I didn’t mean to leave him hanging, but in a moment I knew that I would be forgotten. That knowledge pierced me like a blade. But if pain can ever be good, this pain was.
“You’re older than you look,” I said, and wiped away a tear.
“Yes,” he managed.
“And French.”
He nodded so slightly it was barely visible.
“Messenger . . .”
“Yes, Mara.”
I could have explained, but it would be superfluous. So I said, “Ariadne.”
And she stepped away from the shuffling circle of tourists and walked toward us.
Messenger hid so much from me as he taught me, revealing only the mysteries he felt I needed to know. He had been gentle with me, spoon-feeding me like a baby. He had protected me from the full strangeness and horror and beauty of his world, his and my world.
He had shielded me, too, from himself, from his pain and his guilt and his terrible sorrow. He had kept his emotions in check. But now I saw not the Messenger of Fear but a boy, his face trembling, emotion tugging at his mouth, his nostrils flared, his eyes filling with and then spilling tears.
I had wanted badly at times for that openness to be something I had earned. I had wanted him to love me, as I had begun to love him. Now I was destroying any chance that we would ever be together.
It hurt.
It felt wonderful.
And it hurt like hell.
He did not move until Ariadne herself, seeing him, broke into a run, a careless, graceless, desperate run and then a sound, a whimper, a sob perhaps, came from him and he ran.
I watched them come within inches before Messenger withdrew and with a desperate edge to his voice said, “Stop! I am not to be touched.”
Daniel was beside me. “You surprise me, Mara.”
Messenger and Ariadne stood, inches separating them, hands reaching automatically, then stopping, as if both were surrounded by invisible force fields.
“They’ve been in love for decades, longer than I’ve been alive, longer than my grandparents have been alive,” I said. “That is something too big and too . . .” I sighed. “Too wonderful, for me to intrude in.”
“You freed her from the Shoals,” Daniel said.
“I freed us both,” I said.
“Two happy endings in one day. That’s very rare in a messenger’s life. And yet, still, it could be happier.”
“Yes, Daniel, it could.”
“Hah!” He laughed, a genuine laugh, and he nodded. “Well, a young woman who enters the Shoals and emerges with a life saved . . . It would be strange to describe such a creature as a mere apprentice.”
Daniel winked and at that instant froze the world around us. Every tourist stood where they were, no eye blinked, no shutter snapped. The clouds in the sky became a still life. The blades of grass no longer revealed the breeze. Only Messenger and Ariadne were still moving, still craving each other’s touch, still whispering urgently, still looking into each other’s eyes as if nothing else existed.
We walked to them, Daniel and I, and only when we were nearly upon them did Ariadne look at me, and Messenger followed the direction of her gaze.
Messenger made a very unsuccessful effort to compose himself, to retreat within his shell, but tears leave a mark, and the muscles of his face would not obey his stern efforts to assert control.
“I . . . ,” he said. “This . . .”
“Shall we let him stammer on for a while?” Daniel asked, mocking gently.