by Zoe Chant
Gwen smiled, and he snapped several shots, looking at each of the results very seriously.
“You are very beautiful,” he observed.
Even if it was probably just a polite thing to say, Gwen felt her ears burn like fire. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who protested that she wasn’t so that he’d have to insist that she was, or the kind who accepted it as her due, so she didn’t say anything.
“Oh, show him the iEarth program!” Heather suggested.
They looked at the iEarth program for a while, zooming in and out of the satellite images. Heather pointed out the place in Georgia where she was from, and Gwen showed him South Carolina.
Daniella finally pointed out the time. “We’re going to head over to Ansel’s shop and get Henrik some clothes and things before Gwen and I head for the cafe.”
“No personal checks from you guys,” Ansel teased. “Cash transactions only.”
“Where’s the love?” Gwen asked. “After work, I’m going to drive to Sault Sainte Marie because the game store there is getting World of Witchcraft a week before Wimberlette’s store.” She looked at Henrik and shyly asked, “Do you want to come with me? I can show you Canada across St. Marys.” He wouldn’t know what any of that meant, she realized too late.
“I would love to accompany you,” Henrik said gravely.
“Great!” Gwen said cheerfully. “I’ll pick you up here after I get off. Let me get my purse and hit the bathroom before we go.”
As she left, she heard Henrik quietly ask, “Why would she hit the bathroom? Has it offended her?”
9
Henrik found the car ride deeply unnerving, but made every effort to act casual. It was normal for a metal box to roar like this. It was normal to be strapped into it with no path for escape. It was normal to be pressed up close against a woman who set his blood on fire. It was normal for the world outside to whip past so fast that it made him dizzy, and a little sick to his stomach.
When they arrived at their destination, Gwen released him from the harness, and Daniella, who had been in the front seat directing the machine, opened the door for him.
“Thank you,” he said politely as he fled the terrible conveyance.
“You’re welcome,” Daniella said.
Perhaps Gwen’s ‘Your problem’ was a regional response. Henrik tried very hard not to feel very small and provincial. This world was so enormous and varied.
“Coast is clear,” Daniella added, and Robin flew from the car as well.
“This is where it all began,” Henrik said, staring at the building.
It was not an attractive building, though it was impressively large. It had no particular grace or beauty to recommend it, but it looked sturdy and utile. This was where they had come through the veil between worlds, trapped in glass ornaments. This was where Robin had brought them, in a last-ditch effort to save their lives when they could not save their world. This was where his shieldmate had protected this world. This was where they would make their last stand.
Ansel pulled up in the allotted space beside them. Rez, who had ridden with him, seemed perfectly comfortable operating his own seatbelt and confusingly-configured door. Heather reunited with him as if they had been separated for hours instead of the mere minutes it had taken to drive here.
“I lived in this dump almost a whole year,” Robin said, near his ear. “Drafty place. Not much to recommend it.”
“I should have charged you rent,” Ansel said, unlocking the door. “Remind me to add that to your bill. I wondered who kept stealing stuff out of my mini fridge.”
“Human food isn’t nearly the source of energy that fae food is, but it’s strangely addictive,” Robin said without apology. “And your locks weren’t very hard to break.”
“Remind me to add that to the bill, too!”
The room beyond was filled with shelving that was crowded with wonders that Henrik had never seen before.
None of the rest of them seemed impressed, but even a glance showed clothing and appliances and furniture of such varied types that Henrik was staggered. It must have taken hundreds of craftsmen hundreds of years to make so much stuff.
“You can hardly tell that a dragon came through the roof,” Ansel said, hanging his coat near the door as he led the way in.
Henrik took off his own coat; it was cool inside, but not cold, and the ladies were looking at him expectantly.
“Let’s see what we’ve got in your size,” Daniella said. “I did a quick pass the other day to pick you out just a few things so you didn’t have to wander around nude, but there was a lot more here that might suit you.”
Henrik dutifully followed her to an aisle filled with clothing of all sizes and colors and materials. He picked up a pair of heavy leather breeches, but when he unfolded them, they appeared to be missing important parts; they were completely open in the areas that needed protection the most. “I do not understand these pants,” he said.
“I am not buying you assless chaps,” Gwen protested, taking them from him firmly and folding them back up. “Let me explain sizing to you.”
“We considered purchasing that garment,” Trey volunteered. “But it proved too small.”
“They don’t need to know that,” Daniella chided.
Gwen showed him where the crafter’s label was, and what the numbers meant. “Try these,” she suggested, putting a folded pair of pants in his arms. They felt like a sturdy material, in heather blue, but when Henrik began to battle the button and zipper holding him in his current garb, she gave a choked noise and said, “Not here!”
He froze, and she grabbed several other items at seemingly random from the nearby shelves. “Here, take these, I’ll show you where the dressing rooms are.”
“We’ll be over in housewares,” Heather trilled. “Waaaaay over here.”
Robin, standing on top of one of the shelves, only laughed. Ansel went to another corner of the store and began doing something with sheets of paper.
Gwen led him to a curtained alcove where he tried on each selection and modeled it for her. She seemed equal parts embarrassed and appreciative, and Henrik found himself posing a little more than he otherwise might, turning at her command and rolling his shoulders. She grew gratifyingly more flustered and they laughed together as if they were sharing some joke that neither of them quite understood.
Was this falling in love, this curious attraction layered with a simple contentment being near her?
They eventually settled on more clothing than Henrik had ever owned in his life. “What debt do I owe?” he wanted to know. “These numbers are prices? For a form of currency?”
Gwen took the clothing to the counter where Ansel was working. “We use something called dollars.” She took some small paper rectangles from her purse and showed him the lettering on it. “Will you give us a roommate discount on these?” she asked Ansel.
“Are you an employee?” Ansel asked, bagging the clothing. “Senior citizen? Didn’t think so. Don’t be cheap.”
“Skinflint,” Gwen muttered good-naturedly.
Henrik looked between them, and decided that neither of them meant anything serious, though it was curious that Ansel didn’t barter. “How do you receive these funds?” he wanted to know as Ansel took the bills and gave back a few bills with smaller numbers that Gwen showed him, as well as a few finely-minted coins. “Can I participate in this purchase? I am afraid I came to your world with nothing of value, but perhaps I can provide a service.”
“Don’t worry about it for now,” Gwen said, her cheeks ruddy again. “I have a job as a barista at the same cafe where Daniella works. That’s why we look like a matched set today, this is our work uniform.”
“A...barista? That is a security detail?” It didn’t look like a practical uniform for fighting and it had no armoring at all.
Gwen gave a helpless hoot of laughter. “No, not security. I make coffee.”
“This is a job?”
“It’s very fa
ncy coffee,” Gwen added. “And when I go to work, I make money, and then I buy things, and people use that money to buy fancy coffee, and that’s the circle of capitalism.”
“It seems sensible.” Henrik felt like he was missing a lot about how it worked. “You are a coffee merchant.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and finally said, “Close enough.”
“Did you find what you were looking for?” Daniella asked. “We’ve got to get going to the cafe. Marie’s expecting us by ten.”
Henrik proudly displayed the bag of clothing they had selected and they all walked towards the door, leaving Ansel grumbling over his paperwork.
“I will miss you,” Trey told Daniella, bending to kiss her passionately.
They continued kissing as Henrik was keenly aware of Gwen shoving her arms violently into her coat and yanking her hat over her head.
“We gotta go,” Gwen said impatiently. She glanced at Henrik, and he thought that perhaps she was expecting him to kiss her goodbye as well. He would like to, he realized, and thought that she might like it also. Certainly he was filled with the ache of knowing that she was going to go away, further than the next room. He had never been far from her in this world, and he didn’t think he wanted to be.
He stepped closer, without meaning to crowd, and she gazed up at him with a curious expression of desire and confusion and fear and dismay.
“I have to go to work now,” she said. “I’ll pick you up for our road trip after I’m done.”
Then she turned and fled, leaving Henrik feeling quite bereft.
10
Gwen wasn’t sure how courtship was supposed to work, even in her own world. What would they possibly have in common to talk about? It wasn’t like they’d seen any of the same movies, or played the same video games. Pop culture references would be completely lost on him. All of the knights seemed to get sad talking about their own world, but Gwen didn’t want to spend the whole hour talking about her world and how everything worked like she was a teacher lecturing him. She liked teaching, but she didn’t want that to be the sole dynamic of their relationship.
“Here,” she said. “I’m going to put you in control of music.” Trustingly, she put her phone in Henrik’s hand. “These are the styles, each of these is a song. If you like the song, great, if you want to hear something else, we can skip it, like this. Here’s a play button, those two lines will pause it.”
She had to lean very close to point out how to work the controls, and was thoroughly aware of how big and warm he was in the cold car. The temptation to climb into his lap was almost overwhelming. Gwen buckled herself in firmly and tugged her seatbelt tighter.
Henrik held her phone gingerly as he carefully buckled himself in. “What is punk rock?” he wanted to know.
Gwen grinned at him. “Play it and see!”
To her delight, after a few minutes of Blitzkreig Bop, Henrik began to smile. “It is whimsical,” he decided. They listened to Dead Milkmen and Dead Kennedys, which Henrik liked less well.
“Try the rock category,” she suggested.
Henrik picked up the phone controls swiftly, and he selected the folder and started the playlist. Aerosmith’s “Walk this Way” filled the car. Henrik listened raptly, skipping only a few of the songs in the mix, and asked questions about the lyrics that Gwen could only mostly answer.
It led seamlessly to talking about some of the pop culture topics that Gwen hadn’t been sure how to broach, but it felt like they were having a conversation, not like it was a one-sided class. He wanted to know more about the video game they were driving to pick up, and that required explaining not only video games as a thing, but how new releases occurred and how marketing worked and even programming, which Gwen could explain only in the most general terms.
“Oh!” Henrik said in alarm. “Your phone has failed!”
They had talked long enough that it had gone to sleep, and Gwen told him how to wake it up and rattled off her passcode before she even thought about it.
Henrik happily went back to sampling music, but Gwen was thoughtfully quiet for a moment. She had never given her passcode to anyone before, but this felt like the most natural thing in the world.
She shot Henrik a sideways look. He was inspecting the picture of the album cover on the tiny phone screen, an adorable look of concentration on his profile. She could rationalize trusting him with her passcode by reasoning that there was very little he could do with it yet, but there was something more to her action than that. She would have given him the code even if he’d been completely competent with electronics. He was so...honorable.
Gwen guessed that she should have expected that; the knights all seemed to have a code that bound them completely.
The trip to Sault Sante Marie passed quickly, and by the time they arrived at the mall, Henrik was adept at most basic phone skills and they had listened to Queen’s “We Are the Champions” enough times that he could sing along with it.
Gwen took the parking ticket and put Daniella’s car into a space in the empty end of the lot. Henrik was already staring around in awe. He struggled with his seatbelt until Gwen released him, then spent a moment fastening and unfastening it so he would be able to do it himself, nodding in satisfaction when he mastered just the right amount of pressure.
“It is a mighty palace,” Henrik said, looking up at the big facade of the building. “Is a mall where royalty lives?”
“No, just capitalism,” Gwen said wryly. She locked the car and pulled her jacket closer around her.
It seemed safest to take Henrik by the hand so she wouldn’t lose him in a crowd and he wouldn’t wander off and touch things that shouldn’t be touched, but Gwen wasn’t entirely prepared for what that would do to her. Her whole body was aware of how close he was, how warm his fingers were, how much she loved being near him. She felt almost giddy.
Henrik seemed delighted by the contact, and he grinned down at her proudly. Then they were going in the big front doors, to a whoosh of warm air and noisy chatter, and he drew to a halt.
Gwen pulled him to the side of the stream of traffic and let him drink in the view of the busy mall for a moment. Some of the stores had Christmas displays out, despite the fact that it wasn’t Thanksgiving yet, and twinkle lights sparkled everywhere. There was music playing (not Christmas music, thank heavens), layered with sounds of the air system and the escalators and the thousands of conversations and the hawkers trying to sell trendy massage pillows and squirt people with perfume.
“It is...quite an assault on the senses,” Henrik murmured. Gwen wasn’t sure if he was charmed or simply overwhelmed.
“The game shop is over here,” she said, tugging him into motion.
He insisted on stopping and apologizing to everyone they accidentally brushed, puzzled at first by the way that they shrugged him off and hurried away. “They’re just busy,” Gwen explained. “They’ve got places to go.”
“Indeed,” Henrik said thoughtfully.
They stood out less than Gwen had feared. Henrik got plenty of double takes, especially from the teenage girls who were hanging out at the railings that overlooked the food court, but for the most part, people were occupied with their own business. She steered him past the hyperactive salespeople and they ducked into the game store, which was relatively quiet after the chaos of the halls.
The new game was behind the counter, and they queued up with the rest of the geeks who were excited for the release. Henrik was quiet and observant throughout the process, and Gwen gave a sigh of relief when they managed to escape the mall with no incidents greater than people being mildly confused by Henrik’s courtesy.
He still seemed pensive when they got back to the car, but agreed that he was hungry when Gwen asked. “I thought we’d eat at Lock View,” she suggested. “They’re supposed to have pretty good food, and we can watch the ships waiting to go through. It’s kind of the touristy thing you’re supposed to do here.”
They got
seats on the second floor. Henrik held the chair for her, which the waitress clearly thought was adorable; Gwen caught her sly wink and flushed.
There were photographs throughout the restaurant of the lock being built, and descriptions of how it worked. Gwen, a careful ear out for other customers and staff, filled in some of the blanks. “Canada is another country, with different rules and government,” she told him, showing him on the map.
“They are friendly?”
Gwen had to laugh. “To a fault, if anything,” she said. “It’s one of their stereotypes. You’d like them.”
They could just see the largest of the cargo ships from their seats, waiting their turn to go through the massive locks.
“We have nothing like this,” Henrik said in wonder. “The scale of your world is astonishing.”
A kid from the next table stared at them, but his parents didn’t seem to notice.
Gwen ordered them each the fried fish basket, and was not in the slightest bit disappointed in either the meal or in Henrik’s relish of it.
“I have eaten many fish,” he said. “None have been like this. How is it achieved?”
“There is a vat of oil heated to a high temperature. The fish is breaded, that’s coated with a batter, and dipped into the hot oil to cook. Same with the french fries.”
Henrik devoured all of his meal and half of Gwen’s french fries, and for a short time, she felt like just another visitor, on a date with a very strange Norwegian from way, way out of town. They talked about the locks, and Henrik gave the diagrams a sharp-eyed look and clicked his tongue in a weirdly bird-like way.
“What are you thinking?” Gwen asked him.
“These locks,” he said, running one of his big, nimble fingers over a laminated picture on the kids menu. “It could be that this is rather how the veil between our world works. You have to wait on opposite sides for the level of the water to be correct in order to float between them.”
“But Robin said that the veil was abruptly thick again, after the break of the new year.”