Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

39. The Pyre

Ondrey's heart beat too fast and his arms wrapped around my waist too tightly for a sleeping man. I turned just enough to press my lips to the warm skin over the powerful organ inside the rib cage. Once and twice and thrice I kissed him in time with the racing rhythm of his pulse. His hand moved down my back, the other combing hair out of my eyes.

"You're back," he said.

I nodded. Since I had to lift my head from its warm headrest for that, I climbed the ramp of his neck with my lips, over the bluff of his chin, and landed onto his mouth. Talking could wait.

The soreness of the ritual coupling still lingered, so the cabin's walls were in no danger of falling down. The gentleness of the embrace gave me plenty of opportunities to enjoy the sight of his body.

No part of him was slender, like Kozima's waist or ankles were. Here, muscle sat upon muscle, propped by another muscle. Ondrey had muscles in places I had no idea that muscles could exist on a real man. I always thought that the sculptors just filled them in from the overabundance of imagination when erecting the statuary. After all, the Primordial Age was supposed to be epic. Like with Ondrey's brows, I wouldn't have thought this kind of physique could be attractive, but it was.

Wordlessly, we came together, grateful for being alive.

"We are alive," I whispered, arching like a sail in the wind over him.

"Both of us," he echoed in wonder. "I'm still not sure how I live, and Snehora is dead."

"Believe it," I said. "We are alive!"

He placed a hand on my stomach. A tired, but happy smile tugged his lips and lit his features. "We are alive."

The candles, all of them, threw flame tongues twice as high as their normal flickering, then guttered out in an ominous concert.

Ondrey sat bolt upright, joy fading away.

"Nana!" he cried.

Somehow, he jumped inside his trousers, while ripping down the curtain. He crossed the tiny room in three stumbling strides, tripping over the exhausted legs, to kneel by the old woman leaning back in her chair.

The cat weaved an anxious path by the door, fixing us with its impenetrable stare.

I struggled into my tunic and pants before running to them barefooted. The blanket dragged along the floor catching on a chair.

No, no...please. It can't be happening. Not now. Not to Ondrey... is there no mercy? Mythra? Gala? Bhutas? Anyone?

My paltry prayers had no power to turn away death--reality crawled on forward with a relentless cold step of a glacier. Ondrey let go of the wax hand he was clutching in his and threw his head back.

I wrapped the blanket, then my arms around him while he keened. There was nothing else I could do. Nothing!

My chest hollowed out, heart beating in its emptiness like a clapper of a bell.

The cat yowled, scratching the door, pushing its fat paws underneath until it flew open with a mournful screeching of the hinges. It kept swinging, swinging and screeching, because the cabin rocked from side to side. The wrought iron cover of the oven crashed to the floor and its smoldering content spilled after it, blinking orange and red, smoking, springing to life.

"Ondrey," I rasped over the laments of the man, the door, the cat in the snow, the whole sorrowful world. "Ondrey, fire!"

The orange tendrils shot across the floor and jumped on the curtain.

"Fire!" I yelled again into his ear.

He scrambled to his feet, giving the spreading flames a deadened, blind look. Then, thankfully, he stumbled after me. He even yanked me back once, to make me grab our boots. It was a rational thought, since walking barefoot in the snow would leave us without feet.

I kept an iron hold on the quilted blanket as if it were a treasure. We tumbled out of the door from a height of the chicken legs and rolled through the snow.

Ondrey cried out in alarm, but I came to rest on top of him. "Shush, sweetheart. She's barely there yet and I have a strong womb."

I didn't know if the Divines had blessed our union with a daughter, but the last thing Ondrey needed at that hour was questions about his virility. I cupped his cheek before sitting up to wipe off the snow from my feet and stuff them into our rescued boots. It was a horribly uncomfortable fit. I thought wistfully of Miccola's favorite boots. They were so supple, I felt one could pull them on even in this frigid environment... But even my stiff, wet boots were better than the alternative, like most things in life.

Ondrey followed my suit, then cloaked me with the blanket, shoulder to hip, despite the bonfire giving out waves of heat. Like one of Yadwiga's endless shawls... I stifled a sob.

The cat hated the blaze even more than it hated the snow, so it found the escape from both by shining up to Ondrey's shoulders. On that ample perch, the miscreant settled and licked its paws clean.

Ondrey seemed oblivious to the welts the cat's claws left under his shirt, traced onto the fabric in red stitches or his new purring collar. He watched the cabin—now the pyre—burn.

And he watched, eyes dry and red, from smoke and grief, until the pale sun ushered in a gray day over our corner of the world. Gray ash fell instead of snow, coating his brows and beard. Whatever residual magic had animated the cabin was now gone, and it looked no different than any other pile of burning logs, a haunted remnant of a human dwelling.

A dreadful thought of how he could have been mourning me as well if I hadn't come back from the depth of the River Vash, if my body had to be sacrificed to free my soul for rebirth, probably by his hand... I swallowed, remembering how held me and the pounding of his heartbeat. This sleepless night stretched on far, far longer for him than it did for me.

"You are not alone. We have a child between us. After we mourn the dead, come stand with me before Mythra's altar. I will wed you and take you away, if you would follow. I'll find a position for you with the Company. I'll... I'll..." Sobs threatened to shut off air to my windpipe, but I got out as many words as I could.

He turned around and burrowed his face into my tunic. With slow fingers, I straightened the lazy curls of his hair, brushing ash out, promising that all will be well for him, for us... But first, first we needed to get out of the forest before the cold lulled us to eternal sleep. Or the wolves stopped abiding the fading magic of the Forest Witch and the primal fear of her pyre.

The appeal to duty made it through the cloud hanging over him. "We're not far from the camp, Ismar," he said. "I'll get you to safety."

Clinging to his arm more than I needed earned me a deriding glance from the cat. I returned it with interest: Mythra's fangs, being angry at a darn cat was better than being sad!

My hand, the one that didn't wound around Ondrey's bicep, balled into a fist.

"Tomorrow will come." I said. "The new dawn will rise over the Knowable World. We'll live."

This time sobs didn't mangle my words. I lived. Ondrey lived. Our daughter lived. And, somewhere to the South, far away, Kozima was waiting for me.

I didn't create this world, I just lived in it. Bitter and sweet the Divines and the Bhutas had wrought it for us, the passersby. A woman couldn't turn its progress back to fix anything in the past. I could only love and fight for tomorrow. I could only love and fight harder. I could! And for that I was grateful.