The Path of Ravens (Asgard vs. Aliens Book 1) (28 page)

I set myself to receive her inevitable
counterattack. When it comes, it is vicious—not by
giant-slaying standards, of course, but by ours. Or maybe it is not
so vicious, and I just fail to put up as much resistance as I should.
After a few blows to my midsection, Gaeira grabs my hair, which is
only just long enough to grab, and uses it to force-march me to the
same patch of clay in which she fell. She rams my face into it,
rubbing it around to ensure it gets plenty covered.

Vengeance exacted, she helps me up, and that is
the end of our practice for the day. I wipe my face and set off to
complete a few farm chores before twilight. Later, when those are
done, I walk into the farmhouse to find Gaeira and Dalla in the open
hall that comprises its first floor. Gaeira sits on the floor with
her back to a large clay water basin. At the basin's rim, Dalla
kneels, unraveling Gaeira's long braid. The nursemaid looks up at me,
and I smile, but she does not. That is strange, even if her look is
not unfriendly.

As I proceed inside, she resumes her work and
speaks to Gaeira in a voice too soft for me to overhear. Weary from
the long day, I take a seat on a bench well away from them, that they
might have privacy if that is their wish.

Muttering, Dalla finishes unbinding her foster
daughter's hair and separates the kinked locks which she proceeds to
lower into the filled basin. She picks up a pitcher, which I expect
her to dip into the water and pour over Gaeira's hair, but instead,
she rises from the floor with the moderate difficulty of age and
starts in my direction. Reaching me, she holds out the pitcher.

“She wishes for you to do it... 
Highness
.”

Without accepting, I ask, “She told you
that?”

Dalla purses her creased lips and scoffs.
Rightly so. “You think I'm any worse than you at 
hearing
her?”
She forces the pitcher into my hands. “I 
know 
what
she wants. And it's only fair, you being the one who got her so
filthy! I have a meal to prepare.” Skirts swishing, Dalla heads
for the door and leaves.

Left holding the pitcher, I am reminded vaguely
of my stint as Gaeira's pack animal and boot-remover  in
Jotunheim. I stand and start across the hall to my assigned duty.
Until now I have remained outside  of Gaeira's field of vision,
and she, unsurprisingly, has not spared me a turn of the head. I have
become accustomed to these slights, which are not slights at all. I
admire her for not acting or reacting as others would. It is in our
natures to communicate with those around us always, in various small
ways, even when we think we are not. Gaeira's vow would have her
stamp this out and communicate not at all. She holds her vow
remarkably well.

But not to perfection.

I come up from behind the basin, where her loose
hair trails down over its rim into the water inside. Kneeling behind
her right shoulder, so as best to use my one good eye, I dip the
pitcher in the warmed  water, raise it and pour a gentle stream
down the curtain of dirty gold. My other hand finds a bone comb lying
on the floor at my knee. I pick it up and run it down the wetted
locks, careful not to let it snag. Gaeira's head sinks back a bit
farther, lowering more of her hair into the water, implying that she
had not fully relaxed until now. Did she think I might empty the
pitcher over her face or wield the comb with deliberate harshness, as
I might rake dry straw on the farm? Yes, I played dirty today as we
sparred, but I am slightly hurt to think she would doubt that I would
treat her with anything but respect in this hall of her late father,
where I am a guest.

Does she not know...

Know what?
 I myself know nothing.

Inches from my arm, her white neck lies
stretched so taut that I can see blood pumping in it. Hers is deadly
blood, to be sure, yet even she could not stop me from taking her
life now, if I had a mind to.

My hurt vanishes to know that she trusts me so.

Gaeira is no delicate creature, but as I run
water and bone slowly down her silken hair, I treat her as one. After
a few dozen careful strokes, I put aside the comb and set to work
cleaning her scalp with my bare fingers, that I might better keep the
water from streaming into her eyes. They are closed, but my own
single eye is very open and does not stay where it should. It finds
her neck and follows it down, watching the barely perceptible rise
and fall of her chest under the loose gray linen of her tunic.

She is so very alive, even though, by all
rights, she ought to have been slain many times over by now at the
hands of her deadly prey. And so am I alive, even though I once was
dead and now I wear a dead man's flesh. We two are alive and
together, in this moment, in this tranquil corner of a place called
Vanaheim.

A thought slips dart-like past my guard. What
would Gaeira do if I leaned down and tried to kiss her unsuspecting
lips? Break my fingers? Force my head underwater and hold it there
until I went still?

I do not mean to think that thought. I have no
right to think it. Yet before I can banish it, another takes 
its place: what if I were to ask her permission first? Were she not
vowed to silence, the worst she could  do would be to say no.
But as she cannot do that, she must communicate her answer in some
other way, which may or may not involve the inflicting of physical
harm upon my person.

Yet... even asking her would constitute a
betrayal of the great trust and hospitality she and her foster
parents have shown me. I could find myself cast out of her house, and
worse, bereft of her guidance.

I realize suddenly that I have forgotten my task
and am instead just staring at the nape of Gaeira's neck. I resume
without her appearing to have noticed, but surely she has. Not much,
if anything, escapes her notice.

Even as my actions become once more
goal-oriented, my thoughts persist in tormenting me. I cannot stop
wondering: 
What would she do?
 She is beautiful and
magnificent, while I barely even know what I am. Certainly I am much
less than she.

I greatly relish this task she has given me and
want to do right by it... but suddenly I also want just to be done,
for my own good and hers. And so must it be. Setting down the
pitcher, I pick up the folded towel Dalla has left on the floor and
carefully extract Gaeira's long, sopping locks from the basin. She
leans forward to facilitate my wrapping the towel around her hair.
When her hands also rise to help, or take over, her fingers brush
mine. I pull mine away... but not too quickly. I do not wish her to
know that I have become afraid of her, or that there is any cause for
us not to touch.

I think then that my part must be done, the task
discharged, and so I put palms to floor and raise myself upright. But
before I can retreat, which I truly do not wish to do, Gaeira thrusts
an open hand toward me. I am to help her rise. It is laughable to
think she needs such help, but I do not laugh. I give her my hand and
help her to stand, as she did once for me this day.

As our hands part, the towel tumbles from her
hair, and I catch it. While we stand there face-to-face, our gazes
meet for the first time since I entered the hall. Although I try, I
cannot tear mine away. Hers, too, lingers.

I lift the towel to restore it to its place.
Words fill my mouth, but then just sit there, a weight on my
tongue. 
I wish to kiss you.
 Such words would be a
betrayal. I cannot let them pass.

The question hammers at my mind. 
What
would she do?
 I dare not learn the answer.

But I must know. 
I must...
 Burning
need sends me forward, just a fraction.

I stop myself short of learning the answer.

To my astonishment, Gaeira gives it. Not with
her voice, of course, and neither with her eyes. It is her breath
that tells me. In that same instant of my advance on her, slight as
it is, her breath catches, even  more slightly—and I know.
I know that she will not break anything or try to drown me in the
basin. I know I will not be cast out of her house. I know that I have
not just her permission, but more. It is as much her wish as it is
mine.

I do not just stand there, knowing those things.
As quickly I halted it, I resume my advance, and the space I must
cover is halved as Gaeira moves her own head up and forward to meet
mine. Our lips come together, and this world, one I barely know, both
ends and begins. I cease to know where the floor is, or the roof, or
my own feet. There is only me and magnificent, beautiful she, and
this shared moment that I wish did not have to end.

But end it must, and it does. Or rather it ebbs,
as natural forces do, like the tides of the sea that once I crossed
in a long-ago life, as a prince or a monster. It runs its course, and
we step apart, staring. Gaeira's lips quickly shut. Mine hang open a
short while. The exhilaration in her eyes is but a faint flicker,
such that I wonder whether only someone who knows her well could
perceive it, while any nameless other who happened to be present
would find her impassive. I cannot know that, but I know  that I
see in her face the faint echo of what I surely wear much more
plainly on mine. It is lust.

Her towel lies on the floor. Since I must
eventually move, I decide a reasonable thing to do is retrieve it. I
stoop, finally breaking Gaeira's gaze, which is simultaneously a
disappointment and a relief. I pick up the towel and hand it to her.

She takes it and steps back. She drapes the
towel over one shoulder and then with one hand she grasps her wet
hair behind her neck and moves it in front so that it rests on the
towel, all the time watching me. The flicker I glimpsed has faded,
leaving her looking the same Gaeira I have known since meeting her in
giant country. But I know now what lies inside. She cannot hide it
from me. I do not think she wants to. Not anymore.

She takes a few more backward steps and spins
and strides to the stairs, ascends them, and is gone.

I am staring at the empty space where Gaeira was
when I hear a sound behind me, and I turn in time to witness Dalla
entering. She looks at me, at the basin, at the wet floor, and back
at me. I sense that she means to ask a question, but none comes. She
makes a sound with her tongue that my still-reeling mind cannot
interpret and gives a look nearly as opaque to me as her foster
daughter's were a few days prior.

An hour later, the four of us sit together at a
table in Gaeira's hall for our evening meal. It is quiet, by which I
mean that 
I
 am quiet. I can think of naught but
Gaeira, yet I cannot look at her. And I can think of nothing to say
to Dalla or Afi apart from, 
I kissed the woman you hold as
dear as a daughter, and I desire to do more with her. By the way, is
it true what the All-Father told me—is she a maiden?

Of course it is true, they would tell me calmly.
Do you think Odinn a liar?

Or... Dalla could hold my wrist fast to the
table as Afi fetches an ax with which to sever offending hand.

Afi converses with me, and I manage to answer
him while focusing on the food I am barely eating. I might drink,
since my mouth at the moment feels like sand, but the drink is mead,
and I surely need my wits about me. Fortunately, Afi, hungry and
thirsty after the day's work, is intent on his own food and drink. I
notice, while looking at her hands and her plate, that Gaeira is
eating less than usual. Although she never appears to relish eating,
she always does so in a methodical way. Nourishment is, after all, a
long-term requirement of revenge-seeking.

Dalla, on the other hand, eats more swiftly than
usual. When she is done, she plants her hands on the table, upraises
herself, and addresses her husband, "Afi, dear, my side is
paining me. Would you walk me home and rub it for me?"

Afi's greasy mouth adopts a likewise pained
look. "Could you not sit a bit longer? I'd like some more—"

"Take it with you," Dalla says.

"That's a bit rude," Afi protests.
"Our guest's plate is yet—"

"Afi," she says firmly, and nothing
more, but it ends the dispute. Afi sighs, stands, refills his plate
and cup and hoists them, one in either hand.

Dalla puts her hand on her side, cocks her head
and smiles at me. "You two don't mind finishing without us... do
you, 
Highness?
"

"No," I answer, barely looking at her.
I am worried she might see in my eye the mix of excitement and alarm
that comes from knowing I am to momentarily be alone again with
Gaeira.

"Tomorrow is a rest day," Dalla says.
"You need pay the crowing cock no heed."

Then they are off, out the door of Gaeira's home
and moving away in the direction of the little cottage in which they
dwell. Despite his grumbling, Afi seems hardly put out, even less so
when Dalla pulls his head down so that she might give his cheek a
peck.

When the pair is gone from sight, I meet
Gaeira's eyes. I look for the earlier spark there and do not find 
it. I look back at my plate. There is no chance I can eat and
therefore no reason to sit here poking at it and pretending. Trying
my best to meet Gaeira's even stare, I stand.

She matches the move. She steps to her right,
past the table's corner. I mirror her move. Nothing separates us now.
No table. No Dalla. No Afi. It remains thus for approximately a
heartbeat, and after that, there is not even air between us, for we
have flown to each other. My hands find her waist, hers the sides of
my head, and our mouths that for which they have truly hungered, each
other. We kiss with more fervor and ferocity than we did an hour ago.
Where that was soft and tender and tentative, this shares something
in common with our sparring sessions: we attack each other. Rarely
ever have I heard Gaeira's breath, but I do now: it is fast and
heavy, and the sound of it excites me.