MARKS- Chapter 20

 Chapter Twenty

My life, I realize, is not that different from what it was weeks ago. I get up, I help someone with chores, then I go to work in a room full of color.

It’s reds and blues now, colors Nolan requested and that I have no idea what they’ll be used for. Blues are easy; woad plants are abundant in the woods, even this time of year. The men who go out hunting bring me back armfuls.

Red is an altogether different story. The drakeroot plants are few and far between and hard to pull up from the ground. Not to mention the stain it leaves on my fingers makes me feel like I constantly have blood on my hands. So I’ve learned to start with red, then finish with blue. It leaves my fingers purple and my heart not so weighed down with images I can’t forget.

I throw blue wool over the line as my mind blurs with words. I’ve read the newspaper cover to cover, looking for the Lyran sentences. I asked Nolan if I could try and point the ones out that were real. I took the first copy to him with six sentences circled.

He smiled and said only one of my guesses was right. And that there were twelve more hidden in the paper.

It’s absolute madness. What they’re doing is working for now, but how long will that last? Their actions seem so dangerous and so small at the same time, like steering a rowboat into a headwind. Are they really changing anything? They are careful and calculated. Not impulsive like the King.

Like me.

Guilt nags at me. Here they’ve shared their secret with me, and I hide who I am and what I know. I’m so different from Ward. He serves the King and yet fights him, as different from me as color is from a blank canvas. He’s tall and fierce, and I cower in corners. Truth pours out of him like rain from a cloud. And like a sky with no clouds, truth does not fall from me.

I pull a remnant of wool from the pot, the blue dye dripping off the ends. A small thing, but it comes from my hand, and unlike my words, won’t kill me or anyone else. Or get me kicked out of here. These rocky cavern walls have finally begun to feel like home. I don’t want to leave them. And what about these people? I haven’t talked to many beyond Ward’s family, but they’re all innocent here. And deserving of safety, surely, even if they can’t have a good life.

My stomach grumbles, protesting my decision hours ago to skip lunch. I roll my shoulders, the kinks between them popping like a fire. No smells of dinner have wafted down the hallway, so it’s too early for that. I’d love a walk outside but know I can’t pop my head out for fresh air whenever I want. A sigh looses itself from my tight chest, and I lean against my worktable. This room is squat and fat, whereas the room with the printing press is long and narrow. How many other rooms are buried right under the King’s nose?

I peer down the room’s edge, where it narrows to a darkened abyss that leads who knows where. My fingers twitch as I stare at the dark space where the room ends. Maybe all the tunnels connect.

No way but one to find out.

Within three steps of leaving the room, I can hardly see in front of me. I press my right hand to the rock. If I get lost, I need only to turn and press my left against it and get back where I started. Easy enough.

Three steps later I’m plunged into total darkness. I could go back for a torch, but that would signal my presence. For all I know I could be heading somewhere the married couples retreat for some privacy. There are enough young kids here that somehow they have to get made.

I breathe deep through my nose and take tiny, calculated steps, my feet lightly scraping the rock underneath me as I search for my footing entirely by feel. The rocks grow damp and the air hangs humid, smelling of moisture and secrets. I continue on and when I round a turn, light pours into the tunnel. It’s faint, but I tiptoe toward it. And finally, the tunnel ends and the springs spill out in front of me. Across from me is entrance I know of on my left, where a torch in the wall illuminates the water. I suppose this back way isn’t mentioned so people aren’t spied on while they bathe.

I take two steps forward, relishing the heat in this room and how for the first time in years I actually feel warm. Filled up. Large rocks stand before me - that’s probably why most don’t know this tunnel is here. I bet from the water you can’t even see it. I’ve only been in the water a few times since I first got here, which was what? Seven, eight weeks ago? The warm spring water is something I could indulge in every day, but I’m too scared of someone happening upon me and seeing the marks on my arm. And a bath isn’t worth someone finding out.

A splash echoes across the water.

I dash behind a rock. Blast. Someone’s going to think I was spying. My cheeks flush with heat, and I hold my breath and listen. But no voice rings out. Just more splashes. I press my back to the rock and peer over the edge. I see nothing but ripples across the surface of the water.

Then someone starts to sing.

It’s an old folk song - one my Mama sang to me when I was little. The singer continues, his voice springy and smooth. Then an arm appears as the singer swims into view.

It’s Ward.

I didn’t even know he was back from the city. Though it’s been a couple weeks since I’ve seen him, so it makes sense he’d come. His arms cut through the water as if it were nothing, just another thing Ward refuses to let stand in his way. His face bobs in the water and he smiles as he sings. He reaches the end of the spring and turns around.

I should turn and leave, but instead I’m mesmerized by his arms slicing through the water and how he sings as he swims. He ducks his head under, and when it pops up he’s standing - and thank the Saints - is facing the other direction or else he’d be staring right at me. He runs his hands through his hair, and even wet, his hairs tangle and pull in different directions. I press my hand to my mouth to keep from giggling. Hard muscles crisscross his back, and that’s when I realize Ward is naked.

Saints above.

Of course he’s naked. Who wouldn’t be naked when they thought they were alone taking a bath? My eyes zero in on the water lapping at the very bottom of Ward’s back. If he were to stand on his toes…

I close my eyes. Skies above, Gretta. I tuck myself back behind the rock.

Ward’s voice echoes across the water. “I know you’re there.”

Heaven help me. So much warmth floods my face I feel as though I’m on fire and need to douse myself with water. But the only water here is hot, and currently housing a naked boy. And there is no air in here! I tug at my collar and wonder why my neck feels forty times the size it normally is.

“Well,” his voice calls out again, “you going to hide all night or come out?”

I bite my lip and peel myself off the rock then step out, my gaze skimming the water before it gets to Ward. He’s facing me now, and thank everything above us, he’s dipped lower in the water and all of him is covered.

“I’m so sorry.” I nod to the tunnel behind me. “I was curious where the tunnel went. I didn’t know you were here. I mean, I didn’t know anyone was here. Or where I was.” Good heavens, Gretta, could you sound like any more of an idiot? “I’m sorry.”

Ward raises an eyebrow. “We should make you a guard with those kind of stealth skills, Sparks. You’d make a good assassin.”

My cheeks, though I thought it impossible, flame even hotter. He keeps standing still, wearing nothing but the ripples of the water lapping against him. Nothing on him but his bare chest and his tousled hair.

And a grin.

I tear my eyes from him and stare at the rock ceiling above us. When silence falls I motion to the tunnel. “I’ll just go back.” I pick up my skirts and turn.

“No, wait.”

I spin back to Ward.

“You don’t have a light,” he says.

“That’s all right.”

He motions to the torch behind him. “If you wait till I’m done, you can have that one.”

The thought of staying here while he swims naked makes my head spin. I force myself to look at his face. “I got here just fine without one,” I tell him.

He nods. “All right. If you’re not in the room when I get back, I’ll get a torch and some rope and come find you.”

He grins, and I nod. I get an image in my head of Ward coming for me. Chasing me. Of someone finding me in the darkness I keep myself in. If I were a cavern, would anyone plunge through the darkness to find me? I’m staring at Ward, all grin and water beading off his skin. Him all light, and I’m that dark cavern. I pick up my skirts again. “You won’t have to,” I tell him. “I can find my own way.”

####

 I practically run back through the tunnel then come to a halt as soon as I see the light from my work room. Nolan could be in there checking the fabric, and what would I say if he saw me burst out of the tunnel and asked where I’d been?

 

Oh, just spying on your naked brother-in-law.

Great skies above.

I shimmy along the rock wall and find my little room silent and empty. I scurry from the room, praying to every Saint in heaven that no one ever knows about what just happened. If there was a kingdom of misfit idiots, I would surely be its queen. Parades would be thrown in honor of my blunders.

Calm and slow, Gretta. I take calculated steps and join Blair in making dinner. Boiled potatoes again. There’s been hardly any meat for weeks now; what little kills the men get is eaten in rotation by each family. I help her scoop food on plates then sit just as Ward emerges from the tunnel. Water clings to the tips of his hair. He tosses his towel on his trunk in the corner, and settles his large frame onto a stump across from me. Stupid me, I actually look at him.

He grins, his smile stretching ear to ear. Something bubbles up inside me, a sign I shall either giggle like an idiot or burst into laughter at the absurdity of myself. I put an entire potato in my mouth. That will choke you out, you blasted bubble of laughter.

Blair hands Ward a plate. “Have a good bath?”

"It was delightful.” He takes the plate and settles it on his knee. “Best alone time I’ve had in a while.”

 

The potato I’m chewing gets lodged in my throat. I cough, the laughter or giggle or whatever it is, forcing its way out past the food in my mouth.

Blair sits down on the log beside me. “You all right, Gretta?”

I nod and swallow down both the laugh and the half chewed potato. “Yes. Just got something stuck in my throat.”

“Maybe you should try singing,” Ward says. “I do that when I need to get stuff out.”

His brown eyes hold no glimmer, and his face is so serious I can’t tell if he means it or is a really great tease. Does this lumbering boy have no shame, about anything? Not about being a guard, or loving his family, or being so casual about the fact I just saw him naked as a newborn baby?

I retrieve a small smile from my arsenal of false emotions and paste it on, then bend over my plate, careful to chew my potatoes this time. They are tiny and bland, same as always. Same fire, same potato, same meal. Nothing in this kingdom is going to change. I watch Liddy as she sits before the fire, her plate sitting on her lap. She’s spent most of her life in this cave. Is this all she’ll ever know? Other families linger in front of their fires, every stump and log occupied. What happens when these families keep growing and there isn’t room enough for them to hide? Or worse, what if the King uncovers this cavern with its secrets and it becomes nothing more than a tomb?

These past weeks I’ve thought that’s all this place is: just a tomb of the living dead. But there’s more life here than I’ve wanted to admit. I see it everywhere. In the smile on the women’s faces as they watch their children play tag. In Blair’s eyes when she gazes at Nolan across the fire. Right under the King’s nose, these people have kept on living, and living well.

Shame settles deep in my belly. I haven’t lived a good life. I’ve run and cowered and let him stop my life. And the truth is I’m jealous. I’m jealous of Blair cooking meager meals over a fire whose smoke barely leaves the room she sleeps in. I’m jealous of her loving her husband under the cover of blankets and darkness and laying her children to sleep on a cold rock floor. Because she’s living.

I don’t think I can say the same for me.