Four fingers, one thumb, her grip tight. Her wedding brand pressed into his flesh, reminding him of metal.
"I'm fine," he said. His voice was loud in the darkness of the bedroom, the shadows cloying in corners. "It's nothing."
She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she said: "What was it about?"
Their silence had a texture now. When he didn't respond, the tip of her finger traced its way down his own, down to the canyon inbetween thumb and knuckle to rest there. Hooked it around. It was getting to the disconcerting point that, in the darkness, he knew where she was: could see with the torch flash of memory where her chin would come down to its stubborn point, the mouth that she painted red because it was a little too pale for beauty. Red lipstick or pink gloss, smelling like artificial strawberries. No ******** strawberries that grew in a garden anyway. The curve of her cheekbone, the sweep of her eyelashes. The only other person he'd slept next to in his life had curled up in a fetal position at the small of his back, one hand reached over to the knife on his hip in case they both had to draw it --
Ursula said, lightly, "I married your dreams too."
"I dreamt of waking up."
She didn't laugh. (She had every goddamn right to, but -- ) Instead, she snuggled herself just about into his armpit, rested her head on the pillow, and said: "You don't regret that, do you?"
"No -- " He didn't. He really didn't. Words were unfindable, he had never been that kind of explorer. "Look: I'm not somebody who ******** regrets being alive, Ursula. I don't regret a thing. I don't regret a goddamned thing."
"You don't regret me yet."
It was phrased as a joke, but when Ursula said things like that it was always tinged with a terrible kind of longing that had nothing to do with Beryl or the Earth or the Dark Kingdom: he could see her worry now, and for some reason it always made him deeply sad. "I don't do things I regret."
Which was also a lie, but an acceptable one: I don't regret you, said his hand, and it wrapped around her fingers. I don't regret.
His first Captain fell asleep much quicker than he did after that, which gave him time. He put his coat around them as she failed to wake, breathing heavily in the only way he did regret (she breathed too loud when she slept: she claimed he made slurping noises when he drank, so that probably balanced, didn't it) and tucking her into the lining, closing his eyes so that he could remember right down to the exact point --
*
-- Ursula Killingworth woke up on a mountain.
She woke up on a mountain with her face squashed into her husband's chest, which was more acceptable than waking up abandoned on a mountain, shuddering down beneath the covers as a chill breeze tickled her forehead. She actually accepted this and went back to sleep for ten minutes, but those ten minutes were ones of sleepy, dawning realisation. Wherever they were, the morning was too thin and grey to really illuminate the misty landscape, but they were lying on the grass staring out at a rocky, love-abandoned vista below them, the trees sticking out like spears thrust into the hard soil, and every star lit up in the pale morning sky as though they'd been given extra leave to do so. You didn't see too many stars in Destiny City any more.
"Welcome to your honeymoon," said Khalid, without bothering to open his eyes.
She didn't say a thing. Except, "What about New York?"
"Boring."
"France?"
"Fussy."
"Las Vegas?"
"Go back to goddamned sleep," he said.
Some women didn't get Seven Goddamned Years In Tibet after they were married. Ursula was being forced to admit she was not one of them.
"Don't wanna," came the childish reply, muffled by his chest as she dipped her head down to snuggle against him. He'd learned quickly enough that she was a notorious snuggler. And a cover hog. Even now, she was pulling on the jacket that covered them both, burrowing herself deeper into the warmth of her makeshift cocoon of jacket and husband.
Despite the fact she was now apparently laying on grass (grass??) and not in a fancy four-star hotel with a balcony that overlooked the Eiffel Tower, she couldn't help but smile. She hadn't expected a honeymoon. Hell, she hadn't expected he knew what a honeymoon was. Perhaps the Google was more of a godsend than she originally thought it to be?
"So, are you going tell me where we are, or do I have to guess?"
Being the religious Brad Pitt fan that she was, she'd seen Seven Years in Tibet. But as there were no monks or Dalai Lamas wandering about (that she saw) nor was Khalid's hair bleach blonde (thankfully), she was fairly certain they were not in Tibet.
Maybe.
Yawning, cold feet moved to rub against his, warming themselves up as she disregarded the notion that perhaps he wasn't keen on having freezing toes rubbing against his legs. She thought about making a crack over how he'd better not be taking her to meet his mother (mostly because the Hillworth boys always said Killingworth had been raised by rabid grizzlies.... and now they were currently in the mountains...) but she thought better of it. Mother jokes only worked when your husband didn't happen to be over a thousand years old. And, for all she knew, he could very well have taken her to where his mother was buried. With Khalid, she wasn't sure what to expect out of a honeymoon.
"Sure ain't Kansas anymore, at least."
He wrapped her up in the coat and slithered away, although she kept on making discontented noises and eventually disappeared entirely into the canvas. This prompted a minor squabble -- that's cold, she complained. Your feet are cold, he said, but his fingers dragged down her calf before he wrapped her back up again. There were the noises of him moving around, dragging things -- when she peeked out of the coat there he was, trying to coax a fire like a boy scout using two sticks, carefully nudging sparks into a fine nest of kindling.
"Kansas is ******** flat," he said, completely apropos of nothing.
"Do we play Twenty Questions, darling?"
Silence again. The sparks took, and he cupped one hand over his mouth and blew -- she watched as it took, the little soft nests of shavings glowing orange in the half-dark. His sunglasses were abandoned, his dreadlocks tied back over his shoulders, but away from Hillworth and away from Destiny City he looked -- more at ease, maybe, she knew the shape of his face and the shape of his stress. He kept feeding the fire little sticks, and then he looked at her and she looked back and they were weirdly content to just do that.
Eventually he turned away, looked over the vista -- "I was born about a mile away from here," he said. Oh, God. "Down in the valley." Khalid was beating the dust off his trousers, rocking back on his heels. "About -- longer ago than I care to ******** name." He then mentioned a name they did not talk about in a context they did not talk about: " -- but we were both born in the valley."
He didn't sound sad. Her husband was busy stoking the fire still, with more patience than you'd expect until you remembered that he was probably dying for a cigarette. "Wasn't Jefferson County, Alabama."
She was silent at that. He said, "Cooper Green Mercy Hospital."
After a moment more, she finally began to stir from beneath the make-shift blanket, rising slowly from the ground. It finally occurred to her that he must have seen it while registering for their marriage license, on her birth certificate - one of the few lingering bits of evidence that betrayed her origin. As far as she was concerned, her life had begun the moment she'd stepped off of the Greyhound bus that had delivered her to Destiny City and not a moment before. The twenty years prior to that were nothing more than a bad dream that would come back to haunt her on occasion.
Adjusting the jacket over her shoulders, bare feet padded their way across the grass, closing in the short gap that lay between the couple. She hunched down, mimicking his pose as she moved in to warm herself by the fire and glance over to where he was staring.
"It's hard to believe there are still places like this around," she admitted softly. Where 'like this' even was, she still hadn't the faintest idea, but the only times she'd ever seen anything nearly as serene and untouched had been in movies like Lord of the Rings. Land was an asset, a commodity, even. More land meant more businesses, more cities and homes and shopping malls. She bet there wasn't even a Wal-Mart within miles, judging by the quiet peacefulness that surrounded them. Nature had never been a close friend to Ursula throughout any of her life, but even she could appreciate the environment around her. And appreciated it even more knowing its history."It's beautiful."
And then: "If you had taken me back to Jefferson for our honeymoon, I think I would have had to hurt you."
While she could smile at the tease, there remained an ugly truth between them. Despite the fact they were now husband and wife, there was still so little that either of them knew of the other's past. He wasn't one to talk, she wasn't one to tell. It made her sad, realizing there was still so much she didn't know about him, so much she wanted to know. But then again, why should he divulge anything if she in return wasn't willing to talk, herself?
Eyebrows furrowed, and she unconsciously began to chew on her bottom lip, her mind revisiting a world she never cared to look back into. Finally, she found words. Nothing momentous, nothing awe-inspiring as the world he was introducing her to, but they were words all the same.
"I was a cheerleader, back in high school at Jefferson. Short skirt, pony tail. Sometimes even pigtails." She was staring into the fire, the flames lapping at the air as the wood beneath it burned, "Won Homecoming Queen my Senior year. Lost the Prom Queen title to Ginny Burbank, but we all knew it was because she slept with half of the football team."
There was a pause, and then, "Dropped out of high school to become a waitress for a couple years to save money. That's where Ilearned how to make coffee."
Her head turned, and she looked over at his profile, giving him a weak smile. "What about you? Do anything exciting around here as a kid other than ride dinosaurs?"
Khalid was silent still at that. The fire crackled, offering paltry warmth, but better than that it offered light: light to see the mist and fog by, the dark trees and the enormous mountain ranges capped with snow like icing sugar. "Grew what we could," he said eventually. "Raised animals. Grew more. Heard -- stories." Nary a swearword in sight. "It was highland country, farmer country. We sowed, we reaped. Wasn't fertile. Did what you could, down in the valley." Short and clipped, too. "We didn't read. Didn't paint. Didn't map the stars, or -- this place was a rock."
Charming.
"Who were you saving money for?"
There was silence again, between them. From far-off a bird called. She shifted slightly, moving to sit down as her hands began to rub together. The morning air was chilly, but nothing she couldn't tolerate. At least, now that there was a fire before her and a jacket on her shoulders. She preferred the warmth and comfort of her husband, but she would take what she could get.
It was hard to imagine Gunn Killingworth being anyone but Gunn Killingworth, but over the past few months, pieces of the past had slowly begun to reveal themselves. His name. His age. Now, his former home. He would never realize how much this trip meant to her - hell, even the curt comments were making her smile. He never opened up, but he was opening up and was doing it for her.
Who?
The question repeated itself in her head, and she moved to brush a mass of tangled morning hair behind her ear as she chuckled. "Me, just me. I was saving money so I could save myself. Save myself from a world I hated, a world I wanted nothing more than to get away from."
Eyes drifted over towards the fire and she watched as a twig cracked and melted away in the flames. A small spark, then it was gone.
"You wanted to get out of here too, didn't you?"
One hand moved over and took hold of his. Her smaller fingers entwined with his larger ones, and she brought both hands back towards her. Her head bent down, and slowly, gently, she began to softly kiss each finger. Then the hands were raised even higher, and she moved to rest her cheek against the back of his, eyes closed. Her voice was quieter than before, but her words remained clear. "We both escaped. We started new lives. We're different people now, but for the better. We're better now."
Eyes opening, they stared up at him, the smile growing wider as even more birds in the distance began to sing their morning songs in unison. "Thank you, Khalid."
It was an odd morning. She was a wife, she kept on reminding herself. She was finally a wife. She had pored over every single bridal magazine from BRIDE & GROOM to WEDDING! in her hours at the crummy reception desk at Hillworth Grammar School, piles and piles of Vera Wang white gowns and Chantal Mallett accessories. FAQS about how to have a stress-free honeymoon. Hints and tips for what to pack into your handbag. All of these came back to her as she watched her husband tramp out of the bushes with a handful of tiny bird's eggs, digging them into the ashes with a stick as he crouched over the fire -- remember, he'll appreciate you always carrying a fresh pack of band-aids. She ate the eggs of an unknown bird with the shell burning her fingers, picking bits and pieces out as she dug out the yolk, as Khalid watched her and peeled his own. At least he wasn't the type of husband to expect his wife to always peel his anonymous eggs. She hadn't brought any band-aids, either.
When their ersatz breakfast was done they went walking, the mist rising away with the morning sun as he took her over the valley. Time had forgotten it. So had National Geographic. She had never seen any place more lonely or isolated or untouched -- the only hint that anyone had ever lived there were crumbling masses of rock, old flattened areas that Khalid walked around and around in, high up on the hills a couple of -- yaks? Yak-like animals? -- that watched them unperturbed as they chewed their cud. Khalid pointed out the world's most boring sightseeing areas with what she imagined was a vaguely nostalgic eye -- a curt, this was our village, another curt this was where we kept goats. It had all been absorbed by time.
They walked hand-in-hand. That was something.
It was only when she was perched on a rock and he was walking the perimeter of a field that had some horrible crop -- there were so many horrible, overgrown, tree-ridden crop fields -- that he said to her: "Do you know how long it took me to get there, when I left?" She didn't know. "A year. He and I walked for a ******** year."
She was silent at that. It was odd, trying to envision a world without modern transportation. A world without cabs or buses or even carpooling mini-vans. Already, the bottoms of her feet had grown tired from their walking, the twigs and the rocks scattered among the grass having cut and dirtied the soles that were used to high heels and soft carpet. The thought of walking for days, much less an entire year, seemed almost incomprehensible. And he had done it with a child at his side.
Watching him from the rock, she adjusted herself to sitting indian-style, reaching down to pick away at a small pebble that had managed to lodge itself uncomfortably into her skin. He seemed at peace here, which was odd in comparison to his normal stressed out self. No pulsing veins, no yelling, no hair pulling or lectures. Just quiet peacefulness as he leaned down and picked away absentmindedly at a few overgrown weeds. There was a time when this man was nothing but a farmer, this General-King who had single-handedly recruited an entire army to fight for their shared beliefs. A farmer who raised crops, cared for livestock - he probably even knew how to milk a cow. THAT was a thought in itself, the great and powerful General-King Charonite, milking cows or helping raise goats and baby animals. She smiled at the thought. This was an entirely different side of him that she'd never seen before, a side she found surprisingly endearing, for being such a high-maintenance city girl herself. It was like Green Acres, with Gucci and dreadlocks.
And she loved him all the more for it.
They walked. He showed her the lay of the land. Her honeymoon was mostly spent picking her way over mountain steppes and -- memorably -- blistering the hell out of her feet, wherein he would spend ten minutes carefully washing her bleeding toes. If you had told her a long time ago that the General-King would end up crouched over her legs at night thumbing between her perfectly ruined pedicure with uncharacteristic gentleness, even she would have thought she was dreaming. She had never let herself dream like that. Her dreams had been enforcedly ridiculous to get her through her lunch breaks before Drew could be relied upon to stop and bring her a diet Coke.
But he kissed her, just often stopped her and put his hand in her hair and kissed her like it was punctuation before he ate up the ground with big silent strides. It was only then it sunk in that she was married.
*
At nights, the General-King would get impatient with the advent of one o'clock in the morning because he had somewhere to go home to. This was the first time that he realised he was married, apart from a dislocated sense that upon his isolated rock had come a settler whose presence he was bewildered at as she built her church: she built it there, on his rock. On his sand. He was still bewildered.
Captain Tanzanite knew better than to let a smirk tug at the corners of her mouth. His Captains had suddenly become thin on the ground and obsessed with their work by the time he reached out of his fug to attack the problem of Wiseman, which was a problem you could not attack except with suspicion and vigilance. He hated vigilance. Vigilance, he used to say, was a waiting-for-attack vulnerability --
Guarding your post is vulnerability, had whispered the old ghost with the cold sword. Our role is weakness above all. We can be strong once we realise how we are weak. Old ghosts. He had thought himself laid upon their grave.
But his men were suddenly busy in a way he appreciated because something had sunk in, Tanzanite riding the wave of her successes. Vivianite was silent and slightly sour-mouthed and nowhere near the problem that Nova and Tisiphone had originally been, Tisiphone who still existed (for now) as his ersatz niece -- when he went out he took Tanzanite or Linarite or Hematite. When he went out otherwise he went alone, his objects in motion: General-King Charonite knew how to destroy roots.
Ursula had the sniffles. She had sat on the couch having a temperature and watching episodes of Ugly Betty (what the ******** was that show even about) as she drank mugs of ginger tea and re-did her nails. She picked at her food. He assumed she was sick of take-out. They'd made a domestic purchase of a toasted sandwich maker that she'd been thrilled at and they lived on toasted sandwiches a lot of the time, and overall he was still bleakly suspicious that owning a toasted sandwich maker somehow dulled his killer instinct. It was a listless superstition.
"Go to a ******** doctor," he said, lounging in the doorway of the bathroom. Her sniffles had turned into flu had turned into a stomach bug. Charonite added, redundantly: "You're sick."
