Chapter Twenty-Three
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Iona worried that her pacing would wear paths in the wooden floor, in the hours it took for Liam to arrive. Never mind that she’d broken into the empty house. Normally, the fact would have bothered her, but with an injured Vall slung over her shoulder, there was no time for remorse.
She did, however, spread old towels over the couch before laying Vall atop them, to prevent the blood from staining.
They’d continued to grow pale and clammy, but the bleeding had slowed, and the wound had not gotten worse. In the hours since searching out an irritable Walt from the gas station, she had exhausted herself by flitting back and forth, checking on Vall and watching the loggers helplessly. Vall had stirred intermittently but hadn’t woken. At least there had been no further damage to the maple, though the logging was getting closer by the hour.
Night had fallen by the time headlights illuminated the front window. Iona stepped outside to see the little red car pull up the drive. Liam emerged, his face pinched with worry. Iona feared what she must look like, suddenly aware of her bloodstained hands, her skirt hanging tattered below her knees. The sweater which Liam had given her, the one his mother had so lovingly knit, was soaking in the kitchen to get the blood out before it could stain. She’d done her best to clean herself up, but there was no disguising the state she was in.
Liam dropped his bag on the gravel and rushed up to Iona. His hands grasped her shoulders, fingers biting into her as he looked her up and down with frantic eyes.
“It’s not my blood,” she reassured him.
His grip loosened, and he pulled her in tight to his chest, wrapping his arms around her. He was taller than her, enough that his chin could rest on the top of her head. He wore a fleece jacket of some kind, in a dark green color that complimented his red-brown hair, and the smell of him filled her senses—herby, like eucalyptus, but with a hint of a dog that brought a smile to her lips.
She had been embraced by her own kin many times, but never had it felt like it did with Liam. A warmth flooded through her, beginning at her navel and rising upwards until her cheeks burned. There, with his solid arms around her, she felt at home. For the first time that day, she let herself truly relax, to believe things might be okay.
She let out a breath, partly from her own relief, and also because he was squeezing a bit too tightly.
Liam must have noticed, because his arms fell away, and he stepped backwards so there was a few feet of space between them. A slight flush crept across his face, and his hand raked through his shaggy hair. She immediately missed his touch, but there were more pressing matters at hand.
“You’re alright?” he asked. “What the hell is going on?”
He looked frantic, and guilt threatened to overwhelm her—it had been unkind, to leave out the details of what had happened, but she couldn’t have shared them with Walt over the phone without explaining more than she wanted to. Iona looped her hand in Liam’s and pulled him along behind her.
“It’s Vall,” she told him as they entered the cabin. She’d lit the fire, so the place had warmed in the hours she’d been there. “We were talking, earlier today, and then...” she trailed off as they made it to the living room where Vall slept restlessly .
Liam cursed under his breath and sat on the wooden coffee table, assessing the wound. Then he moved towards the bathroom, where he rummaged around in the cabinets.
Eli was suspiciously absent.
“Can your people not heal this? I mean—no offense, obviously I was going to come anyway, but I don’t really know much about your… biology,” he called from the other room.
Iona sighed to herself.
She’d been debating all day whether she ought to let the Elders know what was going on. Eli would have told Orla everything by now, but Iona couldn’t muster herself to face anyone—it was her shame that held her back. She’d wanted so badly to fix the problems her forest faced and instead she’d only made them worse.
Those truths were only for her, however, and when Liam returned clutching the small plastic container filled with medical supplies, she said something akin to the truth, if not the whole of it. “I panicked.”
She braced herself for his judgment, for him to criticize the decision she’d made. But he said nothing, only nodded with a gentle expression and set out the medical supplies he’d gathered on the table. Rolls of cloth bandages, tubes of ointment and small bottles of antiseptic. Iona cursed herself again for failing to think of it. She was so unused to caring for injuries in that way. Another way she’d let Vall down.
“I forgot everything, Liam. You showed me, how to do it, but I—” her throat constricted, her words cut off by a choking sob.
Liam looked up at her, his demeanor calm. He put a hand on her arm to coax her down beside him. “We should clean it, if you haven’t already. And then we can put a fresh bandage on,” he explained. “Will you help?”
Iona nodded.
They worked for some time together, as gently as possible cleaning the wound and dressing it as Liam described the steps to her again. Iona watched, mesmerized by his steady and competent hands. They were soft, and she wondered what it might feel like for those hands to grip her tight, to glide with gentle finger tips across her cheek. He spoke in low and soothing tones, telling her of his background. He’d taken a wilderness first aid training before the field study he’d done in school, not that he’d had to use the skill until the last few weeks, but he knew far more than Iona did. The mundanity of his words soothed her, and as Vall’s injuries were tended, she released the tension she hadn’t realized she was holding.
When Iona had calmed, he asked about the injury and the damage sustained to the tree.
Iona told him of what she’d seen, and that the loggers had wrapped up for the evening some time ago. He asked a few more questions while they worked, mostly in regard to their machinery, and if Iona recognized any of the men out there besides Andrew. Vall had stirred once or twice, but otherwise let them work without disruption.
“If Vall were human,” Liam said, “they’d need stitches. But I can tell it’s already healing around the edges, so it should be okay.”
Curiosity lit up Liam’s eyes. Iona could tell his mind was working to make sense of the discovery. He had the same fascination with each new discovery made about the Acernae, and Iona found it delightful.
When they’d finished, Liam suggested putting Vall to sleep in one of the bedrooms. It would be prudent, she agreed, to keep them here another night. Stepping through the forest with Vall had been quite draining, and Iona did not think she could do it again after her long day.
Iona had not seen the room before, and though it had been stripped of all personal belongings, she could tell that it had once belonged to Liam. She brushed her fingers along the wooden wall that revealed the memories—a messy room filled haphazardly with half-full sketchbooks, water color paints spilled across the floor, a boy staying up too late to draw. Iona felt heat in her chest once more, her eyes stinging in the darkness of the room.
They settled Vall into one of the two beds, then crept silently from the room.
***
Iona lingered near the door, taking a moment to catch her breath from the events of the day.
Now that the urgency in their meeting had faded, she was left staring at Liam, not knowing what to say. Darkness settled as the fire burned low, and upon the cabin and she followed him into the living room. Liam collapsed on the couch, not bothering to move the bloodied towels, and heaved a great sigh before resting his head in his hands. Her stomach twisted.
“I am sorry to have burdened you with this,” Iona whispered, stopping short across the room.
Liam’s gaze snapped up to hers, meeting it with such intensity she nearly looked away. “It’s no burden,” he said. “If something happened while I was gone… I’m glad you called, anyway. There’s some… things I need to figure out.”
Iona watched as he worked with careful fingers through his tangled hair. He looked back to the fireplace, watching the embers burn down, before getting up to add another log. She thought of the truth she’d learned from Tove about his family. Did he know? Should she be the one to tell him? But he surprised her by taking the conversation in a different direction.
“I left my job, back in the city.” His tone betrayed nothing of his thoughts on the matter.
“Not because of us, I hope,” she said, and the worry that she had caused the turmoil in his life crept in again.
“No, it’s been a long time coming. I think I just needed the motivation.” He sighed and stared at the wood as flames consumed it. His expression was inscrutable in the dancing light of the fire. “Everyday I worked there, it felt like I was getting farther and farther from what got me in the field in the first place. I wanted to make a difference, but it turns out I was really just lining the pockets of my boss. Do you know she’s got her office filled with fake plants? I think it says a lot about a person.”
Iona made a face to match his displeasure, though she didn’t understand the context. “I cannot imagine how you must feel, since we don’t have jobs in the traditional sense. But I will repeat what I told you before: you are so much more than your job, Liam. Perhaps it is time to let something else define you. Let your actions define you, as we do.”
He considered her a moment, then seemed to relax, sitting back down on the couch. Iona seated herself on the far end of the couch, leaving plenty of space between them. Her mind tormented her with the memory of their earlier embrace. She wondered what it might be like to be held by him again.
“I spent my whole life believing… something. You know? And now I’m just realizing that the truth of it is so much more complicated. I don’t know where that leaves me, who I even am anymore.” His green eyes found hers. They brimmed with emotion that Iona could not place. The next sentence came out in a low voice, barely louder than a whisper. “I found out that Tove is my grandmother.”
“I know,” Iona said with a wry smile.
Liam looked blankly at her for a long moment before he snorted to himself, sitting back against the sofa. “Of course you did. You’ve been around for centuries. I just don’t get why you didn’t tell me.”
Iona flushed deeply at her mistake, realizing at once how it all must look to him. “No! I am no older than you are, really,” she insisted. “I only meant that Tove told me herself a week or so ago. She kept the secret from all of us over the years—if I had known earlier… I would not keep such things from you. You have a right to know.”
“You really didn’t know?”
“No, I have only been in existence a little over three decades.”
“But that maple… it’s gotta be over a hundred years old?”
“Ah, yes the tree is older than I. But there is a threshold, a level of maturity at which the tree can support sentience. It takes a great deal of time, to build up that much magic.” Iona saw again the gears that turned in his mind. Each new fact about her existence fascinated him. “Tove… well, she’s likely been on this earth for two hundred, or three hundred years, as you mark time.”
Liam reached into his pocket, and pulled out an old and worn photograph. It depicted a small family in yellowed tones. Tove stood arm in arm with a human man, who did indeed look much like Liam. His hair was a warm brown, and his face looked similar, though marked by time and harsh weather had left his skin leathered and worn. Tove looked as she always had, though the horns atop her crown were shorter. What stood out most in the photograph was the smile, the lightness Tove seemed to carry. It did not match at all the image of her in Iona’s mind. Between the two, a bundle of blankets contained a child. She looked more or less human, though her head of fiery hair looked just like Tove or Iona’s—the mark of an autumn Acernae .
Iona inched herself closer to Liam, and reached a tentative hand out, daring to rest it on his knee. She took a breath, trying to steady the heart that beat faster at the touch.
“Will you try to talk to her?” Iona asked. “She realized who you were, the other night. Maybe she’d want to get to know you now you’ve returned.”
Liam shook his head, immediately shutting down that idea. “Don’t you think she would have come by decades ago, if she wanted to get to know her family? Her human family? I mean, we were here the whole time.”
As much as it pained her to say so, he was probably right, and the thought made Iona furious. These past few weeks, she’d grown so jealous of the family, of the relationships humans were capable of with one another. To find out that Tove of all people had a family out there she refused to acknowledge didn’t sit right to Iona. Tove was taking it all for granted. Those concerns, however, had nothing to do with Liam and she tucked them away for later.
“Is that why you could feel the energy, in the wood of the—oh!” she gasped, cutting herself off. “The guitar! It was a gift to your mother, made by Tove. I knew it was familiar. I thought I recognized it when I first picked it up.”
Liam nodded. “I could feel it. Actually, it’s been happening a lot, recently. The more time I’ve spent out here… my mom figured that the abilities went dormant, the longer I stayed away from the valley. It’s been fading, for her, since she left.”
“I didn’t even think about her leaving… it must be so hard for her, knowing she’s one of us.”
“It is,” Liam gave her a wry smile, “she said it’s the hardest choice she’s ever had to make.”
“So this means you’ll be sticking around a bit longer?” she asked shyly. Again Iona felt her face go hot, but couldn’t put her finger on why.
“I think so. I’ll need to find work somewhere eventually, but I promised I’d see the loggers pushed out for good. Plus I think it’d be good to spend some more time out here, while I try to figure out… this whole thing,” he said, and gestured broadly to himself.
There were only a few inches between them now, the intensity of the conversation drawing them closer. Iona could not ignore the way her heart leaped at his admission, the idea that he might stay awhile longer.
“I’m sorry I left. I promised you I would help, and this time I’ll stay as long as it takes. Maybe, if you want me to, I might stay for good.” Liam shifted beside her, twisting on the sofa to face her, his warm hand on her cheek. “I didn’t stop thinking about you, while I was gone. I was a fool for leaving you, Iona.” His eyes bore into her, but Iona did not shrink from him, as she might have done before. Instead, she moved closer, until there were only inches between them. As he spoke, his voice dropped, becoming husky. “I don’t know what the future looks like out here, but maybe we could figure it out together?”
“Okay,” she breathed, without a moment of hesitation.
Something passed over him that might have been relief. Her breath hitched, and her cheek burned beneath his touch. Liam’s eyes flitted down towards her lips, and she felt the sudden and overwhelming urge to kiss him. A strange, too human impulse she was powerless to resist. She wondered if he felt it to, and why he did not act on it.
Tired of waiting for him, she closed the space between them, and met his lips with hers.