62. Lightleaf

I began the work week like any week and yet not the same.

Now, I had magic.

It was like coming into the sunlight after a bleak winter.

Everything sparkled around me and every leaf on a fern or herb on my fish or rock under my feet was a gift.

I delighted in my goddess, overcome with gratitude at her noticing me.

I scoffed at every dejected memory I had of praying to Rodwin and receiving nothing from him.

Now I had her.

And I prayed to her unceasingly, talking to her as if she were an old friend.

I did not hear her voice again, but it was enough to know I had heard it.

I chose not to tell anyone of her ‘so be it, girl,’ in my ear.

The words were secret and precious to me.

I spent most of the week in Cian’s office, bleeding into a bowl of dirt, praying and trying to make small stones move.

The effect I had had in the field did not return, but the gray stones he lined up on his desk quivered.

Cian said that this was a promising start and explained that other than clearing rocks from fields, which rakes and shovels could do, he needed to do further research on stone magic to see what uses it had.

He himself, possessing a strong and broad scope of what he liked to call ‘his dirt magic’ could not pick out exactly what his propensity towards stone, as opposed to soil, did that benefitted Tintar.

He and Hazel and few other priests could bleed into an unyielding field and the following crop would be bountiful.

But as to stones, he did not know.

He had been a little short with me the day after our visit to the farm, but I was polite and deferential and this invited him to reengage in our usual friendly cadence.

I felt bad about Alric’s shouting at him and felt I had no real way of addressing their disagreement.

So I did not.

While I played with the stones, I again observed that self-writing slate on his desk and had my hands not been bloodied, I would have been tempted to pick it up and read what Cian’s correspondent with the other enchanted slate wrote.

But our relationship was fragile due to Alric’s irateness in the field of rocks.

The keep was abuzz with the anticipation of another Tintarian holiday, The Gleaming, which heralded the end of summer and fell on the upcoming day of rest.

The days were still hot and sticky.

River informed us that the Tintarian fall was only slightly cooler and that their winter was nasty but short.

I finished my work week one day earlier and had pledged my extra day to Helena and Maureen, helping them mix up white pitch in the throne room.

I took a late afternoon bath in Gareth’s bath, washing my hair and combing it out with my lavender worked into it.

I retired to our room, eschewing dinner in favor of reading.

I poured myself some water with lightleaf in it, noting the vial was nearly half empty.

I was grateful that my husband slept more soundly now.

I was laying in only my shift, Gareth’s journal abandoned on the pillow behind me when the door burst open and Alric strode in.

His tunic was draped over his bare shoulder and he looked down at me sprawled on our bed, his eyes roving over me from head to toe.

He had a tin cup in one hand.

“Did you just come from the baths?”

I asked for want of anything better to say.

“I should have knocked,”

he said, more to himself than to me.

His eyes were on my bosom.

“No matter,”

I said, moving to sit up.

“Don’t move,”

he said and his tone was imperious.

I stared up at him.

“What is in your cup?”

He looked down at it.

“Watered down whiskey and more lightleaf than I am accustomed to taking.

I worry what I say tonight.”

I smiled up at him.

“I would not worry.

You are not much of a conversationalist.

Why the merriment? You still have one more day of work ahead of you.”

He just stared at me.

Then he said, “Thatcher brought whiskey to the baths.

I had already put the lightleaf into my water.

I was not thinking.

My stomach hurts because I got punched by a big horse breeder’s boy who is young enough to be my son.

But he did not best me.

Just so you know.”

“Poor thing,”

I said, moving to lay on my side and face him.

“I said don’t move, Edith.”

I returned to laying on my back, looking up at him.

He drained the tin cup and set it on the desk, laying his tunic on the back of the chair.

Then, from his side, he crawled across that large bed towards me, eyes on my form.

When he reached me, he buried his face in my belly and inhaled deeply, as if trying to reach my skin through the cotton shift.

I lay as motionless as I could, my pulse in my ears.

“Why do you always smell so good?”

he whispered into me.

“I cannot get the scent of you out of my nose.

Even when I am surrounded by unwashed men and mud and horses.

It remains with me.”

He had lain down on his stomach, feet dangling off of his side of the bed, using me as his pillow for his head.

His left hand had buried itself under my back and come up around my waist and his right arm was wrapped around my right thigh.

Unsure of what to do, I continued to lay there.

I opened my mouth to ask if he wanted to get under the covers or if he wanted the room to change, but he kept speaking.

“And you own all the colors too.

Gray makes me think of your eyes.

When I eat hazelnuts, I think of your hair when I crack their shells.

I feel like every meal has a bowl of hazelnuts on the table now.

Blue makes me think of your tattoos.

And those three lines of ink you put on your faces before we entered the chapel.

And your flower crown.

Green makes me think of your clothes, white of your ridiculous priest’s robes, pink of your mouth.

Red now makes me think of you sitting in that field with blood on your face.

You looked so proud of yourself.

And I was proud of you, but was I furious.

Gods, woman, yellow is the only safe place and I hate the color.”

He spoke every word into the skin below my navel, but I could make out exactly what he said.

My husband was drunk and I was happy.

I reached out a hand and placed it on the back of his head.

He made a noise of contentment.

“I think you need to sleep,”

I said, but he was already close to slumber and so I joined him.

The next day I woke alone as I so often did.

I wondered what he had thought, once sobered, upon waking with his head on my belly and his arms around my waist and thigh.

I wondered if I should ask after him when I saw him next, but decided against it.

I myself did not know what to think of such speech and conduct from such a man as Alric.

Did he lust after me the way I lusted after him? Had he, like me, only recently admitted it to himself? Was I reckless to hope?