by Alyson Miers
"No, they didn't. That's what makes my case so confusing. I can only suppose it was not just the absence of damage, but the sudden healing, that's made the difference."
"Do you have any other witches around here to share your ideas with?"
"I don't think there's another practitioner of magic alive in the country. Most of us didn't avoid the Plague, you see."
Charlinder saw, indeed, what she meant. Magic was one of those areas that suffered not only a loss of population, but also of communication, to the body count of the Plague.
"I think it's about time to start making lunch, how about you?" she offered.
Charlinder spent much of the afternoon letting Gentiola tell him about environmental damage. Eileen had, in fact, written about the topic, and he had studied her writings just as assiduously as in all other subjects, but that was no substitute for getting to talk to a living person who'd been around to see it. When the sun set and the springtime air in the room chilled, Gentiola lit a fire in the hearth, and they let the topic veer off into other subjects.
"You see, this is why," she said in the middle of another glass of wine during dinner, "I keep memories stored in wool. Everyone learns history, but no one learns from it."
"Would you really say 'no one,' though?" Charlinder asked.
"Okay, 'no one' is too extreme, but not nearly enough people," she conceded. "Especially of the ones who have the power to make history repeat itself."
"I know what you mean."
Dinner was finished, plates were cleared, and Charlinder and Gentiola resumed their places nearer the fireplace. "I want to know," she declared, "how you became a teacher." She was lounging sideways in an armchair, her half-exposed legs dangling over one arm and her hair trailing toward the floor on the other side. "Were you the only one at the time?"
"Yeah, I was the only one; there are only about 150 of us, so we don't need to have more teachers. In fact, sometimes it feels like at least half the village wouldn't care if we didn't have a school at all, but," he trailed off, to Gentiola's chuckling. "Anyway. I was the best student in the class, and my teacher suggested that I take up the job after he quit. I mean, he first made this suggestion when I was sixteen, and at the time I was horrified to imagine myself in his moccasins," at this point Gentiola started giggling especially heartily, "but after I finished my schooling, I started thinking about it, and when I was eighteen, I went back and told him I was up for the job. He retired that summer, almost like he'd been waiting around for me to accept. Sometimes I wondered later if I should have just worked on my hunting and fishing techniques instead," he mused, to Gentiola's increased laughter.
"I take it they were a bunch of disruptive little monkeys, your students?"
"Yeah, I felt that way sometimes. I loved it, though. I did it for two and a half years and couldn't picture myself doing anything else, until I decided to come here."
"I can certainly relate to the disruptive little monkeys aspect," Gentiola shared. "When I was a teenager, and planning to get my education abroad, my family kept saying, 'Why don't you just go to university here and teach Biology at the local high school?' Of course my parents weren’t actually at school with me. For my first couple of years of secondary school, we were under the dictatorship, and the schools were basically just training camps for the regime, but at least they were orderly." She dismounted from the armchair and sat next to him on the sofa. "Then we transitioned to democracy, and the educational system was turned upside down, and not in a good way. And I saw what my teachers had to put up with, so I said, 'You want me to do what?!' And they got used to it eventually."
Charlinder scarcely had time to ponder the differences between Gentiola's and his experiences, when he was so focused on the woman in front of him. Her cheeks bore a lovely, rosy glow, probably from the wine she'd been drinking, but the cause was immaterial. She was a beautiful sight.
"Did you find another teacher to take your place?" she continued, still giggling.
"Yeah, of course. One of my best friends had a cousin who wanted the job, and I thought she was a good fit, so I trained her up before I left, and...I hope she's still teaching now. It's been a long time since I thought about that."
"I'm sure you've had other things on your mind," she said, "and that's what I love about you."
Charlinder met her eyes, and they both burst out laughing. She fell backwards in a semi-reclined sprawl.
"I just said that out loud, didn't I?" she chortled. "Sorry." She pulled herself back up and leaned toward him with her elbows on her knees. Her face looked too intense to be embarrassed. "It's just been so long since I had someone here I could really talk to," she explained. Her gown had moved around while she chose her position, and the back scoop draped wide open, revealing a lustrous arc of skin tanned at the spine and paler near the shoulders.
"You can't have a good discussion with the local survivors?" he asked. He wanted to keep his eyes on her, to keep her sitting just like that.
"The survivors all died decades ago," she breathed. "These are their descendants. And no, I can't discuss with them like with you. They work so hard just to get through each day.”
"I know how that is. I never knew anyone else before who understood how I felt about some things," he explained. "You know, broader and deeper things than just how we'll get through next winter. Of course I haven't been around nearly as long as you, either," he reflected, "but, still."
"No, you haven't," she agreed, "but you're not too young to feel isolated."
"Is there any such thing as too young to feel isolated?" he said.
"Not once you're old enough to remember," she answered with a sympathetic tilt of the head.
At that moment he couldn't stop himself; it was more a question of "why not?" than "what are you doing?" He reached out and ran his left hand through her hair starting at the crown and drawing down. Gentiola's eyes fell closed and she released a sigh too quick to be in her control.
"Stay right there, will you?" he whispered as he moved from where he was to just behind her. He swept her hair around her shoulders and out of the way. He pressed his hands into the exposed skin of her upper back. She let out a high moan as he massaged the muscles just above her shoulder blades. He worked his way down her back and she arched around his hands. Her hair fell back off her shoulder and covered her back, but just as quickly twisted itself into a bun at the top of her head.
Again, he could have stayed right where he was and kept on doing what he was doing, but the next thing was not only the right thing but the only thing to do. He took his hands off her back and wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her in closer, where she leaned back on his chest and laid her head against his shoulder, with her eyes closed and mouth tilted up. Before he knew it, he was kissing her, and underneath the taste of red wine still in her mouth were her lips and tongue demanding his, like the differences in age, countries and powers were merely a game they had played and there was no spell needed to let them talk to each other.
He sank his hands into the springy curve of her stomach through the layers of cotton in her gown. Her waist contracted and relaxed with her breathing, which he felt in sharp puffs from her nose pressed into his cheek with his mouth still exploring hers. One of her hands moved upward; there was a sagging of fabric to one side of her body over his hands. He opened his eyes just enough to see that she had dropped a shoulder of her gown off to the side. It left that whole swath of her body from her collarbone to her hip exposed. She was fuller than most people he'd known, startlingly pale under her clothes, and responded to his touch in undulating instinctual movements that made him turn rapidly hard. He took his lips away from her mouth and looked down at her body; he wanted to tell her how beautiful she was, but no words came. He kissed her other shoulder on the sun-laden exposed part beside the top of her gown. He brought his hand up to the bare side of her waist and stroked the skin there, and it was so smooth, so delicate and silky that he gasped along with her at the way she felt a
gainst the callouses on his hands.
She brought his hand up to grasp her breast, which filled up his palm in the most perfect way. The small brown nipple tickled his fingers as they brushed over it. He pushed the remaining strap of her gown off the shoulder and let the material sink into a messy off-white cloud around her hips. Gentiola disengaged herself from his grip, stood up, and let her clothes fall to the floor. Her eyes glowed deep forest green as she stared down at him. She took Charlinder's head in her hands and kissed him full on, leaving any restraint behind.
"That," she began, with a glance downward, "looks uncomfortable." She untied the drawstring on his trousers, pulled him to his feet, and led him by the front of his shirt to the lounge nearer the fireplace. It was a halting, awkward walk, as she stopped periodically to relieve him of his trousers, then his shirt and then his shorts. It was indeed a relief, as his erection had grown so eager he was afraid his clothes would interfere with circulation of blood.
Gentiola laid herself out on her side at the far edge of the lounge, and patted the space next to her as if Charlinder needed any invitation to follow. "More room here," she whispered as he made himself comfortable and drew his arms around her again.
He could not have asked for a better place to be. As they kissed again, there was nothing else in the world except the two of them. He ran his hands over her side and back and marveled at every curve in that wonderfully warm, soft flesh that was such a welcome relief against his deprived, abused body. Everything else in his life was rough, hard, dry, cold and unforgiving, and then there was this lovely woman pushing her fingers up into his hair.
"Sit up for me, will you?" he asked upon pulling away from their kiss. He slid over to crouch next to her edge of the lounge as he indicated for her to sit up with her feet on the floor. She looked at him quizzically for a moment until he positioned himself between her knees and kissed her just below the navel. There was something that distracted him for a quick, fleeting moment: a scar on her right leg, curving from the center of her upper thigh down to just above the knee, but he didn't dwell on it. He settled his hands on her backside to steady himself as he kissed her lower belly and upper thighs in a slowly tightening spiral. When he drew his hands forward, Gentiola dropped back on her elbows and spread her thighs further apart to give him more room. Finally he spread apart those moist folds of skin around her clit and went to work with his tongue; he went in different directions until he found a pattern that made Gentiola fall flat on her back and moan like she was in pain. He kept going like that until her body seized up as if tangled up between invisible strings and she cried out in desperate, ragged moans punctuated by hard inhalations.
Once she got her breathing under control, she sat up and grabbed Charlinder by the shoulders with shocking strength for such a tiny woman. She brought him onto his back on the lounge and straddled him. She leaned forward, pressed her weight into his upper body and kissed his neck and upper chest like she was just as starved as he was. "Ready?" she said.
Ready for what, he didn't need her to put into words. "Yes," he exhaled. She reached down between her thighs, grabbed hold of his cock, and speared herself onto him. She moved determinedly up and down on him, and it was the most wonderful feeling except for one thing missing: he needed to be closer to her. Careful not to break contact, he vaulted upright and held onto her upper back so that she rubbed against him with every rise and fall. They may have fallen together back against the lounge; he wasn't paying much attention to anything except the insistent up and down of the mesmerizing woman in his arms, and soon enough, he lost control as the light in the room turned to blinding flashes in his eyes. Next thing he knew he was settling on top of Gentiola as his senses returned to normal. He could hear the fire crackling in the hearth, smell the thin sheen of sweat on both their bodies, feel the air turn cool as his pulse calmed to its normal resting pace. He stretched into a comfortable entanglement with her; she ran one hand over his spine and ribs like she wanted nothing more than for him to fall asleep on top of her.
"Char, do you like that I'm chubby enough for both of us?" she mused.
He didn't answer with words, only wiggled around to holder her tighter, resting his hands in the reassuring pads of flesh on her waist. She chuckled along with him in response.
"Besides," she went on, as if they hadn't just interrupted their fireside chat, "what could be broader or deeper for your people than getting through the next winter?"
"I don't mean I blame them for it," he replied, lifting his head to look her in the eye again. "But am I wrong to think they could be looking at bigger things than that?"
"I think what you mean to say is, they should also be thinking of how their grandchildren will get through their winters."
"Yes, thank you."
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Voices
He found Gentiola outside, feeding and watering the rabbits and chickens.
"Good morning," he said, alerting her to his presence.
"Good morning," she returned. "Last night was..."
"Amazing," he finished.
"Yes," she replied appreciatively. "Listen, I haven't forgotten about why you’re here."
"I never thought you had."
"So, then, I’d like to tell you about the Plague today."
"I’d love that."
"Good."
He had to wonder why she'd chosen that morning to bring up the Plague, and why she'd implied that he may have suspected she’d forgotten. After several hours of letting Charlinder stew over this, Gentiola brewed a pot of tea and sat them down in the common area again.
"The biggest thing that I want to know is," she began, "why do you want the answers to the Plague?"
"I thought the reason was obvious. Doesn't everyone want to know?"
"Of course everyone wonders what made the world end," she said, "but you're the first one I know who's become a world traveler because of it. Why is it so important to you?"
"Because," he thought back to the tensions that motivated his departure. "Wait. Before I say anything, let me ask you something: Do you believe in God?"
She looked at him knowingly. "I am answerable to no force except the Earth. Her needs are my concerns, Her demands are my instructions, and Her energy is my life's blood. So if you mean, do I believe in the Abrahamic God, then, no, I don't."
"Okay, then, this'll be simple enough. You remember the fighting Eileen did with Mark, that was all over her journals? Of course we saw how the fight over birthrate turned out, but their argument about the Plague never got resolved, and in my village we're still butting heads over it. Most of us are content just to be heathens and get on with our lives, whereas the Faithful want to keep picking the same old fight about how we need to behave ourselves so God won't have to punish us again. And I might have a little more respect for that kind of concern except they take it upon themselves to tell the rest of us how 'God' wants us to behave, you know? That's the thing, is we still haven't figured out what makes them the Chosen Ones who know God's true intentions better than others."
"I noticed that about organized religions, too, in my youth," said Gentiola. "Go on. How did that convince you to walk around the world?"
"For a long time, it didn't. The argument sort of went in cycles, where the Faithful would annoy the rest of us for a while, and we engaged them maybe a little bit, but in the end we didn't care, and they dropped it for a while. Then more recently, they brought it up again, and they seemed to get a lot noisier about it this time, you know, more persistent. And things started happening, people started fighting about it. They were just little spats here and there at first, not enough to bother anyone except me. But then, one guy beat another one up."
"And this doesn't normally happen in your village?"
"Not often, and not nearly that badly. The message was mainly, 'Keep your cock out of my sister,' but he thought he had God on his side. That was the turning point for the village."
"Now, what did the sister have to
say about this?"
"She was pissed off at her brother for what he did and she made sure he knew it."
"So how did she feel about the other fellow, as you call it, putting his cock in her?"
"Oh, she was all in favor of it. Regularly, in fact."
"Okay, then, I take it this was an example of someone using God as an excuse to be a bully, which is unfortunate, but it happens. Did this bully say anything about the Plague during this episode?"
"Not at the time, but the disease is their biggest reason for arguing that God exists. There were some things that happened which the scientific view never managed to explain, or didn't explain to the Faithful's liking. We nonbelievers figured they didn't need to be explained any better, or it would all make sense once we had researching tools again, or whatever, but the Faithful have always insisted the Plague is proof not only that God exists, but that God decided to punish us for our sins."