23. Garrek
23
GARREK
O aken blinked at me. Then he frowned.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing at his ears. “I must have misheard you.”
“You did not mishear me,” I said. “This is Magnolia.”
Saying her name seemed to convince him. His whole body jolted, and he tried to rise from his chair. Unfortunately, he forgot about his broken foot on the crate, and he toppled to one side, sending his chair over sideways and the crate crashing into a wall. From the wreckage of his fall, he stared up at Magnolia and me in confusion.
“But… Magnolia is with the warden. I was supposed to go and meet her.”
“The warden sent her with us. There was a fire at my ranch. We had to travel to feed the bracku. When Warden Tenn heard that we’d be coming your way, he asked us to bring her to you.”
Oaken righted his chair with his tail, then grasped his heavy, solid wood table as support to drag himself up into a standing position. He leaned against it, putting no weight on his right foot.
“But…” His face showed no evidence of anger or betrayal. Only bewilderment. “But you love her.”
This was not a question. It was a statement.
It struck me like a whip. Like my father’s belt on my back.
“How could you possibly know that?”
“Because I came upon you at the lake and you did not even stir for staring at her!” he exclaimed. “Because you held her – just as you hold her now – as if she means more to you than your own life! Because when you told me about the ardu bite, you did not look and sound like you were giving me bad news about my own bride. You sounded like you were telling me your entire world had ended!”
“He does love her!” Killian sprang up from his crouch in the corner, clawing spit-dampened hair away from his mouth. “He was an idiot and said no to the bride program. But then he met her and he loves her now. And she loves us, too! At least, she loves me,” he said stubbornly. “She told me that I could have her shit in a bottle.”
“ Ship in a bottle, Killian,” I groaned.
“Oh.” He looked slightly less enthusiastic now, but rallied admirably. He leaped out of his spot, putting himself between my chair and Oaken.
“If you try to take her from us,” Killian said, his eyes massive and murderous white, “I will kill you. And no one but Garrek will ever know because they’ll never find your body. ”
“It’s a little scary how much I actually believe that,” Oaken said, regarding Killian warily. Then he looked over Killian’s head to me once more. “Let’s get her somewhere comfortable,” he said. “It sounds like we have a lot to talk about.”
Oaken’s mountain cabin was not large. There was only one room with a bed in it.
His.
This is where I carefully laid Magnolia down. As I did so, I thought that her complexion looked a little better, and that her breathing was not quite so rapid as before, but I could not be sure.
Oaken and I dragged our chairs into the bedroom so that we could watch her for any changes as we spoke. Killian, who had begun anxiously climbing the walls as if they were the bars of a cage, was given the task of retrieving the shuldu and leading the bracku into one of Oaken’s empty pastures. At first, he did not want to go. But when I told him how much Magnolia would appreciate it if he brought her bag back for her, he was off without further complaint.
“So,” Oaken said from his seat beside me. “Start at the beginning.”
I’d said that to Magnolia once. When she’d been trying to tell me her story. Her laugh came back to me as real as the woman in the bed before me now. What, then? The day I was born ?
“I tried not to love her.” I did not know what else to say, where else to start. “It didn’t work.”
Oaken absorbed this in thoughtful silence. Then, hesitantly, like the words might make him bleed if he said them too quickly, “And does she love you?”
“Yes.” There was no point in lying. In delaying the inevitable. “Don’t ask me why,” I added, and to my surprise, Oaken laughed. It was not a fully happy laugh. There was an edge of sadness to it. But it was real.
“She told me she loved me right before she was bitten. She’d resolved to break off the engagement to you. She wanted to apologize to you.”
Oaken shifted, grimacing when his right boot bumped the bedframe.
“I’m glad you are not dead,” I said suddenly. I’d been so focused on Magnolia, on loving her, and then thinking I was losing her, that I had not had the chance to tell him. “The warden did not know if you were still alive. I’m happy that you are.”
A cynical sort of amusement glinted in Oaken’s eyes. “Really? You did not hope I was dead so that you would not have to give her up?”
“I never wished for your death.” Then, a pause. “That was Killian.”
Oaken laughed again, a hearty sound that boomed through the room.
Magnolia stirred. Oaken and I both froze.
“Did she just…”
“Move?” I asked breathlessly. “I think so. ”
Her lips parted. Her strange and beautiful eyelashes fluttered.
I did not even realize I’d left my chair until my knees hit the wood boards of the floor beside the bed. My hand went to her face, caressing. She felt warm. Not too hot.
She did not open her eyes. But she did say something. Something so quiet that no one but a Zabrian with excellent hearing would catch it.
It was my name.
“She does love you.” Oaken said from behind me.
“I did not encourage her,” I told him. “She did it all on her own. And she can be very stubborn.”
Oaken’s next laugh was quieter. “Sounds like she will suit you well.”
“I…” My throat tightened. I brushed a stray curl away from Magnolia’s brow. “I truly did not want to take her from you.”
“You cannot take something that is freely given. She’s given her love to you. She’s made her choice.”
With a sigh, I returned to my chair beside him.
“It hurt her too, you know,” I told him, needing to defend her. “She did not want to break her promise to you. She is so good. She has integrity that you would not believe.”
“I do believe it.” When I met Oaken’s eyes, they were not white with emotion. They were that cool green I’d known for so long. That green I’d never forgotten. And there was kindness in that green, though I did not feel that I deserved it.
“And I also believe this, Garrek.” He quieted for a moment, staring at the floor as he gathered his thoughts. “I believe that I deserve a wife who could actually grow to love me. Only me. Maybe I’m na?ve, or maybe I’m a jealous fool. But that is what I want.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “Do you know what I thought when I first saw her?”
“No.”
“I did not think, ‘Oh, what a beautiful female. How I desire her!’ Of course, she is beautiful. But I noticed it in such a distant sort of way. Because the only thing I could really think when I saw her was, ‘This is someone beloved by Garrek. This is someone precious to the only family I have left. This is the wife of the person who saved me.’ And I loved her then, instantly, as I would love your wife and nothing else. I do not think I am even capable of wanting her as my own wife, now. Because from the first moment that I saw her, I thought of her as yours.”
He squeezed my shoulder, then let his hand drop.
“So relieve yourself of this morose guilt, Garrek. I find that I have very little patience for it. I do not want her if she does not want me. You’re free. Love her and marry her and don’t you dare waste a moment of that happiness.”
“You,” I choked out, not wanting to believe his words. I wanted punishment, pain, something. “You are too reasonable. Can’t you at least hit me or something?”
“Hit you?” Oaken grinned. “You are older than me. I don’t want to fight an old man. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I am only six cycles older than you!” I glared then pointed my tail at his boot. “And you’re down to only one good leg.”
“It still would not be fair.”
“You forget one crucial thing,” I told him. He raised his brows questioningly. “I have Killian on my side.”
His grin widened, and he shook himself dramatically.
“Alright. You win. I would not wish to cross that child even with both my feet working and a knife in each hand.”
“Now that he knows you don’t plan to steal Magnolia away from him, he’ll love you,” I told him. “And he’s ferociously loyal to those he loves.”
Oaken’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Sounds like somebody else I know.”
The ferocious child in question returned after night had fallen. He got the bracku and shuldu ensconced in the empty pasture, brought them fresh water, combed them and cared for them.
Then, he came through the door.
Actually, he crashed more than came. He was absolutely overloaded with bags and poles and leather, so much so that when he first tumbled into the cabin, the only things visible were his legs and his hair.
“She’s alright,” I said quickly when I saw him careen violently towards the door to the room Magnolia and I occupied. He stopped, and from behind the things he held, I heard him sigh with relief .
“What’s all this?” I asked, rising from my chair beside Magnolia. She hadn’t gotten any worse since this morning, which I hoped was a good sign. But even so, I’d been unwilling to leave her. Oaken, whose foot I’d helped set in a splint, was out checking on his herd with a makeshift crutch after being away for so long.
“You told me to bring the things,” Killian said, his voice muffled by the pile. Without ceremony, he dumped it all on the floor.
“I told you to get Magnolia’s bag,” I reminded him. He had done so, it seemed.
Along with mine.
“I wasn’t going to leave your things there,” he retorted. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Killian.”
He glared at me as if expecting a rebuke.
“Thank you.” I opened my arms to him, holding them awkwardly out at my sides.
He gawked at me. “What the blazes are you doing?”
“Don’t say blazes. And I am doing a human hug.”
He reared back in alarm.
“To me ?”
“Yes, to you. Who else?”
Killian made a show of looking around the place. As if there were someone else waiting just behind him, ready to receive my hug in his stead.
“All you have to do is put your arms around me,” I told him impatiently.
“And then what?” he asked suspiciously.
“And then we just… stand there.”
“Doing a hug. ”
“Precisely.”
“That… sounds stupid.”
“I know,” I admitted. “But somehow, it isn’t.”
Killian looked more thoughtful than was usually characteristic of him.
“I think Magnolia has done a hug to me before,” he said at length. “It was nice when she did it.” Then he wrinkled his nose at me, a look that clearly meant it would not be so nice if I were to do it.
“It was only a thought,” I said gruffly, lowering my arms.
“Wait!” Killian sounded absolutely affronted. “You can’t take my hug back now!”
“You never even let me give it to you,” I pointed out archly.
He stormed over to me, eyes crackling. First, he grasped my right hand, then my left, lifting them back up into the air the way I’d been holding them before.
Then he threw his arms around my waist and squeezed.
Thank the blazes my ribs were stronger than his grip. Otherwise, I likely would have died.
I lowered my arms around him, stiffly at first. But soon, I found natural places where my arms and hands seemed to fit perfectly around him. I rested my chin on the top of his head, returning his squeeze but with just a little less of that feral, bone-cracking force.
I assumed that Killian would get sick of me and slither out of my arms immediately afterwards, but he didn’t. He pressed his face into my chest and stayed that way for a long, long time .
When he finally did pull away, the room seemed darker than it should have been.
Astounded, I suddenly realized why.
Killian’s eyes were not bright white. For the very first time, I got to see their true colour, something inside him finally soothed enough to let it show.
His eyes were a deep, rich brown. The precise shade that the brown parts of Magnolia’s eyes took on when the sun hit them. The central veins gleamed with clear and vivid gold.
“What are you staring at?” Killian said, narrowing his gold and brown eyes.
My instinct was to go rigid and say, “Nothing.”
But I did not want to lie to him today.
“You,” I told him simply.
He made a face.
“You are being weird,” he said. And then he flounced away.