“We should have crept to your house under cover of darkness.”
“Sooner or later they’d have discovered I was home. We might as well get this whole thing over with.”
She disappointed the folk of Mear later, though, when they demanded that she tell what had happened. “I was kidnapped by brigands, and Zanja found me and saved my life,” she said. “So I’ve learned the value of having a hero or two among my friends. Now are you going to hold me hostage to your good will much longer? Surely you have work to finish, and the day is nearly over.”
The townsfolk dispersed reluctantly, clearly unsatisfied with the two‑sentence tale, but sunset was drawing near and they all knew that Karis had to smoke or die. Karis gravely bid her well‑wishers farewell, and only Zanja knew what the glitter in her eye was all about. At sunset Karis often was overwhelmed by desire for smoke, and by a lingering fear that somehow her miracle of liberation would prove to be illusory. After sunset came the jubilation at seeing the stars, yet again. She had gone through the cycle enough times now that she seemed to be starting to trust the jubilation and to distrust the fear.
Now they stood alone in a surprisingly empty street rimmed by soot‑gray walls. Someone had taken Homely to the common stable; others had carried their gear away. Karis hesitated in the street, as though she had abruptly lost her sense of direction. After a while, Zanja sat down upon a stoop and tightened her bootstraps. When she looked up, Karis was gazing down at her with a curious expression. Zanja looked at her curiously in return.
“You’ve been very patient,” Karis said.
“Actually, the discipline of peaceful waiting is one I never learned to do with grace. Emil is a true master of patience. You should watch him sometime. The contrast will show you how deliberately and awkwardly and unnaturally I wait. We na’Tarweins are notoriously impatient.”
Karis seemed bemused. “But I don’t want you to wait on me, well or badly. Why don’t you just stop doing it?”
Zanja stood up and took hold of Karis by the shirtfront, and dragged her, startled, to the high stone stoop. With Zanja standing on the stoop, she could kiss Karis’s mouth without having to climb her like a tree. Though Karis seemed affrighted, she did not pull away. Instead, in a moment Zanja felt a shudder run through that long frame, and Karis’s fist clenched in the cloth of Zanja’s shirt. She seemed to want to crawl inside Zanja’s very skin. The shirt cloth started to tear. It was Zanja who took a step back, unnerved by the sensation that she had not so much chosen this moment as she had been delivered to it. Karis lost her balance and sat down upon the stoop as though her knees had given out on her. The breeze, cool with the coming evening, inserted a curious finger into the hole in Zanja’s shirt. She and Karis both were breathing as though they had just sprinted up a hill.
“Blessed day,” Karis gasped.
Zanja knelt at her feet and said with mock seriousness, “The Ashawala’i call that feeling ‘being struck by lightning.’ Shall I explain the sensation to you?”
Karis said shakily, “I understand enough.”
Zanja felt the entirety of Karis’s attention focus upon her. She thought of Karis exploring the landscape of her body the way she had been exploring the heath, and her heart began to wobble in her chest. “Would you rather I go back to being awkwardly and unnaturally patient?” she said.
“Could you?” Karis asked, then answered her own question. “No. And if you could, I’d be offended.”
Zanja grinned. “Well then, it’s completely impossible.”
Karis looked away. Her hands clenched each other like shy children before a stranger. “Zanja, it’s not you I’m afraid of. It’s my ghosts.”
“I have my ghosts too. So what?”
“So maybe lovemaking will be an embarrassing, disastrous farce.”
“We’ve survived so much worse than that already.”
Karis looked back at her, stricken.
Zanja said, “Karis, I can always find a way across. It’s my gift.” She gave her a hand, and helped her to her feet. They walked all the way to Lynton and Dominy’s house without saying another word, and without letting go of each other.
*
The delivery of their gear had prematurely announced their homecoming to Lynton and Dominy, and they arrived to find everything in chaos as the two men frantically tried to make Karis’s bed with fresh linens, cook a celebratory dinner, and heat the bathwater, all before sunset. Karis left Zanja to sort things out while she walked off by herself toward the green trees that clustered around a small pond. The sun was nearly down.
Zanja repeatedly explained to the two men that Karis no longer used smoke and there was no rush, but nothing she said seemed likely to overcome their disbelief. Finally, to calm them down she took over some of the work. She had never made a bed in her life; but it proved, as she suspected, to be largely a matter of common sense. She took out Karis’s two cleanest shirts and hung one to warm by the fire. The second she took with her to the bathhouse, where the washkettle had come to a boil. Buckets of cold water stood waiting to mix in the tub with the hot. There was a crock of herbs and flowers to sprinkle in the water, a crock of soft lye soap, and a bath brush worn soft with use.
Clean, dressed only in Karis’s shirt, which hung to her calves, carrying her knife belt, she walked back to the house and let herself quietly into Karis’s room by way of the garden. It was full dark by then, and she could hear Karis’s voice in the kitchen. Zanja built up the fire in the fireplace and combed her hair with her fingers as it dried. She supposed she was missing dinner.
She fell asleep in the warmth of the fire, and when she awoke, Karis stood nearby, buttoning her clean shirt. She had set a burning candle into the chimney nook, and gazed down at Zanja with her eyes set into dark hollows by the angle of the light.
Ordinary and commonplace words could have filled the silence, but Zanja did not move or speak.
Karis knelt beside the settle and lifted a hand to awkwardly brush the loose hair out of Zanja’s eyes. Her fingers were steady, but her agitated breathing revealed how close her ghosts hovered. She smelled unlike herself: of soap and herbs rather than of smoke and old sweat. She abruptly leaned over and kissed Zanja’s mouth. Then she tried to pull away but Zanja couldn’t seem to release her. Karis easily could have broken free but she held herself still, trembling like a wild horse trapped into the traces. Carefully, Zanja let go of her. She told herself she could wait as long as she needed to, and she could do it gracefully, without resentment. She was a katrim. She could sleep on the hearth in the kitchen and she wouldn’t blame Karis, and she wouldn’t complain.
She sat up, rubbing her face. Karis sat down beside her on the settle and said miserably, “You deserve–”
Zanja crawled into Karis’s lap. Though startled, Karis moved instinctively to embrace her, to accommodate the weight of her. Zanja was so much smaller than she, a tribeless mountain woman lost here in the plains, ready to die of loneliness. Holding her like this, would Karis remember the bitter winter day she rescued her? There had been no coercion when Karis gave her back her life, just generosity: unearned, unsought, utterly unexpected. Zanja felt Karis’s hand in her hair, and shut her eyes and thought of Karis stroking the heath’s soft grasses. She willed herself to be as passive, and as vital, as the heath had been.
She shuddered alert when she heard Karis’s breathing change. Karis’s big, gentle hand had found its way to Zanja’s face and now she began kissing her, and Zanja made her hands lie still. Time carried them upon a quiet river. The fire died down and the candle guttered in its socket. The moon rose and cast a modest light through the garden door’s glass windows. Zanja tasted salt.
She lifted a hand to Karis’s face and found her gasping with surprise, awash in astonished tears. Zanja straddled Karis on her knees and the river took them again and the moonlight faded away. Karis stood up and carried Zanja to the bed. Zanja’s exquisite restraints snapped, and in a matter of moments she ruined both their shirts.