Skin Deep

by Marissa Doyle

  “Yes, I am.” She patted his arm and turned toward the door. She looked so pleased at the thought of spending the evening with the healer. Was she beginning to return his feelings? And why not? She deserved to be loved, really loved, after the way her first mate had treated her.

  Garland came back upstairs after a little while and unpacked the paper bundles she’d brought in. He watched her unfasten the little white discs up the front of one of the clothes and hoped his fingers could repeat the action as dexterously. He hadn’t really cared about clothes, but she’d been adamant about getting them for him. “You can’t wander around practically naked all the time,” she’d said to him before she left this morning.

  “Why not?” he’d asked, and seen immediately that that was a mistake when her eyes widened in surprise. It had been a good thing he hadn’t asked her why she didn’t go naked as well in this warm house, which had been the next thing he was going to say.

  She’d turned pink and looked away. “It’s…I suppose you don’t remember, but it’s just what we do. We wear clothes.”

  It was convenient, her attributing his strangeness to a loss of memory. He’d meekly agreed with her, and now he stood, letting her slide the tubes—no, they were called sleeves—over his arms and slip the little discs through holes, so that the short robe stayed closed across his chest. The fabric was cool and smooth on his shoulders as he moved them experimentally.

  “Well, I got the shirt right,” she said. “Let’s try the pants.”

  She made him put on a strange garment that covered just his nether region, and then something that covered him all the way down to his ankles. He was delighted to see that it had a zipper. He had discovered the one on the edge of his pillow and loved to slide it up and down, marveling at the faint whizzing sound the tiny teeth made as they meshed.

  Now Garland stepped back and examined him. He stood still and returned her gaze. She smiled, her head to one side.

  “Am I all right?”

  “You’re perfect.” She turned to unpack the other parcels, and he heard her say under her breath, “Even though I think it was a crime to cover you up.”

  Lir knew he’d rather be in his own skin, too. But he only said, “Thank you, Garland.”

  He sat back on his bed and watched her help a bewildered but cooperative Conn into his clothes then go over to her quilt tables. He liked to watch and try to see just at what point the power started seeping into the quilts she made, but it was too subtle a process. First there were pieces of cloth, full of striking colors but otherwise ordinary. Then there was a design up on her cloth wall, beautiful but only hinting at what would come. Finally, as she sewed, the power shone through the pieces of fabric, stronger and stronger, until she was done and held up to his astonished view the glowing webs of magic trapped in cloth.

  She set aside the pieces she’d already cut for the quilt she’d promised him—all triangles and diamonds and squares that, when set together, created the illusion of curves in restless motion. He’d been excited when she showed him part of the design on her fabric wall. But clearly her mind was on something else today.

  She’d chosen a fabric that she’d explained to him was called batik, made in a far-away place called Bali. He liked that they came from an island. They had a faint background magic all their own, woven of color and sheer exuberance. They also seemed to complement her power, to focus it somehow. She’d used almost all batiks in his quilt.

  This batik was a rich spring green, the color of trees in mid-May. Little splashes of magenta here and there made the green sing louder, and the pattern was short and spiky, like the wild cedars that grew close to the shore.

  “I thought I’d do something different with this one,” she said out loud, half to him. She’d started doing that a few days ago, and he liked it. It drew him closer into her world, and he hoped he’d get a glimpse of how she did her magic.

  “Not a landscape. Just color and pattern. It’s harder to do because then the fabric is the boss, not the picture in your mind. You’ve got to listen to what it says to do.” She studied the fabric a minute longer, then smiled and turned to her storage boxes. Now was when she usually began to—well, not quite sing, and not quite talk, and not quite hum, either, but some odd combination of the three. It reminded him a little of the ground-nesting bees that sometimes made their hives in sand dunes—a gentle, busy sound, made up of differing tones.

  Soon several shades of green cloth, from palest yellow-green to deep pine but all harmonizing with the first batik, surrounded her. She added a few pieces of the magenta, nodded, and turned to her cutting board and picked up her little rolling knife with the blade that was a circle, and which cut through layers of fabric like lightning. Some of men’s inventions were so simple yet so clever that it was impossible not to admire them.

  After a few minutes of watching her cut fabric his attention tended to wander. She didn’t make her little sound when she cut the fabric but stared at it, leaning against the long, clear ruler so that her cutting ran straight and true. Today it occurred to him that perhaps the concentration she used in cutting fabric was when the magic began to enter it. So he watched her closely as she lined up her edges and rolled her little knife across the green cloth. But try as he might, he couldn’t quite see it—only sense the growing aura around the pieces.

  It was almost an hour later before she clicked the cover back over her knife and straightened her back with a sigh.

  “That’s my least favorite part,” she said, collapsing into the chair at her sewing machine and reaching up with both hands to rub her neck. “I always end up feeling like a piece of rope that’s been twisted till it kinks.”

  To Alasdair’s surprise Conn sidled over to her, walking stiffly in his clothes. He reached up and began to rub her back.

  Garland smiled and let her hands fall. “Mmm. How did you get to be so good at that?” she asked him. “You can rub my back any day you want.”

  Before he could stop himself, Alasdair was behind her. He touched Conn’s shoulder and nodded him back to his chair, then took over.

  Garland sat up straighter as his hands settled on her shoulders. “I’ll be all right—you don’t have to do that,” she said, sounding suddenly breathless.

  “It is no trouble.” Her tight muscles warmed and softened as he worked them, and gradually she relaxed back against her chair. She felt so warm and solid and good under his hands. “Unless you would rather I didn’t?” he asked, pausing in mid-knead, suddenly uncertain.

  “Tease.” She made a soft, amused sound deep in her throat. “Don’t you dare stop. No one’s done that since…since I can’t remember when.”

  He rubbed lower, just under her shoulder blades, and she groaned and leaned forward over the sewing table. “Not even your husband?” he asked.

  She snorted. “Give a massage? Derek? I don’t think so.”

  “He did not give much, did he?”

  “Not unless he could get a receipt and write it off his taxes.”

  Sometimes she said perplexing things like that, but he thought he understood the spirit of it. “May I ask…he didn’t approve of you making quilts, you said. Why not?”

  Garland was silent for a moment. “I’m not sure,” she said at last. “A lot of reasons, I expect. Derek didn’t like the idea of making things if he could buy them. People might get the idea that he couldn’t afford something if he made it. I think that went back to being poor as a kid and wearing made-over clothes from the Salvation Army instead of brand-name jeans.”

  “He couldn’t overcome his past,” he said. “But what about your quilts?”

  She sighed. “I wasn’t supposed to attract attention away from him, and having a career of my own might do that. For a while that was okay because I didn’t know any better and because Derek was so charming and I loved him. Only after a while it began to wear a little thin. I have to make quilts. I have to create things, or else I shrivel up inside. So I made a few, and attracted some attenti
on with them, and Derek smiled and said how proud he was of me in front of everyone, but inside I knew he was seething.”

  “He was jealous.” He pulled her back up and went to work on the muscles at the base of her skull.

  “God, that’s so good…he was jealous of anyone who stole his limelight. He developed an allergy to dust, and got his doctor to tell me that having too much fabric and working with it in the house was making his condition worse.”

  “He didn’t have the courage to tell you himself he didn’t like your quilt-making?”

  “Of course not. Why do something unpleasant when you can get someone else to do it for you? That was Derek’s motto. Do you know who told me he wanted a divorce?” She leaned her head further back and opened her eyes, fixing him with her blue gaze. “His mother, if you can believe it. Of course, that was after his girlfriend told me in the middle of an aerobics class that he was moving in with her and could I have the cleaner send his shirts to her apartment from now on.”

  She had every right to be bitter. With all that magic within her, needing an outlet and not finding one, it was amazing that she hadn’t exploded. And then to be discarded like that— “He did not deserve you. He did not understand what he had when you were his,” he said fiercely.

  “Alasdair.” Garland shifted in her chair, and he realized that he had stopped rubbing her shoulders and was gripping them tightly. Possessively.

  “I’m sorry,” he muttered, and forced his hands to relax.

  Chapter 9

  “Drat that phone anyway,” Garland took her foot off the pedal of the sewing machine and pushed her chair back.

  “Would you like me to answer it?” Alasdair set the iron down and turned to her.

  “No, that’s all right. I need to put a phone back in here one of these days.” She hurried out of the room and down the hall to her bedroom, smiling to herself. Alasdair had come a long way, from being terrified of the telephone’s ring to being willing to answer it. And not only that. Now that he didn’t need to spend all his time resting in bed, she’d taught him how to press the seams of pieces of quilt as she sewed them.

  She’d found, to her surprise, that she liked having Alasdair and Conn around while she worked. Conn was her cheering section, gazing with rapt awe at every seam she completed. And Alasdair seemed to know intuitively when it was all right for him to ask questions and when not to distract her. She realized that she enjoyed discussing her designs and choices with him and teaching him about color theory and how to create the illusion of movement and weight and light with design. Quilt piecing was usually a solitary activity, unlike quilting a completed top in a quilting bee. It was nice to have company for a change—company that she felt so relaxed and at home with. Company that she didn’t have to perform for or be perfect for.

  Some days when she was in her color trance, she wouldn’t say a word to either of them for hours, and it didn’t matter. She’d emerge from her trance and find Alasdair still there, patiently watching her with his glowing brown eyes. His presence was like a…oh, like a safety net. Somehow she felt better knowing he was there.

  The phone was still ringing. She sat down on the edge of her bed and answered it.

  “Garland? It’s Elizabeth Souza, from the library.”

  Elizabeth Souza—never Betty or Liz—was the president of the Friends of the Mattaquason Library. She was all of four feet eleven inches, with a personal dignity in inverse proportion to her height. Even Derek had deferred to her. “Elizabeth, how nice to hear from you. How are you?”

  “Very well, thank you. Shirley Shirley said you were in the library the other day.”

  Garland decided not to mention the seven-months-overdue book that had brought her there. “I was. And I’d love to volunteer again, once I’m a little more settled—”

  “Oh, I’m sure you will. We’ve had some trouble with filling in volunteer staff for the Circulation Desk on Friday afternoons if that would suit you. But that’s not what I’m calling about. As you know, the library celebrates its hundred-and-twenty-fifth anniversary this coming fall.”

  Garland closed her eyes. “I know it, Elizabeth. I’m afraid that I can’t make as generous a contribution to the annual fund as I have in the past. My circumstances have changed—”

  “Yes, yes, my dear. I know all about that. Contributions of any size are always appreciated. But I’m not calling about that, either.”

  “You’re not?” she blurted before she could stop herself.

  Elizabeth actually sounded amused. “No. Several of the trustees have come to me over the last week with a proposition. They’ve seen your quilts and think it would be an excellent idea if we commissioned one from you for the library’s anniversary. It would hang in the lobby, above the front door. Something colorful but restrained, of course, in keeping with a library atmosphere. I brought a stepladder in this morning and measured the space, and a piece about six feet square would do nicely. We can’t offer payment in keeping with what they say Ms. Hayes is charging for your work”—she gave a slight indignant sniff. Garland wasn’t sure if it was for the trustees or for Kathy—“but we hoped that perhaps, in view of your years of commitment to the library as an institution and your past generosity, that you’d take a smaller fee and consider the rest as a donation.”

  Garland was glad that she was sitting down. “You’re commissioning me to make a quilt for the library?”

  “I’ve not yet had the pleasure of seeing your work, but when five trustees independently suggest it, I feel I must listen. Jeanette Sims threatened to not give to the anniversary fund if I didn’t call you and ask if you’d be interested in doing this for us.”

  “She didn’t!” That must have caught Elizabeth’s attention. Mrs. Sims was both very rich and very under Elizabeth’s thumb.

  Another sniff. “I’d like to be able to present a design to the Board for its approval at our meeting in May, if that is possible.” It was not a question.

  “I, uh…that will be fine, Elizabeth.” Garland’s head was spinning too fast to think of any possible objections.

  “Good. We have a tentative date of the second weekend in November for our Friends celebration. I trust you can be finished by then?” Elizabeth didn’t wait for her confirmation. “I’m glad it’s settled. It will be nice to have something done by someone who’s a part of the town rather than an outsider. I’ll call you in a few days, shall I, to see how you’re coming along?”

  Elizabeth must have been satisfied with her reply, for she hung up a moment later still sounding content. Garland sat staring at the phone. She’d hoped to sell one or two quilts in Kathy’s shop over the course of the summer, and instead she was selling quilts that hadn’t even been made yet for thousands of dollars and getting commissions from public institutions. And not just any public institution. What had Elizabeth said? That it was nice that a local person, not an outsider, was doing this? Even the thought of having to listen to artistic input from Elizabeth Souza couldn’t take the shine off that.

  * * *

  She was still feeling sufficiently buoyant two nights later to invite Rob over for dinner to eat her cooking. She and Derek had spent so much time entertaining and going out to eat that she felt inadequate in a kitchen from sheer lack of practice. Alasdair and Conn never complained about anything she made for them, but then they never complained period.

  “Why don’t you come down and join us for dinner tonight? You’re already coming down for meals anyway,” she asked Alasdair as she gathered up the Storm at Sea blocks she’d pieced earlier that day. He’d hung over her like an anxious parent watching her work, breathing soft exclamations of astonishment when she showed him how the triangles and diamonds created gentle curves.

  He didn’t look at her. “I think I would be in the way.”

  “I don’t,” she protested. “Rob would be delighted to see you strong enough to come down. Come on, Conn. What about you?”

  Conn looked mournful and shook his head, then picked
up a book and hid his face in it. Alasdair smiled politely and turned back to gazing out the rain-speckled window, and she wondered if he knew about Rob’s occasionally voiced hopes that he and Conn find another home soon. She knew that Rob had checked back at least four times with Captain Howe, most recently this morning, as to whether they’d found any leads about Alasdair’s identity, and received no satisfactory reply. Alasdair had not looked surprised when she told him but had merely shrugged, which surprised her. “Don’t you want to know who you are and what happened to you?” she’d asked.

  He’d been silent for a moment then said, “You can see what happened to me.”

  “I mean, find your famil—er, that is, find your home and your friends. And yes, find out who hurt you so they can be brought to justice.”

  “Justice? Do you think such a thing really exists in this world?” He sounded very tired all of a sudden.

  Did she? If there were justice, Derek wouldn’t have divorced her and they’d have adopted four orphans from an underdeveloped nation and lavished love and a happy home on them. If there were justice, Captain Howe would have taken charge of Alasdair and Conn instead of scuttling out of her house as if it contained the plague. If there were justice, none of this would have happened to any of them in the first place.

  “No, I guess I don’t,” she finally said. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t try to achieve it in my little corner, does it? What else can I do?”

  He’d looked at her and then over at the Storm at Sea blocks hanging on her design wall, and said softly, “If anyone can achieve justice here, it’s you.”

  The doorbell rang, interrupting her thoughts. “Oops, there’s Rob. I wish you’d come down for a minute to say hello.” She put her hand on his shoulder and squeezed it gently, then hurried away to let Rob in.