted this throughout most of my life, save for Evangeline, Keir, and Dermid.

It was better not to care, not to love, to dream, to hope.

I did not grieve my father’s abandonment or my mother’s coldness if I did not care.

But you made me care, didn’t you? I wrestled with who I was and what kind of man I wanted to be every night on the road. I could not be the careless man who refused to put his heart into anything. I could not wall off my heart if I wanted you to have it.

I have nothing to offer you but a house on a Vyggian cliff in the sea.

But it is yours. If you want a place of your own, I will deed it to you.

I do not have to be there. There is no condition.

I would gladly call it yours and rest knowing you lived there even if you did not want me living there with you.

I think you would love the ocean. She is untamed and unmatched. Like you.

I know there will be protestation on your part.

But let me say this. You can be scared and not want this.

You can reject me. All I ask is that you believe me.

Do not dismiss this as an infatuation. Do not take this—this love—from me.

It might be about you, entirely so, but it is mine.

My love. You are the thing it shines on, but it is my light.

You are the breath I breathe, but these are my lungs.

Believe me when I tell you that I love you.

Perhaps you are to learn to be cared for and I am to learn not to fear the breadth of my care, the expanse and scope of it, this weightless but heavy thing my body barely contains. Learn next to me. Let this be our lifelong study, side by side. Marry me. Not even in law, but in spirit—

His words ended there, a half-formed sentence. Throughout the letter, certain lines had been crossed out. There were illegible ones scratched in the margins. It appeared to be a letter he had crafted, and was still in the midst of crafting, over some time.

My cheeks were wet. I clutched the little booklet to my chest. For some time I sat there, trying to right myself, to regain control of my breath.

I felt both torn in two and stitched back together.

When I opened it again, convinced that rereading it might offer some clarity, I paused at my name at the beginning of the letter.

The O of my name was drawn at a slant that seemed so familiar to me.

Before I could question it, I raced across the hall to the room I shared with Fox and Ilsit.

Our pitiful collection of belongings was piled next to the large mattress, and I pulled my small trunk out from it, flipping the lid open.

Plunging my hands into the folded clothes, extra pair of boots, and the tools for my trade, I fished out The Life of Una.

I set both it and Reed’s warden booklet on the floor, The Life of Una opened to the title page.

Don’t lose hope.

It was written in the same hand.