by Jean Winter
Holy Saints in Heaven.
“My lord, I—I haven't finished with the kitchen yet.”
“The kitchen can wait.” His head curled round her neck for soft kisses just under her jaw. Lyra gulped.
“I'm not cleaned up yet, either. You will probably want me to go take a—”
“You smell great,” he breathed. “You are perfect just as you are now.”
Slow massaging motions began at the base of her neck and crept steadily outward, coaxing her dress's collar and sleeves off her shoulders. Oh, wow! That felt really good.
Her fierce grip on the counter edge relaxed. Well, maybe his needs really are about the physical, she rationalized as J'Kor's hands worked their way to her back where her bodice's ribbon was loosened. Suddenly, Lyra was having a really hard time remembering why this was not supposed to happen.
“Lyra, I want so much for you to enjoy this.”
The bodice slipped away and J'Kor felt his way across her bared midsection while he continued his light nuzzling and tasting of her neck and ear.
She was melting.
Melting.
“I will take care o' you.” Then he was turning her, cupping her face tenderly, and bending to kiss her, long and soft on the mouth. “Do you like this?” he whispered. Not really waiting for a response, he kissed her again.
Then she was in his arms, her body responding. Encouraging. Lyra pulled his head closer. She drank in the deliciousness of his lips and knew that he was registering each drum of her heart that beat in tandem with his.
His response was immediate. Her frock was pulled down past her hips to land in a soft, rose colored puddle at her bare feet and he drew her against him. “Moons, you feel so good!” was his impassioned murmur as he stroked her hair and raked his hands across her back, his breath coming faster. “I am going to be so good to you. You will see.”
Lyra looked up into his face. Those gray eyes filled with tender invitation. His voice brimming with tantalizing warmth and thoughtfulness. She had no words, but just smiled in acceptance, for the first time reveling in the blanketing security of that gaze as he carried her like a baby to his room.
J'Kor lay her gently on top of the made bed and Lyra closed her eyes, surrendering fully to the glorious sensations that his lips and hands were coaxing out of her. She exhaled in pure ecstasy. “My lord …”
“Oh, my little Twitterbug, I have missed you so much.”
Wait. WHAT? Lyra's lashes flew open to a husky athletic build, reddish brown curls, and a smile as glorious as sunshine gazing down at her. A loving finger traced a circle around heart
“I'm still waiting for you.”
Oh God! JON!
Lyra shot up in bed, breathing hard in a cold, clammy sweat. It appeared to be the middle of the night.
“Are you okay?” was J'Kor's sleepy question as he raised his head from his pillow.
Lyra bent her face to her hands, the overpowering guilt coursing through her as her mind raced to remember what was fact and what was dream. After getting home yesterday, she had gone straight to the kitchen to sort out dinner. J'Kor had been polite, but quiet, and each of them went about their business for the evening until bedtime. She was disconcerted by his approach to watch her undress in the closet, but when she had donned the nightgown and had nothing left to do but nervously wait for him to step aside, he simply nodded good night and left.
That was it. He went to his office again and she didn't know when he had come back in.
“Did you have a bad dream?” Lyra felt a touch at her leg and she jumped, jerking it away like it burned.
I am so sorry for being weak, my love! It was a dream! I don't know what came over me.
J'Kor started to sit up. “Would you like to tell me about it?”
“No—” Lyra answered too quickly. She was so embarrassed. “—m-my lord. I mean, no thank you.” Oh, no, she was crying! Lyra hastily brushed away tears and lay back down, turned away from him. “I'm fine.”
A moment of blaring silence stretched exceedingly long. Then, “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Please, j-just let it go.” Every sob and sniff must be so clear to his ears! But she couldn't help it.
“Lyra—” he tried; then he fell silent. Eventually, J'Kor turned over and went back to sleep.
The next day, Lyra could not shake her intense guilt over that dream. The majority of her morning private prayer time was spent in repentance—pouring out her soul, pleading for forgiveness. She couldn't look J'Kor in the eye. She avoided him whenever possible and when he presented her at lunch with another bouquet of fresh flowers, but this time, magically and charmingly pulled from nowhere, her smile, she knew, was quite forced. He didn't know he was only making it worse.
After a rather silent dinner, he remained at the table watching her while she cleaned up. When he asked if she would like some help, Lyra quickly shook her head, thank you, but no.
“Lyra, what is going on?” he finally said. “Is this still about that nightmare? Or our argument yesterday? Are you still upset about that?”
Lyra cringed as she stared at the cabinet before her. “Do I have to answer that, my lord?”
It was a long time before he said, “I suppose no'.”
“May I go outside for a minute, please?” It was suddenly stifling in here!
Another long moment. Then, “Sure. Fine,” and he left the room.
Lyra wandered through the fields, following the brook for quite a while. The harder she tried to put him out of her mind, the harder he stuck. And she couldn't stand it. The dream, how he was entirely filling her thoughts, it was like she was cheating on Jon … and her God. She had to get a grip.
The sun's brilliant purple rays through the distant tree tops suddenly helped Lyra comprehend that she had been out much longer than she intended and she hurried back to the house.
There, she found everything washed, dried, and put away. J'Kor was nowhere to be seen.
Lyra's depression deepened.
A minute staring aimlessly at the wall, and she concluded that the only task that had any appeal at all now was to go curl up in bed and end the day as fast as possible. Unfortunately, that idea didn't work as well as she'd hoped. Her sleep that night was a fitful wreck.
The next morning Lyra dressed, yawning heavily, and began her work of making breakfast and avoiding J'Kor. His plate she placed before him with a barely intelligible, “Good morrow, my lord,” before sitting across from him (as inconspicuously as possible) with her own.
He didn't touch it.
“Lyra, it is like we are back to day one again,” he said. “How much longer are you going to mope around like this? I thought we got past a few things. I thought we were being honest with each other.”
Drat.
The expletive she really wanted to use was not acceptable.
Lyra slowly put her fork down and placed her hands in her lap. “Forgive me. You are right.” Drat! Drat! Drat! But what kind of explanation could she possibly give? “My lord … I fear getting close to you.”
“Because I am a slave-owning Stranger?”
“Kind of,” she admitted, and she began to toy with some fuzz pilling on her apron.
J'Kor growled. “But you have been—”
Then his wire receiver rang loud and annoyingly clear from the office. J'Kor didn't move.
It rang a second time, a third. At the fourth, his chair scraped loudly on the floor as he finally got up to answer it. Now was Lyra's chance to cram the rest of her breakfast down her throat so she could be elsewhere before he came back.
# # #
“Aye, hello?” Kade was thoroughly annoyed that his confrontation with Lyra had been interrupted.
“Brother! Did you finally get things 'straightened' out?”
“Not now, mate!” J'Kor seethed, and hung up on his friend. He strode from the room.
The receiver rang again. Kade swore under his breath. He lifted the receiver again, but only just long enough for the li
ne to connect.
“Broth—”
Click.
It did not ring again.
When Kade got back to the table, he found Lyra with her mouth so full of food she could hardly chew. He rolled his eyes and took the chair next to her. “But we were getting along just fine until the other night,” he insisted. “What is it with these mood swings—”
A knock sounded at the front door.
Blast the Mother! What now?
A small, open-air carriage for two was visible through the front window, parked under the shade tree. Bloody whor'! Nim! He had completely forgotten she said she was coming back for a “follow up.” Grrr.
Kade stalked to the door.
“Good morrow, Kadent,” the physician woman greeted, all smiles and sunshine. “How are you this lovely—”
“Go away, Nim.”
Slam!
The stunned silence lasted only a few seconds.
“Now, Kadent,” he heard, along with a few more insistent raps. “There is no need to be childish about this. I told you I was coming back.”
“And I told you to leave her alone. You are no' welcome here.”
“The girl has the right to know. I am only here today to verify, anyway. I have brought a professor from the university to meet her.”
A professor? This had just gone from bad to worse.
“My lord?” was Lyra's tentative voice. “What is she talking—?” But Kade's raised hand silenced her.
“Nim, I can tell you right now that I will no' let anything come o' it, anyway, so you might as well forget about it and go home.”
After a moment, another voice spoke through the door. Male. And rather nasal. “Eh, my good Lord J'Kor, good morrow. My name is Dr. Wyk, Dr. Lensgran Wyk, from the university.” The man paused for some whining complaint to Nim about the humiliation of speaking to a door before he went on. “My lord, I do no' suppose you could open the door so I can—”
“No.”
“… W-well, I teach medicine and I should very much like to interview your khar—for academic purposes, o' course.”
“Permission no' granted. I am a very busy man and have no' the time for—”
“Kadent, that is enough,” Nim commanded rather sternly. “She needs to know.”
“She is my khar, Nim, and I will decide what she does or does no' 'need.'”
“Know what, my lord?” Lyra's voice was more insistent this time.
“Nothing, Lyra. Just the rash supposition o' an old woman who canno' keep her nose out o' other people's business.”
“Rash am I?” Nim had heard his conclusion—not that Kade had been trying very hard to keep his voice down. “Kadent, when have you ever known me to be rash? You are just being selfish …”
Somewhere in there, the man who called himself Dr. Wyk had started in again. “Lord J'Kor, if I may, I have made it my life's work to study this special branch o' medicine …”
“I am telling you both, for the last time,” Kade shouted, “to leave these premises or—”
“Know WHAT, my lord?”
Lyra's assertive resonance silenced them all.
The door opened with a soft click and swish on its hinges and Nim stood on the threshold, her bold determination belying the mildness with which she answered Lyra's question for him.
“That you are a mage, my dear.”
Curse the Mother's dark side. We are all doomed.
# # #
A WHAT?
The woman's incredible pronouncement was so ludicrous that Lyra almost laughed. How under Geniven's moons could Nim believe such a thing of her? Even if the old myths and legends were true, Lyra wouldn't touch any of that shady, mystic stuff with a twenty foot pole. It was unnatural—not from the Father, and definitely not part of His Plan.
“You only think she is a mage,” J'Kor muttered between clenched teeth, waves of discontent rolling off him.
“Well, that is simply what we are here to determine. Is it no'?”
J'Kor's glare at Nim did not soften as he took her by the arm and led her back outside, down the porch steps, and into the yard where a heated debate bloomed. Heated on J'Kor's side, anyway.
Lyra only caught snippets from that distance, but through the front window she could see the two determined figures hashing it out. Then a little cough brought her attention back to the young professor—Dr. Wyk—who had tentatively stepped inside. Restless fingers fiddled with the very worn gentleman's picnic cap he held before his slightly wrinkled dress jacket. His thin, pale skin emitted an almost greenish pallor under longish dark hair untidily sprouting from his scalp. Wyk's black-framed spectacles did little to hide the large round eyes behind them that, paired with the high, pointy cheekbones, recalled to one's mind the image of a shocktail caught in the glare of a hunter's spotlight—a red-rimmed, chronically fatigued shocktail that spent far too many hours hunched over small lettering in a dimly lit room.
He only nodded politely then turned, like her, back to nervously watching the couple outside argue under the morning sun. Nim finally turned back toward the house, but J'Kor did not, and to Lyra's great alarm, he only glanced back at her once before stalking off in a different direction.
“Good morrow, my dear,” Nim greeted Lyra with a sprite step into the home. “I was hoping to avoid such drama, although, I do understand Kadent's concern. How are we today?”
Lyra had a hard time getting her lips to move. “My lady, I agree with my lord. I am no mage. I-I don't even believe in witchcraft or divination. The very idea is repulsive to me, as a matter of fact.” Lyra dared not go further. She couldn't bring up God in this.
Nim gave her a kind smile. “Whether or no' you believe it yourself, child, does no' change its truth.”
“But it is not true, my lady! I don't even know where you got this idea.”
The two unwelcome guests quietly observed her like an interesting science experiment and Lyra anxiously looked out the window for any sign of a returning J'Kor. No such luck. She was abandoned, in the charge of a woman not as guileless as Lyra had originally surmised and a strange academic whose intentions were totally unknown.
“Lyra, I am sure we will all be more comfortable sitting down. Please,” said Nim, motioning toward the table.
“My lady—”
“Nim, dear,” she was reminded.
“Nim,” Lyra corrected, “is my lord going to return soon?”
“No.”
“But—”
“Sit … child,” Nim commanded, her daily quota for argument fast reaching its limit.
Lyra sat.
Nim and Wyk seated themselves opposite while Lyra pushed her largely uneaten breakfast to the side, her appetite gone.
“Now, first things first.” Nim clasped her hands together on the table. “How are you feeling? Are you fully recovered from last week's incident?”
“Yes, ma'am,” Lyra mumbled.
“Good. I was fairly certain you would be fine, but as you are now aware, that is no' why I have really come back to see you.” A quick look passed between Nim and her companion professor before she continued. “About two weeks ago, Kadent asked me to come tend a small stab wound on his back. It was a simple enough injury, requiring only a few stitches. When he asked me to come see you last week, I examined the cut again, just for good measure.” Another shared look between the two. “I am sure you can appreciate my surprise when I was hard pressed to even locate the wound site. It was completely healed with almost no visible scar.”
Here, Nim stopped, as if giving Lyra a moment to confess her part. Dr. Wyk, too, pushed his glasses farther up his nose, anticipating Lyra's reaction in the minutest detail.
But Lyra shook her head. “My la—Nim, I assure you that I did not do anything. I didn't even know he had a cut. How is that even possible?” The pages of Lyra's memory began to turn, trying to recall any of the times she had seen his bare back. There was nothing. Except the tattoo.
“Oh, I think you did do something,�
� Nim gently insisted, “though you may no' have been aware o' it.”
“What then? What do you think I did?” Lyra challenged. Maybe she would like to hear the answer, just so she could shoot it down.
“You sang, child.”
First a laugh, then a snort, then some other disbelieving grunt tried to vent itself in Lyra's throat, but all failed. She sat dumbfounded, praying that any second now Nim's very ill-conceived joke would end and they could all have a good laugh together.
The woman never looked more serious.
Dr. Wyk was no help either. He leaned forward, eager.
No, no, no! Lyra's hand flew, slapping the table's surface. “That is,” she told them both, “the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. I sang to him?” The snort finally made it out. “Singing?” Lyra rolled her eyes.
How stupid were these people?
Yes, she sang. And tended to hum while she worked, but in all her years and in all the times she had nursed people, she had never known her singing to make a lick of significant difference! It was just the most preposterous—! Lyra blinked.
Neither Nim nor the professor sitting across from her appeared phased in the least. They sat calmly awaiting the death of her denial before they could proceed again in orderly fashion.
It was unnerving, to say the least.
Lyra put her hands back in her lap. “I mean, you must be joking, ma'am. My singing has no magical power to it.”
“That first night that he brought you home, he told me you sang a song.”
“Well, yes … I guess,” Lyra said, vaguely recalling that little detail of an altogether terrifying night. “But it wasn't anything I hadn't sung before. And it wasn't even for him.” It was only for calming herself, because right after that was when J'Kor had taken her by the waist and danced with her, right into his room and—
“Aye, I know,” Nim admitted, “but that is what makes your case all the more interesting.”
Wyk finally felt it was time for him to jump in. “You see, normally, a song mage needs to have physical contact, but somehow, you were able to affect him from across the room. Very intriguing.”
“Wait. A song mage?” Lyra said.
For all the saints' sake! Why was she even entertaining a conversation about this mystical crap? There was the power of the priesthood, the same power by which God performed His miracles and did all His work through the universe, and nothing else. Man did not have the ability to magically manipulate the elements or the spirit world at will, and that was that.