Fantasyland 03 Fantastical (28 page)

I watched, waiting for a response.

After three Cheetos and his second bite of
sandwich, when I got no response, I prompted, “Well?”

He swallowed his bite of bologna and cheese
sandwich and stated, “It’s not bad.”

I felt my mouth form a small smile.

“It’s also not good,” he went on and for
some reason, I burst into laughter.

When I was done laughing I noticed Tor was
not eating. He was watching me with a look so tender it was a shock
when I felt it slice clean through me. The pain was so perfect, it
felt exquisite, better by far than any orgasm he’d given me (and
he’d given me lots and all of them were good) so I bit my lip and
looked away.

I was trying to shove that feeling out of my
soul when Tor murmured, “Only you.”

It took a lot but I forced my eyes to his
face to see his were moving around the room.

I shouldn’t ask, I really shouldn’t ask but
I asked.

“Only me, what?”

His eyes came to me. “Only you could put
color in a colorless world.”

My lungs seized and then I followed where
his gaze had been and I saw my space through his eyes.

I’d painted the walls a soft peach. I’d
strung string after string of fairy lights covered in
sherbet-colored daisies all around the top edges. I’d chosen
carefully selected, but all fanciful and vibrant, prints for my
walls. I had a comfortable armchair in bright pink with a deep
purple chenille throw tossed over it, at its foot, a grass green,
poofy, rectangular ottoman. We were sitting on a peacock blue sofa
with sunshine yellow and orangey-red toss pillows. On the square
coffee table in front of us was a collection of glass orbs, all of
different sizes and colors. The dining room table was glass topped
but the chairs were covered in raspberry fabric, a huge glass vase
in the middle of the table with whirls of multiple colors swirling
through it. There was a wide rug over the wood floors that
reflected nearly all of the colors I’d chosen for the room, not in
a dizzying way, but a subtle one (I thought). And all the lamps in
the room had different bases and different colored shades,
turquoise, lilac, pink, royal blue.

Oh fuck, there was that exquisite pain
again.

I turned my head to him, saw him sitting on
my sofa in jeans and a tee, feet up, eating bologna sandwiches and
Cheetos, chasing it with a Coke, looking relaxed and totally at
home after a day out, by himself, in a world that couldn’t be any
more different from his home and it hit me.

“And only you,” I blurted.

His eyes held mine when he asked quietly,
“Only me, what?”

Oh well, might as well say it.

“Only you could be catapulted into a
different world, a world totally unlike your own, and take it all
in stride.”

He wasn’t just taking it in stride. Just
like in his world, he seemed in command of the situation. Not only
at-ease but like he had it all under control and I suspected, with
very little effort, if he didn’t have it under his control, he
would.

Just like always.

I loved that about him and I hated that I
loved it.

Hoping to hide my feelings, I babbled on,
“When I got to your world, I was totally freaked out. The first
ten, fifteen minutes, I thought it was a dream. The rest I knew
wasn’t and I was scared shitless.”

“You forget, my love, I was prepared for
your world,” he told me and I felt my brows draw together.

“You were?” He nodded. “How?”

“You told me about it. About the cars and
the buses and the planes and the asphalt and the sidewalks. You
told me about the buildings made of glass rising into the sky.
People talking to other people on their phones in the streets.
Others sitting in front of those…” he hesitated, “boxes, tapping at
them with their fingers.”

“Computers,” I reminded him, stunned.

He remembered everything I told him.

Everything.

He smiled. “Computers.”

“You thought I was making it up,” I
whispered and his eyes went dark.

“But now I know you were not.”

“You thought I was,” I semi-repeated.

“But now, Cora, I know you were not,” he
also semi-repeated, this time softly but also firmly, that tender
look back in his eyes.

I swallowed.

It was Tor’s way of apologizing. And it was
a good way.

Then I decided I’d had enough. I couldn’t
take more. He was going to get to me and he couldn’t. What he did
hurt, too much. And anyway, he didn’t belong in my world and I
didn’t belong in his. It was unnatural and anything could happen.
Nature had a way of righting itself, sometimes violently.

I’d given in once, giving him all I had and
taking what I could get in return.

And I loved it.

But it could be taken from me.
He
could be taken from me. At any moment a blue mist could form and
whisk him away.

I had to stay on target. I had to sort out
my life. And I had to guard my heart.

Which was going to be hard with a seasoned
warrior obviously intent on laying siege to it.

But I had to try.

“Do you want to watch TV?” I asked into the
void, his eyes flashed his displeasure at my change of subject then
they settled.

“Will you rest if we watch this… TV?” he
asked back and I nodded. “Then yes, I’d like to watch TV.”

I sucked in breath then turned, leaned down
the couch, opened the drawer to my side table and grabbed the
remote. I hit the button and resolutely ignored him as I switched
channels until I found an innocuous sit-com. Then I settled in,
partly turned away from him, and focused on TV (mostly for my
sanity).

Not long after, I heard his plate hit the
coffee table then the remote was slid from between my fingers.

My head twisted to him and I cried, “Hey!”
but like a man, of his world or mine, he took over the technology,
hitting buttons on the remote so the channel changed, the contrast
changed, the volume changed and then he found a decent volume along
with a cop show.

Figures.

Then he tagged me around my chest and pulled
me down to lying beside him, wedged against the back of the couch,
as he stretched out on his back, head to a pillow against the
armrest.

I pushed up and snapped, “I was
comfortable.”

“You’re more comfortable now,” he returned,
telling the God’s honest truth.

“Am not,” I lied, pushing up on his
chest.

“Cora, you are.”

“Am not!”

The hand attached to his arm that was wound
around me slid up to the back of my neck and he pulled me
inexorably forward until I was close to his face.

“You promised, we watch this TV, you’d
rest,” he reminded me.

“Yes!” I clipped.

“Then…
rest,
” he commanded.

I glared at him. Then I saw the determined
look on his face.

I knew what
that
meant.

So I informed him, “You’re annoying.”

He chuckled and forced my cheek to his
chest.

I kept my body perfectly solid to
communicate nonverbally that he was a jerk.

That was, I did this until I fell dead
asleep.

Crash into Me

We were on our way to my parents’ house, Tor
driving.

Yes, Tor
driving.

Earlier that day, when we went out to my car
(which had not disappeared but had enough pop cans, chip and candy
wrappers in it to water and feed an army – taking them all in, and
thinking of all the takeout cartons I tossed out the day before, I
was thinking the other Cora was no longer skinnier than me), Tor
flatly refused to sit in the passenger seat, demanded a lesson and
refused to believe that he’d need more than one lesson and practice
(much less an actual license) to drive around in a city. With no
choice (he didn’t give me one), I showed him around the console,
explained the basics, he started up the car and away we went.

No joke.

He was a natural. He even figured out the
road signs and traffic signals and only asked what a few of them
meant.

I was not freaked out that I was sitting in
a car with a beginner from another world behind the wheel.

No, I was freaked out about the fact that I
decided to tell my parents the truth hoping, since they were
hippies and had open minds, that they wouldn’t think I’d gone
around the bend.

And I was also trying not to think about my
day with Tor.

Which had been, even in my gray, dreary,
colorless world, what only Tor could give me.

Magic.

* * * * *

I woke that morning in my bed to a mild
headache, a few aches and pains and to hear my shower going.

The shower meant Tor hadn’t been flung back
to his world sometime in the night.

I rolled to my side, glanced at his pillow
and saw the dent.

I knew Tor, after watching television late
into the night, had carried me to my room. When he put me on my
feet by the bed, still exhausted and half asleep, I disrobed, found
a clean nightie, yanked it over my head, then collapsed into bed,
falling back to sleep the instant my head hit the pillow.

And seeing the dent, it was apparent Tor
slept with me.

Oh well, whatever.

I decided since the ibuprofen had eventually
worked the day before and I now had coffee that I would head to my
pill stash in the kitchen which was a room that fortunately also
housed the coffeemaker. So this was what I did.

Tor came in after I set the coffee to
brewing and he was wearing nothing but one of my forest green
towels (they weren’t girlie, which sucked, I liked girlie, but they
were the only thing (as well as the rust accent colors I used) that
didn’t look putrid against my bathroom suite).

As I stared at his chest coming my way, he
greeted, “Morning, wife.”

My body jolted to alert but not in time. I
was swept up in one of his arms and his head was descending. He
gave me a hard, warm, close-mouthed kiss then broke his mouth from
mine.

As I tried to get my head together, he
glanced at the filling coffeepot, opened the cupboard over it and
pulled down two mugs, not loosening his arm while saying, “I like
these indoor waterfalls you have.”

“What?” I asked dazedly and his light blue
eyes came back to mine.

“Your indoor waterfalls. These, and your
front room, the color of your sheets and the night garments you
wear, so far, are the only things I like in your world.”

“Um… you mean shower,” I told him.

His brows went up. “Shower?”

“Yes, like a rain shower except it’s a
bathroom shower.”

“Ah,” he murmured, his lips twitching,
“clever play on words.”

I hadn’t thought of it like that but it was
true.

“Tor –”

“I need food,” he announced, moving to the
refrigerator, opening it and he did this taking me with him with
his arm still around me.

“I’ll make you breakfast. Now, Tor –”

He was digging through the fridge (which
held milk, Diet Coke, regular Coke, bologna, American cheese,
condiments and nothing else) and he didn’t even look at me when he
interrupted, “I’ll need new clothing. I do not want to wear the
other me’s garments.”

“We’ll go to the mall. Now, Tor –”

He looked down at me and he was grinning and
looking weirdly happy so I snapped my mouth shut because it was a
good look.

“So, you’re going to cook for me?”

“Uh… sure.”

“Do you have eggs in your world?”

“We do, but I don’t have eggs in my
apartment. I’ll have to run to the corner market.”

He let me go and turned to the door,
stating, “I’ll go.”

I stared at his muscled back. Then I cried,
“Tor!” and followed him. When I hit the living room, he was
crouched by the open TV cabinet and reaching in. “What are you
doing?”

His head tipped back so he could look at me.
“I assume in your world, like my world, vendors expect
payment?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then I need coin,” he said, pulling out a
wad of fifties and looking at it. “Paper. Unusual,” he muttered and
looked at me while straightening out of his crouch. “King Baldur
prints paper funds. It’s worthless. It’s printed at vast amounts
beyond the gold and silver in his reserve. He expects tax payment
in coin and trading in paper. This way does not work and his people
are becoming restless.”

That was fascinating but I was more focused
on him using Cora’s money.

“Um… maybe we should leave that money where
it is. I’ve got a twenty in my wallet. I’ll give you that,” I told
him and started to my purse.

“You will not,” he stated firmly, I stopped
and blinked at him.

“So, what are you going to use? You can’t
get a job at a fast food joint and make enough to buy us breakfast
in time for said breakfast.”

“Cora’s money is our money. We’ll use that,”
he told me.

“No, actually, I think we should figure out
what’s going on with it and not use it. It isn’t ours.”

“She owes us,” he declared.

“How?” I asked, confused.

“I don’t know. I just know she does.”

“What?”

He walked to me. “Cora, whatever is
happening, to you, to me, is her doing. I know it. This blue mist,
this is at her command or her request. I don’t know if she has the
situation under her control or if it has started controlling her.
Unless you study under an apprentice for years and pass exams, it’s
against the law in my world to practice magic. It’s against the law
because it’s very dangerous. I know that Cora has not done this.
What I also know is that, whatever is happening, she’s behind it.
So, if she has earned this money, through nefarious means or not,
she owes it to us. And furthermore, you, as my wife, do not pay for
your keep, except…” he paused and grinned, “with a kiss.”

“Tor –” I started to remind him I actually
wasn’t his wife and to ask about this apprenticing magic business
(I knew they had wizards or something in his world!) but stopped
when he bent in and brushed his mouth to mine.