Meek

Chapter 42: Reflex

"Oh, hey," Eli said. "You're back."

Laranya turned away. "Put some clothes on."

"Sorry," he said, and started toward the cart.

"No," she said. "Wait."

So he stopped there and waited, dripping.

She took a breath then turned back to him, almost defiantly. "You look like a forest spirit rising from a mystic pool, Eli. The mist clinging to your skin. Your shoulders and arms and eyes and--everything."

He didn't know how to respond to that, so he didn't. He just watched her, watching him.

"Cloaked in meekness, huh?" She showed him the faintest curl of a smile. "Well, Glade knows you're not cloaked in anything else."

"I'll get dressed."

"No, I--" She took a breath, and her light eyes were timid and knowing at the same time. "I want to touch you."

Dreamers. He had not seen that coming and he didn't know how to react. And standing there, thrumming with life after coming so close to death, he wanted to kiss the hollow of her throat. He wanted to hear the noises she made ... but something held him back. He trusted her now, that wasn't the problem. Maybe he didn't trust himself. Maybe she was too willing to put herself in his hands, or she was too certain that she knew what was best, or too--oh!

"You're too young," he said.

"I'm seventeen." She stepped toward him, hips swaying. "Old enough to marry, have children."

"I'm eight years older, and--stop that. You're too young."

"For what?" she asked, in a throaty voice.

"For me, Laranya. Right now. After whatever you've ... just been through."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you don't put your hands on a woman when she's not herself."

She frowned. "Did your father tell you that?"

"It's something I heard one my sisters say."

"She's awful," Laranaya said. "I hate her."

"At the moment? Me, too."

She wrinkled her nose. "Well, this is mortifying."

"It's not that bad, you're--"

"Shut up! Turn around. Turn around, Eli."

So he turned around and stared at the pool--with his eyes, though one of his sparks watched Laranya. She screwed up her face like she wanted to cry, then didn't. She rummaged in the trunk and threw a pair of breeches and a shirt at him.

As he dressed, she bustled around, sorting through the gear in the trunk, generally acting businesslike and unbothered. Which made sense. She didn't really want him, not as a lover. She wanted human contact, human warmth. She wanted to forget her homesickness or banish the memory of Chivat Lo. But blessdamn, Eli still felt desire roaring in his blood. She really was too young, though--and he wasn't completely confident that he'd provide human contact.

When he joined her, she pretended that nothing had happened. She showed him the nuts she'd gathered, all of which were inedible without preparation: acorns and buckcherries and hailnuts.

"If you can eat these with your troll stomach," she said, "our supplies will last much longer. Well, and if your troll teeth can chew them."

He cracked a hailnut with his back teeth. "Pretty sure I can bite through anything softer than limestone. Tastes okay, too."

"Which? Limestone or that hailn--oy!" She smacked the donkey's rump. "Get off that!"

"What's she doing?" he asked, bringing a spark closer.

She made a face. "Having a snack of her own. Your shed skin."

"She knows quality."

"Gross." She pulled the donkey away then said, "So you're all better now?"

"Yeah."

"What happened? Why did it take so long?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe I'm slow to heal from fire. Maybe I was just ... tired."

"You still only have two sparks?"

"Only?" He tilted his head. "How many do you have?"

Her smile reassured him that she wasn't too upset. "You know what I mean, you burl."

"You thought I'd get a third one?"

"After all that? I thought a third, a fourth, a fifth."

"Nope. Still two. Though, uh ... my link to them is stronger." He explained what he was calling his 'core,' the big, inner spark diffused throughout his body. "It's not a spark-spark, though."

"So I was right," she said. "'All that' did change you."

"Maybe a little."

She started brushing the donkey. "So now we need to strengthen them."

"The sparks?" he asked, a little alarmed that the two of them were thinking so much alike.

"Yes, Eli, the sparks. You can see in the dark. You can see behind yourself, around corners, with your eyes closed. The sparks hear and smell and touch. That's amazing."

"Completely."

"Yet it's limited. And you're okay with a blade. You know the basics and you, um ..." She eyed him across the donkey's back. "You don't hesitate. To kill another human being, to hurt them .... that's rarer that you think."

"Not rare enough," he said.

"But in a fair fight, against anyone who's better trained--which is everyone with real training--you're in trouble."

"Don't worry--I won't fight fair."

"Seeing the attacks isn't enough. Seeing everything isn't enough. You also need to--"

"Healing is a pretty big deal."

"Mm. Sheathing your opponent's blade in your stomach, or grabbing a naked sword like you did with me. Definitely a big deal. But one bad mace blow to your temple, one sword all the way through your neck--blight, even an axe to the chest, deep enough, and you're finished."

"So what? You're going to spar with me?"

"No, Eli. I'm half your size and I'm ..." She gave him a wide-eyed look. "I'm far too young."

"Funny."

She smiled, but then asked, "When won't I be too young?"

"A year from today," he told her, trying to put the awkwardness behind them.

"I accept," she said.

For a moment, the forest quieted.

The leaves stopped rustling, the birds stopped calling.

For a moment, Eli felt the distinct sensation that he'd stepped onto unfamiliar ground.

The moment passed, and Laranya pulled a four-foot rod from the cart. "I'm not well-trained either, not with a sword. But I know how to use this."

"A blowgun? You want to train the sparks against a blowgun?"

"If you want to master accuracy and speed, there's nothing better."

"You just want to shoot darts at me."

"More than anything," she said, a little too fervently.

"That's not--"

"And you'll block them with your sparks."

"I'm not sure they're strong enough for that yet."

"When they started touching my face, they felt like ladybirds. But after a few hours they felt more like twigs." She reached toward him. "Put one in my hand?"

He snugged a spark into her palm and pressed it against her calloused skin.

"Oh! It's smaller than I thought. Like an appleseed." She poked the spark with the fingers of her other hand. "So odd to touch something you can't barely see."

"You can see it?"

"Only because I'm looking. And in direct sunlight. Just a hint of a shimmer. It feels almost like water. Liquid and ... flow-y. Can you make it bigger?"

"No," he said. "At least, I couldn't before."

In the dungeon and the clister caverns, he'd envisioned his spark as a shadow. Absolutely immaterial, but under his control, like moving the shadow of his hand. Except then he'd learned to give the sparks a little heft: halo, he'd knocked over oil lamps with them. He wasn't sure where the outer bounds of his ability lay, though. So he focused on the sparks and his core ... and felt the sudden breadth of possibility.

"Hm," he murmured. "Maybe ..."

He experimented until he managed to shrink his sparks slightly, from appleseed-sized to flea-sized. He still couldn't enlarge them, though, despite focusing until his head pounded. He couldn't turn them into fists or bucklers. Not yet.

His failure revealed a different ability, though. When trying to expand a spark, he'd accidentally changed its shape. He'd spread it against Laranya's palm like butter melting. He tried that again, and the 'appleseed' flattened into a shape like his pinky fingernail. Thin and oblong and slightly curved.

"Huh," he said.

"Definitely feels fluid," Laranya said. "It's less of a spark and more of a raindrop."

"We're not calling them 'raindrops.'"

"Fine," she said. "We'll train your dewdrops with the blowgun."

He snorted and withdrew his spark--like that would teach her.

"You can practice making them heavier on your own," she continued, "but you need a sparring partner to hone your reactions."

He nodded. "Sounds good. Speed and accuracy couldn't hurt."

"We'll practice as we travel."

"And where are we travelling to?" he asked.

"Northeast, to start. Away from Rockbridge and toward..."

"Toward what?"

"The future, Eli."

"Would you just tell me?"

She tsked. "You don't put a destiny on a man when he's not feeling like himself."

"Really?"

"My brother told me that."

"You're a brat," he said, and threw an acorn at her.

She snorted. "And you're a hedgehead. We deserve each other."

She refused to tell him their destination, but he didn't mind. He didn't need answers yet. He needed to catch his breath after the events of the last few days--the last few months. Which apparently involved lying on his back and watching the wind move the treetops around.

Laranya foraged in the woods--she communed in the woods--for hours. When she returned, she sorted through her trunk and ended up with a pile of stuff that she decided she didn't need.

"So why did you bring it?" he asked, which struck him as a reasonable question.

She gave him a look that implied that it was not, in fact, a reasonable question. "You want to start breaking down the cart?"

"We're breaking down the cart?"

"Don't you think? The cart ties us to the road. Every time we're spotted heading away from the, the scene of the crime, we're a little less safe. It's better if we blaze our own path."

"You just want to go deeper into the forest."

"I want to avoid Rockbridge troops! I don't think they care about me, but Chivat Lo said to expect the worst. If they're looking for a girl, alone, riding a cart ... well, now we're a couple with a donkey. We'll fill the saddlebags and a satchel. Hide the trunk and the disassembled cart in the ferns and ..." Her smile flashed. "Go deeper into the forest."

"Ha."

"Please?" she asked.

"Sure. Staying unseen makes sense. And I need to use the sparks until it's second nature. That's best done away from prying eyes.'

So she scouted the area while he broke down the cart--and a dart lodged in his shoulder.

He grunted. "Ow!"

"Stay alert," she called from the trees.

He plucked the dart from his skin and sent his sparks flying toward her voice.

"And don't break my darts!"

The sparks flashed between mossy branches, but still couldn't travel more than a few yards from him. They didn't detect a single trace of Laranya, either. Dryads. So he drew them closer in readiness for her next attack.

He was unfastening the traces from the cart when a dart caught him in the skull.

"You're the prick," he muttered.

At least she hadn't poisoned these. When she'd burned Chivat Lo's alchemical concoctions, she'd kept a single tub of the paste that dryns smeared on darts to paralyze their prey. Not that it would work on Eli, but--

One of his sparks showed him a blur of motion. An eyeblink later, another dart struck his shoulder. That gave him a moment's warning, even if he hadn't tracked the trajectory clearly enough--or soon enough--to react.

A few hours later, he felt like a pincushion. But maybe, maybe he also felt more alertness from the sparks. And more activity in his core. Instead of merely watching, the sparks seemed to reflexively react to possible threats. Or maybe he was learning to reflexively act on what they showed him.

Yet he still struggled to block the darts. He knew how to give the sparks heft now. With a flick of attention, his core could turn them as heavy as ... as a coin, maybe? Which was a start. Better than an appleseed--but the propulsive power of the darts still tore through them.

Laranya imagined Eli turning into a two-fold mage, with the sparks blocking swords like a tiny Shields and smashing obstacles like invisible Arrows. Or maybe a three-fold mage, because the sparks also extended his senses as if he'd stepped upon the path of the Rose.

That's what she imagined. What she did, however, was torment him for hours.

Yet the practice paid off surprisingly quickly. By the time the sun started setting, Eli still hadn't blocked any dart outright, but he'd managed to knock a dozen of them off-target. Of course, that was still a hundred leagues from stopping a blade or a crossbow bolt.

Or from pressing sparks against the ground to lift himself to his feet from a seated position

Or from lodging them in the crook of a tree and pulling himself upward, into the cover of the branches.

One day, though. One day.