Chapter 19 Drew #3
The smile was the small one. The smile was the smile from the gap, from the boiler-room, from the back-cot, from the rosemary.
The smile was the smile he had been letting out in increments for two weeks.
The smile was now a thing the tent saw daily.
Tess had told me, at lunch, that the smile was the thing the camp had not known Drew had been holding for nine months.
The smile was Drew. The smile was now ours.
I set the pencil down.
I rolled the route map.
I put the map at the foot of the cot.
I said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"Take your shirt off."
His face did the thing it did.
It did not do the not-saying. It did the other thing. The thing his face did when he was deciding whether to ask a question or to do the thing. He decided to do the thing.
He took his shirt off.
The scar at his side was a different color than it had been last night.
Half-Vampyren healing rate was Sylvia's-projection-plus.
The scar was already shifting from the raw pink-pale of three weeks toward the silver Sylvia had said would land by August. The silver was at the edges already.
The center was still pink. The edges were going.
I put my hand on the scar.
His skin was the half-Vampyren-ninety-five-degrees. The double-pulse-rhythm of his one heart played the two notes under my palm because my palm was at the right place. The right place was the place where the heart was.
I said: "How does the scar feel."
He said: "Numb at the center. Sensation at the edges. The numb is fading. The sensation is filling in. Sylvia said the nerve regrowth would be slower than the tissue. The tissue is closed. The nerves are growing. The growing is the work."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"The scar is the place where my blood went in."
"Yes."
"You can feel my blood in there?"
"I cannot feel the blood. The blood is. Cora, the blood is in everything now.
The blood went into the closing. The closing used the blood.
The blood is in the new tissue that is forming.
The new tissue is going to have your blood in its history.
The cells of the new tissue are going to carry the memory of having been built from your blood.
The cells will divide and the new cells will not have the original molecules but they will have the structure that the molecules built.
The structure is. Cora, the structure is your blood's structure.
The structure is mine and yours. The scar is the structure made visible. "
I leaned forward.
I kissed the scar.
He did not move.
I kissed it again.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"That."
"Yes."
"That is a new thing."
"I know."
"You just kissed the scar."
"I did."
"The scar is."
"The scar is the structure made visible. You said it. I am kissing the structure. The structure is mine. The structure is yours. The structure is ours. The kiss is what the structure is for."
He pulled me up to him.
The kiss this time was the kiss of two people who had been at this camp for two days and who had a tent and who had a shelf and who had a clay shape on the doorframe and who knew, today, what the body did when the body had been at the medical tent for nine hours assisting a Lucian integration physical and what the body did when the body had been at the schoolhouse teaching Deedee and the eleven Urbana kids to count by sevens.
The bodies had spent the day doing the work.
The bodies came back to the tent and the tent was the tent.
The kiss was the kiss.
He undid the buttons of my shirt. The careful-precision-Drew-hand was still careful but the precision was no longer the precision of a man who had not done this.
The precision was now the precision of a man who had done this twice.
Once on the road. Once at home. The third was the third.
Three was a count Drew had been working on.
I let him.
The half-Vampyren cool of his hand was at the small of my back.
The cool was the cool I had been wanting for nine months and which I had been counting in stacks of seven to keep from thinking about.
The cool was now the cool I was allowed to touch.
The shirt came off. The cool was on my skin.
The cool was the temperature my body had been arranging itself toward.
I said: "Drew."
He said: "Yes."
"The medical tent today."
"Yes."
"You held Sebastian for a minute."
"Yes."
"You held his head with one hand and his body with the other. Brecca told me at the kitchen tent. Brecca said you held him the way a person who has been waiting to hold a baby would hold one. Brecca said you did not flinch. Brecca said Sebastian did not cry."
"Sebastian is the camp's first Lucian-half-blood. He is three weeks old. He is small. The holding is. Cora. The holding is what hands are for. I held him because Brecca needed to pour water. I held him for ninety seconds. I gave him back. The holding was the holding."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"You have been the model all day. For Veron. For Brecca. For Sebastian. For Auriel. For Deedee. The whole camp watched you today be the model. The whole camp watched you walk from the southern edge to the center."
"Yes."
"Tonight you are not the model."
"No."
"Tonight you are. Drew. Tonight you are mine."
He said: "Yes."
"Show me."
He showed me.