By Moonlight Wrought (Bt Moonlight Wrought) (47 page)

         “That’s terrible,” Dirk said, his eyes
full of compassion.  He had idolized Selric since he had known him, wishing he
would have lived the young nobleman’s life.  Now he saw that it was not as rosy
as it appeared.  “Well, you’re free now.”

         “I don’t know,” Selric mumbled, then
smiled wickedly.  “Fiona!” he then said, tickling her lean ribs.

         “No, no,” she said.  “What about Alanna? 
How does she fit in the story?  How about...how about...”

         “Now, Fiona,” Dirk demanded loudly,
slapping his broad hand on the table.

         “Fine,” she said arrogantly, trying to
get off Selric’s lap in protest, but he held her tight.  “Me?  Well, I want to
be somebody.”

         “More,” Cinder said, shaking her head in
disapproval.

         “I want to be powerful,” she continued,
with a look a defiance to the Faerie.  “I want to have power to control things,
people, destinies.”

         “Why?” Dirk asked, confused.  “Why would
that be important to anyone?”

         “To control.  To manipulate,” Fiona
snapped.  “Greed.  Don’t you want to make Cinder stop?  Well, if you could
harness powers, magical energies, you could make her do what you wanted. 
Anybody.  You could have any woman you wanted.  All the money you’d ever need. 
A mansion.”

         “Hey this sounds like allusions to the
Stormweathers.  I don’t like where this is going,” Selric said jokingly. 
“Sounds like me:  women, money, mansion.”

         “Stop it,” Fiona laughed, pinching Selric’s
wrist.  “Dirk, you can’t be that...
that
simple.”

         “Well, I guess I am.  I’m happier here,
with all of you.  Even you, Fiona,” he said plainly.  Fiona sat flabbergasted.

         “Melissa?” Selric asked.

         “I think Fiona needs to tell us something
else,” Cinder said softly, somberly, her eyes sad.  “Something she needs to
tell someone; anyone.”

         “No, Cinder,” Fiona begged.  Cinder
nodded.  “He was terrible to me.  Terrible.  I don’t want to.”  Cinder said
nothing, simply looking at the stoic woman hiding her pain while the others all
paled at the pain the pain priestess’s voice.  “He did...did...bad...no
Cinder.”

         “Who did?” Dirk asked, his face pale and
mouth ajar in shock at her horror.

         “My grandfather.  He was wicked and he
made me...made me.  No,” she said, turning her face to Selric.

         “Shhh,” Selric said, rubbing Fiona’s
shoulders. 

         “It wasn’t the sex, it was the kind of
acts, the manipulation, the degradation.”

         “The betrayal of trust.  The pain?”
Cinder asked.  Fiona’s eyes shot to Cinder as if she were completely right,
then she turned away again.  “The pain isn’t what bothers you, although feeling
it is why you turned to Aura, isn’t it?  Now, you’re too strong for the abuse
to scar you,” Cinder said, touching the priestess.  The soft caress was a
harbor in a storm.

         “No.  It wasn’t that it had hurt so
much.  It wasn’t the pain of his actions.  It was the pain of how his wife
ignored my horror.  My parents died, in a fire, and I lived with Granny
and...him.  Granny loved me so much, I could tell.  But she loved him more. 
She knew.  I told her, but she thought if she were nicer to me, than I wouldn’t
mind; I wouldn’t tell.  She was right, I didn’t.  But I would only take so much
and when he continued on and on, and got sicker and sicker...I was only a
child...” she said bitterly.  “...I killed him.  I stabbed him, I killed him,
and I ripped his guts out and I liked it!  I’ve liked pain and hurt ever
since.  But Granny didn’t and she was going to tell, so...so...I” she turned to
Selric and only he knew that she wept.

         “Well,” Cinder said quietly, as if saying
“Isn’t that something?”

         “They never knew I did it.  “A tiny ten
year old girl could never mutilate like that,” they said,” then she fell quiet. 
“I don’t feel bad about doing it.  I feel bad I
had
to do it.  I feel
bad now for what you might think about me.”  She wiped her eyes like a child
and slid off Selric’s lap.

         “We understand,” Selric whispered, still
holding her close beside him.  “I don’t think you’re bad at all.”

         “Even I understand,” Dirk said quietly,
the gentle man clearly moved.  “Actually, it helps me understand you and the
things you do a little better.”  Fiona looked at him, only briefly, then cast
her eyes down.

         “Melissa?” Selric asked quietly, the mood
at the table now very somber.

         “Do we need to?” she asked.  “Everyone is
so quiet now.  I thought we wanted to forget our troubles.”

         “We want to understand each other better,
so that when we’re down, we can help each other,” Selric said with a smile.

         “I don’t think...” Melissa tried.

         “We all did it,” Dirk said sweetly,
taking her hand, wet with perspiration.

         “It won’t hurt,” Fiona said smiling, her
eyes still red, though no tears had fallen in front of any of her friends.

         “I’m running.  I’ll admit that,” she
said.

         “From what?” Cinder asked when Melissa
stopped.

         “Stoneheim,” she said.  “Stoneheim and
everything in it.”

         “Your parents?” Fiona asked.

         “No!  Not them.”

         “Are you sure?” Cinder asked.

         “I don’t feel like confessing anything. 
My life is my own.  Why are you making me?  You all just wanted to get
something off your chest.  I don’t.”

         “I didn’t,” Selric said.

         “I
certainly
didn’t,” Fiona added
fervently with another sniffle from her tiny nose.

         “I don’t care,” Melissa said, getting
angry.

         “You don’t have to tell us,” Cinder
said.  “We aren’t making you.”  Melissa relaxed, realizing that she should not
lash out at them when they were clearly only trying to help.

         “I just...I’m just a little,” Melissa
started, and she stood on that threshold of trust, so afraid to leap off, but
being lured by the possibility that there was a warm, safe place there to
land:  a place she would be accepted and cared for as she was.

         “Don’t be,” Fiona said.  “Go on.”

         “I’ll say just a little,” Melissa agreed,
even smiling in embarrassment.  “I was...I was forced to work for someone I
despised.  He changed and I had to get out of there before I became like him. 
They made me do things...hurt people, and I didn’t like it.  That’s why I ran away. 
I couldn’t stay there, so I just...I just quit.  They would have forced me back
in; or killed me, and my family.  I hope they’re all right...my family, that
is.  I worry about them constantly, but Daddy says that they had nothing to
fear.  You see, he knows the same man.”  She fell silent.

         “Is that all?” Cinder asked, and Melissa
nodded.  Cinder doubted her, but knew that what Melissa held would be better
for her to keep inside her for a while longer.

         “Well, I’m ready to go,” Melissa said
with a forced smile, sliding over Dirk’s lap.  “You coming, Fiona?  What?” she
asked when they all looked at her.  “Really,” she sighed.  “My story does not
compare to all of yours.  It doesn’t.   Mine is maybe just fresher.  I’m not
ready to talk about it.  Not yet.  Relax,” she said laughing convincingly. 
“That is all you’re getting and there is no deep secret.  I swear to you as my
friends.”  That was enough to convince them all, and Fiona got up with her; Selric
rising to let her out.  Melissa actually kissed his cheek and bent back over
the table, kissing Cinder then Dirk, as well on the cheek. 

         “See you all later,” she said.  Fiona
kissed them all on the lips then the two donned their fur-lined cloaks and said
good-bye once more before stepping out into the blowing snow.  Selric ordered
one more round and they drank and talked on no particular subject for fifteen
minutes. 

         “I’d better get home and see how things
are,” Selric said.

         “To Alanna?” Cinder asked spryly.

         “I guess so,” Selric said, a guilty look
on his face.  “That’s one of the things.”  Selric had introduced her to them
all, then brought her briefly to visit twice, but generally the time he spent
with the group was time away from Alanna.  “Good night, kids,” he said
jokingly, kissing Cinder on the lips and patting Dirk’s shoulder firmly.  “I’ll
be in touch.”  He cloaked himself and went on his way.  Cinder and Dirk had
chatted and held hands for an hour when Dirk announced that it was time to take
her home, so she went with him and he escorted her on his arm.

         “You know,” she said, walking as close to
him as she could.  “When I first came to the city months ago, I was so naive
and immature.”  Dirk kept himself from laughing when she admitted how things
had changed, when he could see they had not.  She smiled, her face glowing in
radiant beauty, looking as if she knew his thoughts.  “I’ve grown and learned
so much from you humans.  I’d always been with my mother.  Rarely did I go to
the nearby town where I met my first humans, but I never had any friends.” 
That night was the first night that Dirk had ever heard Cinder admit to being
different than humans.

         “I feel the same way,” Dirk said.  “Six
months ago, my life changed.  When I met you, Missy, and Selric, even
Fiona—poor Fiona—I was all alone.  Though I don’t like alot of the things that
you all do, I don’t feel alone anymore.”  They walked in silence for several
blocks, the snow falling now lightly about them.  The full moon, reflecting off
the abundant accumulation, lit the city in silvery-blue light.

         “I wish you would protect me, like Selric
does,” Cinder said.  “I feel so safe with you; physically.  Emotionally,
though, I’m not very secure.  I mean, it’s not your responsibility, but you
always seem to care so much, but in an authoritarian kind of way.”

         “What’s that mean?”

         “You just said that you don’t like some
of the things we do.  Does that include Selric?”

         “Well…no.  He is ok,” Dirk answered
curiously.

         “That would have nothing to do with the
fact that he is a boy, and you are a boy, and we, the people who you think need
to do things you approve of, are girls?”  She smiled at him.  “Maybe you should
try to understand how I feel, then try to help me, not order me.”  Dirk thought
on it; she seemed right.  How could he demand so much from her; she was not a
possession of his.  It never really occurred to him to let her live her own
life.  She always seemed so innocent, so in need of fathering.  “Remember the
knights?”

         “Yes,” he blushed.  “Not too much
protection there.  I’m just glad they didn’t hurt you bad.”

         “But you tried.”  She smiled, leaning her
head against his arm, like she did almost every time together.  “You stepped up
and put yourself in danger to protect me, and my honor.  And what about those
big wolves in the alley?  You saved my life.  You saved me and I love you.”  He
smiled.  Her words were warm and sincere, not fiery and passionate as she had
said them hundreds of times before.

         “I’ll try to protect you the way you
want.  Does that make you happy?  But I’m worried about you.  I just feel like…” 
Cinder smiled, her eyes sparkling in happiness and she nodded and Dirk sighed
and fell silent, ignoring his worry.

         “Yes,” she said in appreciation for his
concern, even if she did not share his sentiment.  Dirk walked her home and
inside to her door.

         “Now, I can’t protect you if you keep
doing stupid things.  Try to stay in once in a while and don’t be going out
with strange men.”

         “Would you like to stay?” she asked, a
look of hopeful adoration on her face.  Cinder undressed before him.  Out of
character, Cinder removed her heels, her lingerie and stood before him naked in
her immortal beauty.  She smiled a kind loving smile seeming void of lust. 
Dirk moved forward and swept her into his arms and laid her in her bed.

         Panting and totally spent, Dirk held
Cinder in his arms, lying on their sides, Cinder backed up to him tightly.  He
kissed her shoulder, each of the little freckles that formed a pattern.  He
laughed as he tried to remember where he had seen that pattern, and again kissed
them one at a time. 

         “What is it?” Cinder asked sleepily.

         “Just kissing your little freckles.  They
look familiar.”

         “Well you have seen them before,” she
sighed with a giggle. 

         “Well, yes, I know that.  But they…I
never noticed.  They look like a constellation.”

         “Oh, how cute,” she said, trying to look,
but unable.  With a sigh she got up from the warmth of their embrace and the
dark fur bedcover and turned up the dim lamp.  Moving in a planned, smooth
pattern she trotted quickly past her wardrobe, grabbing a hand mirror from a
shelf within and leapt back into bed with Dirk.  He laughed at her antics, but
admired her lovely form and grace as she did it.  When she sat beside him, Dirk
immediately put his hands on her, not lustfully, but just to stroke her soft,
warm flesh.