EPIC: Fourteen Books of Fantasy (64 page)

I caught his hand and held it firmly against my chest. His eyes darted to mine, and I didn’t let him go.

‘A-Adenine.’ Eventually, he pulled me down to sit at his side. And I shuffled over so I could lay along the bed beside him. Both his hands held mine, and I stared at them.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked.

‘I can’t lose you,’ I admitted.

‘I’m not going anywhere. I need to sit up though.’ He squirmed a little, and he dropped my hand.

He glanced past me at a cup of water that sat slightly beyond his reach. I placed it in his hands. The cup seemed heavy in his palms, as if it weighed a hundred pounds. I helped him draw the cup to his lips. When he’d finished sipping, his arm slumped, and I caught the cup and replaced it on the table.

And then he coughed. And coughed. And coughed. Blood stained the handkerchief that he held to his mouth.

‘Are you..?’
Dying,
I thought, unable to say the word out loud.

‘Varago says I’m very unwell.’

‘Oh, Frooby.’ I leaned my head on his shoulder. ‘I can heal you. Let me heal you. Jemely told me today. My uncle…’ My words turned into sobs. Tears flowed down my cheeks, and I remembered Klawdia warning me not to show my weakness. My heart.

‘What about your uncle?’ he asked gently.

‘Remember how I said he’d hurt me? He was sick. Dying, in fact. He wanted a healing from me. He wasn’t a bad person. He loved me. He loved me,’ I repeated, and more tears flowed. ‘Please. Let me heal you. I need to do it. You need to be healed. I can’t lose you. No one else can die because of me.’

‘No, Adenine. No.’

‘Is the maid here?’ I asked.

He hesitated for a moment. ‘She’s away.’

‘Good. Hold still. I know how this works.’ I sat across from him with my legs crossed. I reached out and touched his bare chest. He grabbed my wrist, but I was stronger and ran my fingers across his collarbone.

‘Adenine, you can’t. This is not right, and you know it.’

I ignored him. I traced his stomach with my other hand, moving down under the sheet to his hipbone. I reached the beginning of his thigh and realised he was completely naked.

His breathing deepened. His feet twitched, and his eyes rolled backwards as he became absorbed in my touch. Then, his eyes snapped open. Again, he pushed my hand away. ‘Stop,’ he said, but his eyes betrayed his failing will.

I slowly replaced my hand on his leg and stroked it back up his thigh, discovering long hairs around the crease of his leg. Then, my fingers brushed his stiffness. It twitched. He moaned. Slowly, I traced the outline of it. It began to twitch more rhythmically, and his body moved.

Darkness crept to the edge of my mind. I perspired as my throat tightened, and I felt as if I’d drown in the swirling disturbance. My thoughts turned into pictures of my uncle, holding me tight, pushing my shoulders down and sloshing the water between us.

I tried to remain with Frooby, in Frooby’s room, in Frooby’s house. But I couldn’t. Those images changed into visions of my uncle’s body bleeding on the floor. The blood had trailed from the tub across the room and into the storeroom. I saw the viciousness in Father’s eyes as he attacked my uncle.

I breathed in deeply. Frooby was watching me. It didn’t matter how I felt. All that mattered was that I save my friend. Determined not to let the fear take hold of me, I got up onto my knees and sat on his lap.

‘No.’ He groaned as I moved my pelvis back and forth, rubbing him through the sheets. ‘No, Adenine.’ He gasped and held onto my arms.

His face twisted with frustration and pleasure, and my mind reeled from the scene. Heat rushed to my face, and all I could feel was disgust and shame.

And I remembered how Uncle Garrad had had stroked my face with careful fingers and looked into my eyes. How he’d brushed his lips on mine.

‘Kiss me,’ I said.

Frooby’s eyes watered. ‘Don’t. No more.’ But the conviction was still absent from his eyes. ‘I…don’t love you this way.’

Uncle Garrad had told me long ago that every man would want me. And that included Frooby. ‘It
is
what I want,’ I assured him. ‘I want you alive.’

I increased the rhythm of my grinding. I pressed downwards, and his head went back against the wall. He responded by pushing up against me. I could feel how he wanted me. Another moan escaped his lips.

‘You are innocent, Adenine. You must be told no because you are worth saying no to.’ With every last bit of energy he had, he knocked me sideways into the wall.

I hit my head with a bang, I clutched at it for a moment, but the pain soon disappeared. He pushed his arms against mine pinning me to the bed, taking control.

He hovered over me for a moment. I observed every bit of his milky flesh, naked and throbbing. There was lust in his eyes, but he moved off of me and struggled to stand. He bent over, resting his hands on his knees as if he would faint. When he had composed himself, he held out one arm for balance while he dressed in a crumpled shirt and pants. He hobbled back to the bed and collapsed, coughing, beside me. He trembled as he pushed a handkerchief to his mouth and coughed harder. A string of red drool joined his lips to the material when he pulled it away.

‘Never do that again,’ he said. ‘Your gift makes you obliged to no one. Especially me.’

‘Live,’ I begged, and tears welled in my eyes.

‘A true friend will not put their needs before yours. If you healed me, you would have a scar in your heart, for doing so would betray yourself. I know how you struggle with the past. And only real love can cure that.’

‘I do love you!’ I cried.

‘As a friend, yes, but that is not enough. It is not enough for me, either. Even if I lived, I could never be happy knowing I’d hurt you. It would be unbearable to me. My body is weak. It has always been weak. I accept that.’

‘I don’t! I
don’t
accept it.’

‘One day, you will. Now, I want to look at those golden eyes, so move over, or I’ll die on top of you.’ He forced a grin, and I smiled back. ‘Take that blindfold off.’

I blushed, untied the thin material from my eyes and wrapped it around my wrist. He lay down beside me and stared at me from across the bed. I draped my arm across his waist. I felt so safe, so warm, that silent tears trickled down my cheeks as we looked into each other’s eyes.

‘Amazing,’ he said.

‘The property is perfect,’ I replied.

‘What? Your hill shack?’ he said.

I nodded, hating to admit to my fondness for my uncle’s shack.

‘Tell me about it.’

I told him about the creek, the sunrise, the waterfalls, and the woody, musty smell of the cabin. He listened intently.

A door banged downstairs. I sat up and scrambled to the end of the bed.

‘Go. Quick!’ he said and coughed.

Footsteps echoed within the house, and I went to the window to climb out, but it was too late. The door was flung open, and hands grabbed me from behind. I fought them.

‘Father, let her go!’ Frooby yelled.

‘Visiting my son, eh? You fancy him, eh? Well, why don’t you make yourself useful then?’ He shoved me onto the bed next to Frooby.

‘Father!’ Frooby coughed.

‘Quiet, boy. It’s about time you got a proper healing. After your mother’s death, we deserve a bit of luck.’

‘Stop it,’ Frooby said.

Frooby’s father stripped me of my clothing, throwing bits of fabric aside. I went back to that place, that place where I was the helpless ten-year-old in the tub.

Derkal found the dagger that had been hidden under my dress, and tossed it about in his hands. ‘What’s this for?’

Too afraid to answer, I clutched at myself and stared at him. He placed the dagger back on the bedside table. For a moment, I wanted to dive from the bed, grab the knife, and attack Derkal.

He bent over and yanked off my boots. ‘What luck that a friend of yours is a healer whore, eh, Frooby? Finally, you’ll be cured. Heck, you’re going to live! We can stop wasting our coin on those useless medicines that do nothing but give you the runs.’

Ashamed of my nakedness, I placed an arm over my breasts and a hand over my groin.

‘Into bed now,’ Derkal ordered.

I shook my head.

‘It’s in your blood, whore. Get into the bed!’

My legs wobbled as I stepped towards Frooby. Frooby looked tormented. His eyes flicked from his father, to me, and then to the dagger on the table. He pushed the sheets aside.

‘Keep them on,’ Derkal said and dragged the blanket over his son. ‘You’ll get sicker.’

‘Father, she already offered…’

‘I bet she did. And how much coin did she ask for?’

‘Nothing. She’s my friend. She really cares.’

‘She’s not normal, Frooby. She’s not like us.’

‘Wrong. She’s exactly like us.’

‘So you care about her. It doesn’t change anything. A boy your age always wants a girl,’ Derkal retorted.

‘No, Father. I don’t want her that way. Look how she trembles. Does that look like the heart of a willing girl?’

Derkal looked at me for a moment and shook his head. ‘This isn’t about fun and pleasure. This about tomorrow, and the day after that, and the one after that until you are a grown man.’ Derkal turned to me. ‘Come then, blind girl. Get to it.’

I crept onto the bed. Underneath the blanket, Frooby’s hand found mine.

‘Now, get on top of her, son. Think of this like a school lesson.’

‘Father—’

‘Shut up. Do as I say.’

Frooby tried to manoeuvre himself on top of me under the blanket. Derkal walked over and pulled back the sheet.

‘You’ve still got your pants on, boy. Take them off. Don’t you know how this works?’

‘No!’ he said. ‘I won’t do it.’

‘Fine. You girl. Take them off for him.’

I shook my head.

‘By my sword, you will.’ He took two steps towards the bed and dragged me by my wrists to the floor. I banged my knee and elbow. Pain shot through my body, and then he flipped me onto my back, undoing his pants.

I covered my face with my arms and hands. I closed my eyes and tried to think of the creek at the hill shack. I thought about the mist floating above the water.

‘Father, no!’ Frooby yelled.

I pushed away his voice and thought only of happy things. I was tired. I wished for sleep.

‘She’ll be more willing after I go first.’ Derkal pulled me down until the length of my spine lay against the floor. His pants were around his ankles, and his nakedness poked through a thick bush of hair. His eyes glimmered with hunger, something I had never seen in my uncle’s eyes. In his, there had been only fear and tears.

Clumsily, Derkal fell to his hands and knees and crawled across me. I locked my legs together, and he tried to pry them apart. Eventually, he pinched my thigh, hard. I cried out and allowed him to spread my legs. I twisted my head to the side and closed my eyes.

Forest, wolves, snow lion
.
Butter, Jemely…

As his hands gripped my thighs I heard a squishing noise. Derkal’s body shuddered, and his full weight collapsed onto me. I braved a glance at his face, and his eyes were wide open. I squirmed to get out from underneath him and saw that he had reached for his back. Frooby hovered above me, clutching Klawdia’s dagger. Blood dripped from the tip.

Blood gushed from a wound in Derkal’s back, pooling in the hollow of his back and spilling over the sides. Frooby still hadn’t moved; he just stared at the dagger in his hand. I collected myself. Frooby would be hung as Father had if he did not get away.

I wouldn’t let that happen, not when he’d saved me. ‘Come on, Frooby.’ I stood and pried each of his white fingers from the weapon. ‘Trust me. We have to leave.’

I helped him put on his boots. My own clothes were ruined, so Frooby passed me some of his. Every now and then his eyes would lock on his father’s body, and he’d freeze up.

‘Frooby, concentrate. If you want us to live, we have to leave, now.’

His eyes swept to mine. They were empty, lost. After a moment, they filled with recognition, and he nodded. I unwrapped the blindfold from my wrist and tied it around my head.

‘I-I stabbed…’ He unclenched his hand. The dagger clanged against the floor.

‘I know. It’s all right. He’ll be all right,’ I said in a soothing voice, yet I didn’t believe my own words.

We raced downstairs and stepped into the sunlight. I felt exposed, as if everyone could see our dirty secret lying upstairs—we’d murdered someone. Only one person would soon learn the truth, and she sat in Frooby’s yard, watching us exit the house.

‘Adenine,’ Klawdia said, stealing a glance at Frooby.

‘Klawdia!’ I exclaimed, betraying my relief at her presence. I couldn’t find the words to express how I felt.

‘What happened? Your clothes…’

‘Derkal…’ I said.

As if saying his father’s name invoked a curse, Frooby collapsed beside me. His body sprawled awkwardly on the veranda steps. I leaned down to check him. Someone shouted inside the house. The maid must have found Derkal.

Klawdia jumped from the horse and cart. She lifted me up and even though I didn’t want to leave Frooby, I collapsed in her arms. I drew will from inside of me, and as Klawdia placed me in the cart, I jumped out again. As I ran back to the house, she yanked my shirt, and I fell backwards to the ground.

‘Gather your wits! We must go now!’ She placed me in the cart again and covered me with a blanket.

The cart lurched forwards, and we trotted away from the house. As the wheels of the wagon hit rocks, my head hit against the wooden sides. The pain felt good, distracting me from the agony of leaving Frooby behind. After a while, we stopped. I pushed the blanket aside, and the sun blinded me.

‘What happened, Adenine?’ Klawdia asked, sitting me up and holding my knees with her strong hands.

I sniffled. I tried to find my breath, but it came in short gasps. ‘We have to… go back. We… have to get Frooby!’

‘Calm yourself. Master your feelings,’ she ordered.

Klawdia always knew best, so I closed my eyes and tried to slow my heart, my breath, my mind. After a few minutes, I stopped gasping. ‘Frooby’s father tried to make me lay with him.’

A section of her hair hid her face. Individual strands glistened orange and red in the sunlight, and when she looked at me, she appeared sad. ‘I’m sorry.’