The Button Girl

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The Button Girl Page 27

by Sally Apokedak


  Once dressed, she left her room, but she couldn't remember which door led to the great room she'd seen the night before. She crossed to the room opposite hers and knocked softly. Getting no answer, she cracked the door open. Sleeping quarters. Empty. The bed looked like it hadn't been slept in.

  At the next door, when no one answered her knock, she again peeked in. The blankets on the bed were rumpled. The door to the bathing room stood ajar and the room was still steamy. She'd apparently barely missed Sober.

  She was about to close the door when she saw the gray flannel button scarf in a rumpled pile on the desk. She tiptoed into the room and held the scarf to her cheek. It smelled of Sober. "Why do you keep this?" she whispered.

  "I already answered that once."

  She spun around, still holding the scarf, her cheeks burning.

  "Didn't you believe me?" He leaned against the bathing room door, a brush in his hand. He wore loose flannel trousers—brown—with a tan shirt that looked creamy-white against his dark skin.

  Repentance threw the scarf on the desk and backed toward the door. "I'm sorry. I was looking for the library."

  He took a step toward her.

  "I didn't know you were here. I'm sorry." She backed out the door and fled across the hall to her quarters.

  A knock sounded on her door and Sober walked in without waiting for an answer.

  "Will you please talk to me?" He sat on the bed next to her. "I really need to know where I stand with you."

  Her cheeks were still hot and she didn't want to look at him. "I don't know what to say." She wanted to throw herself into his arms and tell him, "I love you, that's where you stand." But to what end? He'd already told her he wouldn't go with her to Montphilo.

  "How about if I ask questions and you answer?"

  She nodded.

  "Why did you refuse to button me? What was it about me that was so distasteful?"

  She looked up and rolled her eyes. "Must we go back to that, Sober? I thought you had forgiven that."

  "I did forgive." He took her hand. "I'm merely wondering at the reason. Was it something about me you couldn't stand? Is it something I can change? Is there hope you'll ever change your mind in the future? How can I know what I need to do, if you won't tell me what I did wrong in the first place?'

  She pulled her hand away from him. "Now you're being ridiculous."

  He nodded. "I guess I am. How ridiculous of me to think we might make a good button couple. What is it about me that you can't stand?"

  "You're serious?"

  He sat waiting.

  "It had nothing to do with you. If I had been promised to Justice Palmtree I'd have refused the buttoning, all the same."

  "Justice Palmtree? He was a more desirable button mate than I was?'

  She groaned. "I just meant ... Oh never mind. Sober, I didn't even know you. I didn't refuse because you were lacking. I refused because I couldn't stand the thought of the overlords taking my babies and making them slaves."

  He studied her for a moment. "So to protect babies that didn't exist, you sacrificed me to the overlords?"

  She winced. He'd never understand. "You're the youngest. You never had to watch your baby brothers carted off. You never had to hear their wailing or your mother's weeping. "

  Compassion pushed the door open and stuck her head in. "Oh, there you are, young man. I wondered where you'd gotten to. Well, come on, then. I've laid breakfast out in the library for the two of you."

  Repentance silently followed Compassion down the hall, hoping that Sober might drop the whole conversation. She was sure she loved him, but she wasn't sure she could talk to him about it right then.

  Two plates and two mugs stood on a low table in front of one of the settees in the library.

  "Lord Carrull won't be joining us?" Repentance asked.

  "He's gone to the palace." Compassion answered.

  A surge of hope filled Repentance's heart. Lord Carrull would fix everything. She was sure of it.

  Breakfast was fluffy mounds of scrambled spruce hen eggs with vegetables and sausage mixed in and buttered toast on the side. And to wash it down they had strong coffee with sweetened yak's milk.

  Compassion, after pouring and making sure that everything was to their satisfaction, and after asking fifteen times if they were sure there was nothing else wanting, left them alone to eat.

  "So," Sober said as if the conversation in Repentance's sleeping quarters had never been interrupted, "if you'd been promised to Justice Palmtree it would have been a little harder to sacrifice him to the overlords than it was to sacrifice me?"

  She laughed. "Stop! You're being silly. I never said I wanted to button Justice. I had no intention of buttoning any man. Ever. From the day my first brother was taken, I made up my mind to never, ever button."

  "It would have been helpful if you'd have told me that before I passed up every other chance."

  "I didn't know you were waiting for me. I barely knew you were alive."

  He chuckled. "If only I was as good looking as Justice Palmtree. You knew he was alive."

  She picked a piece of tomato from her eggs and flicked it at him.

  He swatted it away, laughing.

  "Justice was in my school with me every day. You weren't. How was I supposed to know you?" She laid one hand gently on his back. "But I am sorry for what I've put you through. I didn't know they would beat you." Tears stung her eyes. "I didn't know anything, really. I didn't even know Harthill was made of ice." She shook her head, amazed to think of all the things she hadn't known about the outside world on the day of her buttoning ceremony. "All I knew back then was that I would never button and breed for the overlords."

  "You knew we'd be taken away on the slave carts and that we'd never see our families again."

  Repentance remembered Goodwoman Marsh on the ground, blood running from her broken nose, and shuddered. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  She set her fork down and shoved her food away, her appetite gone. "I was six when they took Tribulation. I hated my mother and father for letting the boys go. I grew up knowing that my parents couldn't protect me—wouldn't even try to protect me—if the overlords came for me."

  Sober reached over and brushed the hair back from her forehead. "I wish you had trusted me enough to tell me before the ceremony. I would have liked to have said goodbye to my folks."

  "I didn't even tell Comfort. I left her without saying goodbye." She had left a note, though. Sober hadn't gotten that chance.

  "But it was your choice."

  "Which made it worse. You went as a victim of my selfishness. Your parents could remember you with love. Mine had to live with the shame of what I did."

  He took her hand, playing with her fingers for a moment and rubbing her palm with his thumb. "You really didn't know I was alive?" he asked looking up from her hand.

  She shrugged and gave him an "I'm sorry" smile. "I know I owe you, Sober. I'll pay you back someday."

  "No. You don't owe me anything. I don't expect anything from you. I know that's hard to believe when you've grown up in a world where you owe your entire life to a man with a dragon stick."

  "But Sober—"

  "No, let me finish this, please. I don't want to own you, Repentance. I rescued you because I couldn't bear to think of the life squeezed out of you by the swingman's rope. I couldn't bear to think of your beautiful eyes with no light in them. It was purely selfish on my part, but not the kind of selfishness you think. I don't mean to use you or take anything from you. I love you and I want you to be safe and free."

  She smiled. "You love me?"

  He looked confused. "Of course I love you. Was that ever in question?'

  "So you're not having a joke on me? You really were waiting for me all those years?"

  He looked shocked. "How many times must I say it?"

  "I don't understand why you would do that. You didn't even know me. We'd not spoken more than a few words before that trip up the mountain."
r />   "I loved you all the same," he looked at her, his face flushed and his eyes bright. "I've loved you since the day I saw you in the swamp picking persimmons for Comfort, when everyone was saying your mother wasn't right in the head. I heard you singing to Comfort and telling her you'd never let anyone take her away. I wanted to protect you. That's why I put the bunches of swamp bananas on the ground every week just at the time you were out with Comfort looking for breakfast. And the berries and nuts. Didn't you ever wonder why the squirrels loved you so much that they left you mounds of berries in the summer and nuts in the winter?"

  She laughed. "You? I used to thank Providence for all that food. I thought he knocked those bananas out of the trees for us."

  "No, that would have bruised them. He made me crazy in love with you so I climbed the trees and carried the bananas down and gently laid them on the ground for you."

  Repentance blushed. He was crazy in love. She was overwhelmed. She never knew. And even after she caused him so much pain, he still loved her. She swiped at the stray tears that slipped down her face. "And here I was afraid you might want to button with Generosity."

  "Generosity?"

  "She's very nice," Repentance said. "And she's pretty."

  "She is both of those things." Sober said. "But I've never thought of her in that way." He leaned back and closed his eyes, thinking. "Interesting question. Were I not in love with you, would I button Generosity? She's a fine girl. Still a man likes to have a little peace and quiet in his own home of an evening." He opened his eyes and threw Repentance a wink. "And I do believe Generosity could chase a dead man from his grave with all her chatter."

  She looked at his happy face and laughed with him at the thought of Generosity talking a dead man from the grave. She kept looking at him after they grew quiet. Where would she be in five years? He would be free eventually. Would he still want her?

  It didn't much matter. She understood perfectly what Providence had done to Sober all those years ago because he'd done the same thing to Repentance. Crazy in love. That described it perfectly.

  She slid close to him, picked up his arm, ducked underneath it, and laid her head on his chest. He settled his arm around her.

  "I love you, Sober," she said.

  He bent down and kissed the top of her head. "And now I can die a happy man," he whispered.

  She snuggled against him.

  "Well, no, that's not true. I'm not perfectly contented, yet," he said. He reached under her knees and pulled her onto his lap. Then he kissed her.

  On the mouth.

  For a long time.

  When he finally pulled away she fell against his neck, feeling a little lightheaded.

  He closed both arms around her and held her tight.

  "Now you're content?" Her voice sounded gravelly as if she'd not used it in years.

  "Not really."

  She stiffened in his arms. He hadn't liked it? She'd never kissed anyone before. Maybe she'd done it wrong.

  He kissed her again. Longer that time. Finally he trailed little kisses across her cheek to her neck, just below her ear.

  "Not nearly content," he whispered. "You're like salt water. The more I drink, the thirstier I get."

  She leaned against his shoulder and sighed. She, at least, was perfectly content.

  There is rest for the weary warrior on the sunny slopes of Providence's Mountain, but there is none to be had in this world. You mustn't lie down and sleep. Every time I've thought to take a little nap, I've paid the price. Evil never rests and neither can we.

  ~Kindness Firtree, Meditations on the Precepts

  Chapter 33

  Sober kissed her once more and scooted her off his lap and onto the settee beside him. "Now, leave me be, woman. My breakfast is already cold," he said as he picked up his fork.

  She shoved him with her shoulder. "You blame me?"

  "I don't see anyone else here distracting me."

  They ate in silence, glancing at each other and smiling every so often.

  When he finished breakfast, Sober waved at the bookshelves that covered the walls. "Well, then, what shall we do today, Repentance? Read books, read books, or read books?"

  She thought sitting on the settee and continuing with that kissing business might be nice, but she said, "Well, I don't know. I was kind of thinking we might read books."

  He smiled. "Good idea. We have lots to choose from." Then he added under his breath, "And thank Providence for that."

  She landed a light punch on his shoulder. "Because being cooped up with me all day is such a boring prospect?"

  He winked at her. "Because my mind is far too creative in thinking about all the ways we could fill the hours as we wait here." He jumped up as if chased by a trooper and proceeded to browse the books on the shelf by the door.

  Repentance, wanting to give him some room, wandered over to the shelf by the window.

  Compassion came for the dishes.

  Repentance smiled at her.

  "What is it, then?" Compassion asked, giving Repentance an odd look.

  "What do you mean? I've just had my breakfast and now I'm going to read."

  "I never thought the cook's food was that good, is all, to make someone look as happy as you look."

  Sober chuckled.

  "I said something funny?" Compassion asked, throwing him a glance over her shoulder.

  "What? Oh, no. I'm just looking at the books."

  "Some funny volumes there, eh?"

  He smiled at her.

  As soon as the door shut, Repentance grabbed a small pillow from the settee and threw it at Sober.

  He batted it aside and winked.

  He chose a biography, she picked out a folktale, and they spent the next few hours sitting close, reading.

  Every time he turned a page, he'd lean down and kiss the top of her head. She wasn't turning her pages as often. She kept drifting off into her own thoughts and having to read each page several times.

  "Listen to this," he said.

  She closed her book, her finger holding her place, and gave Sober her attention.

  He angled his head to read the title of her book. "Oh, my. Are you sure you don't mind my interrupting that important book? The Yak Herder and the Lowland Girl? Sounds enthralling."

  She bonked him lightly on the head with the book. "What do you want, Sober?"

  "This is a biography of Lord Banniss. Do you know who he was?"

  The name sounded familiar. She remembered one of the young princes spitting the name out with venom. "He was some kind of slave sympathizer, wasn't he?"

  "He was sent to the swing frame almost a hundred years ago. Mistress Merricc told me about him. But listen to what he said in a speech a year before he was hanged. 'There are some things worth more than life and some lives not worth living. To die as an honest man is better than to live as a liar, to die fighting evil is better than to live with your eyes and ears and heart clamped shut to the pain around you, and to die serving a friend is to die the best way of all."

  "That's pretty sad," Repentance said.

  "You think so?"

  "Considering he died a year later on a swing frame? Fighting evil, I presume. Yes, I think that's sad."

  "I found it encouraging. He died as an honest man. And he died serving the slaves he'd befriended. He got his wish and died the best way."

  "Why did he have to die at all?"

  "That's beyond my ability to answer. It's a harsh world. But if we have to die, it's good to die well. I think Lord Banniss would have heartily approved of you, Repentance." He picked up one of her hands and kissed the palm. "It's better to die fighting evil than to button and breed for the overlord slave traders. You were right about that. You were willing to sacrifice for your beliefs. I'm happy to know you. And Lord Carrull, too. He risks his life to help slaves. I'm convicted. I have been far too complacent."

  She frowned. "You didn't know. No one in the village knows anything. We didn't even know a place like Montphilo e
xisted." She remembered her Geography books with the maps ripped out and her History books that told half-truths.

  He paused, considering. "I was asleep. I think I could have known. I should have known. I was simply content to wait upon Providence to deliver us out of slavery, and I never took a stand for what was right."

  Repentance shivered. She had never been content. That was her problem. She'd always railed against Providence and the unfair treatment he allowed. She hadn't run away from the village for such noble reasons. She wasn't so much loving her future babies as trying to protect her own heart and trying to strike back at the hated overlords and simply trying to escape the swamp where she always felt like she'd choke on the gray and where she never felt safe for one single minute after the overlords tore her brothers from the family. Her motives were all mixed up together but she knew she was not as noble as Sober was making her out to be.

  "I see now," Sober continued, "that I was sitting contentedly by, while slaves were being beaten and hanged. I knew it when I saw those three boys on the swing frame the day we arrived in Harthill. I knew that very moment that Providence had used you to pull me out of the swamp and open my eyes to the evils of the world, because He wanted me to act."

  "Act on what?" Lord Carrull said as he entered the room.

  Repentance's heart skipped a beat. "You're back. Did the king believe you?"

  "I didn't see him." He sat in a chair facing Sober and Repentance. "He was gone. I saw the prince. He says the king has gone away on business. He would not say where."

  "That makes no sense," Repentance said. "Why would the king leave now?"

  "Particularly when tomorrow night is the Moonlight Festival." Lord Carrull said,

  Repentance had forgotten all about the festival. The preparations in the kitchen felt like a lifetime away. The time she spent in the dungeon had driven all thoughts of feasting and thanksgiving far from her.

 

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