Allie's War Season One (117 page)

We circled the property from his memory of the boundaries, then rode along the river for a few miles until we reached an area with more trees and wider pools. Fording in a calmer spot, we took the horses up into the foothills before coming back to the shade by the water.

The next day, we followed the river upstream instead, stopping after hours spent past the valley and into the mountains, walking the horses up the river itself, through a narrow canyon surrounded by sheer cliffs. Breathtakingly beautiful, the ride that day had mostly been to look at scenery, although we stopped for awhile then, too, once we found a spot with enough flat land and trees to make a good picnic area.

The third day, we went straight for the mountains themselves, taking the horses up a steep, winding trail until we found an even bigger waterfall than the one we’d passed on the way to the cabin. We hung out there most of the afternoon, alternately hiking, sitting around, talking...even playing around with some sight stuff.

Each day, he brought food. I didn’t know if he was getting up early to cook or what, but the food supply seemed endless.

I went swimming each of the three days, too, despite the freezing cold water. I swam in the river itself, not too far from where he lay on the grass, trying to nap while the horses grazed...and even in the pool formed by the waterfall higher up on the opposite end of the valley.

I didn’t know if he was still on that kick, wanting us to get to know one another without sex, but I really saw the logic to it it if he was by day two. We’d rarely had time together when we weren’t in some kind of crisis...people trying to kill us, time pressures of whatever kind, him stuck in the role of bodyguard or teacher, me depressed about my mom or the new life I blamed him for, at least in part...or just the usual separation, fear, misunderstanding-one-another’s-intentions crap that seemed to dog us from the beginning.

I found him easy to be with when neither of us was trying to communicate anything dire. We were both a little overly cautious maybe, and we both probably looked at one another longer when the other one wasn’t paying attention. But other than that, yeah...it was easy.

I’d forgotten he had a good sense of humor.

The white horse had been his idea of a joke, of course. The whole “white horse of the Apocalypse” thing and the Bridge...apparently he’d been up half the night chasing horses because the white one had been so difficult to catch.

Still, he’d experimented with riding it for a few hours to make sure it was safe, so when he’d offered that one for me to ride, he’d been fairly confident, he’d said, that he wasn’t actually putting me in danger.

After the first hour, I’d nicknamed the horse “Bait and Switch.”

He seemed like the easygoing one at first, maybe because he didn’t fidget or startle as much as the roan, and didn’t react at all when I first climbed up on him. Once we left the fenced area by the house, however, he had a tendency to take off at a gallop without warning, and stop on a dime...also without warning.

The third time he did it, I went flying over his head and landed in a heap on the grass.

Once he realized I wasn’t hurt, I saw Revik fighting to suppress a smile as I cursed at the horse while it cantered around us in a circle, tossing its head and mouth with the metal bit. Revik offered to ride the white one after that.

I tried again, weathering a few more of Bait’s attempts to unseat me, but after he dumped me a second time, I gave in, giving Revik a turn.

After he’d gone flying over the white mane to meet a different piece of field, I watched him tumble into a seated position as Bait galloped off, kicking out his heels.

Riding up to him on the red-faced horse, I leaned over the pale neck to tell Revik, who was still sitting on the ground, that I’d renamed Bait yet again...and that he would henceforth be known as “Karma.”

That actually made him laugh out loud.

Things stayed easy at the house. By the third night, we got into a rhythm. We took turns showering, changed clothes, ate. Then I sat cross-legged in front of the fire while he leaned against the couch with a notebook and a pen. After a few hours of watching him sketch that first night, I finally asked him what he was doing.

He’d been vague about the specifics...something about mapping a Barrier structure he’d seen. He’d shown me how he did it, though, explaining his system of using different patterns in the lines to demonstrate where the structures stood in relation to one another dimensionally. Borrowing his sight, I could see how he was translating from the Barrier to a two-dimensional diagram...it was actually pretty neat. The structures even looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen them.

Things only got weird when we went to bed, and then mostly because each night I’d try to get him to trade me for the couch. Each night, he refused.

I slept fine that second night. Even after the third, I woke up feeling good.

Well after midnight on the fourth, I was still awake.

The house was warmer, maybe because the weather kept getting warmer, or maybe because he’d turned on the steam heat to test it the night before, while in one of his tinkering moods. In any case, I didn’t need the blanket. Wearing a long, silk, pajama shirt that might have been meant for him, I lay on top of the covers and stared up at the ceiling.

It was dark with the drapes closed, but a swath of moonlight made its way through a crack in the curtains. I distracted myself, finding faces and animals in whorls of plaster and wondering what the stars looked like.

An hour later, I realized I wasn’t going to sleep.

I was in pain.

I’d known that, of course. Suffering from separation pain was hardly noteworthy, though, after months of that...over a year of it, really, if I counted the time on the ship and even before that, in Seattle. It was such a constant in my life by then, it took me awhile longer to realize it was the reason I was still awake.

I wondered if he was sleeping.

Lying there, I tried to ignore the separation pain itself, as per usual, even as I let my mind toy with his offer that first night, and whether he’d meant it when he said it had nothing to do with what Maygar had done. I believed him...or believed that he believed it, anyway...but it made me wonder what he told himself about why he’d changed his mind.

I struggled with the whole pain-light-marriage thing in general though, philosophically at least. It was easy to convince myself that most of our “feelings” were somehow biologically wired, due to the way seers reacted to one another once they’d bonded. I’d been told by a few of them, everyone but Revik himself, really, that it didn’t actually work that way.

In fact, they claimed it was the opposite...that the bonding came out of the feelings. Unlike humans, seers just happened to hardwire those feelings biologically.

Well…more or less.

I knew I didn’t see it quite the way they did, though. Not having been raised seer, there were still gaps in how I viewed some of the bigger differences with human culture and biology.

Most humans viewed seer sexual behavior as animalistic...purely biological, without any real feeling at all. Most didn’t know that seer pairings were, almost without exception, monogamous. They made assumptions based on owned seers, who rarely had the opportunity to take mates, or to be with them if they were unfortunate enough to have been paired prior to being sold.

With Revik and I, it all happened so fast, it was easy to doubt the feelings that rose for me in the wake of the bonding itself.

I was told that happened sometimes too, though…and that it didn’t mean the pairing was a mistake, or “random,” or related somehow to a form of seer sexual frustration...all of which I’d worried about with us, to lesser and greater degrees.

The truth was, as with humans, there was an element to the bond that was unexplainable by the rational mind. It didn’t make it “magic,” but from a seer perspective, it meant that the mind wasn’t always the main driver for couplings of that kind. Nor was the body.

Then again, for seers to relegate the mind to a sort of tool or lesser entity compared to the aleimi or the higher parts of the seer “soul” was second nature.

For me, it was harder.

Neither Revik nor I had mentioned our talk that first night.

He hadn’t kissed me since then, either...or touched me at all really, even to hold my hand. After replaying the conversation in my head, I realized he wouldn’t come near me, not unless I gave him a reasonably clear signal.

Which was fine...and fair enough...except that I was probably the crappiest person on the planet at giving signals.

I could just wait. We’d both tacitly agreed to wait, and it had only been a few days; I should probably just let things play out naturally.

Sooner or later, we’d have to talk about it.

Or, given our past track record...not.

There had been a few tense moments that day. I’d jokingly shoved him on the picnic blanket during lunch, and it nearly turned into a wrestle when he grabbed my arms...right before he abruptly backed off. He reacted when I took down my hair. I felt it before I saw it, and wasn’t even sure I’d read him right until I glanced over and saw his jaw clenched.

He reacted to my announcement that I was going swimming, too.

He was possibly angry about my reaction to his offer...or maybe embarrassed because I’d essentially turned him down. I didn’t know if he got embarrassed about things like that, though. He seemed pretty open about sex in general, with everyone but me anyway.

I got the impression he was still holding on to the Maygar thing. He wasn’t happy that I’d fought him...I definitely picked up on that at least once. I was pretty sure he blamed himself more for what happened after, but he hated that I’d agreed to fight him in the first place.

Hell, we probably needed to fight ourselves...which we’d still never done. Just spar it out until one or both of us cut the crap. Given his record in that area though, it might not be much of a match.

And that brought me back around to his original offer.

Was I being stupid?

It was a one-way ticket, so there was that. But I was pretty sure we’d both already signed on for that part, so waiting a few more weeks wasn’t going to change anything there.

I still didn’t completely trust him. There was that.

But he’d acknowledged that, too, in his way. And I was pretty sure the only thing that would fix that would be time. Truthfully, at that point, I didn’t really think he’d cheat on me...my mind didn’t, anyway, when I reasoned it out. Now that he’d decided to be married, I believed him that the rules had changed for him. He was a seer, after all.

But believing him and trusting him still weren’t fully aligned in my head.

Gritting my teeth, I sat up.

I slid off the edge of the bed before I really thought about what I was doing.

I’d leave myself an out...see if he was awake, ask if he wanted to go look at the stars.

Walking to the door to the other room, I stopped again, second-guessing everything for another few seconds. He’d never buy that. On the other hand, did it matter? I’d seen through his attempts at meeting me halfway, too.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open as softly as I could.

I listened to the quiet. At first I wondered if he’d left again.

Then I heard him breathing.

I couldn’t tell if he was awake, not for sure. His breathing wasn’t exactly regular, but it was heavier than usual, so he was most likely asleep and dreaming. Before I could talk myself out of it, I crossed the rug-covered floor in my bare feet, telling myself I was just going to look. If he really was awake, maybe he would want to go outside with me.

Or fight me. Whichever.

But he wasn’t awake. Sprawled on his back, he lay on the couch fully dressed, an arm hooked around the cushion behind his head. An old paperback book lay on the floor by the couch, almost as if it had fallen from his fingers when he dozed off. I glanced at the title, saw that it was some Russian writer, and fiction. He read a lot, as a general rule, but I couldn’t remember ever seeing him read fiction before, not even on the ship.

His face rested against the back cushion, leaving its outline in profile. His other hand lay on his stomach. He didn’t look wholly relaxed, though; whatever he was dreaming about, it left a vague tension around his eyes.

The couch was wide, I noticed. Even with him lying flat on his back, I could fit there, next to him. Staring at that foot and a half of fabric, I hesitated. I wondered if he would mind waking up with me next to him.