Matching Day

"And their people aren't so fragile as to sneer at the law," said another, sneering himself. He was the thirstiest among them for brutality, for swift attacks on anything that threatened the community.

"What will they do with him there?" asked the young one again, his shoulders drawing up as though it were him being sentenced, and not Mason.

The others did not try to protect his gentler sensibilities. "Once they've heard what he has to say, he'll be killed, just like the last one. The Matching Council will not be questioned."

***

Salvia sat on her bedroom floor, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head resting atop them. She had not cried at the whipping, but she'd wanted to; her pride had prevented her from making any show that the other girls could use against her in a pity attack.

Now, though, with only her cat Lollaine to see her, she shook with quiet sobs. "I just wanted them to have to stop," she whispered. "Mason...poor Mason..."

***

Lenei lay curled on the forest floor, where she had lain with Mason every night before. She wished they had not let her go; she deserved to be in a cell, for what she'd done. And Mason...oh, poor Mason...

She spent the night not looking at the stars, and crushed dried leaves into dust that, dancing on the breeze, still looked more alive than she did.

It began to rain in the wee hours of the morning, a steady, mournful downpour that soaked Lenei through immediately and began to make the leaves float in anonymous streamlets. She unfolded herself for the first time since she lay down, feeling the creak of limbs as they complained about hours of stillness.

Her hair plastered to her face, water running into her eyes, she considered going home, but decided against it. Once there, her mother would comfort her, and coo over the state she was in, and find her warm clothes, and stoke up the fire for her; she knew she didn't deserve any of it.

Her jailer-of-sorts, the youngest of the elders, had informed her that Mason would be taken back to Micrague in the morning, to be sentenced there by his own Council. She hoped they would be more lenient with one of their own.

"I wonder if they'll let me see him?" she wondered aloud, her eyes settling on the nearest tree as though it might provide an answer. A tree branch shuddered in the wind, restlessly nodding, its leaves quivering. Taking that as an answer, she floated back toward town like vapor.

There was no one in sight until she reached the doorway of the internment building, and even then it was easy enough to slip past the man as he leaned inattentively against the brick wall; even with this obvious crime as evidence that humans were not incapable of treachery, the people of this community were unused to deception, and knew little of how to guard against it.

Lenei darted through the hallways, remembering from her own brief imprisonment here that the dungeon-like cells were on the lower floor, beneath the benign entry hall and waiting room, the beautifully carved desk that blocked the entrance to the stairs and which Lenei leapt easily, and the offices of each elder, some of which were still dimly, warmly lit.

She slowed her steps as she approached the final corner in the cell hallways. Once she turned it, she knew she would see someone sitting vigil at Mason's door, and she did not want to alert him to her presence until she learned whether he was one of the younger, more sympathetic ones, or an older, unsentimental hard-nose.

Taking a deep breath, she leaned out just far enough for her eyes to be past the edge of the wall, then jerked back. There was no one in the hall.

Offering a quick prayer of thanks to whatever gods were listening for keeping the way clear for her, she strode down the hallway, peering into the small, barred window in each door to find Mason. At last, in the next-to-last cell, she spotted him, still lying just the way they'd dropped him face down on the bench, his feet dragging the ground.

She knocked quietly on his door, and when he didn't move, whispered, "Mason!"

He raised his head slightly, his eyes straining to see over his lacerated shoulder; they widened when he recognized Lenei.

"Lenei? What are you doing here?" he mumbled. He sounded like his mouth was stuffed full of cotton.

"I had to see you, before they sent you away. Can you come up to the window?"

"I can't...can't really move, Lenei. I mean, it's hard." She could see the admission was hard for him; he wanted to seem always invincible.

"Hold on," she said, then darted toward the closet at the end of the hall, where she was sure the keys were kept. She was right; she found the rusty skeleton numbered to match Mason's door and hurried back with it. The lock grated open with a corroded screech, and she heaved on the handle to gain entrance.

Kneeling next to Mason, she was horrified anew by his injuries. Her hand, hovering just above his tender skin, passed back and forth over his back as if she could somehow erase the bloodied lines that way.

"Oh, Mason," she breathed.

"S'not so bad, Lenny," he said sweetly, if insincerely, gritting his teeth as he strained his shoulder backward to grab her hand and pull her in front of his face. "Listen, you've got to get out of here. If they find you here, they'll think you were trying to help me escape, and you'll be in more trouble than ever."

"Escape?" Lenei repeated, her eyes curious. "Why would you escape? You're just going home, aren't you?"

"Yes..." Mason said, watching her with cautious eyes, wondering how much she knew.

"Well, they'll be nicer to you in Micrague, won't they? I mean, you're one of their own..."

He sighed infinitesimally and forced a smile for her benefit. "Yeah, they'll go easier on me, I'm sure."

Her eyes flickered between his eyes and his mouth: he was a master of lying with his eyes, where most people would read an untruth, but she had noticed the way his lips tightened, showing more gum when he lied, and she saw now the way his lips drew back from his teeth.

"What?" she demanded. "What are they going to do to you? What can they possibly do that would be worse than what they did today?"

He sighed heavily this time, wincing as an attempted shrug made his back muscles scream. "They've had this problem before, Lenei. A couple of years ago, a boy who grew dissatisfied with his pair was caught with a girl a year younger than him, who hadn't been paired yet."

"What happened to him?" she whispered.

"He was...put to death. The girl killed herself a week later."

Lenei gaped in horror, mouth hanging open like the connection of her jaw to her skull had gone slack. Abruptly, she said, "Can you walk?"

"What?"

"Can you walk, or do I have to try to carry you? Well, no, not carry. I don't think I can carry you, but I could probably drag you, if I was careful. Maybe you could wrap your arms around my neck and--"

"Lenei, stop," Mason said sharply. "Like you said before, there's nowhere for us to go. We'll get caught again, and this time there'll be no way to protect you--"

"I don't want to be protected, Mason! I want to get you out of here!"

She seized his arms and tried to move him, succeeding only in stretching his wounds and nearly knocking him off of the bench onto his back. His muscles were too stiff from laying the way he had for hours for him to help her much. She let out a small cry of frustration, but Mason quickly shushed her.

"Lenei, I hear something." Both of their heads swiveled toward the doorway just in time to see someone appear, framed by it.

The next-to-youngest elder looked as stunned as they did, his hand going immediately to his heart as he spotted Lenei kneeling there next to Mason.

"Miss Russing? What do you think you're doing?" he said at length.

"I have to take him away," she said boldly, ignoring Mason's eyes, that pleaded with her to hold her silence and not incriminate herself further. "Do you know that they're going to kill him? What has he done wrong that deserves that?" She was on the edge of tears; she knew there was no hope now of Mason escaping his fate. She had almost resolved to follow the path of the girl who had been in love with the last Micrague resident who'd stood against the Matching Council.

"I...I did know that..." the elder said, struggling for words in the face of Lenei's misery. "But he - he's a...lawbreaker! And we...er, that is, the Council...must follow the, um, law..."

"But look at us!" Lenei begged. "Are we criminals? Do we deserve punishment and public humiliation? Our only crime was falling in love."

"Ah, yes, but...you see, you fell in love with the...uh, the wrong person."

"The wrong person? Who was I supposed to fall in love with then?" Lenei persisted. "A ghost? My pair was gone before I even knew him, and Mason saw me as something more than an object of pity. He saw me, and he fell in love with what he saw. How could that be wrong?"

"I...I really must ask you to-to leave, Miss Russing..." the elder said, desperate not to have to report her. He'd always rather liked Lenei.

"I'm not leaving without Mason. I'm afraid he's my other half; where he goes, I go." She clung protectively to Mason's arm, squeezing her fingers tight against his skin so that she could not be seen to shake. Her heart knew that what she said was right, but her head was packed with the logical arguments against her that came from a lifetime of listening to the community elders, and that was hard to ignore.

The elder looked first at her - her face pained, but resolute - and then at Mason, whose eyes never left Lenei, and his heart battled his head in much the same way. Here was his chance to prove that he was not the weak-spirited, soft-hearted one, that he could stand for justice and law just as surely as any of the other elders, that he could look impartially at any situation and choose the wisest course. But here was also his chance to see in action real, honest to gods true love, and to protect it rather than stamp it out. Several long minutes passed without anyone moving, and then the elder spoke.

"He won't want to wear a shirt right now, but you should take one just the same, and a cloak, so that you don't freeze to death. There are bandages and such in that cabinet where you must have found the key, so that you don't have to break into the infirmary."

And then he left, returning to the cup of tea and paperwork that had held his attention in his office upstairs until the sounds of voices below had alerted him to Lenei's presence in Mason's cell. At this hour, he was alone in the building; in the morning, when someone came to relieve him, he would be conveniently asleep, close enough to the cell that he could have been keeping watch, but far enough away that the young lovers could have snuck out without alerting him.

It was a miracle that they made it out of town at all, with Mason so incapacitated and Lenei's strength hardly adequate for carrying a young man his size, but somehow, leaning heavily on each other, they made it into the woods.

For a long time, they heard only their own heavy breathing as they fought their way through the undergrowth, moving always away from the community, but then, just when it seemed they might have gotten clear, a voice said clearly, smugly, "I knew it."

Lenei's head shot up immediately, with Mason's following more slowly on his unsteady neck, and their eyes both settled on the form of Salvia just in front of them, standing with her arms folded across her chest against the cold. The mist of rain - all that was left of the earlier storm - frosted her hair with shimmering droplets.

"I knew you would try to run. I knew it," Salvia repeated, anger licking like flames at her words.

"What else would you have us do?" Lenei demanded.

"Stay here, of course! Well, not you," she said to Lenei. "I wouldn't mind if you ran off into the forest, but Mason is mine. Now that he's been thoroughly chastened, he should be returned to me."

"Salvia," Mason said wearily, "you would not have me either way. If I do not escape now, they will send me to Micrague."

"Fine, I'll go with you. We should be getting married soon anyway."

"They are not sending me there to get married, Salvia. They're sending me there to be sentenced - and if Micrague tradition is to be upheld, I'll be killed."

Salvia's eyes widened; this must be news to her. "Killed?"

"Yes, killed," Mason said, his voice still heavy with exhaustion. He spoke matter-of-factly, not begging her, but not antagonizing her either, as Lenei clearly was. "If it's dead you want me to be - and I suppose I'd understand that, considering what I've put you through - then announce our presences here to the elders. By all means, sound the alarm, let them know we've escaped. I'll be dead by this time tomorrow."

Salvia just stared at him, aghast.

"I...never wanted you dead..." she said at last. "I just wanted them to stop you..."

"Whatever your intentions, Sal, they will have me executed. They can't afford this kind of infraction against their authority. " He could see her resolve faltering, could see the wheels turning in her head, and he took a couple of painful steps forward, desperate to take advantage of her momentary weakness. "Think about it, Salvia: wouldn't it be amazing to be able to choose who you want to love? To entrust your heart to someone that you know wants it just as bad as you want to give it?"

She looked torn, confused; her eyes were shiny with impending tears. "But that's not right..."

"Salvia," he said seriously, setting his hands on either side of her face, "there is nothing in this world that could be more right."

She shook her head, breaking away from his hands. "No, no, you broke our match...you broke everything."

"I'm sorry, Salvia. I'm so, so sorry that I hurt you. But you've got to know that we were never right for each other. You could see that, couldn't you? Please, Salvia, please understand that I would never have hurt you if I could have helped it, but my heart was making the decisions for me. I had to follow love."

Salvia's eyes blazed toward Lenei and then dropped to the diamond droplet-studded grass. "Why her?"

"I can't explain," Mason said, shrugging. "There's no explanation for love."

There were distant male voices in the trees now, coming closer. Mason's eyes bored into Salvia's, begging her to understand.

"Do you want me to die?" he asked quietly.

Eyes finally overflowing, Salvia shook her head. "No," she said miserably. When she met his eyes, they were hurt, accusing, but also relenting. "I won't say anything to them."

Mason kissed her on the forehead. "Thank you, thank you," he whispered.

As the voices floated ever closer, Lenei gripped Mason again wherever she could tightly hold him without further injuring him, and they stumbled into the darkness. Before they left, though, Mason whispered to Salvia, "Find someone you truly love."

Watching his retreating back, she said, too quietly for him to hear, "I already did."

***

"That was so, so close to being the end of us both," Lenei said, her voice breaking with relief. "Gods, I wish none of this had ever happened."

"I don't," Mason said. "I'm glad that Salvia and that elder both found us. Because of them, it was all worth it, even the punishment."

Lenei was stunned enough to come to a complete halt. "How do you figure?"

"Now we know that there are at least two people in this world besides us that believe in love. Maybe there's hope after all. Maybe someday, people will be allowed to choose whoever they want to love. It'll be messy, and hearts will be broken, but in the end, when it does last, when you get to the end of your road hand-in-hand and turn around to look back at your life, you'll know that it was real love."

And with those words echoing prophetically through the trees, Mason and Lenei began again to slink through the trees, stumbling one step at a time toward their messy, beautiful, imperfect forever.