The Untold Tale

Twenty-One

I am decided that, as much as I dislike questing, and horseback riding, and heroic pursuits, airplanes are by far the worst form of travel that mankind has ever inflicted upon itself.

True, it is a great wonder to be able to fly as a bird, or a fairy, or a dragon might, and higher up in the air than any of the three. But the wonder is quite polluted by the airports themselves, by the lines, the security checks, the screaming children, the ignorant fellow passengers, the terrible food, and the indignity of cramped seats and aisles. Just the serving woman's hand upon my headrest each time she walks by is enough to jostle me closer and closer to annoyance with each subsequent pass.

All the modern conveniences, as Pip would say; and yet, none of the courtesy. Nobody is careful of one another's personal space. It is as if concern for one another evaporates the moment the liminal space of the terminal is breached.

The indignities don't end when our wheels touch the tarmac, either. Pip says I must not be so very upper-class and old-fashioned, but I really do wish there was a set of servants available to fetch our luggage from the carousels for us. Such a battle of shoulders and toes!

One of the things I like most in Pip's world is the way that people are expected to do things for themselves, rather than relying on laborers and footmen to do the fetching and carrying, rather than relying on cooks and serving women to do the domestic chores; but it is also sometimes the thing I like least. I enjoy being independent, being free to do as I like when the desire or need strikes. But I do very much miss just ringing a bell and having a meal brought to me in the library without having to rise from my chair or my book. Pip calls me lazy when I sit in my home office and bemoan the lack of servants, and adorably hopeless when I ruin her cookware by trying to do it myself.

Contradictory woman. I find it more endearing than I should allow.

But even the gently reared must work for their suppers in Pip's world, and, to that end, Pip has procured for me a daytime position stacking the shelves of the university at which she studied and to which she has returned to teach. Two mouths eat the food we buy, two bodies live in the condominium apartment that soars above the city in which we live, two people require clothing and money for transportation, and so, two pairs of hands must work to procure the currency required.

We are not too badly off, however. The condominium is purchased, not rented, because we made a very good trade on the golden dragonet tears I had been carrying in my purse when I crossed into Pip's world.

And working at the library gives me something to do with my long days while Pip is in her office, preparing the coursework for her students. I steal the books sometimes, for everything within this world is recorded, every action set down for posterity, and I want there to be no electronic record of my self-imposed syllabus. No... trail.

I am still trapped within the patterns of the Shadow Hand. For years, I left no path through paperwork and government for anyone to follow—I cannot make myself give up that habit now. I always replace the books, of course, the next day. Or the day after. Whenever I am done reading them. They are books on government and finance, commerce and agriculture, books on the history of the world, on the wars, on the politics, on the religions. Oh, so many religions. And so many of the wars because of how people interpret a single god's edicts.

I once told Pip I'd felt abandoned by Elgar Reed. Now, I feel lucky for it.

Once I have found our shared suitcase and plonked our travel bag on top of it, Pip leads me through the throngs of weary travelers to the outside. We get to bypass the security line, this time, because we are traveling within the same nation. I have no passport—the set of documents that are required to cross borders. Pip and I have signed a marriage license in order to begin the process of building a legal identity for me, but it is too new to allow me to have the passport of a "naturalized citizen" just yet. (Her parents were displeased with our lack of ceremony, done as it was in haste and at the city hall, but her wai po patted my cheek and called me, in her language, a "good boy." I had felt such a pang of warmth and welcome that it had made me weep. I miss Mother Mouth terribly.)