“They do, my love. They think of you as a wild animal with no soul, but they see me as little better. I like emotion and feeling and desire. Ergo, there must be something wrong with me.”
“No, there is something wrong with them.”
Natalia brushed herself off and looked around the platform which, she realized, was built of woven, living tree limbs. For someone raised in the dead desert, the idea of plants having this much strength was decidedly odd.
“Well, I didn’t come here to fall at your feet and beg you to take me in,” Natalia said. “I just wanted to see you. To find out if you’d healed. To properly say goodbye.”
He closed his large hand around her arm. He didn’t hurt her, but the grip was so firm she knew she’d never break it. “Why should we say goodbye?”
“You’re a Dream Catcher, I’m a city woman.” She tried to sound uncaring. “Although all this is beautiful.”
“And it’s mine.”
“You own the tree?”
He laughed, his velvety, throaty laugh. He released her and gestured to the end of the platform. “Everything you see from here is mine. This is my realm.”
Natalia peeped over the edge, dizzy from the height. She noted that no railing ran around the platform. No need, for a being who could fly. Between the boughs, she saw a carpet of forest that ran on endlessly. Mist from the gorge rose in the middle of it.
“My family lives here too,” he said, his warmth at her back. “Sisters, brothers, cousins.”
“Do they fly, too?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter.” Ochen closed his arms around her waist. “I will hold you and not let you fall.”
Natalia looked into his silver eyes. She felt herself caught, as she had in Delia’s ballroom, as though his eyes swallowed her. She blinked. “No. I don’t want the fantasy. I want you.” She had a panicked thought. “This isn’t a dream, is it? I’m not hanging on the edge of the gorge unconscious, am I?”
Ochen flicked his fingers over her cheek. “You’d be cleaner in a fantasy.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“But I like you this way.” Ochen kissed the end of her nose. “Stay with me, Natalia.” His expression darkened. “Please.”
“For now,” she whispered.
He snatched her up in his arms and leaped from the platform. A wash of cold air robbed her of a scream, and then they were on another platform, smaller and higher, again made of living branches. This one
had a bed, or at least a pallet of fresh leaves. The garlands Delia had brought in for her soiree paled in comparison to this living bed. Ochen laid her down on it.
“What am I, Queen of the forest?” she asked.
In answer, he pulled off her boots, unlaced her leggings and tunic and tugged them off. Natalia instinctively grabbed at the fabric. She shouldn’t be unclothed outdoors. She shouldn’t be unclothed in front of another person. High-born ladies were never naked in front of anyone from two seconds after they were born until . . . well, never. Even bathing was done in absolute, strict privacy.
Ochen plucked a leaf from a nearby branch, held it between his hands, then rubbed it over her skin. She started to ask what he was doing, but she saw that her scratches, her insect bites and the swelling in her hands faded and disappeared. He was healing her.
“Is this how you healed yourself?” she asked.
He nodded. “My brother had to charge the leaves for me, but yes.”
“I’m surprised Dream Catchers aren’t captured for that skill instead.”
“It only works with the leaves from one of the Dream Catcher’s own trees. How long do you think it would be before the trees were harvested and the Dream Catchers imprisoned?”
“Not long.”