Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(116)

She tilted her head back and considered his stormy expression. “This is very good,” she said. “This is some excellent self-pity.”

And then the rumble of his laughter again, and a kind of helpless heartache in his face that caused her to reach for him, take him into her arms, and kiss his neck, his snow-covered shoulder, his finger not wearing its ring, and every place that she could find. He touched her face gently. He touched her lips and kissed her. He rested his forehead against hers.

“I would never hold you here,” he said. “But if you can bear this – if you can bear me behaving like this – I don’t really want you to leave.”

“I’ll not go,” Katsa said, “for a long time. I’ll not go until you want me to; or until you’re ready to go yourself ”

———

He had quite a talent for playing a part. Katsa saw this now, because she saw the transformation now, whenever they were alone and he stopped pretending. To his brother and his cousin he presented strength, steadiness, health. His shoulders were straight, his stride even. When he couldn’t hide his unhappiness, he played it as moodiness. When he couldn’t find the energy to direct his eyes to their faces and pretend to see them, he played it as inattention. He was strong, cheerful – strangely distracted, perhaps, but healing well from grave injury. It was an impressive act – and for the most part, it seemed to satisfy them. Enough, at least, that they never had reason to suspect the truth of his Grace, which was ultimately all he was trying to hide.

When he and Katsa were alone, hunting, collecting water, or sitting together in the cabin, the disguise quietly fell from him. Weariness pulled at his face, his body, his voice. He put his hand out occasionally, to a tree or a rock, to steady himself.

His eyes focused, or pretended to focus, on nothing, ever. And Katsa began to understand that while some of his sorry state was attributable to plain unhappiness, an even larger part of it stemmed from his Grace itself. For he was still growing into it; and now that he no longer had vision to anchor his perception of the world, he was constantly overwhelmed.

One day beside the pool, during a rare break between snowstorms, she watched him notch an arrow calmly to his bow and aim at something she couldn’t see. A ledge of rock? A tree stump? He cocked his head as if he were listening.

He released the arrow, and it sliced through the cold and thwacked into a patch of snow. “What – ” Katsa started to say, and then stopped when a spot of blood welled to the surface and colored the snow around the arrow’s shaft.

“A rabbit,” he said. “A big one.”

He started forward toward his buried kill, but had taken little more than a step when a flock of geese swooped down from overhead. He put his hand to his temple and fell to one knee.

Katsa strung two arrows and shot two geese. Then she hauled Po up. “Po, what – ”

“The geese. They took me by surprise.”

She shook her head. “You could sense animals before, but the sense of them never knocked you down.”

He snorted with laughter, and then his laughter fizzled into a sigh. “Katsa. Try to imagine how things are now My Grace shows me every detail of the mountain above me, and the drop to the forest below me. I feel the movement of every fish in the pool and every bird in the trees. The ice is growing back over our water hole. Snow is forming fast in the clouds, Katsa. In a moment I expect it’ll be snowing again.” He turned his face toward her now, urgently. “Skye and Bitterblue are in the cabin. Bitterblue’s anxious about me, she doesn’t think I eat enough. And you’re here, too, of course – your every movement, your body, your clothing, your every worry coursing through me. The sighted can focus their eyes. I can’t focus my Grace. I can’t turn this off. How exactly, when I’m aware of everything above, below, before, behind, and beyond me, am I supposed to keep my mind on the ground beneath my feet?”

He trudged away from her toward the red patch of blood. He yanked tiredly at the arrow in the snow. It came away in his hand, and lifted with it a large, white, bloody rabbit. He plodded back to her, rabbit in hand. They stood there, considering each other; and then flakes of snow began to fall. Katsa could not help herself – she smiled, at the fulfillment of his prediction. A moment later Po smiled too, grudgingly; and when they turned to climb the rocks, he took her sleeve. “The snow’s disorienting,” he said.

They set out across the slope, and he steadied himself against her as they climbed.

———

She was getting used to the new way Po had of considering her, now that he couldn’t see her. He didn’t look at her, of course. She supposed she would never feel the intensity of his gaze again; she would never again be caught in his eyes. It was something she tried not to think about. It made her stupidly, foolishly sad.

But Po’s new way with her was also intense. It was a kind of attentiveness in his face, a concentration in his body, directed toward her. When it happened she could feel the stillness of his face and body, attuned to her. She thought that it happened more and more as the days passed. As if he were reconnecting with her, slowly, and pulling her back into his thoughts. He touched her easily now, too, as he’d done before his accident – kissed her hands if she was nearby, or touched her face when she stood before him. And Katsa wondered if it was true, or just her imagination, that he was paying them, all of them, more attention – truer attention. As if perhaps he was less overwhelmed by his Grace. Or less absorbed with himself.