Tim Te Maro and the Subterranean Heartsick Blues

by H. S. Valley

  I let myself imagine that he secretly wants to be stuck with me forever – that all of this is for keeps. That we actually, maybe, might have already made this whole thing somewhat more than temporary. I pretend he feels the same way about it as I do – that his grip on my arm, wrapped around his chest, is somehow possessive, needful, and that I’m not alone in this mad, teetering whirl of emotion. The possibility is simultaneously horrifying and exhilarating. My emotions slip out of me, every breath a thought of what could be. I feel it like a physical thing, an unfurling of all of my defences; every shuttered thought and feeling, every tightly stifled wonderance, finally let free.

  It’s a long, long time before I can fall asleep, trying to cram everything back inside.

  CHAPTER 24

  EVERYBODY KNOWS

  We’re awake early for a weekend and in the dining hall before the majority of students have bothered getting up, so we’re safe to talk about things without being overheard. The notebook is open in front of us, and Elliott has fashioned my jacket into a nest so Meggan and Leda can sit on the table between us. I pour the tea and he butters some scones – uniformly shaped for him and dark-edged and crispy for me.

  ‘Why don’t we read the whole list of things all together and see if anything links up?’ he says. ‘It’ll be a start. Once we know what questions to ask we can do some more specific research, ask a teacher or something.’

  ‘D’you think it’s safe to ask one of them? Won’t it be obvious why we want to know? I can’t imagine that standing in front of my mum with our fake baby and your ring on my finger is going to be remotely subtle.’

  He hmms in assent. ‘Have you talked to her about any of this?’

  ‘No, of course not. I haven’t even seen her this weekend. And I don’t want her to find out I’ve done something embarrassingly stupid unless I have no other choice.’ I push my hands through my hair and try to reset my brain. ‘Let’s just start.’

  He looks up at me from under his fringe and the sheer beauty of him hits me again, right in the gut. ‘“You cannot create a bond with someone who’s already dead”,’ he says, looking me in the eye.

  ‘You also –’ I turn the notebook towards me, trying to get back on task. ‘“Cannot create a bond with someone without their consent”.’

  ‘Folie à deux, as expected,’ he says, and I don’t bother asking him what the hell that means.

  ‘“You cannot create a soulbond with someone who is already soulbound to someone else”,’ I continue, ‘“already promised to be soulbound, or not yet born”.’

  ‘All sensible rules. And I doubt this is a soulbond.’

  ‘I was being thorough.’ I give him a pointed look and he shrugs, so I continue. ‘“One can only rely on the fortitude of a marital bond –”’

  ‘I thought we decided we weren’t married?’

  ‘You decided. I don’t trust everything I read on the internet.’ I find my place on the page again. ‘“… If the parties are of sound mind, of true heart, betrothed to one another or confined by parental shackle …”’ I pause. ‘What do you get from that?’

  ‘If that’s our bond, the “of sound mind” bit is something of a surprise.’ He smirks at me.

  ‘That wasn’t the bit I meant. Could a ceremony – the magic – recognise Meggan as a parental shackle?’

  ‘I don’t know. When did you research marriage stuff?’

  ‘I didn’t, specifically – this was in Bonding Ceremonies and Rituals Around the Globe. New Zealand law obviously doesn’t legally recognise most of what was in there,’ I point out. ‘Some of it sounded familiar and some of it definitely didn’t and then there was a bunch of stuff where I couldn’t even tell if it was magic at all. Anyway. Do you think “true heart” means “honest”?’ I mull it over. True heart … it reminds me of something dragony. ‘It sounds like a movie about a knight who gets given a sword.’

  Ana and Manaia arrive then, and the conversation shifts to movies as Elliott tucks the notebook out of sight and we pretend that’s what we were talking about all along. The others drift in: Nikau and Hana with Buttercup, looking enviably domestic, then Matt, with a hot water bottle and a blister pack of ibuprofen. Sam and Silvia turn up as we segue from talking about dragon depictions in media to discussing specific TV shows and whether characters can be considered queer canonically if the showrunners said no, but the writers and the actors hinted very blatantly at yes.

  ‘Morning,’ Silvia says. Her and Sam have probably had a very romantic start to the day again, if the extra fluff in her bun is anything to go by. Or Sam’s smile. Ugh. At least I didn’t have to be there for it this time. ‘Were they OK last night?’ she asks, and lifts Leda out of the jacket nest for a cuddle.

  ‘Minor grizzling at about four,’ I say, ‘but otherwise fine. We took them on an exciting trip to the library.’

  ‘Tim,’ Silvia pats me on the arm. ‘You do know they can’t read, right?’

  I give her my best withering look.

  ‘I expect they can hear if you talk, though, otherwise talking to them wouldn’t settle them down,’ Sam says. ‘Who knows, they might be listening to everything we say and reporting back to Ms Van Mill.’

  I panic and look over at Elliott, hoping nothing Meggan has heard us doing has made it back to any of my mother’s colleagues. He gives me half a second’s glance before focusing on Sam.

  ‘Well. I can assure you, we did not make them listen to several thousand words of dry, tedious information about bonding and cursed jewellery,’ he says quietly, and passes over the teapot.

  Sam’s eyes light up and the egg-spy theory is forgotten. He leans in, ready for new information. ‘Is this about the rings?’

  ‘Unfortunately, no,’ Elliott says. ‘None of it really seems to be. We’ve done a lot of research, but none of it seems to fit what these rings are doing.’

  ‘But they’re doing something?’ Silvia leans in, right beside Sam. ‘Tell us what’s happening. From the beginning.’

  She’s forgotten to be quiet and now everyone at the table has gone still, waiting. I look around and see mostly worry, not the thirst for scandal I’d expected. Even Manaia looks concerned under the frown she’s directing entirely at Elliott. Presumably he hasn’t kept her up to date. Meggan grizzles from her nest and Elliott pulls her into his lap to comfort her. I wish he’d do the same for me.

  ‘We don’t really know,’ I say, loud enough so it carries the length of the table but hopefully not beyond. The nearby tables are only sparsely occupied, so we should be fine. ‘We went out, got drunk, woke up with each other’s rings on.’ I hold my hand up just enough so they can see, and Elliott does the same.

  Silvia frowns at the gold band, then back at me. ‘You don’t normally wear a ring.’

  ‘It’s Dad’s. I found it a few days ago with his things.’

  Sam freezes halfway through buttering some toast. ‘His things are still here?’

  ‘Focus, Sam.’ Silvia flaps her hand at him. ‘Are they giving you visions? Can you communicate telepathically? Are you having the same dreams?’

  ‘No, we, um …’

  ‘We can’t take them off,’ Elliott says.

  ‘What? At all?’

  ‘They can technically be removed,’ Elliott explains. ‘But we experience a vast and horrific sense of unease if we lose contact with them. Almost like emotional vertigo. Nausea, despair, et cetera. Imagine depression, but condensed and turned up to eleven.’

  Ana grimaces sympathetically, her tiny hand reaching out for Manaia, but Sam looks thoughtful, which is why I wanted us to get his help in the first place.

  ‘Even if you keep hold of it, the edges of the ring feel sharp, like a blade,’ I say. ‘Though no actual damage seems to be done in either case.’

  ‘It punishes you if you take it off?’ Sam asks, frozen knife-deep in a jar of Pic’s peanut butter.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘That’s not normal,’ he says.

  ‘That’s pretty
far past not normal.’ Silvia’s lip curls. ‘Why would you need that if both people wanted to be bonded to each other?’

  Sam hesitates. ‘Maybe it’s not meant for two people who want to be bonded.’

  ‘Are you thinking master-slave stuff?’

  ‘Not specifically. I’d need to think more about what the benefits of the bond might be before I made any sort of hypothesis.’

  ‘Are there benefits?’ Silvia turns to me again, and I don’t have an answer for her. I see her lip twitch when she realises what she’s just said, and I don’t have an answer for that either.

  ‘None that I can think of.’ I say, straight-faced. ‘Like I said, no telepathy, no visions, no dreams. No magical GPS, no night vision. Nothing.’

  ‘Maybe it’s not a punishment then,’ Sam says. ‘Maybe taking the ring off does something else and you just happen to feel bad. Correlation, not causation.’

  ‘Maybe it’s just the drunk teenager special?’ Elliott suggests. ‘Saved for idiots who drink too much without thinking about the consequences. Doomed forever to be reminded of the need to be sensible.’

  Silvia smiles. ‘It would serve you right if it was, wouldn’t it?’

  Elliott directs his sarcasm at me. ‘Your friends are so supportive, Tim, I can see how you did so well at life.’

  ‘Hey,’ Silvia says. ‘We never said we weren’t going to help you figure this out.’

  ‘Yes. Food first, though,’ Sam says.

  ‘Us too,’ Ana pipes up from the other end of the table.

  ‘Whatever we can do to help.’ Manaia nods and goes back to her coffee, seemingly unbothered that she’s been volunteered for something without her permission.

  ‘We have netball, but we can help after?’ Nikau offers, and Hana and Matt nod encouragingly.

  The weight of secrecy lifts with the promise of not having to tackle any of this alone, and Meggan goes quiet and calm in Elliott’s arms. He shifts one of his feet so it’s tucked between mine, and for the first time since we woke up yesterday, things don’t seem quite so bad.

  CHAPTER 25

  MY DELIRIUM

  The rest of the morning is dedicated to researching what kind of bond it is. With Sam at the helm, and Elliott more than happy to follow his lead, things quickly get far more intellectual than I can manage right now. A spreadsheet emerges from between where Ana and Manaia are huddled on the library’s old blue couch, covered in textbooks and an atlas. After an hour, Silvia and I leave a note at the table and take the egg-babies for a walk.

  She eventually lands on the topic I’ve been dreading and I shrug, not sure how to explain my feelings even to myself. ‘You must really like him if you’re not completely freaking out about this,’ she says, with a hint of mischief.

  ‘He’s fine,’ I say, and I feel the heat of the lie burn my ears. ‘He’s good with Meggan and he’s been helping me with atmospheric charms in Practical Magic. He can cook as well, unlike Matt, so Food Tech is less hit-or-miss now.’

  ‘Come on, Tim.’ I hear the smile in her voice. ‘We found you shirtless. Cuddling. It’s obvious something else is going on.’

  I decide to not mention we were also pantsless. ‘It’s not a big deal, Silvia.’

  She makes a disbelieving sound and we walk in silence for a moment. Then she asks, ‘Is this why you and Lizzie broke up? She always seemed really into you.’

  I let out a sigh. ‘Yeah. Well, things changed. I was dealing with some stuff, and it wasn’t really … working.’

  ‘But it’s working with Elliott?’

  ‘We’re not going out,’ I groan.

  ‘Sure you’re not. You’ve gone straight past that to married.’

  ‘We’re just bonded,’ I say. I wish I cared as little as I’m implying, or that I could actually tell Silvia how I feel, but she might not get it.

  ‘You guys are living together, sleeping in the same bed, and you’ve swapped rings. A hundred years ago, this would be a common law marriage.’

  ‘Common law marriage doesn’t exist anymore. Since 1951, you need a licence to be married in New Zealand.’

  ‘And before 1951, you didn’t need that.’

  ‘We didn’t go back in time the other night, we just went to the pub. And it could be entirely coincidental that we used rings. It’s not like either of us have other jewellery or anything else that would work for some other sort of bond.’

  ‘What about your pounamu?’ she says, all smug, and I glare at her ’til she gives up. ‘Fine,’ she says, like she’s disappointed that my life isn’t entertaining enough for her. ‘Maybe you’re bonded in an entirely non-marriagey way and we’ll find some quick little unbonding spell and you can go back to living as lovers and being ten feet deep in denial.’

  She makes it sound ridiculous – that it could be so simple. That I’ve been naive in hoping it will be. I can still hope, though. It’s that or cry.

  Silvia looks sideways at me, quiet for a moment, like she’s trying to gauge how touchy I am right now. ‘Do you want to be married to him?’ she asks, and I wish I knew how to answer.

  There’s definitely a part of me that wants the epic, sweeping romance of being married young and throwing caution and modern conventions to the wind. I like the idea of being loved so much that none of that matters. But I’m not loved, and there is no romance, and it does matter. And lord knows what the rings will do if either of us want to get married to someone for real in the future. So I say, ‘I don’t want to be wearing a mental breakdown on my finger for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Is that the only reason you want to fix it?’ Silvia stops walking and I turn to check if she’s OK, but she’s just standing there staring at me like I’m incredibly thick. ‘Tim. Seriously. Do you like him that much?’

  I can’t look her in the eye. ‘It’s not like it would matter if I did. We have an … arrangement, and it’s only ’til the end of the assignment. We agreed.’

  Thankfully, she doesn’t nag me for more information, just says, ‘Unless you’re magically bonded forever …’ and then goes quiet. It doesn’t last. ‘Tim.’ She looks hesitant. ‘For argument’s sake, if it is a marital bond … Have you guys … you know … since you were bonded? I mean, it looked like you had yesterday morning, but I don’t want to assume. Because according to what I was just reading, it would make a difference –’

  ‘We didn’t …’ Oh my god, this is horrifying. ‘It wasn’t, you know, we just –’ My face is on fire and I stare at the floor, wishing it would swallow me. ‘We don’t even like each other. We only hooked up because we’d both been dumped and we were sharing a room anyway, and I was curious.’

  ‘Yeah, so you say. But are you still curious?’

  Good lord, she’s relentless. I look down at Meggan, clutched in my arms. Am I? ‘No.’

  Silvia doesn’t say anything more, just bumps her shoulder against mine and stays close as we make our way back to the others.

  When we get there, the librarian is gone and the same Year 12 student from last night is sitting behind the desk again, staring at us as we walk in. Sam is sitting at our table with Elliott, and Silvia leans over his shoulder to give him a hug. She stays there, whispering. He glances up at me for a second, his expression serious. Elliott keeps his eyes on his notebook and says nothing.

  ‘Yeah, we were beginning to wonder that too,’ Sam says, and my gut turns.

  ‘Wondering what?’ comes a voice from behind me, and I turn to see Ana, followed by Manaia carrying a stack of books. There’s a particularly large hardback one at the bottom titled 19th Century Encyclopedia of the Occult, which seems a bit intimidating.

  I look at Sam, with Silvia still draped over his broad back, and he looks at Elliott, his eyebrows indicating very clearly that this is his news to share.

  ‘Since we can’t find any information about any nonmarital bonds that fit the characteristics of this one, and a bunch of clearly marital ones that do …’ Elliott finally looks up at me. ‘It’s seems as though we
might’ve actually got married. For real. Well, maritally bonded. Not legally married. I was right about that, at least.’

  ‘Also, since you’ve engaged in some sort of sex since, you might have a hard time breaking the bond,’ Sam adds.

  My gut falls out of me and crashes through the floor, into ancient bedrock and closer and closer to hell. The feeling of doom is edged with frilly lace, though, and a soft, sappy feeling that I’m pretty sure is my latent romantic side. Somewhere else in there is also the horrifying realisation that Elliott has been talking to Sam about our private life, and Sam’s now just announced it to Ana and Manaia as well. Both girls are silent and wide-eyed and I wish for a second that all of me could’ve fallen through the floor.

  ‘Hang on. We don’t actually know for certain what counts as consummation,’ Elliott says. ‘There’s a reasonable chance this’ll still be easy to undo and we just need to find the right information about how to do it.’

  I’m torn between being pleased that the two of them are getting along and the ouchy feeling of my maybe-husband clearly hoping he won’t be my maybe-husband much longer.

  ‘OK then,’ Sam says. ‘I propose we concentrate on finding out what constitutes consummation in marital bonds, and whether marital bonds work for same-sex couples. If we happen to come across a divorce ritual, we’ll keep it to one side in case we need it.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I blurt. ‘And thank you all for helping.’

  Elliott pushes the chair beside him out with his foot and motions for me to sit. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  ‘Knowing what we do, it’s probably both of your faults,’ Sam says.

  ‘My mum is going to kill me.’ Elliott drops his head into his hands, and my insides hurt.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Silvia hisses, straightening up. ‘Speaking of mums …’