Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
Nothing happened. No bubbles, no light. After thirty seconds he broke to the surface, shaking his head.
We agreed he should try again. I followed him down this time, watching as he clutched the sword just as I had done many times. The hilt did not glow.
We kicked up and caught our breath. He looked at me with a mix of dejection and relief.
“Maybe it cannot work with two of us here,” I offered.
“Go ahead,” he said. “You try.”
I sensed, as I swam down, that this would be the final time I grabbed the sword. The edges were fraying and a moment in time was coming to an end.
After a few seconds, the water lit up with the familiar trickle of bubbles. Galehaut was floating next to me and I was thankful he was seeing this, that it was not somehow all in my head.
The briefest flash. I saw a man on his knees, hands behind his back. There were votives around him and an altar in the background. A sword was coming down in the direction of his neck. I flinched. I did not want to see this. I closed my eyes but the vision was still there.
The man on his knees was dressed in knightly silks. I could only see his face in profile, but he seemed to possess a youthful handsomeness, which somehow made the scene more arresting, like the killing of a rare lynx.
Just as the sword was about to slice through skin, the vision went green.
I recoiled from the hilt. A ghastly image. Why would the sword show me such a sight?
“What was it?” Galehaut asked when I broke through water. “What did you see?”
“It was violent,” I said, swimming with him to the lake’s shallow edge. “Two people. I didn’t recognize them. I couldn’t feel who they were.” I explained the vision in more detail. Galehaut was equally dumbfounded.
“Why green?” he asked. “What does it signify?”
“Life? Rebirth? Growth? I do not know. It makes no sense.”
We stood in the water up to our chests. His auburn hair was slicked back and glimmering.
“You’re upset.”
The visions had grown more obscure, but none were this disturbing.
“I’m a little shaken. That’s all.”
He splashed my face. I reared back in surprise.
“What was that!”
He splashed me again. I splashed him back.
“See?” He smiled. “Now you’re not thinking of it.”
He dunked me under, and I sputtered to the surface. Now we were both laughing uproariously, grappling and wrestling in the water’s pale blue light.
How could he do this? How could he take me out of my head and pin me to the moment?
The radiance of our connection had become, in the span of weeks, the defining feature of my life.
I lived and died by the shift of his moods.
I became a student of his gestures. Time, for me, had always been hazy and slick.
But with him, time felt sharp. Time felt clear.
Time was a hard crystal, framing him in refracted light.
The emptiness I carried all my life—I was waiting for him to fill it.
A honeycomb. Was it the same for him? Had he been on his island all those years, hoping for me?
I remember our hands were interlocked, the lake up to our thighs, the water dripping off our bodies in beads of light. I could feel the strength of his grip coursing through my hands, and I wobbled in the water, almost slipped. Then I remember his hand on the small of my back, catching me.
His hand lingered just a moment too long, long enough for me to imbue it with a longing I couldn’t articulate. I searched his eyes for meaning. He cocked his head, startled, as if—in my throbbing hope—I’d shown him something he couldn’t unsee.
He leaned in and kissed me.
Before I could register what was happening, he drew back and let out a terrified laugh.
I could see in the frantic swirl of his eyes a sudden revelation.
He had shocked himself. He had shocked me.
My instinct was to comfort him, to tell him it was all right, to brush it off as another component of our playfight.
But then he grabbed my face and kissed me again.
This time he parted my lips with his tongue and I was the one to pull back, startled by the unfamiliar sensation.
I sensed his immediate fear, that he had misinterpreted the signs, that this was somehow not what I wanted.
But of course I had wanted this. I wanted nothing more.
I wanted it so badly it could obliterate me.
As if to allay our fears, he placed my hand on his chest. I could feel his heart.
“It’s racing,” I said.
“Is yours?”
I pulled his hand to my ribs.
“Yours is galloping.” He smiled. “For me.”
We kissed again and this time I did not pull back.
His tongue moved frantically, with pent-up want, and I felt my own desire pressing against him, my full need laid bare.
He guided his hand downward, pulling me close, kissing me again, deeper, stroking me, and I thought how similar this experience was to my panicked snaps, equally visceral and totalizing.
Yet I did not want to escape this moment.
I felt him against me beneath the water, and took him in my hand, surprised by his thickness.
He let out a little moan, and bit into my neck. His breath was heavy against my ear.
We found ourselves back on the shore, entangled, kissing.
Galehaut took me in his mouth, and I clutched the sand in my fists.
I wanted to watch, wanted to see Galehaut do this, to know that this was happening.
As his fingers cradled me, I fought a rising urge.
I threw him off and switched places. He was smooth, stiff, perfectly upright.
I could feel his body shaking, spasming, and then a sweet stickiness struck my throat and I knew that this was the kind of consuming intimacy I’d been too afraid to yearn for.
He pulled me on top of him and stroked me until I flushed and shuddered.
He dipped his finger in the well of my chest and licked it.
I collapsed against him, feeling the warmth of his muscles, wishing my body could be his body like in stories I’d read, about the descendants of the sun.
“I’ve never done that,” I said finally.
He laughed at my statement of the obvious. “Well, as with everything, you seem to be a quick learner.”
“It was good?”
“It was more than good.” A pause. “Was I?”
“More than good. What do we… what does all this—”
Galehaut hushed me. He pointed to the vast loft of stars.
Pythagoras believed that the distance between the planets was like harmony in music.
One tone between Earth and the moon. Another between Mars and the sun.
A tone and a half between Saturn and Jupiter.
Seven tones in all, a whole compass of notes. Music came from distance.
I laid my head on Galehaut’s chest and all I heard was warm blue silence.