Tristan's Tale Pt. 04

And, now that I mentioned it, I was more or less surrounded by members of Tower.

"Well, show's over," I muttered to nobody in particular, and walked back to my friends, thinking only of Jade.

What the hell were they going to do to her?

I sat down next to Emmit, and stared at the floor. For a long time, nobody said anything. The Lounge started to resume its activity - I overheard more than one conversation going on about me. Already there was made up stories included in the narrative - I'd punched Derrik, I'd kissed Jade, I'd threatened to wipe Derrik out in the tournament.

I ignored them all. The image of Jade, her face downcast and her body heaving with sobs, was etched into my mind. What had she been trying to tell me with that look? Had she been saying anything at all?

That's how it goes with these things. I wanted a sign, I wanted to know. What had she thought of me? What was going to happen to her? I had all sorts of ideas, but, in the end, like the many before me who have watched a lover taken away, all I was left with was the emptiness of an unanswered question, and the gnawing frustration of playing over the memory of the gaze we'd shared.

But it was just a memory. And now she was gone.

Emmit patted me on the back. I didn't look up from the floor. He hadn't expected anything from me, though, and was already standing up. He walked away.

Sailor sighed, rubbing his face. "Tristan, I don't even know what to say. That was really, really stupid. And that was so fucking cool of you."

"Pay more attention to the stupid, stupid," said Vanessa to me. "You have cast the dice. No telling how Tower's going to respond." She rubbed her hands together eagerly. "This is the most exciting thing that's happened since forever! I can't wait to talk to everyone about it."

Rodrigo rolled his eyes. "I'm never going to hear the end of this, eh?"

She kissed him on the cheek. "No, not for a while."

"Do you know what's going to happen to her?" I asked, staring at the ground.

Sailor shrugged. "No idea. Nobody's broken a rule like that while I've been here. You hear stories, of course, but I can't imagine any of them are true."

"Why not?"

"Too gruesome. It's not how things are done here."

Great. "So, what, maybe I got her arms chopped off?"

Sailor laughed nervously. "Na, probably not. Probably. Who knows?" He stood up, stretching. "We'll see what happens. I'm sure it'll be alright."

"Alright," I responded.

"Get some sleep, okay? Try not to think about it."

"'Kay."

They left, and then so did everyone else. I don't know how long it took, and I had no idea what happened to Derrik, but eventually, I was the only one in the Lounge.

I went over to the fire, which was still huge. The flames rose to the top of the enclave in which it was contained, licking the blackened ceiling above. The magic of Moleh kept it from being as hot as it should have been - I was mere feet away from it.

I stayed there a long time, staring into the embers below the flames, watching waves of orange ripple across their surface.

It was the closest thing I had of her.

Wait - no it wasn't. I had something else - something I'd completely forgotten.

I raced back to the men's dorms, almost forgetting to be quiet once I walked into the room with the cots inside. I peered under my bed, feeling around for it.

After a few seconds, I found it. Holding it up in the dim torchlight, I stared intently at the orange sphere. The ball of wood Jade had shaved to her color the first time I'd met her. She'd said I could use it as a compass - I just needed to figure out how.

I parted the curtain of beads and walked into the opposite room - it was night outside, I realized. Being indoors for so long, I had no idea what the sky was like.

I held the sphere up to the window, and prayed with all my heart.

Where are you?

And like so many of us who have turned to the sky for answers, none came. The universe seemed to echo my fear - that I'd lost her. I'd really lost her. Looking out into the empty courtyard, below a sky I couldn't call mine, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of being alone. No insights from god would come - the destiny I felt binding myself to Jade would give me no answers.

And so I stared at the sphere. I'd have to make my own destiny, then. I turned the sphere around and around in my hand - it was just a block of wood from one of the glowing trees. It gave off an incredibly faint amount of light, almost impossible to notice, really. I spun it around, thinking of her.

Where are you?

And my eyes fell across the slight groove she'd cut into the surface - just a thin slice, but there it was: my color. And with that, I smiled, and was able to let go of something. I don't know what - but it was as if she was there with me. I wasn't just off on a pipe dream - she'd seen something with me as well. There had been a connection, there had been that ineffable something that kept me thinking of her at the stupidest times.

I clutched the sphere tightly in my hand. Maybe I wouldn't be able to find her just like that.

But damned if I wouldn't try.

I went to sleep holding the sphere between my hands, pressing it between my palms, and thinking of her.

It took me a long time to finally succumb to sleep, and even when I did, I seemed to wake up every twenty minutes with a jolt. Had I found her? I'd concentrate on the sphere, on her, on her hair and her grace and the way she seemed to be etched into reality differently than everyone else, that she had been placed wherever she was precisely because it was where she belonged, that every word she spoke was the right one and fuck - I was never going to get a good night's rest.

That cycle repeated itself many times, and I heard most of the bells ringing throughout the night until finally they rang seven times, and I rose to go to breakfast.

I passed Emmit as he was waking up, and he nodded to me, yawning.

"So, you're a morning person all of a sudden?" he asked.

I showed him the sphere as I walked past him - he nodded silently, and I continued on my way. Some people may value the friend who will sit and listen to them speak, and offer advice and counsel. But in that moment, I was more grateful for his silence than for anything he could have said. I got the impression he was actually there with me.

I would speak of the day that followed, but, strangely, I don't think I could. Things happened to me as they normally did, but it was like I wasn't there for any of them. Every moment my attention wasn't demanded somewhere else, I was focused on the sphere, or on Jade. It was as if my entire life had made a sudden and profound shift - that I now orbited around this unanswered question, and it consumed me.

Would I ever see her again?

I was asking myself this question when Thomas found me lying down on a high platform away from everybody in the Course, and started hitting me over and over with his club. I didn't respond to it for quite some time - it didn't hurt like it should have - it was more a series of dull, throbbing aches. After a while, it did add up to a noticeable pain. Annoyed at having to break my concentration, I stood up, and gave Thomas a withering stare.

"Oh, go bother someone else," I said, perhaps too spitefully, and then tossed myself off the platform.

It hurt when I hit the ground, but cushioned by the strangely altered laws of falling, it was only a bunch of pain. Nothing I couldn't handle, and certainly not enough to keep me from trying to find Jade.

Sure, a compass would be useful. But, and you can call me stupid for this one if you like, I just had this certainty that if I tried hard enough at thinking of her, of tracing back the connection that bloomed within me every time I remembered how our eyes had met, that I would find her again.

Have you ever been so lost thinking of someone else that an entire day flew by without you noticing it? Or, a week? A year? If so, you'll understand how it came to pass that three days flew by without me noticing that they had. In hindsight, it was a miracle that, without their leader, Tower had held off on retaliating against me. I would have been totally unprepared. I didn't even look for my Chi while I was in the room. I didn't meditate, I wasn't fully there for any of the stretches, and my partners always beat me shaping Clay.

I always carried the sphere with me wherever I went. All my attention went into it. How was I supposed to use this as a compass? If it was possible, I would figure it out. And if it wasn't possible, then I'd reach an arm into the guts of reality and rearrange its inner mechanisms until it was possible.

Those days flew by like wind over an empty field.

And then, early one morning, I woke up hours before anyone else, clutching the sphere, and I knew exactly where she was. I had to smile - of course that would be the first place she would go.

I checked the outside temperature in the next room by putting a hand to the glass window. It was cold out there, despite it being the middle of the day, so I pulled on a gray sweater from my chest, and went to grab a blanket from the supply closet before walking out of the dorms toward the lounge.

Once there, I exited the building into the Courtyard, stepping out under the sun.

I walked with the pace of one who knows he doesn't need to hurry but really, really fucking wants to. A slow walk, as if going too quickly would upset the perfect balance the universe had just found, the blanket slung across my shoulder and my hands in my sweater pockets.

I heard her before I saw her. The long notes carried out into the chill like beams of sunlight gently warming the air. Her voice was at once fluid and compact, draining into lower notes with the ease of paint dribbling down a flight of stairs, rising higher like a feather caught in a playful draft of air. And none of it made sense. It had to be that way, I think. It wouldn't have worked any other way, and, with Jade, it always worked. She was just that kind of person.

I didn't approach the tree she was sitting under at first. Instead, I walked past it on the path, and, without looking at her, knelt in the grass a ways in front of the tree. I unfolded the blanket, spreading it out on the grass, and then laid myself out on it, leaving half of it open. The singing didn't so much as falter, but she saw me. I could feel her watching me reclining on the slope of the small hill I was on.

I enjoyed the concert for as long as it lasted - filled with joy whenever she let the birds join in with her song, peppering her notes with light, sporadic melodies, or when the wind picked up and she gave space for the rustling of leaves or that sigh of grass which only the truly silent can hear.

And, if you were in the presence of such music, you'd have been as silent as I was.

It did stop after a while. A flutter of wings - and then footsteps walking my way. My eyes were closed, and my eyelids darkened as a shadow was cast over me.

"You must have come here to talk," she said softly. "So, talk."

"Actually," I said, "I came here to listen."

She sighed the sigh of those who are beginning to sluff off the weight they have been carrying with them. A sort of, "ah, might as well" kind of sigh.

She stepped onto the blanket and sat down next to me. "I'm afraid I don't really feel like talking at the moment," she said. She sounded downright weary, like she'd given everything she had to something and simply had nothing else to give.

I nodded. "That's okay."

"Good," she said, and laid down next to me, leaving space between us. We weren't touching - and though the thought occurred to me, it wouldn't have been right.

We shared the space together, and breathed. I still hadn't looked at her. But, you may understand me when I say that wanting to know how she looked wasn't a pressing concern. I was here on the blanket and so was she, however she was, and that was enough for me. It really is those moments, when so little can be enough, that one feels actually alive. I didn't need anything, and neither did she. Nothing to do. Nowhere to be but here with her.

"You're thinking a lot, aren't you?" she asked softly.

"Not as much as I could be," I replied.

She was silent for a moment, mulling that over. "Thank you," she said at last.

We stayed there for some time, enjoying the space and the stillness of one another, and then I got an idea. A mischievous little idea - nothing too crazy, but it stuck. A sly grin spread across my face as I realized I was going to carry it out.

I turned on my side to face her, and opened my eyes.

So help me god, I would never need to see anything else for the rest of my life. Her head rested on her arm, her hair spilled slightly over her face and across her skin. Her cute, slightly sloped nose was below her closed eyes - eyelashes curled like black storm winds ready to billow across the sea - and she wore a simple white gown which left just the upper part of her chest visible, dusted lightly with the freckles that were more prominent on her face. Her other arm was tucked between her legs. The rise and fall of her chest, the sun illuminating her contours in such a vivid contrast to the rest of the world around her.

"Want to see something magical?" I asked her.

Her eyes fluttered open, and we looked at each other deeply for a moment.

She smiled faintly. "I think I already have," she murmured.

"I'm serious," I said.

She looked at me inquisitively. "What do you mean?"

I pushed myself up until I was standing - she pressed herself off the ground so she was sitting, leaning on one hand.

"I want to show you something," I said. It was comfortable, talking in circles with her. We didn't need to get to the heart of anything - there was no pressure. Like a slow game.

"Tristan," she said, dusting off the gown at her knees, "I will follow you if you ask me to. Understand, though, that I am not my usual self at the moment. Things are still a little shaky for me."

"Well, I guess it's time for me to return the favor, then, and you can lean on me while we walk."

She smiled, and a little color came to her face. "I remember that - after you got your scar," she said, trailing off.

"It wasn't so long ago."

"No, I suppose not. I feel like I haven't really existed for the past four or five days, however." She shuddered. "It is not a pleasant thing, being so completely controlled. And then..." she cursed. "I was foolish. I should not have attacked Derrik, I should not-"

"Hey, Jade."

She stopped short and looked at me.

I reached a hand down. "Walk with me?"

She smiled and took my hand, standing up with me. We let go of each other and walked toward the fountain, leaving the blanket behind. "Thank you," she said at some point.

"Nothing to thank me for," I said.

"No, I mean, for freeing me. It was a very noble thing for you to do."

"You're welcome," I said simply.

"You will have made enemies, I suspect," she noted.

"Yup."

"Powerful enemies. Perhaps I ought not to thank you," she mused, "Because only a complete and utter fool would do such a stupid thing."

"At your service," I said, making a mock bow, and I turned toward the Arch.

Jade paused. "Tristan, where are you taking me?" She eyed the faraway threshold apprehensively.

"Have you ever actually visited the stone giant grove?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. But I've heard stories - it's too dangerous."

It was my turn to shake my head. "The stories were wrong. I went there myself. I won't say anything about it, but I think it's worth the trip."

She bit her lip - fuck was she cute - and then walked up to me. "Okay." Her eyes sparkled. "Actually, a little adventure sounds nice right now. I have been cooped up for too long."

We walked out of Moleh, and I fixed the vague blob of the grove in the distance and started walking toward it. She breathed in deep. "Mmm, the air smells nice around here. There is less of the butterfly woman's presence. It really does foul up the air."

"Really?" I asked.

"What, you can't smell it?" she asked, surprised.

"Might be the necklace," I said, tugging on mine.

She nodded. "Probably - I got a much better feel for her influence after I took mine off."

We walked comfortably in silence for a while. Eventually, I had to ask. "Where did they take you?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know where - the two-faced man took my sight after we left the lounge. When I could see again once more, I was in a stone cell furnished only with a bed. It was a prison cell. The two-faced man stood outside the iron barred door, and informed me I would only be let out once I fully and completely understood why I had broken the rules in the way I had broken them. And then he left."

Shit. She'd been gone for three days. She must have sensed my reaction, because she laughed a little. "It wasn't so bad. Well," she said thoughtfully, "It was pretty horrible. But good, in the end. I was made to work through some issues which I had been avoiding. Issues that have been hurting me, and others, I'm afraid." She looked at me curiously.

"It's strange," she continued, "It is as if I am seeing you in a new light."

"What sort of issues?" I asked. I may be brave (or stupid) enough to face down the head of Tower and steal his girl, but when it comes to receiving compliments... No thank you.

She stayed silent for a moment. "I suppose if I'm really over it, it won't be much of a problem to tell you."

"Whatever you're comfortable with," I said. And I meant it - I didn't want to pressure her into anything.

She took a deep breath, and put a finger to her lips, pursing them together. "Back home," she began, "My parents were very strict. Very religious. I stopped believing before high school, but I kept going to church to keep them happy. If they weren't happy, well... The beatings were worse when I was younger," she said stiffly.

"My parents were into drugs. I knew something was going on when I was young but didn't understand until I was older. Still - it was a small town, and there wasn't much I could do. Me, run away?" She shook her head. "I thought of it often, but it was as one of those fantasies which one knows will never be fulfilled. It lived in the realm of impossibility. I kept to my books."

"And then, all of a sudden, I am to be married. To someone I have never met before. I tried to put my foot down, to draw a line, but it was too late. They screamed at me about all the things they did for me, how I was ungrateful, how it was not a big deal."

"I kept my ground until my mother snapped. It was so bad a beating that I was sent to the town's doctor - a friend of my fathers. He kept me from dying and asked no questions, and I was sent home after a few weeks."

"They said nothing of the marriage for a short time after I returned. It was blissfully quiet in the house. But then, a stranger knocks on my door and comes in. My husband to be," she said, the words laced with venom.

"I had no choice. Without my parents, I could not afford to take care of my recovery. It was an unspoken exchange - they help me to heal if I marry this man."

"I was married in a cast in my bed. And then came the year of suffering - my new husband was no less abusive than my parents. I would later learn my father had gone into debt to fuel his addiction, and had offered me as collateral to wipe the slate clean."

"Slowly, I became able to walk again. I moved in with my new husband, and kept mostly to my books. I dreaded when he came home - always, I had one eye out the window, either to watch for his arrival, or to pray that I would be saved from that place."

"And then, one day, I walk into the bathroom and the house behind me disappeared. Instead, a jungle stretched out from the bathroom door."