First to Dance (28 page)

She brought a hand up to her face where he hit her and tears fell down her cheeks, but she didn’t say anything. “Just get this over with,” she
whispered. She turned her head to look away from him.

Rage grew up inside him. He
didn’t know who he was angrier with—her, or himself—but he took it out on her. He treated her roughly, and then he stormed out of the room.

Etana
rolled to her side and tears continued to stream down her face, but her mind went blank. There was so much on her mind that she couldn’t seem to think about any of it. She closed her eyes and started to sob. Her body was shaking, and she broke loose into raw emotion until she had no energy left for crying, so she lay still, exhausted but unable to sleep.

Timothy came back a short while later and climbed into bed beside her
again. He rubbed her back and shoulders as he spoke softly into her ear.

“I’m sorry for how I treated you earlier. I overreacted.
” He kissed her cheek. His hands felt good on her shoulders, but she still felt sore between her legs, and she didn’t know what to say to him. She was tired of his game, and she realized now that there was no way she would travel with him anywhere. There was no agreement anymore. She would live here on Adonia and not bother with the man. She was ready to live a normal life—to be a person instead of a god.  She would touch the people’s hearts by living among them, helping them on a personal level in whatever ways she could, and perhaps that would make an even greater impact than all the clothing and books that the universe had to offer.

He kissed her
shoulder a few times. “I know you won’t believe me,” he said, “But I love you, Etana. I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone before, but I love you. I’ve
grown
to love you, watching how you care for so many people even though they never have a chance to thank you or to even know who to thank, and by the time you leave and return again, the people you’ve helped before are all dead, but still you help. Your care for them is foreign to me, and it makes you all the more attractive in my sight.” He nuzzled her cheek and her neck, and then he fell asleep beside her, with his arm around her. Etana waited, and when she was sure he was in a deep sleep, she slipped out of his arms, put her clothes back on and left the space center. She walked away, knowing that Adonia would be her home now for the rest of her life, and she did her best to put Timothy, Zozeis, and all the other planets out of her mind. It was late spring, which meant she would have to travel for several days to find the people. She packed what she would need for the trip, and as she walked, she wondered what it would be like to spend the summer under the trees.

In her second month on Adonia, Etana realized that her body was changing, she was throwing up a lot, and her period was late. She avoided the thought for as long as she could, but eventually she had to face it: she was pregnant with Timothy’s child.  Once she accepted this fact, it scared her at first, but then it calmed her. She had another chance to be a mother, to raise a child. This time she would stay with her son, and no one here would tell her what she could and could not teach him. She realized then that she’d assumed she would have another boy. She wondered if she was betraying Aaron for wanting to replace him, and then as soon as she thought of the child as a replacement she started crying. She tried blaming the pregnancy for how easily the tears came, but she didn’t fool herself. She wasn’t crying because of pregnancy; she was crying because she knew she’d abandoned a baby boy and left him to be raised in an insensitive, dishonest society. But what else could she have done?

“I hope it isn’t a boy,” she whispered.
Or I will always feel Aaron’s presence in the back of my mind, and he will be asking me why I loved and raised this son, but abandoned him.

The summer moved along quickly. Time passed so much more speedily when there were things to do and people to talk to, not like on the spaceship where she was alone fo
r days or months at a time and the only person she ever saw more than once was Timothy. Everyone else that she met was dead by the time she was on their planet again. It was a lonely and very slow-going life, but here, living day to day with people always around her, the time sped by.

One night
as she tossed and turned, wondering why it was so hard to sleep now, a small blue light in the sky caught her attention. She sat up and watched it as it descended closer and closer to the ground. It was very far away and only a speck in the sky, but she recognized that light.
Timothy’s back
, she thought,
but why? Why now? He knows I’m not in the town. I don’t imagine he’ll spend the next three days walking just to see me.

She watched the horizon carefully for the next several days, but he never came, and the
n about a week and a half later she saw the blue light again, this time going up away from the planet and far off into the sky. She puzzled over it quite a bit because he never stayed on one planet this long, and it made no sense for him to come
here
at a time when he knew he wouldn’t see her.

The matter passed from her mind as days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. The leaves began to fall from the trees and it was time to go back to th
e houses where they would have better shelter for the winter.

The journey to the town was rough now that she was nearing the end of
her second trimester. Every movement she made was uncomfortable, and she was ready for the pregnancy to be over. Thankfully, there were carts that she was allowed to sit on for part of the journey, and she had nothing to carry when she was walking. When they arrived she was exhausted, so she entered the first house she came to and slept on the floor. Most of the furniture was gone by now, and the houses were empty.

Early the next morning she went to the school building to check on her reading videos and make sure that everything was functioning properly, but when she got to the room, the first thing she saw was that there were twice as many journals there
than what she’d left. She went to the room of clothing and saw that the supply there had doubled as well. When she returned to check the video monitor, she realized the screen had been replaced with a larger one, and there was a note attached to it.

“My gift to you,

Love,

Timothy.

P.S.: I had our bed moved to the house you stayed in the first time you were here, when you stayed for six months. I hope it will make these final months of your pregnancy more comfortable. Also I had the wiring fixed so the houses would have heat this winter, and there is a lock on your door for when you want privacy. Take care of yourself; I will see you soon.”

There was a key taped to the back of the note.
Etana looked at the note and the key and started crying.
It must be the pregnancy,
she told herself.
I’m emotional from pregnancy hormones; that’s all.
But she knew that wasn’t the case. She was crying because the note said exactly what she would have wanted a husband, a lover, to say to her, but coming from Timothy the words felt meaningless. It wasn’t love—just a part of his game. He was playing with her heart, manipulating her, as he always had, and Etana feared that the only way to end it would be to become like him so that she had no heart left to be manipulated. She couldn’t seem to shut off the part of her that wanted his intentions to be pure. She
wanted
to believe him, and that was the problem. As long as she wanted to believe him, his words had power over her.

At first she thought
about leaving the house and bed for someone else, but then she told herself that her stubbornness wouldn’t hurt Timothy the way she intended it to. So she decided to take advantage of the added comfort in her most uncomfortable months.

 
The winter progressed, and Etana watched her belly grow and kick and grow some more. She thought that surely she would have a child in her arms any day now. She spent many days lying in bed feeling her tummy move and smiling down at it. Any day now.

A knock came at her door late one night when there was a blizzard outside.
Who would be foolish enough to leave their house during this storm?
she wondered, but then she was upset with herself for thinking it.
Nobody is being foolish; someone cares enough to check on me.

She opened the door and it was Timothy standing there, hol
ding his coat tightly around his body and grinning. He quickly stepped inside and closed the door for her. He stared her over for a moment, and then he smiled wide and knelt to kiss her belly. He wrapped his arms around her in a gentle embrace; his hands were always so gentle when he was in a good mood.

Etana
grabbed his hands and pushed them away from her. “What are you doing here?” she said. “Go away. I don’t want to see you.”

He stood up and
took one step toward her. “Why do you resist me?” he asked. “You don’t have to despise me the way you do.”

“
My time with you was only part of an agreement so I could fight against you. I hate everything that you stand for, and you know that. But I’m done fighting. You win. So go away.”

“For once,
Etana, can you stop thinking of me,
the scientist
, and start thinking of me,
the man
? I’m not as dreadful as you think.”

“Oh I’m sure you’re much worse.”

“Ouch.” He smiled and his eyes were bright. She knew he wasn’t really hurt by what she said. How could he be? He didn’t really care what she thought of him. “Really Etana, if you would just stop defining me by my experiment—“

“—your experiment has caused thousands of people to suffer, and you don’t care about it at all
! You treat me like a game, and the only reason you let me fight against you is because you know the damage you’ve done is so great that I will never win. Yet you do nothing to end the damage.”

He looked down at the floor, and
Etana thought she saw a hint of remorse on his face. No, it couldn’t be remorse. This man didn’t know remorse, did he?

“I’ve had factories built on
Azias over the last ten years,” he said. “Journals and clothing are being produced there, now. You won’t have to travel all the way to Earth to bring supplies here to Adonia or anywhere else. It’s my gift to you. I knew that one day this would happen,” he said as he placed his hand on her pregnant belly, “so I planned ahead for it. I knew you wouldn’t want to leave our child for very long.”

She hadn’t been to
Azias since the time when she first left Earth to live there. She wondered what else he’d built over all these years. “What makes you think I will leave our child at all?” she said. “I’m staying here, Timothy. I’m done with your game. My efforts haven’t been enough to stop you. I give up, I quit, I’m done. My life is here now.”

“You’ve told me that before.” He pushed a bit of
her hair back behind her ear and kissed her on the cheek.

She turned away. “Please don’t touch me anymore,” she said. “
Let me live here and raise this child in peace.” She wasn’t sure if she was commanding or pleading.

Timothy sighed. “Must I walk five more miles in this blizzard to
night, or will you allow me to stay here until morning?”

“You can stay,” she said, “but not beside me.” She went back into the bedroom and closed the door.

The blizzard lasted three days and the two of them were stuck in the house together until it was over. Timothy brought meals to her in bed and asked her often if there was anything he could do to make her more comfortable. At first she found it annoying, but by the third day she started to enjoy the pampering, and that night, when he tucked her into bed and kissed her forehead, she started to sob.

Her tears startled him. “Why are you crying?”

“Because this isn’t real. None of it is real. It’s all an act you’re putting on, and I wish you would stop, but you won’t stop because you don’t care if you play with my heart.”

“It’s not an act,
Etana.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You will.” He ran his hand over her cheek and dried a few tears from her face before kissing her forehead once more and leaving the room.

The snow was deep outside, too deep for him to realistically walk the five miles back to the space center, so he ended up staying a while longer, and he was there when she went into labor.

At first she demanded that he leave her in peace, but as the contractions grew stronger she grew fearful and called him back into the room. She kneeled on the floor and held herself up by leaning on the bed. She asked him to rub her back where the contractions were hurting her and sent him a few times to bring her a glass of water. He brought towels and laid them out beneath her and around her to catch any blood or fluid that came out with the baby, and she guided his hand with hers to show him how she wanted her belly to be rubbed. She closed her eyes and shut out who he was so she could accept his help without being upset by it. His identity didn’t matter tonight—the only thing that mattered now was that this baby was born safely. The fact that it was Timothy helping her was but a trivial detail.