Episode 74: Niels Talk (Giana)

She wasn’t accustomed to writing poetry in English. It had a different set of rules and words that rhymed in new ways. Combinations that wouldn’t be possible in Danish flourished in English.

Giana loved rhyming poems.

The non-rhyming sort were lovely in their own, way, but the hunger of the rhyme, the satisfaction of its conclusion, left Giana with a sense of deep beauty and accomplishment.

This, she scripted for Meldrick in her long narrow cursive hand that marked her as a member of an outdated generation of near-nobility.

She had seen Mel write in ancient Elesarian, the loopy and expansive letters that made up his language, and she hungered to learn it. Not from just anyone, but from him. She imagined his fingers gripping hers as he guided her hand into making the elegant shapes of each letter.

She wrote, in English:

She folded the page into thirds and sealed it with her family’s wax seal, passed down through generations of Poulsens. It was the family crest, with a winged dragon facing the viewer.

The irony of this was not lost on her, although Niels hadn’t been as entertained when she pointed it out to him.

Once the seal was cool, she set the folded paper on the pillow Meldrick’s head had occupied for the last two nights. She rested her fingertips on the pillow for the moment and imagined his face there, looking up at her.

She needed a job.

Never before had she felt the compulsion to do something productive, aside of volunteer work or managing her children and her estate. Since she’d moved here, she’d been content to watch and learn.

Now she wanted to be useful and productive. Perhaps there was a skill she could teach, or a task she was suited to.

It wasn’t as though she could discuss it with Aadya.

She removed her hand from the pillow.

In all her longing for Meldrick, she had never seriously considered that something might come of their tea-time meetings until something was already underway. She wasn’t prepared for the barrage of guilt she felt, or the anxiety over her friendship with Aadya, or her worry over what this would do to Niels and Talise.

It was a very odd situation.

Even accounting for those stressors she had no regrets. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact day or time that she’d fallen in love with Meldrick. She certainly hadn’t done so deliberately, but watching him endure in silence, she’d felt a camaraderie with him. That had evolved in time, until she realized one day she was far too attached.

Thus had begun her poetry days on European hillsides, her search for some release from the turmoil she felt over the reality that she was in love with a married man, with her friend’s husband, with her son’s father-in-law.

To her, he wasn’t any of those things: He was the man who fathered his brother’s children as though they were his own, who saw in Niels the same potential she saw in him, who governed with a patient and exacting hand, who never seemed to judge, who worked tirelessly to improve the lives of family and strangers alike.

He was the man who had joined her for tea when she was new and uncertain, who had brought her a basket of tea varieties from all dozen realms. He was his eyes and the way his brows bent down when he worried and up when he smiled. He was the thoughts that piled up behind his silence, waiting to become action.

He was his ridiculous hair and his subtle humor most people seemed to miss.

Somehow, miraculously, he seemed to be hers.

She returned her pen to her desk, wiped her seal stamp clean and donned a lightweight capped-sleeve sweater. She knew it was absurd to wear a sweater in the desert, but ingrained habits of not baring her shoulders were difficult to shake.

She would get there.

Hand on the doorknob, she reached back to turn off the room’s main light, which hung a few inches below the ceiling.

Someone knocked.

She hoped it wasn’t Meldrick. She’d told him he didn’t have to knock; she wanted him comfortable enough to come and go on his own, but she understood it might take time.

She opened the door, prepared to tease him.

It was Niels, tight and closed, hands in fists in his pockets.

Ah.

She’d expected this talk yesterday, honestly. His self-control was improving.

She sighed. “You may as well come in.”

He walked into the room and she could see that his mind broiled with tension. This was worse than she’d expected. She hoped Aadya and Meldrick wouldn’t be stepping down over this. If they were, perhaps it would be best if she pretended she had misgivings. She could push Meldrick away for the good of the kingdom. She’d done worse to herself before, and survived.

She was, at heart, a fabulous survivor. Her family had struggled through wars and recessions and all sorts of other problems, and they always slogged on in their fashion. The wars Giana had fought in her life may have been personal ones, but they were wars nonetheless. She knew she had that Poulsen strength.

Unfortunately, Niels had it as well.

“Here to lecture me on my choices?” she challenged, in a soft tone. Perhaps if she addressed the elephant in the room he would go away with confidence that she had considered the repercussions.

He picked up the family seal and looked at the reverse-image of the dragon. “No,” he said, at last.

Thank goodness he hadn’t lost his voice.

“What, then?” she asked.

His tension seemed to be contagious. She hugged herself, arms crossed.

He spanned the handful of steps between them and pulled her into an unexpected embrace. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Sorry?” she asked, surprised. She stepped back and took him in – the rigid shoulders, furrowed brow, thin lips. His lips were never thin; she hadn’t thought it was possible. “What has happened?” she asked him.

How selfish of her, to be worried for herself, when something was dramatically the matter elsewhere.

“Zero offered to teach me Wicca magic,” he began.

She loathed when he got like this. Whenever there was a matter he didn’t want to address, he came to it in a roundabout way while he peppered his story with unnecessary details.

“He bought me an Empirion,” Niels added, with a half a smile.

“And?” she encouraged.

The one time she’d called him on this – the day he’d admitted that Eddie had nearly killed himself the night before – he’d responded with an idiom that the longest way round was the shortest way home.

The memory nearly made her smile.

“While we were talking, he discovered that someone had done Wicca magic on Aadya and Meldrick. Something to drive a wedge between them.” At last, he met her eyes. His watered. Remorse, possibly? Something.

He cleared his throat. “So he broke the spell.”

Giana’s mind fought to catch up with the lump in her throat, which she could not talk around without revealing her emotional state.

She looked at him, expectant.

What could he mean, wedge? Broken spell?

She imagined the reality this implied, in which a stranger had manufactured affection between herself and Meldrick, between Konrad and Aadya, in order to weaken the kingdom. She knew too little about Wicca magic to be able to state, with conviction, that these feelings were her own and not someone else’s doing.

“Has he gone back to her?” she managed, eventually. Niels shrugged his shoulder.

It was for the best, if he had. Not for Giana, but for the kingdom, for her friend Aadya, probably even for Mel.

She searched within herself to determine which it was – whether she loved Mel, for himself, or the idea of him, for herself.

It was him.

She bit back her tears and straightened her shoulders. “Thank you for warning me,” she said. Her voice was still off.

She was Giana. She was the rock that had held her family together when her husband left her for Eddie’s father; when Eddie’s mother had died and suddenly Eddie had become her son in every way short of legal adoption; when her children had endured taunts by classmates for having such a socially unacceptable father; through their father’s sickness and death; when Niels and Eddie and their friends had left for America to become famous when they were far too young; when fame had found them; when Niels had first become a father, with a girl he hardly knew.

Giana was the rock. That didn’t stop because the setting had changed.

She would navigate this with grace and resolve, and she would never let her children down. The grief could come later, when she was alone.

She hugged Niels.

“They’re not stepping down, are they?” she asked him.

“They may. Talise and I held court this morning.” There was the edge, the fear. She focused on that.

Arm still around him, she uttered, “If only you could see, how ready for this you both are.” Yes, the pair of them were young, and already had their hands full with a small army of children.

But each of them came into this with an array of skills, which complemented each other and would serve the kingdom and its people well. And no one could doubt the essence of their love for each other, which bound them together more strongly than any wedding ceremony could do.

Giana had been skeptical when Niels mentioned he’d met a girl. After the last one, she hadn’t achieved any substantial faith in his understanding of himself and what he needed in a girl.

Then he’d brought Talise home for the weekend. She’d never met two people more inextricably entwined. Her twin and his fiance were the same. The four of them: Talise and Niels, Acheron and Spence, loved with a fervor and passion that Giana admired and aspired to.

She opened the little cabinet beside her desk and withdrew a butterscotch candy, which she passed to Niels.

“How did court go?” she asked. She sat in her chair, and he sat on the sofa, and she began the work of being his mother, of weaving into his mind the confidence in his own capabilities, of helping him to see where he was strong and where he needed to grow. She relaxed about her own worries as he opened up to her about his.

Her children were, after all, her greatest passion.

<- Episode 73 | Episode 75 ->