Graceling (Graceling Realm #1)(61)

They moved as quickly as the road allowed. But the farther they traveled, the more the road resembled a trail at best, winding through overgrown gullies and around trees the size of which Katsa had never seen. Trees with trunks as wide as the horses were long, and branches that groaned far above them. They had to duck sometimes to avoid curtains of vines hanging from the branches. The land rose as they moved east, and streams crisscrossed the forest floor.

Their route at least provided some distraction for Po. He couldn’t stop looking around, his eyes wide. “It’s wild, this forest. Have you ever seen anything like this? It’s gorgeous.”

Gorgeous, and full of animals fattening themselves for winter. Easy hunting, and easy finding shelter. But Katsa felt palpably that the horses were moving as slowly as her mind. “I think we would move faster on our feet,” she said.

“You’ll miss the horses when we have to give them up.”

“And when will that be?”

“It looks possibly ten days away on the map.”

“I’ll prefer traveling by foot.”

“You never tire,” Po said, “do you?”

“I do, if I haven’t slept for a long time. Or if I’m carrying something very heavy. I felt tired when I carried your grandfather up a flight of stairs.”

He glanced at her, eyebrows high. “You carried my grandfather up a flight of stairs?”

“Yes, at Randa’s castle.”

“After a day and a night of hard riding?”

“Yes.”

His laugh burst out, but she didn’t see the joke. “I had to do it, Po. If I hadn’t, the mission would’ve failed.”

“He weighs as much as you, and half as much again.”

“Well, and I was tired by the time I got to the top. You wouldn’t have been so tired.”

“I’m bigger than he is, Katsa. I’m stronger. And I would have been tired, had I spent the night on my horse.”

“I had to do it. I had no choice.”

“Your Grace is more than fighting,” he said.

She didn’t respond to that, and after a moment’s puzzlement, she forgot it. Her mind returned to the matter at hand.

As it couldn’t help but do, with Po always before her.

What WAS the difference between a husband and a lover?

If she took Po as her husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn’t yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his wife forever. And, no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it was a gift. Her freedom would not be her own; it would be Po’s to give or to withhold. That he never would withhold it made no difference. If it did not come from her, it was not really hers.

If Po were her lover, would she feel captured, cornered into a sense of forever? Or would she still have the freedom that sprang from herself?

They were lying on opposite sides of a dying fire one night when a new worry occurred to her. What if she took more from Po than she could give to him?

“Po?”

She heard him turn onto his side. “Yes?”

“How will you feel if I’m forever leaving? If one day I give myself to you and the next I take myself away – with no promises to return?”

“Katsa, a man would be a fool to try to keep you in a cage”

“But that doesn’t tell me how you’ll feel, always to be subject to my whim.”

“It isn’t your whim. It’s the need of your heart. You forget that I’m in a unique position to understand you, Katsa.

Whenever you pull away from me I’ll know it’s not for lack of love. Or if it is, I’ll know that, too; and I’ll know it’s right for you to go.”

“But you’re not answering my question. How will you feel?”

There was a pause. “I don’t know. I’ll probably feel a lot of things. But only one of the things will be unhappiness; and unhappiness I’m willing to risk.”

Katsa stared up into the treetops. “Are you sure of that?”

He sighed. “I’m certain.”

He was willing to risk unhappiness. And there was the crux of the matter. She couldn’t know where this would lead, and to proceed was to risk all kinds of unhappiness.

The fire gasped and died. She was frightened. For as their camp turned to darkness, she also found herself choosing risk.

———

The next day Katsa would have given anything for a clear, straight path, for hard riding and thundering hooves to drown out all feeling. Instead the road wound back and forth, up rises and into gullies, and she didn’t know how she kept herself from screaming. Nightfall led them into a hollow where water trickled into a low, still pool. Moss covered the trees and the ground. Moss hung from the vines that hung from the trees, and dripped into the pool that shone green like the floor of Randa’s courtyard.

“You seem a bit edgy” Po said. “Why don’t you hunt? I’ll build a fire.”

She allowed the first few animals she stumbled across to escape. She thought that if she plunged deeper into the forest and took more time, she might wear down some of her jitters. But when she returned to camp much later with a fox in hand, nothing had changed. He sat calmly before the fire, and she thought she might burst apart. She threw their meat onto the ground beside the flames. She sat on a rock and dropped her head into her hands.