Tigerlily Page 5

  When he pulled her to him, she went, laughing.

  “Feel better, now?” he murmured.

  His mouth was already on her skin, once more.

  “Yes,” she said, in reply. “Yes—God, yes.”

  Chapter Five

  Summer was dying away. She could feel it, in the air. Only a month with him, and the heat, and the scent of freshly mown grass in the air. And just so suddenly autumn approached, with the cold crisp of winter on its heels.

  They lay naked in the fields while the heat still reigned, even at night. He liked to chase her through the long grass, until she let him catch her—this time, she let him catch her. And there were other things different about the game too, like how often her clothes would fall away right in the middle of it all. Or how much he liked to press her down into the grass, and kiss her open mouth, and say all those incredible mixed up dirty words that made her half-insane with lust.

  Or maybe all insane. After all, Mr Kensington from the place down the hill often walked his dog right by the places they did some wildly dirty things, and she couldn’t find it in herself to care at all.

  She couldn’t find it in herself to care about anything much, anymore. Except for his lack of memory, or name, or real knowledge of who he was. And maybe of the sex, all the twisting, curving, crazy sex. Of his voice, calling to her in the night. In the day. His half-remembered stories of things he didn’t quite know.

  He might have been with her a fortnight, when he told her he remembered a labyrinth, with a golden spire at its centre. The mountains made of glass, and the trees, that had veils instead of leaves. She had asked him if he was really remembering, or just making things up, and he had grinned at her through the darkness of their lair. Just his teeth visible, like the Cheshire Cat.

  Which for all she knew, could well be real.

  But she didn’t dare say anything to him about all those occurring thoughts, for at least another week. And when she finally did, it had come out strange. You realise that you existing means that anything could. God. The Devil. Monsters under the bed.

  But he had only replied in his usual half-dry, half-wide-open sort of way. Maybe I am the monster under the bed.

  It wasn’t really a shock, that she hardly ever thought about fire and metal and pain, anymore. Or that he seemed to know that she didn’t.

  He turned to her and said so, just as she was getting up from the bed they’d finished creaking off its legs. One day, she thought, we’re going to pound it through the floor.

  If they ever got to one day, that was.

  “Is it really so easy, to persuade you into contentment?”

  His words brought with them a flash of guilt, but the thing of it was—it just didn’t last for very long at all. Two years of finding it hard to be happy was enough, she felt. It was enough.

  “I guess so.”

  She stood in the doorway to the bathroom, and the thought occurred to her that really, it hadn’t been easy at all. It had taken a man from another world, tearing himself from God knew where, to bring her back to life. It had taken her old friend, coming to her once more through summer’s door.

  But she didn’t say so. She simply walked back to the bed, and folded herself down, back into his arms.

  “I’m happy, now. Truly happy,” she said, into the dark fall of his hair. She pressed a kiss to his cheek, as he murmured in reply, “I know.”

  It was the troubled note to his voice, which left silence behind. Or maybe it was just all the words inside her—the ones that kept coming and coming no matter how much she tried to hold them back.

  “That means you have to go, doesn’t it.”

  God, it sounded final. Not even a question, really.

  “I don’t have to. I could stay in this world, forever,” he said, but then he added to it, without a hint of disapproval. “I never have to know my name.”

  She thought of crazy people and morons, and other things that probably didn’t have names either. In his world there were probably half-dead, shadowless ghouls, walking around bleeting for their names like children with lost toys. Though she knew, of course, that such an idea was just the half-baked imaginings of her fevered brain.

  No way was it some element of his world, leaking into her. Filling her up, with memories that she shouldn’t have. Of the mountains, and the leaves, and God, she thought of the ghouls day and night. It made her want to ask him if she had it right, but cowardice tightened the words down to nothing.

  “A half-life, then. Never knowing who you really are. Where you came from.”

  Even when reduced to its most casual form, it still choked her to say it. But there it was, all the same.

  “It would never be a half-life, with you. You are the other half of me. I will always be my truest self, when I am with you.”

  She tried to pull away from him, but he wouldn’t let her. She had to wet his hair, with all of the sudden stupid crying.

  “God. God. Don’t say that, Sam.”

  “Why does it upset you?”

  He sounded genuinely curious. He always sounded genuine.

  “Because it makes me not want to say your name. Not ever. It makes me not want to tell you.”

  Unlike her, who always sounded awful, just awful.

  “Then don’t. Maybe I don’t want to remember a time without you.”

  “Don’t you hate me for knowing it, and keeping it from you? Maybe I kept it from you all along! What do you think of that?”

  She managed to pull away from him, this time. But the expression on his face was not the one she expected. It was calm, and gentle. So lovely, God he was lovely.

  “I know you know it, Mae. And I don’t care.”

  She thought of the boy, in the fields. The glimmering hint of wings, around his narrow shoulders. Oh, how it all came back to her now—as something real. It hadn’t been make-believe. None of it was make-believe. It was real.

  “If you knew…if you only knew what you were, Sam. I don’t even know what the name for it is—fae or demi-god or something…something…”

  “You don’t have to ever tell me, Mae.”

  “It’s not right, to keep you from it. If I was a part of a world like that, I’d never want to leave. I’d never come here, to this empty place, never!”

  “Not even for me?” he asked, and she fell silent, then. She sat up, and stared off into the dimness of what was once her parents’ room.

  “I’d go anywhere, for you.”

  He sighed in such a happy sort of way, somewhere behind her. His hand smoothed down her arm.

  “I’d never hold it against you, you know. If you didn’t want to say it. You have my word.”

  She thought of what he might become, and at the very least of what he would lose— that beautiful world of pleasure and plenty—and shivered. He would lie and cheat and pretend and never hold it against her, to give her everything she wanted and keep nothing for himself.

  “I don’t need your word. You’ve done everything for me, and I’ve done nothing for you. You deserve that place.”

  He laughed—though softly, and not unkind.

  “You don’t even know it. I don’t even know it. What if it’s hell?”

  She glanced back at him, over her shoulder. Even in the dim light of the bedroom, she could see that he belonged there. His perfectly strange and beautiful face belonged there.

  “You know it’s not.”

  He was silent for a long while, then. He didn’t need to say anything—his big dark eyes said it all. Though he did so, anyway.

  “I love you, Mae.”

  She suspected that it would hurt as long as her parents had. It would, but at least this time it wouldn’t go on forever. It would fade, as her memories had of him before. She would forget the little wooden horse, and his dark eyes like moons, and the pleasure of his body, pressed against hers.

  “I love you too, I’ve always loved you,” she said, finally. Then there was nothing left to tell, but the one word that mad
e his dark eyes light up, brighter than any moon. “I always will, my Tigerlily.”

  * * * *

  Dusk was falling. Behind him, the flames of a far off bonfire flickered and leapt. He looked like a god, bared to the waist and waiting, waiting for her to come to him, through the trees. She had woken up alone, in their bed. And known.

  “Are you going, now?”

  Her voice sounded lost and tremulous, even though she didn’t intend it to be. He had said he was fae, but who knew what that really meant? He probably was a god, from a land far beyond her existence. Who wouldn’t be grateful, for the tiniest chance to touch something like that? He had helped her, and that would have to be enough.

  People just didn’t get to live like that, forever.

  “Yes.” To his credit, he sounded regretful. “I’m not meant to be in this world. They weren’t wrong to try and stop me.”

  “Will they hurt you, when you go back?”

  He shook his head, and she felt it still. That connection, between them, telling her that he did not lie. God, to even have a connection like that, with a creature like him! It didn’t make sense, that she was crying. It would always be with her, always. All that love and magic and brilliance.

  “I’m not trying to stop you from leaving. I’m not sad anymore, all right? I’m not. You did what you came here for, and I love you for it.”

  She thought something slid down his cheek, too. Only then he smiled, faint in the darkness.

  “You are a strange people. So loving, yet so lonely, inside. I would lie awake at night and gaze up at the dark blue sky, and ache to feel your loneliness—even though I was always there. I was always there, Mae.”

  She covered her face with her hands. It seemed better that way.

  “When you sat in the corner of the little dark room, and wept, and felt sure that this pain would go on forever, I put my arms around you and said—”

  She spoke, between wet fingers. Finished it for him, easy as anything.

  “You said, ‘You will be summer, again. You will be light, in the darkness.’ I know. I remember. I heard you even when I thought I didn’t.” She tried to wipe her eyes, but more just kept on coming. “Go, now. Go now, while I’m not looking.”

  “But I want you to look, Mae,” he said, and then his voice rolled, like far off thunder. “I want you to see these woods fade into the fields of silver fire, and the great labyrinth of Ende, beyond. I want you to stand at the edge of the mountains of time, and see the vast spread of my world below you. The world that lives on the other side of this, past the mossy bank with the lock whose key you’ve always had.”

  Her hands dropped to her sides, all on their own. Her breath didn’t want to come; it lay whispering and still, low down in her chest.

  “Why would I leave you here, Mae? I love you. I love you. I can’t leave you.”

  She thought of debt collection agencies. Cars, newspapers, bills. Emptiness.

  “Say, if you don’t want to come with me.”

  He sounded suddenly so unsure, as though there really might be anyone in the world who wouldn’t want to make their way to the castle, beyond the goblin city. Mountains of time, he had said. Fields of silver fire.

  He loved her.

  “If I forget my name on the way,” she said, as she stepped towards him. Put her hands on his arms. Drank in his slowly spreading smile, and his eyes lit with pleasure. “Remember—I’ve always been fond of Dorothy.”

  About the Author

  Charlotte Stein has been published in numerous erotic and erotic romance anthologies, and has written her own longer length works for both Black Lace books and Total-E-Bound. She has been writing for more than half her life, but only recently worked up the courage to submit something to actual publishers. Thankfully, the story ended well.

  Email: charlotte_stein@hotmail.co.uk

  Charlotte loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at http://www.total-e-bound.com.

  Also by Charlotte Stein

  Waiting in Vain

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