“If not for that,” he said, the same way he clarified mission details, “you would have given up and let yourself drown.”
I wanted to deny that, but the lie wouldn’t come. In those dark moments out there, I might have done exactly that. The easy path. Marskal was quiet, waiting for an answer, though he hadn’t exactly asked a question. I rubbed my hands over my face, water dripping onto to it from the sodden hair I had no energy to wring out or deal with.
“When I left Annfwn,” I said into my palms, “I thought I was going to be a hero. Like Salena. Did you know her?”
“No,” he replied, no longer snarling with fury, but not exactly relenting. “I saw her a few times, when I was a boy in Ordnung Township, and later as a young man training at the castle. The mad queen. Even then, even so far gone, she was magnificent.”
“She wasn’t mad, not in that way. But she gave everything to her plan, sacrificed herself in a long, slow attrition. It ate at her, being unable to shift.” Too close, there. “Never being able to return to Annfwn, shackled in marriage to that horrible man. He killed her in the end.”
“I know.” His voice held a world of regret.
“Anyway.” I dropped my hands and gazed over the gentle water luminous in the starlight, so much kinder when it wasn’t trying to drown me. “I thought I could do that, too. In my foolishness, I believed I could be as great—or even greater—than she. But I’m broken.” My voice, too, broke over the word, a knife cutting me.
“You’re not broken.” Marskal sounded as if he were trying to be encouraging, but furious frustration with me ran beneath it. “You have incredibly powerful magic.”
“That’s not important. It’s only occasionally useful. I’m talking about me. I am no longer a shapeshifter. I am broken.”
“I don’t agree on the magic, but as for shapeshifting, you simply need to recover, to try, to work at being able to—”
“I tried, all right?” I hurled it at him, even knowing he didn’t deserve that. “When I was sure I was drowning, when I was desperate to live, I tried to shift and I couldn’t. It’s gone. Gone from me forever and I’m nothing now. Nothing.” The sobs tore out of me, like a hatchling breaking out of its shell, ravenous and leaving the shards of my pride behind. Grief racked me, worse than coughing up the seawater, agonizing to my pitifully weak body.
I tried to curl up, but he was there. Yet again. Arms around me, lifting me onto his lap and wrapping himself around me. Safe. Warm. Protected. The memory came back of being the hummingbird carried in Marskal’s hands, jolting as he ran down the mountain. I felt fragile like that again. Bird bones. I buried my face against his chest and wept as I hadn’t since Anya’s daughter died. Marskal cupped my head in his hand, holding me against his heart, murmuring words of comfort, of compassion and reassurance.
Finally I ran out. I might have drifted asleep, a broken bird cupped in the palm of his hand. When I opened my eyes, time had passed, but he sat unmoving, still holding me, though he must be exhausted, too. I stirred and he tightened his hold, not restraining, but cuddling me closer. Maybe he thought I still slept.
“I should have died,” I whispered.
“You did die,” he replied without hesitation, “and you came back. You had strong reasons to come back. Remember those and stop trying to die again.”
I wanted to argue that I wasn’t really trying to, but… I sighed and leaned into him, boneless and weary. “Yes.”
“Yes?” He stroked a hand over my hair. “Will you promise me?”
That made me laugh. I couldn’t even say why. A chuckle rumbled through his chest under my ear. “Some men want promises of eternal devotion from the women they love, it’s true. I only want you to promise me that you’ll try not to die. I might not survive it a third time.”
“I can’t promise you eternal devotion,” I said, feeling that I needed to. Oh, honesty.
“I know.” He didn’t sound angry or even sorry. “I’ve never asked for that.”
He hadn’t asked for anything I wasn’t willing to give. This much, I could. “I promise to do everything in my power to stay alive.”
“Good.” He kissed the top of my head. “You’re not nothing.”
I moved, suddenly restless, but he held me close, making a shushing sound. “Don’t try to escape. Listen to me. You are yourself. A woman of humor, intelligence, and an unmatched exuberant love of life and all the world. None of us love you because you’re a shapeshifter. We love you for you.”
“Even though I’m failing in my role, and you’ll need to call in other Tala.”
“I’m sorry I said that.” His voice was indeed full of regret. “I was trying to push you, thinking that maybe anger would get you past the fear. A misguided attempt to help you. Plus you’d annoyed me.”
“I did it on purpose, to push you away.”
“I know that, too. In a better moment, I wouldn’t have fallen for it.”
I turned it all over in my mind. “I don’t know how to have only one body.”
He laughed a little, rocking me. “It’s hard for me to understand, because I’ve only ever had one body, but you learn to make it into what you need. If you need to swim, to fly, to run—there are ways to do that as a human. Train the body you have. I’ll help, if you want it. Though I still think you’ll shapeshift again. Don’t tense up.”
But I had. The thought electrified and terrified me. “How can you think so?”
“Because you still have your other magic. And you still have your shapeshifter strength and speed. It’s all there.”
I shook my head. “Even partblood, non-shifters have that. Look at Ursula—that same shapeshifter strength and speed makes her a superior fighter, but she’s never shapeshifted and never will.”
“Never wanted to,” he pointed out.
Which was true. Ursula clung to her mossback state with all the fear of those who dreaded change.
Like me.
“When I tried—out there—Marskal, it was life or death and I knew it. If that wasn’t reason enough to push me past this… scar tissue or loss of nerve or whatever is wrong with me, what would be?”
He sat quietly, stroking my hair, snarled and wet as it was. “It wasn’t a strong enough reason,” he said after a bit. “Because you thought of yourself as already dead.”
For some reason, the story he told me when I woke up came back to me. The warrior Morvared, who set everything to rights and then suicided, because he figured he was supposed to be dead. Marskal had dodged my question at the time, but suddenly I knew that he’d related that tale to me for this reason.
And, strangely enough, even though I had nothing else in common with that mossback warrior of old, the fact that he’d shared this feeling made me feel better. Not quite so broken.
“What will be a strong enough reason?” I asked.
Marskal moved, lifting my chin to look into my face. “There are lots of reasons,” he said, and kissed me. The feel of his mouth, the taste of him, the sweetness of the desire coiling from him into me… it all felt so good and real and alive. And, yes, there was that love in him, like a soft blanket enfolding me. Maybe it was being so battered, but this time I accepted it with gratitude, letting his regard warm and fill me. Maybe my heart had cracked a little, because I felt something. Wanting and needing him.
The yearning rose up, too, and I wrapped my arms around his neck, sliding my fingers through his short hair, finding it sandy and sticky with drying salt. He tasted of the sea, too, and—deeper inside—of himself. I pressed into him, opening more and demanding more. He obliged, devastating me with the kiss, hands roaming over me with his own hunger. I didn’t at all understand how he could want me—love me, even—when I’d been so awful, made him so angry, disappointed him so deeply. Breaking the kiss to breathe, I let my head fall back and he transferred his avid mouth to my throat, thrilling, fulfilling.
“I don’t understand why you love me,” I gasped, but holding on, so he wouldn’t pull away.
>
He didn’t. Instead he laughed, that darkly sensuous sound, licking up my throat, then finding my mouth again. “Maybe that’s something else you have to figure out,” he muttered against my lips, then dropped kisses on my cheekbones and closed eyes. “We should get you back. You need food and water.”
“One track mind,” I teased, not wanting to let go.
“Well, I need it, too.” He eased me off his lap. “Somewhere on this beach are my boots, my sword belt, and a pack with food, if I can only find them.”
Stricken, I contemplated him as he must have been, frantic, stripping off his weapons and boots and plunging into the sea to find me. I still didn’t know how he’d seen me, or gotten there in time. I cupped his cheek. “I’m really sorry, Marskal.”
He smiled slightly and turned his head to press a kiss into my palm. “Apology accepted. Don’t do it again.” He heaved himself to his feet, groaning, then held a hand down to me. “Think you can get up?”
I could, using the leverage of his help, but trying not to pull him down. The story of my life, lately. No more self-pity, I told myself firmly. Marskal was studying the darkened beach in each direction. Went a few steps and crouched, examining the sand. “This way,” he said, nodding to himself. “I think it’s not far.”
“You can see in the dark?”
He took my hand, lacing his fingers with mine, leading me down the beach—which was also back toward the palace. “My night vision is pretty good, but I’ve practiced it, too. Yours isn’t?”
“It is when I’m something nocturnal.” The fear and grief stabbed at me, and I let it. No more fighting or denying it. “I used to be able to draw on certain keener senses,” I offered. “Sort of a semi-shapeshifting.”
“Useful. And explains why sometimes you looked like you had cat eyes. Or that night you came back from being the owl—your eyes and some of your face still looked like the owl.”
I didn’t know that. No one else had ever remarked on it.
“Aha. And I’m right. Here it is.” He sank to his knees in the sand and I gratefully followed.
He snatched up the pack from his pile of things and extracted a flask, making to hand it to me. “You first,” I said.
He raised a brow, but drank, then handed it to me. The fresh water tasted so sweet, soothing on my salt-scraped throat. “Fruit first or bread with honey?” he asked, rummaging through the pack.
“Any meatrolls?”
Shooting me a sidewise glance, he nodded, handing me one. I took a breath, not liking the scent, but determined to override the lingering hummingbirdness. Catching him watching me like I might faint or puke, I determinedly took a bite and chewed, telling myself the whole time that this was good for me. My stomach only barely rebelled, and I smiled at Marskal, even if it felt a little grim. “You shouldn’t have to feed me—and I need to nourish this body properly.”
He leaned over, sliding a hand behind my neck and kissing me. “I like feeding you. It’s something I can do for you.”
“You do everything for me. It’s me who does nothing for you.”
“That’s not true.” He kissed me, reverent, the love in him humming through it. “You did suck my cock, after all.”
The laugh snorted out of me, unlovely and graceless, but he didn’t seem to mind, kissing me anyway, the kiss turning hungry. A hunger I returned in kind. With a reluctant sound, he eased off. “Finish your meatroll and drink more water.”
“Yes, Mother,” I replied, obediently eating.
“Is your mother like that?” he asked, casually curious.
“Badgering me to eat?” I thought about it. “Not really. You wouldn’t know this, but eating has never been a … problem for me, before all of this.”
“I did know that,” he replied gently. “Remember that first night I brought you food? You ate like you were in pony form.”
I laughed. “True. Speaking of—more meatrolls?”
“One more, then we’re stuck with fruit and honey until we get back to the palace. I brought mostly that.”
Thinking of me, even as I was trying to escape him. “Anyway, my mother’s been dead for a while now.”
He froze, looking embarrassed and pained. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize.”
I shrugged. “Why would you? But, my mother was…not warm? I mean, she was Tala, and so not like mossback mothers.”
“Tala mothers abandon their children at birth?” Marskal nodded. “Figures.”
I elbowed him. “Not like that, but we’re a proud people. Don’t snort like that. And Salena was her sister and my mom had only a few forms. I think… it bothered her, not to show as much ability, though her blood was as pure. And then Zyr—my brother—and I, we’re more like Salena.”
“Two of you then?”
“Three. I have a sister, Anya, as well, though she is more like my mom. Except not as fertile.”
“Your mom had three children—that’s amazing, given what’s going on, right?”
I nodded, making myself swallow the last of the meatroll. I didn’t love it, but I already felt stronger for it. “More than that. She was pregnant at least a dozen times—if she kept count, she never said—and carried seven children to term. Only three of us survived to adulthood.”
~ 18 ~
He stared at me, face stricken and pale in the starlight. “Zynda… I had no idea. I’m so terribly sorry. And here I went on about my siblings.”
“I didn’t mind. I asked, remember? Our children have a high mortality rate—even those that survive birth and seem healthy. It’s true of most every Tala you meet—we just don’t discuss it with outsiders. Or, really, at all. With me, Zyr, and Anya, my mother found the right partners. We all three might even have the same father, since the blood matches worked.”
“I’m understanding more now,” he mused. “And your sister and brother—no children?”
“Zyr has fathered a few, he thinks, though none have lived that he knows of. The women…well, we’ve gotten to the point where the women keep to themselves if they’re pregnant. Maybe they tell a few close friends, I don’t know.”
“They don’t tell the fathers?” Marskal sounded aghast.
“Well, if they even know who the fathers are,” I point out. “Some women try to keep track, but others don’t. And then, if they do know, why trouble the men with the grief of losing a child?”
“Because.” Marskal’s patience sounded strained. “Because, Zynda, grief can be shared. People make each other stronger for sharing these things.”
I shook my head. “That’s a nice idea, but it doesn’t work that way. Men and women fight over it, each accusing the other of having the bad blood. Some of the marriages, the grief and anger tears them apart.”
“As when Salena’s Tala husband suicided.”
“Exactly.” I shrugged, then hoped it was too dark for him to have seen it. “Anyway, if any of Zyr’s children have lived—and the mother was sure of his fatherhood—she would have told him so our family could claim the child as part of our bloodline. And so other women would know he could produce a viable child.”
“So much I didn’t know.”
“No one who’s not Tala knows this.”
“Thank you for sharing with me,” he said gravely. “And your sister?”
I sighed, wondering if I could tell this. “She’s carried one baby to term, but the infant …” My voice went creaky at the end, and I couldn’t get the word out.
Marskal heard it and moved next to me, putting an arm around me. I dropped my head onto his strong shoulder, not sure why I’d ever resisted it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You were there?”
I nodded. “Anya didn’t want our mother to know. She was still alive then, but she’d had so much heartbreak with her own babies. So we went to another community up the coast when Anya began to show, and I stayed with her. To keep her company.”
“To share her grief or joy.”
I gave him an exasperated look, which he probably missed ent
irely. “With Anya it was more to nod while she moaned about feeling like a whale without getting to be one and to hunt down whichever exotic fruit juice she was currently craving.”
“You’re adorable when you’re pretending you don’t deeply care about someone. You were there in case the worst happened.”
“I suppose that’s so. We were—” My throat closed on it, but I powered through. “We tried to be practical. We knew better, but when she didn’t miscarry, we were so full of hope. Anya had picked her lover very carefully, a man who’d fathered three viable children.”
He stroked my arm, an easy up and down slide. “Hope makes things both better and worse.”
“Worse,” I replied darkly, the memory of those days like a stone in my belly.
“For someone so lighthearted in general, you have a strongly pessimistic side.”
“Do I? I suppose we’re all like that, the Tala. We live so close to death, to the loss of our entire people, that it kind of forces us into the other end, just to compensate. No one celebrates life like those in constant company with death.”
I could feel him not commenting. “Just say it.”
Marskal sighed a little. “It’s not fair—but I was thinking that you, after your own brush with death, didn’t compensate by celebrating life.”
That sunk into me, and I was quiet, mulling that over. “You’re probably right. I think—” I broke off, surprised at what I’d nearly spoken aloud.
“I’m listening.”
“So you can report back,” I had to point out.
He turned to me, raising my averted face with a finger under my chin, and kissed me. It felt like a promise, a vow. “I apologize for giving you that idea. You’re right that I was trying to push you, but it was unfair to imply that I’d betray your trust. I won’t say anything that you confide to me and that you don’t give me permission to share.”
“Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” I teased him, but something about the moment made me breathless. And warmed me inside.
The Shift of the Tide Page 21