Forever and a Knight

by Bridget Essex

  I want to understand. I want to unravel this.

  But I don't know how.

  ---

  That night, it's absolutely freezing. It's the kind of cold that makes me worry my nose might fall off from frostbite if I don't keep reaching up and pressing my palm to it.

  The sky looks like it's threatening snow, massive clouds scuttling across the starry night sky. But it doesn't snow. The wind blows wickedly between the trees, and the temperature keeps dropping, but at least there's no snow.

  Not until we stop and set up camp, of course.

  The sky seems to break, and then softly, gently, thick white flakes begin to fall down from the sky and all around us. I stare at the flakes reproachfully, burying my chin in my coat and sighing as Attis unsaddles Zilla.

  “I'm sorry, Josie—there's no village for a very long while. At least until tomorrow night. We are out in no man's land, as it were,” she says with a shrug, heaving the heavy leather saddle off of Zilla's back. “But I have a tent,” she tells me companionably, “and once it's set up, we'll be nice and warm together. Just have a little patience; it'll be done soon enough.”

  “I'm being patient,” I tell her, my teeth chattering. I glance at Attis, who doesn't seem bothered by the cold at all, as she takes off Zilla's bridle, slipping it over the horse's dark head. I shift my weight and roll my aching shoulders back. Damn, my cat is heavy. “Hey, can I help you with anything? I feel lousy, just watching you work by yourself,” I tell her, holding tightly to Wonder.

  Attis glances at me in surprise, and she's silent for a long moment as she removes the blanket from Zilla's back, too. “It would be a great help, actually, if you could gather wood for a fire. Dry branches, please,” she tells me, then digs out a small strip of cloth from one of her packs. With hard, lightning-fast strokes, she begins to scrub Zilla's black back, scraping away the sweat that had built up beneath the saddle blanket.

  “Firewood. Sure,” I tell her with a grimace. I don't want to bring up the fact that I've gone camping exactly one time in my entire life, and we bought firewood from this guy on the side of the road right before we entered the state park.

  But, still, gathering firewood... How hard can it be?

  Turns out: pretty damn hard.

  Because the trees are so enormous, and most of their branches are so enormous, whenever a branch falls to the forest floor, it's far too big for a single person to pick up. I'm talking as-round-as-me big. These branches are so large that if anyone was standing beneath them when they fell, they'd very quickly become a pancake. I'd need a massive chainsaw and a lot of energy to tackle any one of these branches, but they're certainly not kindling or ready-made firewood material as is. Even the smaller branches, the “twigs,” off of the big branches are as round as my thigh. I can't break any of them, even though I try with a vicious series of kicks to one that looks a tiny bit promising.

  It doesn't budge an inch.

  Frustrated, I venture further into the woods. It's twilight, but it's still light enough to see by at least a little, light enough to keep myself from walking into trees. Wonder's grumbling under my coat, but I ignore her, then try bouncing her like a baby to see if that quiets her. My arms are as heavy as lead after holding my chubby kitty all day, and Wonder certainly doesn't seem to appreciate the gesture (I'm worried my chest is in danger of puncture wounds), so I stop bouncing her, and then Wonder gives up her struggles for the moment, snuggling tightly against me again.

  I'm walking along, trying to keep my eyes peeled for those poisonous thorns I “found” (or, you know, fell on) my first night here (I'm actually sniffing the air a little like a dog, trying to detect the sickly sweet smell that I now associate with them), when I see a large, wide shadow rising out of the gloom between the trees.

  “Huh,” I mutter, stopping short.

  I stare up at the building.

  Well, it's not so much a building as what used to be a building.

  It's a ruin.

  I walk a few steps closer, my curiosity getting the better of me. This is the biggest building I've seen so far on this world, a couple of stories taller than the tavern we stayed in last night. There's one tall tower attached to the building itself and rising far above the base structure, and two shorter ones tower on either side of the tall one. None of these towers (or, even, the building itself), has a roof to speak of—the roofs appear to have caved in. There's a wide stone wall erected around the whole building, and I'm pretty sure, actually, as I look at the dilapidated stone walls and shambled towers, that this used to be a castle of some type.

  A small castle, reduced to ruins in the middle of the woods.

  I stare at the sprawling building in the dark, my breath coming out like smoke in front of me.

  There's a story here.

  I venture a little closer toward the building when I stiffen, hearing a shuffle of dead leaves moving behind me. My heart in my throat, I turn instantly, really not ready for any more surprises today. I'm, therefore, utterly relieved when I see Attis making her way toward me across the forest floor, walking with assured purpose as she strides toward me.

  “I was worried,” she says gruffly when she reaches me, not looking me in the eye as she glances past me, a small frown making her full lips curve downward. “Have you found any firewood?” she asks, raising her eyebrows as she glances at the castle and then back to me again, as if massive castle ruins in the woods are no big deal at all.

  “What's that?” I ask her, perplexed, as I gesture back toward the castle.

  “A castle,” she tells me maddeningly, her one brow raising higher. “Now, the firewood, Josie, we really need—”

  “I can't find any,” I tell her quickly, which—I realize—sounds terrible (I had one job!), but Lord knows I did my best to find some, and there's just nothing small enough to burn here in this part of the woods. As I shift Wonder back to my other arm, I have a brief, fleeting moment of panic as I wonder if—because there wasn't any firewood to be found—that we might actually stand a chance of dying from the cold tonight.

  This is not a nice, accommodating world full of heaters and thermostats, as much as I wish it was. This is the kind of world where you spend a freezing night in the snow in the woods, and it might be your very last night because of that.

  Attis glances around at all of the massive branches that have fallen, over time, and I can see a grimace pass over her face as she realizes that there aren't any twigs or, really, anything that might qualify in a broader sense as kindling.

  She sighs for a long moment, then stands a little straighter. “Well, then,” she tells me with a small shrug. Attis crosses her arms, plants her feet firmly in the ground and stares ahead at the castle with narrowed eyes. “Perhaps what we're looking for is there.”

  I turn to look back at the castle, but Attis wastes no time. She lifts her chin and moves past me into the dark, toward the ruins.

  “They would, of course, have had wood stocked here once, before the place was abandoned,” says Attis over her shoulder, as I trot to catch up with her long-legged stride. “And we might still be in luck. This place, believe it or not, was abandoned only twelve moons ago.”

  “Really?” I mutter disbelievingly as I follow her into the dark. It looks like it was abandoned a few hundred years ago.

  “This forest,” says Attis, gesturing around us with her armored hand, “has a habit of reclaiming what it wants. This castle used to be an outpost of Arktos City, actually. It's not really a castle; it's a small recreation of a castle,” she tells me, as she points up to the empty towers overhead, the towers that no longer have roofs because the trees are starting to crowd them out, curving branches around the dilapidated rock like each tree is trying to squeeze life out of the building.

  “What was it for?” I ask her, shivering a little.

  “This place was built for our Queen Calla when she was very small, as a gift from her mother, Queen Calliope. Her mother loved Calla very much,” says Attis with a s
mall smile. “She wanted Calla to have her own kingdom to rule in play, and the child loved the idea of a castle in the woods. So it was built for her. Calla called it Castle Star.” Attis points up to the tallest tower. There, in the stonework, I can make out stones placed into the wall of the tower, stones that, even in the dark, seem to glow gently with a soft, blue light. They're placed in the shape of a rough, five-pointed star.

  “So why was Castle Star abandoned?” I ask Attis, as I follow her under the large-mouthed front gate of the castle itself. The iron gate that used to hang here in the entry is hanging off to one side, dragged backward on its hinges by vines and thorn bushes, lying useless and rusty on the ground.

  “Queen Calla's lover brought her here about a year ago,” says Attis, brows up. “And her lover broke her heart here. She told Calla that she was in love with another woman.” Attis bites her lip and shakes her head. “So Calla left this place, and she hasn't been back since. And she asked her outpost of guards to leave this place, too. I honestly thought she'd change her mind, send her guards back here, because she used to love it so much. And, besides, it's a good outpost for the northern border of Arktos. But she never came back. And if you don't keep up with the woods, the woods move in,” she says, nodding to the wall to our right that's completely covered in ivy. “I loved this place once,” Attis tells me, her voice wistful. “But I think it will remain as it is until Queen Calla's future daughter takes over. If she even has a daughter.” She shrugs. “I don't think Queen Calla herself will ever come back here again. A heart, once broken, is difficult to heal,” she mutters, her jaw suddenly tense.

  I glance at Attis in the encroaching dark, Attis who crouches down smoothly on the floor of this main room, running her gloved hand over a mound of matted leaves, pulling them back to peer underneath as she looks for firewood. Her gaze seems far away, and her shoulders are raised, tense.

  I want to ask Attis about her lover Hera, but now's the most imperfect time I could come up with to do so. So I don't ask her. I try to calm my struggling, unhappy cat in my coat, and I cast about in this weird, open expanse of a stone room with its shattered, open maws of windows that let in quite a bit of the dying light. I look for a pile of firewood. I wonder what we'll do if there's nothing here to burn.

  It's so cold I can't feel most of my feet.

  “Here,” says Attis then, rising and striding to another pile of ivy. She moves a few strands of the lush, woody green aside, and this reveals a great mound of old firewood logs, neatly cut and stacked in a row. “Good thing, that,” says Attis mildly, taking up a large armful of wood and rising. “It might have been fairly cold tonight without this,” she says, and I can hear the slight smile in her voice. And when she glances back at me over her shoulder, she actually winks at me. “Now, can you carry some back?” she asks.

  I set Wonder on the ground, admonishing her quietly to stick around. I honestly don't know if she'll listen, but if she came for me across worlds, I kind of like to think that she's going to hang around. And she does. My spoiled cat is grumbly for a full minute, licking the fur on her back furiously, like she's super pissed at me, but then she gets up, meows at me loudly for some type of food (I'm assuming—it's her “feed me now or else” meow), and then she sticks close to my feet as I hold my arms out to Attis for the firewood.

  “So, I mean, are all the knights like you?” I ask, and when she gazes at me with a raised brow, I realize I didn't really phrase that correctly. “I mean, are all the knights les...women who love women?” I say quickly. “I mean, your queen is, right? Is that, uh...common around here?”

  Attis gazes at me with raised brows, like she doesn't even understand the question. “This is Arktos,” she says then, as if that explains everything. She stands smoothly with a very large armload of firewood in front of her. “We only have women knights,” she tells me, “though the kingdom does hire male mercenaries for certain campaigns if there aren't enough knights available. But there are usually enough knights. And, yes,” she says, her mouth turning up at the corners, “the knights do love their women.”

  “Is that, like, a thing here? In Arktos?” I press, feeling my jaw begin to drop as she nods. I firmly hold my mouth closed.

  “It's our way,” she says, with a small shrug. “There are other countries where this is not as common, of course, but in Arktos...” Attis gives me a small smile as she glances my way. “So, what is it like on your world?” she asks me, as we begin to walk back toward the encampment that Attis had started to set up. At least, I hope we're headed back to the encampment. The woods are very dark now, and though Attis is walking quickly in a specific direction, if it were up to me, I wouldn't have the first idea where Zilla and the packs are.

  “It's not like that on my world,” I mutter, glancing backward to make certain that Wonder is sticking close to me. Miraculously, she is, bounding after us over the brush and debris on the forest floor, a little like a puppy might. She's such a weird, wonderful cat. “I mean,” I clear my throat, “there are lots of women who love women. And men who love men. And people who like both. And lots of other stuff like that,” I tell her quickly. “But we...we don't have our own country. Though we do have Provincetown and San Francisco,” I mutter, but she doesn't seem to hear me, and I don't know if I'd be able to succinctly explain those cities. “So, what's it like?” I ask her, fascinated. She turns to me, surprised, her head to the side. “What's it like to live in a country full of people like you?” I ask her, practically breathless.

  It's a lesbian kingdom.

  This new development kind of takes the cake. What lesbian wouldn't love the idea of a lesbian kingdom? I can't stop wondering how awesome it must be...

  “I don't really know how to answer that,” she tells me, taking a wide step over a fallen branch. “Be careful there,” she tells me, and though she's carrying an enormous load of logs, she's able to steady them all in one hand and reach out quickly in the dark, steadying me by curling her fingers around my elbow as I stumble over the branch.

  “Thanks,” I tell her, feeling my cheeks redden in the twilight, thankful for that darkness just now so she can't see.

  Attis is silent for a long moment. “Do you miss your world, Josie?” she asks me.

  My breath quickens in the dark, and—ahead of us—I can just make out Zilla's shadowy bulk, can hear her snort out in contentment in the dark. I can see the packs and saddle on the ground around a small circle of cleared earth that Attis must have created while she was waiting for me to gather firewood.

  As I stare at the beginnings of the camp, I let myself realize that Attis and I are going to share a tent tonight. I mean, obviously we shared a tavern room last night, our beds very close to one another. But, come on. We're going to be sharing a tent. That's a whole other ballgame.

  There was tension between us last night... She caught me out of midair. I think she was going to kiss me. I'd wanted to kiss her.

  So...why didn't I?

  Because I'm going home.

  Because I do miss my world.

  I do...don't I?

  God, what a stupid, stupid thought. I grit my teeth, immediately angry at myself. Of course I miss my world. Too much information, but come on, I'm not ashamed to admit that I miss an actual toilet. I miss heat and warm water and baths and coffee and those damn hot dogs that seem to be everywhere I look when I'm in Boston and now are an impossible world away.

  I miss my job. I miss my friends. I miss...

  I take a deep breath, let the firewood drop next to Attis' stack as she kneels down and begins to place dried moss and tiny twigs (that, impossibly, she was able to find) in the center of a circle of pure dirt that she scraped out on the forest floor.

  I'm not an outdoorsy person. There's a lot I really despise about riding a horse every damn day, making tiny (if you compare it to driving a car) dents in this long journey we're going on to reach a city and a festival and the mere possibility that I'll be able to return to my world.

  B
ut here's the thing, the thing I haven't really wanted to think about, not yet... But it's there, glaring and obvious and something that I really do have to consider:

  What if I can't make it back to my world?

  What do I do then?

  “I do miss home,” I tell Attis quietly. I sit down on one of the larger logs and watch as she crouches in front of the tiny tepee of sticks and moss she's created on the circle of earth. I stare as she takes two stones out of a pocket I didn't realize she had in her armor, watch her strike those two stones together, watch the sparks emanating from the stones. The sparks fall on the kindling, twigs and moss, and then there's a tiny pinprick of light in the dark.

  And the fire catches.

  I watch Attis bending toward the fire, watch her lips purse as she blows gently on the tiny flame. I watch her red hair shining in the light of that flame as she tucks it behind her ear with an armored glove, setting more twigs on top of the slight fire. Her eyes are narrowed in concentration, and I watch her smooth, assured movements as I feel my heart beating a little faster.

  “And then sometimes,” I say quietly, so quietly there's a chance that Attis might not hear it, “I don't miss it at all.”

  Her gaze flicks up to me, and in the firelight, her warm, amber eyes seem to glow golden. “Surely this life is quite rough in comparison to the one you led before,” she says, averting her gaze as she sets a log on top of the small fire. The fire licks along the wood almost immediately, and in the space of a heartbeat or two, it gives a little roar, and Attis places another log on the hungry, growing flame, feeding it.

  “Yeah. But it's not so bad,” I tell her, reaching down and running my fingers along Wonder's fluffy, warm back, holding her against my leg for a long moment until I make absolutely certain that she's not about to saunter into the fire (or, much more likely, saunter past it and have a spark drift up and onto her fur and set her on fire). But, of course, my cat is smarter than that. She leans against my leg, purring up a storm, but also glancing out into the woods as if she sees something she really, really has to investigate. Or, you know, kill.