She said, sighing, feeling nothing in his kiss, “I feel like that bush there, killed down to the roots. Let’s hope I’ll grow again in spring too.”
“Should you be out? Damon said you should rest again today.”
“Well, Damon has a bad habit of being right, but I feel like a mushroom in a dark cellar,” Callista said, “it’s so long since I’ve seen the sunlight!” She halted in a patch of sun, savoring the warmth on her face, while Andrew moved along, checking the rows of vegetables and pot-herbs. “I think everything here is still in good order, but I’m not familiar with these. What do you think, Callista?”
She came and knelt beside the low bushes, checking their roots. “I told Father years ago that he should not plant the melons so close to the wall. It’s true that there’s more sunlight here, but there isn’t really enough insulation in a bad storm. This one will die before the fruit is ripe, and if this one survives” — she pointed — “the cold has killed the fruit. The rind may do for pickle, but it will not ripen and must be taken away before it rots.” She called the gardener back to give orders.
“We will have to ask for some more seed from one of the lower lying farms. Perhaps Syrtis has been protected from the storm. They have good fruit trees and we can ask them for some melons, and some slips from their vines. And these should be taken to the kitchens. Some can be cooked before they spoil, others salted and put by.”
As the men went to carry out the orders, Andrew slipped his hand between her arm and her body. She tensed, went rigid, then quick color flooded her face.
“I am sorry. It is only a… a reflex, a habit…”
Back to square one. All the physical reflexes, so slowly and carefully obliterated in the months since their marriage, were returned in full strength. Andrew felt helpless and defeated. He knew that this had been necessary to save her life, but seeing it actually in action again was another shock, and a severe one.
“Don’t look like that,” Callista begged. “It’s only for a little while!”
He sighed. “I know. Leonie warned me of this.” His face tightened, and Callista said edgily, “You really hate her, don’t you?”
“Not her. But I hate what she did to you. I can’t forgive that, and I never will.”
Callista felt a curious inward trembling, a shaking she could never quite control. She kept her voice even with an effort. “Be fair, Andrew. Leonie put no compulsion on me to be Keeper. I chose of my free will. She simply made it possible for me to follow that most difficult of paths. And it was also of my free will that I chose to endure the… the pain of leaving. For you,” she added, looking straight at Andrew.
Andrew sensed that they were perilously close to a quarrel. With one part of himself he craved it, a thunderclap which would clear the air. The thought came unbidden that with Ellemir that would be the way: a short, sharp quarrel, and a reconciliation which would leave them closer than ever.
But he could never do that with Callista. She had learned, with what suffering he could never guess, to keep her emotions deeply guarded, hidden behind an impermeable barrier. He breached that wall at his peril. He might now and then persuade her briefly to lower it or draw it aside, but it would always be there and he could never risk destroying it without destroying Callista too. If she seemed hard and invulnerable on the surface, he sensed that behind this she was more vulnerable than he could ever know.
“I won’t blame her, sweetheart, but I wish she could have been more explicit with us, with both of us.”
That was fair enough, Callista thought, remembering — like a bad dream, like a nightmare! — how she had railed at Leonie in the overworld. Still she felt compelled to say, “Leonie didn’t know.”
Andrew wanted to shout, well, why in hell didn’t she? That’s her business, isn’t it? But he dared not criticize Leonie to her either. His voice was shaking. “What are we to do? Just go on like this, with you unwilling even to touch my hand?”
“Not unwilling,” she said, forcing the words past a lump in hre throat. “I cannot. I thought Damon had explained it to you.”
“And the best Damon could do only made it worse!”
“Not worse,” she said, her eyes blazing again. “He saved my life! Be fair, Andrew!”
Andrew muttered, his eyes lowered, “I’m tired of being fair.”
“I feel that you hate me when you talk like that!”
“Never, Callie,” he said, sobered. “I just feel so damnably helpless. What are we to do?”
She said, lowering her eyes and looking away from him, “I cannot think it is so hard for you. Ellemir—” But she stopped there, and Andrew, overcome with all the old tenderness, reached out for the deeper contact, wanting to reassure her, and himself, that it was still there, that it could endure through the separation. It occurred to him that because of their deep-rooted cultural differences, even telepathy was no guarantee against misunderstanding. But the closeness was there.
They must start from that. Understanding could come later.
He said gently, “You look tired, Callie. You mustn’t overdo on your first day out of bed. Let me take you upstairs.” And when they were alone in their room, he asked gently, “Are you reproaching me for Ellemir, Callista? I thought it was what you wanted.”
“It was,” she said, stammering. “It was only… only… it should make it easier for you to wait. Do we have to talk about it, Andrew?”
He said soberly, “I think we do. That night—” And again she knew just what he meant. For all four of them, for a long time, “that night” would have only one meaning. “Damon said something to me that stuck. All four of us telepaths, he said, and not one of us with enough sense to sit down and make sure we understood each other. Ellemir and I managed to talk about it,” he said, adding with a faint smile, “even though she had to get me half drunk before I could manage to break down and talk honestly to her.”
She said, not looking at him, “It has made it easier for you. Hasn’t it?”
He said quietly, “In a way. But it’s not worth it if it’s made you ashamed to look at me, Callista.”
“Not ashamed.” She managed to raise her eyes. “Not ashamed, no, it is only… I was taught to turn my thoughts elsewhere, so that I would not be… vulnerable. If you want to talk about it” — Evanda and Avarra forbid she should be less honest with him than Ellemir — “I will try. But I am not… not used to such talk or such thoughts and I may not… may not find words easily. If you will… will bear with that… then I will try.”
He saw that she was biting her lip, struggling to force her words through the barrier of her inarticulateness, and felt a deep pity. He considered sparing her this, but he knew that a barrier of silence was the only barrier they might never be able to cross. At all costs — looking at her flushed cheeks and trembling mouth, he knew the cost would be heavy — they must manage to keep a line of communication open.
“Damon said you must never be allowed to feel yourself alone, or think yourself abandoned. I can only wonder, does this hurt you? Or make you feel… abandoned?”
She said, twisting her slender fingers in her lap. “Only if you had truly… truly abandoned me. Stopped caring. Stopped loving me.”
He thought that it was such an intimate thing, it could not help but bring him closer to Ellemir, make even more distance between Callista and himself.
His barriers were down, and Callista, following the thought, flared up in outrage. “Do you want me only because you thought I would give you more pleasure in our bed than my sister?”
He turned a dull red. Well, he had wanted directness; he had it. “God forbid! I never thought of it that way at all. It’s only… if you think I am going to be wanting you any less, I would rather forget the whole thing. Do you really think that because I sleep with Ellemir I have stopped wanting you?”
“No more than I have stopped wanting you, Andrew. But… but now we are equal.”