Windowmirror Chapter 5 ~ Passing By

Their engagement lasted two months, the proper length of time in Elsariat.  It was a boring and lonely two months for Lazuline, as she was not allowed to work in the library with Lencel.  It was considered extremely improper for an engaged couple to spend time alone together, so it was necessary to arrange shifts for them to work in the library.  Lencel got more time there, lots of time to spend translating his beloved Celian book.  Lazuline rarely saw her intended and the time alloted for her to work at scribing seemed precious little.

The Pelem family gathered every evening for dinner, and Lencel was now, for the first time, allowed to join them.  He and Lazuline sat at opposite ends of the table and didn’t talk.  Sometimes Lencel did not show up for dinner, or came in late, and Lazuline knew it was because he valued his time with the book more than his one chance a day to see her.

She had second thoughts every day and night of those two months.  Though she did not consider any of the young women she knew to be “friends,” they didn’t hesitate to ask her in shocked and amused tones why on earth she had agreed to marry Lencel Oran.  She told them that they didn’t know him like she knew him, and that she loved him no matter what anyone else thought.  But the question echoed in her mind.  Why marry a man who doesn’t love you, if you don’t have to?  Is it worth it?

“Are you really happy with this?” Zettee asked her, her eyes showing the wisdom of an unhappy marriage.  “The Orans are cold.  Well, maybe not Syamor, but Tavano and Lencel, they are more alike than Lencel would ever admit.  Sometimes I think that’s why they hate each other so much . . . they hate themselves.”  She grew quiet and thoughtful, and Lazuline wondered if she even heard the reassurance that Lazuline knew what she was marrying herself into.

Their wedding day came, and Lazuline felt like a different person.  All of her mother’s handmaids had worked on her, flocking around her and talking to each other about her as if she wasn’t there.  Clearly, she needed a lot of work to make a presentable bride.  At the end her hair shone black and was stuffed with flowers and woven with beads till her head felt heavy.  Her neck was likewise weighted down with chains of jewels, her arms and fingers covered in bracelets and rings.  Her face was painted, her eyebrows torn at, her skin soaked in milk (a horrible waste of milk, she thought).  Her dress was very beautiful, though, white with ribbons the same violet-blue of her eyes.  It was the only thing about the experience she really liked.

When she peered into a mirror, she felt like an oversized doll that had been played with by too many overeager children.

Whether Lencel thought her transformation made her beautiful or ridiculous, she didn’t know.  He was more unreadable than ever.  Perhaps it was the weeks of estrangement, but she saw nothing in his eyes when they stood facing each other in her father’s hall, and he handed her the rose that Tilmona had thrown to the floor.  It scared her.  But it was too late to decide that she had made the wrong decision.

They danced together, it was the first time he’d touched her since dancing at Syamor and Philoan’s wedding, two years ago.  He wasn’t any better of a dancer, and he didn’t say anything until Lazuline broke the silence.  “I feel like we haven’t spoken in years.”

“It’s not my fault.  It’s a stupid rule, but most anything to do with love is stupid,” he replied, not meeting her eyes.

“I think it’s more about being respectable than having to do anything with love,” she said, sounding more calm than she felt.  “Love isn’t respectable.”

“I agree.”

“I’m glad we’re having an agreeable start to our marriage . . . .”

“Surprisingly, considering we began the engagement by you calling me stupid and telling me to shut up.”

“Is that why you’re mad at me?”

His arm tightened around her, then he let go of her abruptly.  “I’m not mad at you,” he said shortly, meeting her eyes only for a flicker of a moment, then he turned away and left.  Lazuline stood alone on the dancefloor, stunned and embarrassed.  Everyone was either looking at the door Lencel had disappeared through, or at her.

She smiled faintly and went over to sit by her mother, whose eyes said plainly, Should have married the Cryth.

Lazuline sat alone in her bedchamber later, and for a time was sure that Lencel was not going to come.  She amused herself by untangling the beads and wilted flowers from her hair.  She was tired but couldn’t sleep with all that in her head.

When he knocked it startled her, but again sounded calmer than she felt when she said, “Come in.”

Lencel looked around the corner briefly, as if checking to see if it was safe, before he came in and shut the door slowly behind him.  He stood there, half hidden in the shadows, as Lazuline gave him a long, silent stare.

“I apologize,” he finally said, “for leaving earlier.  I . . . something came over me.  I suppose you hate me now.”

With a sigh, Lazuline wrenched a stubborn bead from her hair and tossed it on the vanity, where it bounced a couple times before falling to the floor and rolling to rest in the corner.  For a moment its travel was the only sound, then she said, “I can never hate you, Lencel, it’s what you want so badly.”

“I humiliated you,” he replied, half-heartedly, as if knowing already there was no convincing her to denounce him and send him away.

“I’ve forgiven you.”  She stood and faced him.  “I’ve forgiven you many times, and still I find it possible to keep on forgiving.  When are you going to stop trying to drive me away?”

He left his post by the door and was, in a moment, inches from her, and his breath brushed her face as he said, “If you could see inside me I wouldn’t need to drive you away, you’d be running.  You don’t know me, Lazuline.  I don’t want you to think you love me.”

She simply lay her head against his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his waist, saying nothing.  There was nothing to argue, there had been too many words between them already, everything had been said.  None if really mattered; she’d made up her mind to have him long ago and though he’d come kicking and screaming, now she did.

At first his stiffened in alarm, like a wild animal caught in a lasso.  Then his arms reluctantly went around her, and his hands became tangled in her hair as if moving by themselves.  They stayed that way for a long time, or perhaps a short time that only seemed long.  Lazuline wondered if he’d ever hugged or been hugged before.  He had always seemed like a person desperately in need of it but impossible to touch.

In bed Lencel was as serious and methodical as in the library, Lazuline felt like a book being opened, paged through, read over, written in.  But Lencel loved books; this was not a bad thing to be.  She lay for a time, awake as he slept, the smell of ink and sex mingled up in each other as they had been before.  She was just beginning to doze off when the window blew open and a gust of cold air shot through the room.  It was far colder than a summer night’s breeze should be, and there was a moment of sheets flying and cursing as Lencel leapt up to slam the windows together and fumble with the latch.

He sat back on the side of the bed, dazed and still perhaps not fully awake.  Lazuline draped an arm and a blanket across his shoulders and pressed herself against him, shivering.  There had been a candle burning on the wall but now it was blown out.  There was a menace in the air, in the wind that blew through the room, and it lingered around them like the sting of a slap.

“What was that?” she wondered in a whisper.  “It felt like death.”

“It was just wind,” Lencel replied, then pushed her down on the bed again, and they set to warming their flesh together.  Lazuline forgot then, for a time, that the soul eater had been passing by.

Gilaraman and Tilmona Pelem had had a fight.  Now fourteen and nearly come of age, Tilmona wasn’t adverse to slipping off to be alone with a handsome boy she’d danced with at her sister’s wedding.  But even a secluded corner of the garden was not safe from the watchful mind of her twin, who was very adverse to the idea of her slipping off into the shadows with any kind of boy.  There had been angry words exchanged; Tilmona’s suitor slunk away to find a different dark corner to hide in, Tilmona stormed off in a huff.

And now.

Now she was gone.

To be born a twin was to always have another person in your consciousness.  Many twins didn’t need words to communicate, even when far apart, they could walk and talk in each others’ minds and read each others’ feelings and moods.  The bond was not the same strength in every pair, but the curious power such a link gave made twins a special thing.  There was such a wealth of folklore and rumor surrounding the full extent of twin power that it was hard to pick out truth from fiction.  Even a person whose twin was dead was viewed with a certain reverence, though they made a sad figure.

Gil had never been so alone in his life.  Tilmona was gone.  He felt it like a cord snapping in his mind.  One minute he was aware of her existence — she was somewhere and she was unhappy with him, so she shielded herself from him.  He didn’t know exactly where she was and couldn’t reach any of her thoughts, but she was there all the same.  And then she wasn’t.

He went to her room, he searched the garden, the kitchens, favorite rooms they’d played in as children, not so very long ago.  He even went to the library, though neither twin was much for books.  She was nowhere, and the hole she left in his mind was growing rounder and blacker with each passing moment.  This quiet isolation . . . was this what it was like for everyone else, all the time?

Gilaraman and Tilmona Pelem disappeared from their father’s house that night.  In the morning they were gone, and no one could remember seeing either of them leave.