Shadowbridge (17 page)

She spent the rest of the afternoon out of sight in the boathouse.

 . . . . . 

At dinner she gauged Gousier’s mood before appearing, but he was ebullient and carefree. He didn’t know yet. “What a perfect day this was. Business was never better,” he said, adding, “I could have sold twice the fish I had”—which was as close as he came to upbraiding Leodora for what he perceived as her dereliction that morning. He rambled on about the stall, a wealthy family throwing a party who had taken every shellfish he had. He used the idea of a family to lead in to his delight with the village and how exciting it was going to be when they were united with Tenikemac in a “great big family.” Obviously, he hadn’t visited before coming to dinner, and with luck he wouldn’t have reason to before tomorrow. One more day was all she needed.

While her uncle ate and grunted and babbled this way and that, Leodora experienced once again the recognition that she was doing something for the last time. With a focused inner quiet, she gazed around the room, burning each detail in her mind—the horizontal lines of the reeds that composed the walls; the rough plankings underfoot; the blue-dyed, frayed mat by the door; the fish oil lamps with their curlicue handles of carved bone. And beside her, Dymphana. She saw her aunt detailed in guilt: brittle, thinning hair shot through everywhere with strands of gray; a face wrecked and ravaged time and again by a useless sagacity she wasn’t allowed to express against Gousier’s pigheaded presumptions and temper. She was tied to him forever and had no idea that Leodora might not be. It was their lot; escape was unimaginable—and wasn’t that implicit even in the way Dymphana told her of her mother? Leandra, who escaped to nothing. To doom. It had been a cautionary tale as much as anything else. Gousier imposed the limits, and the women must do the best they could within those limits. Defiance destroyed you.

Eventually Dymphana sensed her stare. While Gousier babbled, their gazes met, and for a heartbeat Leodora thought her aunt must see her plans as if painted upon her face the way wedding blessings would have been this time tomorrow. But Dymphana read something else in the look, smiled a worried, empathetic smile, and then pretended again to be attentive to Gousier’s chatter.

 . . . . . 

Later the two women carried the wooden bowls and utensils down to the water’s edge to rinse them. The moons were up and bright. The sea was calm. To the north the bridge spans glittered distantly their bejeweled solicitation. Emotion boiled up in Leodora. She found herself hugging her aunt and saying what she had fought not to say: “I love you, Dymphana. I’m sorry I have to go.” Horrified by her own confession, she could only wait for her aunt to destroy her.

Dymphana stroked her hair and said, “My sweet girl, it’s all right. You won’t be far. We’ll still have time together. And maybe…maybe it won’t be so bad.” In the midst of her reassurances she began to cry. Soon it was both of them in the throes of miscommunicated despair. Leodora couldn’t stand the lie—this was worse than the confession. Another moment and the truth would explode out of her. She broke away and ran before she could confess everything she intended.

Outside the boathouse she wept awhile longer. The tears now were for the future, for the pain Dymphana would endure. Gousier would take out his anger on her just as Soter had said. There would be no one else left to hurt.

Finally she wiped her eyes and, snuffling, went inside, climbing the stairs. In her grief she failed to appreciate that a candle was already burning in her garret. She was almost at the top before she realized, and by then she could see him lying on her bed as if with eternal patience.

Tastion. Naked.

When he saw her face, however, his smile of feigned nonchalance went flat. He sat up, covering himself. “Gods, he spoke to Agmeon. He’s beat you, hasn’t he?”

She shook her head, unable to communicate the events in any sensible way. He held out his hand. She didn’t take it. Remained where she was.

Finally, as if she had asked a question, he said, “I came here to see you because…To tell you that the ceremony’s off. They’re proscribing any contact with you.”

She was hardly surprised.

“Do you understand that I won’t be able to come here again for a while? Maybe a long time? Not until things settle down. Why did you do that—ride a dragon? You could have done almost anything else and it would have been better. Parading naked through the long house is nowhere near as bad, and it’s bad enough. How in the ocean did you get a dragon to take you?”

Unable to explain, she didn’t try. She said, “I won’t marry Koombrun.”

He smiled. “I knew that. And whatever happens, you’ll still be mine.”

“Yours?” After the emotional turmoil she had just put aside, his presumption was more than she could tolerate. “When have I ever
been
yours? When could I ever
be
yours? If I’m yours, Tastion, let’s go now and tell the village. Your father. Come with me, right now.” She offered her hand. “Come. Come on. Let’s see Agmeon for his blessing. You can go just as you are. It’ll be perfect.”

It was his turn not to move. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? Just being seen with you right now would be punishable by drowning. And still, here I am. But why do you want to reject what we do have? What we’ve had all along. You act as if it’s all been just me. But it hasn’t been just me. It hasn’t only been what I want. Or were you not there?”

“It’s too late for this argument.”

He leaned forward and tried to reach her, but she shifted back. He would have had to stand up to touch her. “How can it be too late? You’re not marrying him. This will blow over in time. They’ll forget, or at least they’ll get used to—”

“I’m leaving.”

“You keep saying that, and I don’t believe you.”

“I’m leaving Bouyan, Tastion.”

He snorted as if this were an impossibility. “Going to ride off on a sea dragon? Agmeon can’t talk about anything else. And no one knows the dragon you were on—no one’s ever seen it before. Or since.”

“It was almost a baby, not grown up.”

Tastion shook his head. “There aren’t any babies in our herd this season. So you don’t know where it came from, either. How can you expect it to come back and take you where you want to go. Believe me—dragons are headstrong. As moody as people.”

“Tastion—”

“Look, Lea, everything will return to normal for us in a few months, at most a year. You won’t ever have to marry Koombrun, you’ll stay where you are, and we’ll meet in secret like always.”

She shook her head. How could he be so obstinate, so blind? He was no different than Gousier: His mind was made up regardless of the facts. “You should get dressed.”

For a moment he sat in contemplation. Then he pulled his clothes from beneath the bed. He got up, standing brazenly in front of her in a state of half arousal. He sorted through the clothes as if unable to identify his trousers, offering her one last opportunity to have him. She held her position. When it became obvious that she couldn’t be coerced or enticed, Tastion shrugged as if to say it didn’t matter, and began to dress.

She saw as if for the first time his true nature. Although she had always desired to ride Tastion as fearlessly as she had the dragon, she would not succumb. She would have left it at that and let him go; but then, in a way that all but dared her to disagree, he muttered again, “You’ll still be mine.” His shirt was half over his head. Leodora grabbed his hand and yanked him to the steps.

“Wait, I don’t have my shirt on, Lea!”

She ignored his complaint, hauled him stumbling down the steps and through the dark below. “Lea!” he said again, but laughingly this time. He thought he had won.

Outside, on a path she could have found even on a moonless night, she led him into the deeper jungle. But she kept going, passing by their hidden spot, dragging him on. He was silent now, and even his hand in hers betrayed his tension behind her.

When she stopped, the tower of Ningle loomed overhead. Lights sprinkled on either side of it, a coruscation on the night sky, a glow suggesting lines and forms, solidity out of nothingness.

Leodora began to climb the stone steps. She still had hold of him, and he stumbled up onto the first step after her. “What are you doing? Stop it.”

She paused and looked down at him. “Climb up with me.”

His eyes traveled beyond and then back to her. He craned his neck to see if they’d been followed. “Do you want me to be banished? I can’t do this. You know I can’t—”

“It’s forbidden. Proscribed. Like me. Coming to my room and offering yourself to me naked is a crime, but you can do
that.
Why can’t you do this?”

“That’s different.”

“Because you want to do it. I want you to do this, but this you can’t—because you don’t want to.” She climbed another step and he tore free of her grasp. She let him go.

He slid back down a step. “Stop.”

“This is where I’m going.”

He looked at the tower, at the sky. He tried to laugh at her. “Don’t be stupid. You don’t know any more about up there than I do. You don’t know anything except stories.”

“It’s all I need to know. I can be whoever I want. You already are who you’ll always be. When my life moves forward, you won’t be part of it any longer.”

“But, Lea,” he tried desperately, “you don’t have to go now. Don’t you see? The marriage is finished. You’ve destroyed it.”

“Ah, and you don’t want to give up until you’ve had me completely. What you really want to say is that you’d have me remain on Bouyan for your pleasure.”

“And is that so awful?”

“Not for you. For you it’s idyllic. Just what you want. You ride out every morning, come back in the evening, drink and laugh with your friends, and then creep off to your kept whore. Of course you won’t be beaten to death on the morrow, either, or drowned if caught.” She climbed down past him and started back along the path. She heard him come crashing through the underbrush after her.

“It was what you wanted, too.”

She stiffened. Then she nodded. “Yes, you’re right, Tastion. It was what I once wanted, too. But it’s not what I want anymore.” She set off again. Soon he closed the gap between them again.

“I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them and they’ll keep you from leaving.”

She stopped so fast that he ran into her. She turned. In the shadows he might have been simpering, showing her how clever he was—she couldn’t be certain. She didn’t have to see his face. He had just told her what she had meant to him. They had both been teasing arousal from each other for so long, but the difference she saw now was that she might actually have loved him.

“Tell them, then,” she said. “Tell Agmeon, tell the elders. Be sure and tell them the means by which you learned it, and how many other nights we’ve spent together. Tell them everything we’ve nearly done and everything you want to do. All you’ll do is bring the stars down upon your head, as well.”

Quickly he changed tack. “I’ll tell Gousier.”

Fear knifed her belly. Everything she had ever felt for or shared with Tastion evaporated. She took a step and he moved to block her. She kept coming nevertheless, impelling him backward by force of will until his heel caught against a root and he fell. He tried to grab her as he toppled, but she dodged his fingers and kept going. She expected to hear him shout his threat again, but there was silence behind her.

Where the paths branched, she turned left and went to Soter’s.

Oil lamps burned brightly within his hut. She stopped in the doorway.

One of the puppet cases stood open in the center of the room. All the puppets lay in a heap beside it, a congeries of articulated limbs and rods. From the rear Soter emerged, his eyes sparkling in the oil light, a smile on his lips at the sight of her. He looked uncommonly sober.

“Come see,” he urged. She crossed the room. “You see how the case is made?” He leaned over it and found a small black ribbon in its depths, which he ceremoniously pulled. What appeared to be the bottom of the case rose up like the trapdoor to her garret room.

“Extra compartments,” he said. “We put our belongings in this one, beneath the puppets. The other’s bigger, deeper. Your father used it for whatever came along. If pockets were picked and the boodle found its way to us, in it went. The moneys collected during performances, too. It pays to be careful on the spans. He was doing very well, and thieves lurked everywhere, in the most unexpected guises. That’s something to remember about the spans and spirals: You can be as intimate as you like with someone and the next thing, they turn on you.”

“Yes, they do, don’t they?” Through her fresh bitterness her thoughts were already leaping ahead, in another direction. “The other case is a little larger.”

“It is, yes. Like a coffin, big enough almost. Bardsham managed to fill it, though. We once carried a young…never mind.”

She hadn’t heard him. She was regarding the larger undaya case. “Do you believe in coincidence, Soter? Or do you think that some things just happen to take place at the right moment?”

He stared at her in perplexity.

“We need to take everything out of the case,” she told him, “all the puppets. I need it.”

“But I just packed it.”

She started past him, and he hurried after her, around her, muttering, “All right, all right.” He took hold of the case before she could and dragged it out of the small back room. Unfastening the lid, he carefully began removing the puppets. “They’re in proper order, be careful,” he advised when she reached in, too. Piled on the floor, there were so many, she couldn’t believe she had tried every one. Soter lifted the false bottom. “You don’t want to put anything heavy in here, you know. These cases will wear you down. In the morning they’re hardly an inconvenience, but you haul one along till sunset, and you won’t think you’ll ever stand up straight again.”

“It isn’t heavy, what I have in mind. It’s light as air.”

He dropped the bottom back into place. “Well, I hope it’s important. We can’t have anything frivolous on this escapade.” She closed the case and carried it out, leaving him bewildered between the puppet piles.