Episode 239: Morning (Giana)

Cool lips pressed against her forehead. She knew right away that they were not Mel’s Dragon-warm lips. They were cooled by dawn in a tent.

But he was so warm, Misha, and his arm still enclosed her in the safety of his assurances. He hadn’t done a thing last night. He could have. Many men would have, but he had not.

She snuggled against him.

He pulled her against him and kissed her neck, just below her ear. “Good morning, Ana,” he whispered.

She froze. It wasn’t fair to him, for her to relax like this when she meant nothing more by it. He wanted her to mean more.

“How you sleep?” he asked.

“Heavy.” She turned onto her elbow so that she could see his face, effectively separating their bodies. “You?”

“Next to you?” he teased, as blood rushed to her cheeks. “I sleep okay,”

“I’m sorry,” she said. She could not decide whether to be amused or embarrassed or angry with herself for causing him extra trouble.

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “I sleep another night.”

He kissed her, as they’d kissed during their dance last night. She let him. She did not need to be drunk to appreciate the feel of his lips, pliable against hers.

“This isn’t an answer yet,” she warned him, because of course the answer was No. “I will have to speak to Rhoda. And think.”

And find a way to reject him without damaging his reputation or his personal sense of self-worth.

He ran his hand down her arm and slid it from there onto her waist. “You want breakfast?”

“Yes, please.” She could eat. That, at least, she knew how to do. “Can I…help with it? And do you work?”

“I home for week. My work is travel.” He knelt down and unzipped the tent, shirtless against the sunrise. “You meet my family?” he offered. “We share food.”

She nodded her head again. Out in the sunlight, the world was brighter than she expected. She was rarely outside at this hour since moving to the Dells, and in Denmark the sun was not this overbearing this early in the day.

He led her to a nearby cook fire, where an older man sat whittling and a woman bent over a pan. “Kak, Bibi,” he greeted them. “This…Ana.”

The woman rose from the fire and hugged Giana before kissing her straight on the lips.

Imagine if she had done such a thing to Mel, with his opinions on touch!

Gi tried not to be tense, at being kissed by a stranger. It was no different from Misha kissing her last night.

“Welcome!” the woman, Bibi, said. “Now we just have to find someone for Luca.”

“What happened to Kenzie?” Misha asked.

The man, Kak, shrugged. “Nothing happened to Kenzie.”

“Hm,” Misha murmured. “He will find someone.”

Bibi did not much seem to care at the moment. She appraised Gi, in the outfit Rhoda had given her, which was a peasant blouse, a leather lace-up bodice, and a dark blue skirt with a red and white floral print. She ought to be at a renaissance festival, not here, although the clothes did seem to fit well with her surroundings.

“Where are you from, Ana?” Bibi asked.

Misha ran his hand down her back, politely distant but still soothing.

“Babylon, by way of Elesara,” she answered. That was easy to share.

“Do you know why we call it Babylon?” Misha asked her.

“No? I have always wondered.” She would not wish to be asked why she called Elesara by that name and not another, so she afforded others the same privacy, on the assumption that they likely didn’t know.

“Don’t listen to him,” Kak said. “He has wild ideas.”

“It is where every color is. Of person,” Misha blazed ahead, indifferent to Kak’s teasing. “So it is like a nursery, like a baby. So we call it Babylon.”

She laughed. It was a better story than she would have invented.

“Perhaps it is Eden, then,” she teased.

And perhaps there was something to that. She thought about the bees trouble that so worried Aadya, and the lack of diversity in every realm she’d visited. The only place truly flourishing was Babylon. What if…?

Misha interrupted her thoughts with an unexpected smoldering look and a deeper tone to his voice. “If it Eden, I be in trouble for all the fruit I eat.”

She blushed, against her will, but Kak and Bibi smiled.

“Maybe Luca will be as lucky as you,” Kak hoped.

Bibi served Gi a stack of flatcakes on a tin plate, with some sort of molasses drizzle over the top, much like pancakes and syrup but richer in flavor and texture.

“Maybe next dance,” Misha agreed. Gi wondered if the Tsinganoi marriages were like Regency families in the United Kingdom, where younger sisters were not allowed to date until older sisters were married.

If so, that was unfortunate for Luca.

“Are you staying in camp?” Bibi asked. Her eyes watched Gi eating the food, perhaps for some sign of approval. Gi made an effort to look as though she enjoyed them as much as they deserved.

“She stay with me,” Misha said, vague.

“Are you fertile?” Bibi demanded.

Blood rushed to Giana’s cheeks, more that she felt defensive than at the forwardness of the question. “I have other children,” she offered.

Why had she said that? She had no intention of staying here, and no reason to state something so personal.

“Bibi,” Misha complained. He sounded like he might have blushed too, if he had lighter skin. “We not marry.”

“Why not?” Kak asked.

“Is no rush, yes?”

Kak and Bibi shared a frown.

“We only just met,” Gi explained.

Bibi returned to the fire, to cook more of the flatcakes. “There’s always tonight,” she declared.

“We are here for week,” Misha argued.

“And you’re joining the Ghelgavver?” Bibi asked.

“I am not sure.” Gi was clueless as to what that word meant, what else others assumed about her.

“Rhoda wants you to?” Misha asked.

That must be the word for those girl-warriors Rhoda wished for her to train with. “She said so. But I am better at planning parties than using swords.”

Bibi handed Misha his plate. He ignored it briefly. “You should tell her no,” he advised. He took a bite of the flatcakes.

“Yes?” Gi pressed. It seemed as though it would be in his best interest, if he wanted her, for her to invest more in this community.

He shrugged and swallowed before replying, “Why not? She cannot make you. But she can explain, tell you what she see. Not just tell you how to get there.”

But if she could see the future, if she thought Niels was in danger…

“I’ll have to talk to her, it seems.” She leaned against him a little, to get Kak and Bibi to relax about the marriage troubles, and took in the sights of a gypsy camp in the morning. The sheer number of cook fires, the children running between them and playing games, the animals, the roar of thousands of people talking over their breakfasts…

The encampment was so alive. It reminded her of the visit to Hong Kong before they had run into Greg in the tea shop.

“It’s so busy here,” she commented, suddenly unbearably homesick for Mel. “So relaxed.”

“You like it?” he asked, as a small smile played about his lips.

She snuggled against him more. If she could not have Mel, she would take comfort where she could find it for now. “It is refreshing.”

He kissed the top of her head. “You know why Rhoda want you for Ghelgavver?”

“Not yet,” she said, grimly. “I intend to find out.” Niels in danger was a good reason to train, but she would prefer more details, such as a when and where and how.

He spun her so that he could meet her eyes. “Because you already a warrior. You just need training.”

Ha. If she were a warrior, she would be home by now. She was meek and afraid of making the wrong decision. Of going home only to find that Mel meant those words and would not take her back. Of damaging Misha in a society based on honor, only to find that she may as well have stayed.

He kissed her head again. “I show you around soon? You no have to work today.” He grinned. “If we marry, you have whole week to ignore Rhoda.”

“Is she going to rekill me if I don’t?” she teased him. “I thought I got the week either way.”

He laughed.

It was unexpectedly relieving, the way he laughed. Utterly relaxed, despite her tension.

“We find out?” he responded.

She polished off the rest of her flatcakes and sat, holding the plate. “What traveling work do you do?” she asked him, as he sat on a tree stump beside her. “Have you been many places?”

“All over. Babylon, Noc Thui, Alder, Caidler…if good trade, we go there. I trade little things. Do jobs no one want.”

“What jobs does no one want?” she asked. She imagined him in a hazmat suit, going down into a sewer.

He shrugged. “Build walls, move things, dig…people pay for many things that do not want do themselves.”

“Do you love travel?” she asked.

It was an innocent enough question. Whatever came of today, however she finally made her way home, she knew she would never forget him. The more she knew of him, the better.

He nodded his head. “Do you? Travel, or like to?”

She laughed. “Yes. I’m from Babylon.” And yet she had been to Elesara, Sylem, now Glavnaya.

He gave her a discerning look, his brows bent down as he studied her face. “Rhoda travel different from want to travel.

“I have seen every country in Europe,” she amended, amused. “I was just starting Asia. But I haven’t done much in other realms yet.”

He took her plate and stood, dropping both of them into an enormous metal washing tub half filled with water. “You want tour of camp or see new realm?”

“Other realm?” she could make the best of this, see something new, something it was possible no one in the Dells knew about. A true adventure.

“I pack tent?” he offered. “And tell Rhoda I busy.”

“I’ll wait here?” she asked.

She could grill his parents for information, about him and the culture and the situation.

He kissed her head and sauntered off towards the site of last night’s bonfire.

As soon as he was a safe distance away, she turned to Kak. “How often is Rhoda wrong?” she asked him.

“Rhoda never wrong,” he said, stiffly. “Sometime she not explain the whole plan, but she not wrong about steps.”

She could not afford to cry, not at this moment, with his family watching. Who knew the damage it could cause.

“And what makes her think she knows anything?” she retorted, morphing her tears into anger instead.

“She phuri,” he explained. “Phuri know. They see future.”

Yes, she knew about that already. It was much of the reason the Dells were allowing the attack, a faith in Rhoda.

But if Rhoda could see the future, and she’d pulled Gi from her talk with Mel midway through the argument, she must have seen that they would reconcile and everything would be alright.

A flicker of hope stirred in her chest.

“Why you no like Misha?” Kak demanded to know.

She stirred the fire with one of the long sticks that stuck out past the ring of ashes. She looked down and said hotly, “Before your phuri murdered me, I was married to someone else.”

“Your marriage no good for you then,” he told her.

But it was. Good and precious and a dozen other things that made her soul sad to be without.

“Or Rhoda wants to use me for something,” Giana said. It could just as easily be about Rhoda wanting a treaty, or a baby to be born, or goodness knew what else.

“She take one thing, give another,” he said. “Everything has cost.”

“I suppose she sent him a wife too?” Gi asked.

“I not Rhoda.” He frowned at the fire. “Maybe she did.”

How could such a fierce people collectively submit to the vision of one woman? “Wouldn’t any of you prefer to make your own decisions?”

“In Babylon, people marry and give up.” Kak gestured towards the densest part of the camp. “Here, we stay together. Whole kumpania is family, she find you place in it.”

It sounded nice, in theory. Just the one mistake, about Giana’s willingness to give up on Mel.

“What happens to Misha if I say no?” she asked Kak.

Bibi held up her spatula, threatening in what Gi hoped was a teasy way.

“You say no?” Bibi asked her.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. She needed to find a way out of this that wouldn’t hurt his reputation or damage his faith in what seemed to be the local religion.

Kak laughed. “I not know either,” he said pointedly.

It was clear their welcome was about family, not about Gi herself. They didn’t want her, or wish her well, unless she was Misha’s wife.

At least extricating herself from them would be easy. The rest of it…

She hugged herself, against the world.

<- Episode 238 | Episode 240 ->