Your One & Only(49)

“I have something for you,” he said. He fetched it from his pallet and came back, taking both of her hands and dropping into them a small bead. He’d decorated it with scrolling lines in the outline of a ginger flower and tied it on a leather string as a bracelet.

“It’s like the one you wear,” she said. He nodded. “Are you giving me this so I look different from my sisters? So you can tell us apart?”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, but he flinched anyway, thinking of the many Nylas who’d come to his room. He realized now, however, that he’d been blind with them. He could no more mistake Althea for one of her sisters than one of the Ingas for his dead mother.

“That’s not why I made it,” he said, pulling the bead back from the bars.

“No,” Althea said, grabbing his hands. “I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry.” She bit her lip. “Can I still have it?”

He’d found the cohune nut on the path to the barn, and he’d wanted her to have something from him that only he could give. She held out her arm through the bars, and he wrapped the ends of the string around her wrist. They were close enough that he could feel her soft breath on his face.

“You can put it on my other wrist if you want,” she said. He stopped and looked up. “So it could cover the scar. I know it’s ugly.”

Jack shook his head. “No,” he said simply.

The laughter outside had stilled, though the breeze lingered. The clones were in the midst of their ceremony, selecting those they were going to spend their evening with in the tents. She hadn’t answered when he asked if they would miss her, because of course they would. It wasn’t as simple as choosing him over some brief evening’s entertainment. The choice she’d made was like a stone dropped in water, leaving ripples across a deep pool. She must be aware there’d be repercussions. Jack thought about his mother and was afraid for Althea. If they tried to hurt her . . .

As if to put aside thoughts of what the future would bring, Althea smiled and her hand brushed the line of his jaw, her touch as light as the sugary cotton. She stood and wrapped the shawl around her shoulders. She spun, letting the skirt of her dress undulate in a wide circle. It was the Pairing dance, the same dance the clones were doing at that moment on the Commons in Vispera.

Her movements were light and graceful, and Jack could see without really trying the structure and timing of the dance, and also the story in it, ancient yet alive. Without taking his eyes from her, he took up his guitar. He’d tried for a long time to be one of them, and he’d only suffered for it. He was done pretending he was something he wasn’t.

He waited for a quick tap of her toe in the dirt, and then he played. He plucked at the strings, sensing the flow of her body in the vibrations of the instrument. His music settled into the beat of her dance. At first she hesitated as if confused, but she kept dancing until they were each in time with the other, and after a while, her face beamed with realization.

She could hear the music.

He saw the comprehension not just in her face, but in the fluid ease with which she moved. It was in her limbs, in the pulse and twist of her turns, in the joy enfolding her whole being.

When the dance ended, sweat glowed on her skin and her breath was quick. She knelt down, and with tears, she touched his face. They leaned together through the bars and their lips met, warm and slow. The last thrum of the guitar lingered in his body before it grew into something more.

Althea took his hands through the bars. She held them with reverence, like he’d just performed some otherworldly magic. From the pocket of her skirt she pulled a long yellow ribbon. She wrapped the end around his wrist, and then crossed his palm to loop around his fingers. She kissed him again as the silky ribbon glided over his skin. His lips parted from hers to speak, but then he stopped and, wordlessly, he halted her elaborate movements with a hand over hers. He unwound the ribbon and coiled it back into her palm. Her hand closed around it, and he felt a pang at the confusion he was causing her, knew she was thinking he didn’t want her.

It was too hard to explain. He didn’t want to Pair with her. That was what the clones did. They did it ceremonially, as a performance of something human and long past. He didn’t think less of them for it. But as often as he’d wished to be a part of their world, he wasn’t and never would be. He was human, and he was learning more and more about what that might mean. It was a human longing that made him ache to press his lips against hers again, to feel her skin on his, to get lost in her soft, delicate touch.

He didn’t want ribbons and rituals.

He wanted her.



The next day, Jack was tired. He’d been unable to sleep during the night and now, working in the fields, he labored in frustrated exhaustion.

He couldn’t stop thinking about Althea. Part of him wished he’d just taken the damn ribbon. Althea had known they wouldn’t Pair, not while he was locked in a cage. The ribbon had been only a token, a symbol. He should have tried harder to make her understand. She’d left quickly and awkwardly after they’d kissed last night, and what if she didn’t visit him again? She must think he was inept and ignorant, a primitive creature who couldn’t comprehend their most basic rituals.

Jack hacked at the stalks of wheat with the small sickle. The sunny, cloudless sky was such a contrast to his mood, it made him feel the world existed only to spite him. After all, he wasn’t supposed to be here. If the earth noticed his presence at all, it was only to wonder why he was laboring in a field that wasn’t his instead of dead with the rest of his kind centuries ago.