14 #2
“We… you need a doctor,” he said. “What? I’m going to maim you so that we can escape them? I would never do that to you.” His stomach took this moment to growl loudly and pointedly. He felt lightheaded. He put his head between his knees, feeling defeated. He wanted to cry.
“But if we go back… we can’t. We simply can’t.”
“They’ll put the blame on me,” he said. “I’ll take it. I’ll say that I found out that you were going to marry him and that I stole you away—”
“No,” she said. “Because it won’t matter!”
“What do you mean? If it isn’t your choice—”
“It won’t matter whether I wanted it or not. We’ve been away together overnight, and I’ll be ruined regardless, and he’ll never marry me anyway.”
He lifted his head. No matter how much he wanted to cry, tears were not actually coming. “Of course,” he said. “Of course you’re right. Well… it won’t be like that, then.”
“No?” she said.
“We got lost,” he said.
“Oh, they’ll never believe that. You and I have been running all over these hills since we were children.”
“I was trying to run away, and you tried to stop me,” he said. “You got hurt, and I had to bring you back. Simple enough.”
“But why were we gone overnight?” she said. “Why did we go so far? Why wouldn’t I have turned back?”
“You think they can determine when this happened?” He gestured to her ankle.
“What about the food we took? They’ll have realized it was missing—”
“I took it for myself.”
She shook her head at him, her expression fierce. “No. They will punish you.”
“Better me than you, little fair elf.”
“No, no, but it is not your fault, it is partly my fault, and if I could have just gotten on the train—”
“I pushed for it. It was my idea. And it was a stupid idea, Aerhril. We both see that now. It wasn’t well thought out. It was all about my vanity, not about anything practical.”
“Not vanity,” she said, reaching up to touch his skin, her voice soft. “No, not that.”
“We both know I am not enough for you,” he said.
“That… no,” she said.
“We have had it illustrated,” he said. “Just now. When you are entrusted to me, what do I do? I cannot manage anything. I couldn’t get you on the train. I did not protect our belongings. I got you hurt. I was mad to think I could be worthy of—”
“Stop that,” she said.
“Perhaps I deserve punishment,” he said.
“Never say that.” Her lower lip was trembling. There was a long silence. “I am going to get up and walk very soon.”
“Aerhril—”
“It is not that bad. I but twisted it,” she said, though the last words came out as a sob.
He bent down to kiss her forehead.
She clutched him.
Later, when he was carrying her as they started back in the direction of the Peak, she winced against his chest as every movement jostled her ankle, but she said, “We’ll try again.”
They would not try again. He knew it was all pointless now.
She continued, “We have some idea of the trials of it now, and we know better what we are up against. We’ll make a better plan next time. We’ll come up with better ideas and better solutions. It will work next time.”
“Yes, little fair elf,” he said, out of breath, because he was tired and hungry and was bearing all of her weight. “Next time, it will work.”
They never got a horse, but he knew that he had to get her back to the Peak that day, that they could not afford another night out here, so he pushed himself to carry her all the way back, even though she began to protest that she could walk.
They did try it once.
She could not walk.
So, he picked her back up and he carried her, walking over the hills and around the cliffs and through the valleys, following the road that led them back to the keep. Eventually, they reached it.
He carried her directly through the front door of Foxglove Peak. He went right into the main sitting room and deposited her on the couch and collapsed on the floor next to her, exhausted.
The steward was in there. He got up from the writing desk where he’d been seated, writing a letter or setting out some contract or the shadow only knew what. His uncle peered down at him.
“I tried to run off on my own,” he said. “I was going to hop a train. She came after me. She got hurt. I had to carry her all the way back.”
“Run away?” said the steward, stepping closer. “Do you not appreciate the charity I show you, boy?”
He groaned. “You hate me. I hate you. Everybody would be pleased to see me go.”
“How many years have I fed you, clothed you, put a roof over your head? And how you repay me is to run off? You have a debt to me, boy.”
He shut his eyes. He was so very, very hungry.
He realized, in that moment, that there was some truth to what his uncle was saying.
He had been ill-treated here, but he had never starved.
He had never fought for his very survival.
They beat him here. They taunted him. But the wide world was indifferent to him.
There was hatred and there was indifference.
Hatred was preferable in some ways.
The steward had him whipped worse than ever, but he got fed afterwards.
He didn’t think a meal had ever tasted so good, especially with the sting of the whip’s furrows cooling on his back, that sharp sensation of the lack of pain where pain has just been, the tingling of the aftermath of it, the pleasure of its end combined with food, a full belly, his warm bed above the stable…
He was glad to be home, that was the thing.