In Other Lands

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “I am also just going to constantly insult you,” Elliot announced. His lightly stroking fingertips touched the place where golden skin was cut off by leather. He could undo tangled leather ties with one hand, with the incentive of Luke’s breathing, changing rapid and desperate, in his ear.

  “Don’t insult me,” breathed Luke.

  “Oh,” said Elliot. “I’m going to. There will be the more elaborate insults, but also just the casual everyday insults and insulting nicknames, like . . .”

  “Like what?” Luke whispered.

  Elliot looked down at Luke, gold and pearl and flesh and blood, storybook strange and known by heart. Luke was looking back at him and really seeing him, and he could see the brilliant blue of Luke’s eyes turning almost black. He felt the strain of Luke’s body, arching up to be as close to him as he could.

  “Hey loser,” Elliot murmured, “I want you.”

  As a graceful segue back into platonic friendship went, Elliot had to admit it had not gone well.

  If he wanted to be brave and tell the truth, as Luke had, maybe he had not wanted it to.

  It was difficult to get to know Golden, but Elliot was trying. One advantage was that he was as intelligent as he was good-looking, and he spent a lot of time in the library with Elliot, Myra, and Serene.

  “They restricted our books in the finishing school,” Golden confided in a rare moment of openness. “It was very annoying to work out ways to get forbidden books. I did manage.”

  Golden wore a reminiscent smile, as if thinking fondly of past lawlessness. Elliot did not know him very well yet, but he liked him a lot.

  “Will you miss the library then, my sweet?” Serene asked tenderly. “Will you miss me, too?”

  “I suppose I would miss . . . the library,” said Golden. “If I were leaving with the rest of the elven contingent. Except I am not. I explained to Commander Woodsinger that, as your future spouse, I wished to learn more about your military duties, and that moreover since I had run away with the soldiers I could not go back to the elven woods unmarried. Papa would have hysterics. The commander has kindly permitted me to attend certain select classes during your final year. I think I will learn human military history, and how to throw javelins.”

  “You’ll like military history,” Elliot approved. “Can’t speak to the javelins.”

  Serene sat stunned.

  “We are not to be parted?”

  Golden sneaked a pleased glance at Serene’s expression, half adoring and half amazed. “No.”

  Serene kissed Golden. It was an intense kiss, until Golden drew away with a horrified look at the witnesses to his immodest behavior. He looked toward the librarian, obviously expecting a scolding, but Bright-Eyes-Gladden-the-Hearts-of-Women beamed benevolently down at this display of young love.

  Elliot felt deeply wronged.

  “Why did you not ask me to come with you to the commander’s office?” Serene asked after a pause.

  Golden looked mildly surprised. “For moral support, do you mean? I suppose I could have, but I’m the independent type.”

  Elliot smiled to himself, remembering standing in the commander’s office with Serene and Luke years ago. Going to support Serene then had been, he reflected, one of the best decisions of his life. He was ready to support her through anything. Including the crisis of realizing that she might be more emotional and needy than that tender flower, her betrothed.

  The door of the library opened, and Luke came in. He was in the library more often these days, which Elliot thought was an excellent life choice. Elliot was about to gesture to the chair beside him, when Luke spoke.

  “Just came to say good-bye,” he said awkwardly. “I have to ride out with the elven troops, so the Border guard can give their thanks for the elves’ support in person.”

  “Farewell, Luke,” Serene told him. “Good fortune ride with you. My apologies that I cannot accompany you as I would wish.”

  “It is ridiculous that I am going, and it’s all your fault,” Luke told Elliot. “Serene and Golden can’t come, because elven society is rocked by their scandalous elopement, and so I have to go, because I’m the only warrior cadet in the Border camp who can speak fluent elvish.”

  “Ha ha,” said Elliot. “Enjoy.”

  “Right.” Luke hesitated, rapping his knuckles against the table. Elliot turned a page of his book. “Okay. So I’m going.”

  “Okay, bye,” said Elliot.

  He heard the door swing shut, turned another page of his book, and looked up to find everyone staring at him.

  “Boys!” said Myra, at the same time as Golden said: “I fear human men are not given the chance to develop their natural masculine intuition.”

  “What?” Elliot demanded.

  “Are you stupid?” asked Myra. “Are you going out with Luke or not?”

  Elliot hesitated. “Yes.”

  “He came specially to say good-bye to you,” Golden said, more politely, but his tone also questioned Elliot’s intelligence. “I do not know if you are not interested, or protecting yourself, but you cannot guard yourself against the whole world. You only succeed in placing a barrier between yourself and the world.” He hesitated. “I know that from personal experience.”

  It was the first crack Golden had let himself show Elliot, in his ivory-and-gold façade: it was the first time Golden had shown Elliot that Golden wished to be known. Elliot appreciated that Golden wanted to be friends. He wondered what hurts Golden’s world had inflicted on him, and how they were different from the wounds the world had inflicted on Elliot, and Serene, and even Luke.

  Elliot hoped he would get to know Golden better. But he had something to do first.

  He shut up his book and pushed it away.

  “I think I’ll go say a proper good-bye to Luke.”

  The patient silence of his library mates indicated they thought that would be for the best.

  They were right, Elliot thought. If he was not inherently unlovable, if he had not chosen someone who would never want him as much as he wanted them, then he had to take the risk and try. He had to trust that they would both try.

  It was terrifying. It was what people did, all the time, on both sides of the Border.

  Elliot lingered a little longer, out of panic, and addressed Serene. “I’ll give Luke your love, shall I?”

  “He knows he always has my love,” said Serene. “So should you, by now. Go tell him something he does not know.”

  She gave Elliot her small, almost imperceptible smile. It felt like a blessing.

  “All right,” said Elliot, and ran out of the library.

  There was frost on the ground, but Elliot felt the ice breaking under his feet as he dashed around the towers and cabins, down the dirt path to the gates where elves and humans were mounting up in preparation to go. Luke was already on his horse, scanning the horizon. There was a knot of people between them, checking saddlebags and saying good-byes, defying Elliot’s attempts to weave through them.

  “Excuse me, sweetheart,” said Elliot. “Darling? A moment of your time? Sugarplum? Sugargrape? Sugarassortedfruitsandvegetables?”

  Luke did not even turn his head.

  “HEY, LOSER!” said Elliot.

  “Elliot,” Luke said at once, looking around and then jumping easily off his horse. “What are you doing here?”

  Just the truth, Elliot reminded himself. Not what he thought someone else wanted to hear, or what he thought would protect himself. Just the truth, and trusting that someone else would care to hear it.

  He took a deep breath. “Just came to say good-bye,” he said. “And . . . I’ll miss you.”

  It was absurd to feel like this, both embarrassed and too vulnerable. Luke was his boyfriend.

  “Yeah?”

  Luke’s voice scratched on the word. Elliot wondered what Luke would say if Elliot told him that Elliot thought Luke was extremely good-looking and that Elliot was terrified of losing him. He feared Luke would assume Elliot had head tr
auma.

  Elliot probably would have to have head trauma to get that out. Luke was able to pay Elliot compliments, even though they came out with the clumsy force of insults or missiles. Luke was, Elliot thought, better at this than he was. Which made perfect sense: Elliot might have had a boyfriend and a girlfriend before, but Luke had been loved his whole life.

  Elliot wanted to get better at this than he was. He wanted to learn how.

  There were people all around: supercilious elven warriors, the commander watching with an expression both wry and judgemental.

  “Yeah,” Elliot said, stepping up to Luke. “Take care of yourself. Don’t get hurt. Seriously, I know better than to ask for no heroics, but if it comes down to it, consider leaving someone else to die. For me.”

  Luke pretended to consider it, for a minute. “Nah.”

  “Well, okay,” said Elliot. “Just be careful, then.”

  He took hold of Luke’s upper arms, pulled him towards Elliot and kissed him good-bye, the way he should have kissed him in the library. Luke relaxed against him, soldier’s muscles loose under Elliot’s hands, soldier’s discipline gone for a long thoughtless thrilling moment. It took Elliot another moment to open his eyes and realize the sudden shade and warmth came from Luke’s wings, which had not been out before.

  “Um,” Luke said. “I’m very embarrassed. Please go.”

  Elliot patted him on the shoulder. “Terribly sorry about all of this. Everybody is looking at you. Have fun with the elves.”

  He pushed a wing affectionately aside and headed back toward the camp. Elliot looked over his shoulder and saw Luke already looking after him, Luke’s expression still startled but undeniably, transparently pleased by this turn of events.

  Elliot enjoyed the warm glow for about half a second when he saw the other cadets who had come to say good-bye following him. In the lead was Dale Wavechaser. His face was set in stony lines, hard in a way Elliot had never seen him look before.

  Dale caught up to Elliot. Elliot let him. They walked alongside each other in silence for a while.

  The other cadets were hanging back, as if kept off by a forcefield of awkwardness.

  “You and Luke,” Dale said at last.

  “Ah,” Elliot responded, brilliantly. “Yeah.”

  “So I guess you really liked him, all along,” Dale said. “I mean . . . you said as much.”

  Elliot caught himself looking around, paranoid, as if he had committed a crime and he was scared someone would see. He crushed the guilty impulse, and nodded.

  “And I guess . . .” Dale’s voice was heavy now, like footsteps dragging to an unwanted destination, “he always liked you.”

  Elliot opened his mouth to deny this vehemently and completely, to say that he had never been wanted or wished-for, but he remembered Luke last night, telling him about the play, and shut his mouth again.

  “And where does all this leave me?” Dale asked. His voice was bitter. “Aside from feeling like a complete idiot.”

  Elliot kept walking silently beside Dale and tried to sort it out, the conflicted mess of not caring about someone else enough. He was not used to being the one who cared less, and having to admit all this to himself: that he had hurt Dale, both intentionally and unintentionally, that Dale had genuinely cared about him and been kind to him, that he still did not find Dale interesting to talk to, that he still did not want to associate with Dale or anyone else who thought about Luke or Myra the way Dale did.

  “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “Doesn’t change much, does it?”

  It didn’t.

  Dale sighed, and was kind for the last time. “Don’t worry about it, Schafer. I’ll be fine.”

  Elliot gave him a small smile before he walked away. “I’m glad.”

  Elliot went home alone, by the river that fed into the lake where Dale had kissed him and Serene had caused a scandal by doing only what the boys did. He was thinking about Dale and about trolls and about peace, and most of all about Luke. He was so deep in thought he almost walked into the river, but then he heard a ring like a bell and felt his shoe knock against something hard. He looked down and saw a glass bottle, half embedded in the mud of the riverbank.

  It was the same bottle he had sent down the river with a message for the mermaids, but it did not have the piece of parchment he had put inside. Instead, as Elliot pulled out the cork, he found a round flat stone, and inscribed on it were symbols he had never seen before, in a language he did not know.

  He did not know if it could possibly be a message from the mermaid he had met, or whether it was a different mermaid, curious and reaching out. He did not know what the message said.

  But he could learn what the words meant, learn to speak the language of strangers. He could find out, and reach out.

  It was one of the first days of blue skies and sunlight, though the air still had a bite to it, reminding them all the year had not quite turned tame. Elliot was extremely pleased to welcome the spring, as for a few weeks there, especially those camping in the frosty woods with harpies, he had felt as if it would be always winter. Always winter, and never central heating.

  Serene, Golden, Elliot, and Luke were all due to meet out in the fields where Serene, Elliot, and Luke had gathered years ago, after Serene had been banished from the lake. They wanted to discuss where to go next year, without teachers eavesdropping on them or Commander Woodsinger offering any more unsubtle hints.

  Serene and Luke’s parents had all written four very different letters of very urgent advice. Rachel had even written to Elliot. The Sunborns had been collectively surprised and, reading between the lines, mystified when Luke let them know that he had a sweetheart whom they might have met before, someone who preferred books to athletics and whose conversational stylings Adam Sunborn had once described as “You know when a nest of hornets goes mad.” Elliot knew the Sunborns had been expecting something entirely different. He could not blame them if they were disappointed in their hopes for their much-loved Luke, or if they grew cold to Elliot, or if they found themselves unable to take the situation very seriously.

  He had opened the letter from Luke’s mother with a certain amount of trepidation, but Rachel’s letter to Elliot had been sweet to him as she ever was, and finished with the hope that he would come and stay with them on the break before they began their posting, that he should think of the Sunborns’ place as home, that he was always welcome. Elliot believed her. He kept her letter, folded up carefully between the pages of one of his favorite books. He still thought Rachel Sunborn would be a very nice mother to have. Luke’s father had not sent a letter. He had sent Elliot a jumper he had knitted himself, the warmest thing in the Borderlands next to the shelter of Luke’s wings.

  Much though Elliot appreciated Rachel’s writing, he would not do what Rachel wanted. They had all agreed not to let anybody else influence them.

  They wanted to decide on their own.

  Luke arrived first, because Elliot had told him to come early. Elliot saw him coming, a dark shape against the sun, but he came to Elliot swiftly and landed lightly, folding his wings back as they sat cross-legged and knee to knee in the green grass.

  “I have something to tell you,” said Elliot. “I haven’t told Serene. I want to tell you.”

  He was used to having Luke’s attention, but perhaps he would never be used to having focus like this, so absolute, as if for a little while Elliot could be all that mattered in the world.

  Elliot drew in a deep breath and said, before he could lose his nerve: “My mother,” and then he was able to take a breath, knowing he had committed himself. “She left when I was a baby. My father never forgave me for it. She’s in the Border camp now. She’s one of the medics—the one with red hair like mine. She doesn’t want anything to do with me. You can’t do anything about it. I can’t do anything about it. I’m going to leave the Border camp at the end of our last year, and I don’t imagine I will see her aga
in. I wanted you to know, because—I want you to know me. That’s all.”

  “Thanks for telling me,” Luke said, soft.

  They sat there for a little while. Elliot slumped backward, almost overcome with the relief of having told, having it no longer be the secret that he was unwanted and always would be, having it be a smaller secret because it was shared. He could tell Luke was trying to think of the right thing to say.

  “Medics,” Luke said at last. “Who needs them?”

  “Every stupid warrior in this camp, or else your wounds would become infected and all your limbs would become gangrenous and drop off.” Elliot rested his cheek against Luke’s shoulder. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

  They sat like that for a while longer, until they saw Serene and Golden coming in the distance. Serene was ruffled, as Luke was, from a long day of warrior training, though Luke was more ruffled, on account of the flying. Golden was not ruffled at all. He had apparently spent the day in the library, making pro and con lists for the fortresses they could ask to be assigned to. Elliot leaned his head against Golden’s elaborately coiffed one as he admired the lists.

  There was peace in the Borderlands for a time, peace in the freshly turned blue skies where harpies flew, peace over the fields where humans and trolls dug, peace in the forest where dryads sang, and peace in the lakes and rivers where mermaids swam. There had been no sign of unrest and no sign of humans coming across the Border again. Not yet.

  They had to take advantage of this opportunity. They could go wherever they wanted, if they could only decide where that was.

  “I would suggest not the elves,” said Serene, always the most decisive of the group. “My mother is not pleased with me seducing an innocent and highly born young boy. I think Golden and I should be married several years before we venture back into elven realms.” She hesitated. Over the years her rare faint smile had grown, Elliot realized, far less rare. “Besides,” she added. “I would welcome a new challenge, so long as I have old comrades with me as I face them.”