CHAPTER TEN #2
“Do people not bathe? Are there not public toilets? And what is wrong with the air?” For now that I’m standing still and not focused on my inner thoughts of whisking Char.Lot away for privacy, I can’t help but notice how thick the air is.
There’s a heavy taste of soot and grime, as if I am breathing in blackness.
She laughs. “It’s one reason why the upper classes regularly absent themselves to the country. Clean air, clean water.”
I struggle with my brows to keep them in a normal line. Impossible to think the gods and kings of this place so hate their people. Even the feckless Gilgamesh provided his people with the basics.
“Lead me to your home. We’ll collect your belongings before we locate my direction.”
“Oh, I can’t…” She swallows. “I thought to bring you to the museum instead, and while I hide away, you might confront Sir Gilead? Or Lord Peterson? Lord Peterson is the kinder of the two.”
“After we return to your friend.”
But she shakes her head. “Alad. I can’t. Not yet.”
“Behave, Char.Lot, or I shall become quite cross.” It’s a line I read in several of the penny dreadfuls, but no sooner do the words leave my lips than I’m picturing tying her to my sleeping mat while I torture her with my tongue.
To my delight, the sentence seems to work on her as well as it did in print when Lord Falmouth ordered the governess to bend over the bench so he might assure himself she had not taken the silver.
Char.Lot flushes a deep pink and bites her lips before shrugging. “I do owe Mary a goodbye. And an apology.”
“For what? For flying off with me?”
Head hanging low, she shrugs again.
It is the way of this place. Ridiculous rules, but I can’t rebuild Uruk here to my liking.
Char.Lot takes me through a park rife with people promenading, riding horses, walking dogs on leashes, and sitting upon benches.
Many stare at us. I don’t know if it’s my ill-fitting clothing, my height, or the fact her slippers are in tatters.
She mentioned before she fell asleep that her gown isn’t meant to be worn beyond the interior of the home, though I can’t tell the difference between what she wears and what others sport, except there’s no bustle at her back.
Ridiculous confection, the bustle, though it does turn my mind towards my i?arum and bending Char.Lot over a bench.
When we arrive at a building spread wide, its edifice scrubbed in golden stone with carefully arranged windows of clear glass (a remarkable feat to make it so clear, and something I need to learn more about), Char.Lot pauses and takes a deep breath.
“Servant’s entrance around back, or the front? I’ve always taken the front, but of course, now that I’m ruined, I shouldn’t be allowed past either threshold.”
And there it is. Something in her voice. Something in her eyes. I see the same thing I saw in Gilgamesh, the thing that ruined him, ruined the happy, laughing, industrious, caring boy I’d known since childhood: self-hatred. Or, at least, hatred of one part of himself.
“Char.Lot,” I say, turning her towards me and refusing to loosen my hold even when she looks over her shoulder at the home.
Finally, when she raises her gaze to mine, I ask, “Why do you think you shouldn’t be allowed over the threshold?
We haven’t done anything wrong, not even by the ridiculous standards of morality you hold in this age. ”
Her eyes shutter. She nods, but without conviction.
“Of course, you’re right. I suppose it makes no sense, really.
I was a whore masquerading as a proper young lady all the other times I walked through the front door.
It’s only that my shame is now public, which doesn’t say many good things about my character, does it, that I’m only now pausing? ”
I brush back her hair. She pinned it earlier so that her golden tresses wove into a solid lump upon her head, but flight and worry have disarranged the style. “Most people hate some part of what they are, Char.Lot, but it’s dangerous to do so.”
“I don’t...”
“I wish you didn’t. Acceptance of your worst traits is wiser since it’s impossible to outrun who you are. Choices. Past. Personality. Ancestry. These are unalienable slices of who you are, and trying to cut one or more portions from you will only turn you into a monster.”
“Certainly not my past choices. They’re stone. Er… sorry.”
A little smile escapes me despite my disquiet.
“Anyway, I don’t see how despising the weakness in me that caused me to make such terrible decisions is terrible. How else will I ever grow, or change? Or do you think change is impossible?”
“I think change is very possible. Acknowledging mistakes and learning from them is wise.” I step back, dropping my fingers. “The problem arises, I suppose, when self-hatred prevents you from living with an open heart. From forgiving others. From allowing yourself to be happy.”
Like a gloss of glittering stars, little tears prick her expressive blue eyes, but don’t fall. “I forgive others all the time.”
Gods, how her simple words tear at my heart. Behind the simple string is a world of hurt she’s had to suppress, and somehow, the pain doesn’t seem to have left her bitter and cold.
How, even for a moment, did I confuse this magnificent creature with Karu?
“Then forgive yourself.” I shake my head. Forgiveness and hate. The two are such close companions, and so very different. “Because if you continue to hate a portion of who you are, you’ll inevitably poison all the other parts.”
She sniffs and swipes at her cheeks. “I’m sorry, but what you counsel, Alad, seems facile to me. I’m not going to wallow in my evil.”
“I’m not speaking of wallowing in unhealthy choices.
I’m speaking about holding a revulsion so deep that it prevents you from crossing your friend’s threshold.
It hasn’t turned you bitter, yet, but it will.
The poison is there.” I step closer again, helpless not to touch her.
I stroke her cheek. “I watched Gilgamesh become a monster as he attempted to eradicate his human side in his quest to equal the gods. In doing so, he lost all empathy. And sense.”
She shakes her head. “That’s a very different case, Alad. I despise my own weakness…”
“So did he.”
“But I don’t hate my ancestry. I’m not trying to control anyone, or become god-like. I’m merely acknowledging a terrible part of myself.”
“But what’s so terrible in what you did?
” I throw up my hands, frustrated by my inability to communicate what I need her to know.
“All you did was evaluate an untenable situation and make the most logical choice you could in that moment, much like a general does on the battlefield. Loss is inevitable in every life-altering situation, but the loss could have been you. It could have been you, Char.Lot.” I grab her head between my hands, forcing her to meet my gaze again, though in truth, she hasn’t looked away.
“Others in your position might have lain down in the gutters to die. Or taken up thievery. Or murder. Or suicide. How can you despise the very thing that saved you—the very part of you that I so admire?”
“You—admire me?”
“So very much, yes.”
Her eyes flicker as she searches my face. Finally, she traps my wrists in her hands and sighs. “Isn’t there anything you hate about yourself?”
“No. There are parts I like more than others, but… no.”
Her huff of laughter holds ragged edges. “But of course not. You’re perfect, Alad. You can’t possibly hold even a mild dislike for any portion of who you are, for there’s no part to dislike.”
She’s not being sarcastic. I see the truth in her gaze. Even so, the simple statement floors me. I’ve been thinking in terms of Gilgamesh and his disgust with his human side, and what that disgust resulted in.
Even now, it’s Gil’s voice preventing me from offering Char.Lot marriage, isn’t it? His disgust that I would wed myself to a whore.
Married a whore. Picked the lowest part of yourself, the lowest human you could find, eh, Alad?
It’s as if he lives inside me still, so far in time and space from where we existed. It’s his voice still whispering in my ear. Chilling my blood. And once again, I’m listening to him. Yielding to propriety. Following my king. My brother.
“There are definitely parts I dislike.” The part, for instance, that wants acceptance from my friend so badly, it requires a blow to the heart to make me see my own motivations.
But in admitting the truth to myself, I suddenly realize how silly it is to hold such a need. What Gilgamesh might think of Char.Lot doesn’t matter. What I think of her does. What he thought of Karu mattered too much—and it led to utter destruction.
She lets go my wrists to swipe under her eyes again, though the few precious tears she’s shed have dried. “You’re blessed not to have committed such a heinous sin that you can’t ever forgive yourself.”
Pain, again. It blossoms like some terrible flower from the center of my chest. All the petals are sharp. They cut like blades.
I take her chin in my fingers as she begins to look away. I wait until her focus centers. “If you don’t forgive yourself, Char.Lot, you won’t have a future with me.”
I drop my grasp and step back as her mouth rounds in surprise at my challenge. But the truth is, if she can’t forgive herself, how can she ever truly love me as I need her to?
Love me?
But my thoughts are interrupted when the door flies open and Mary rushes through. She grabs Char.Lot into her arms, squealing like a sow.
“Dear Lord, I thought he’d eaten you. I feared never to see you again.
Come. You must come inside and tell me all that’s happened.
Thank you, sir, thank you for escorting my dearest friend home, and…
” She rotates her head to look at me, really look at me, for the first time. “Oh! Are you… can you be… Alad?”
I bob my head in the fashion I’ve witnessed here as greeting. “Hello, Lady Mary.”
“But you look…” Her gaze rakes me from head to toe as she loses her voice.