Remembrance

After several minutes of groveling, she pulled back and looked at him. He was still standing rigid, still looking at something far away from her, but she knew that his hurt was gone. So why wasn’t he doing what he usually did when he forgave her? Usually he took full advantage of her contrition to get her to play some game where she was a helpless female rescued by the big, strong male.

But now he was still standing there, his arms at his side. And he wasn’t pushing her away and telling her to stop getting his face wet, as he usually did on the rare occasions when she kissed him.

With her toes barely touching the ground, her arms tight around his neck, her body pressed full against his, she looked at him. Had his eyes always been this dark? she wondered. Had his hair always been this black, his skin this exquisite color? Her heart was pounding in her throat. This was Talis, a boy she had shared her whole life with. He was as familiar to her as the sun, as the air, but at this moment he seemed to be the most glorious, the most unfamiliar thing on earth.

“You missed a spot,” Talis said, and Callie could feel his voice against her chest.

“Missed?” she said, her voice catching in her throat. She had no idea what he was talking about.

“You did not kiss all of my face,” he said quite seriously, then bent his head so she could kiss him more.

A moment ago her kisses had been quick, the way she had always kissed him, little girl kisses that she’d given him when he’d killed a spider for her, or once when he’d hit a big boy who was teasing her in a nasty way. Then, in happiness, she’d kissed his cheek several times. Then the only indication Talis had given that he was even aware she was kissing him was that he had bent just slightly so she could reach his cheek.

He had never kissed her, even after Callie had done very nice things for him, such as doing his chores because he’d fallen asleep under a tree. Talis said that knights didn’t kiss girls. “What do they kiss? Their horses?” she’d asked mockingly. At that retort, Meg, in one of her rare witticisms, had said, “Knights kiss their mothers,” then had lowered her cheek to receive Talis’s kiss. Talis had left the house whistling in triumph.

So now Talis was almost asking Callie to kiss him. And kiss him she did. Never in her life had she wanted to do something as much as she wanted to kiss Talis this moment. It was as though the whole world had disappeared; nothing else existed but the two of them under this tree.

She kissed his chin, long, slow, lingering kisses, then moved upward, and as she did so, he lowered his head just slightly.

When Callie placed her lips on his, it was not the hard, puckered kiss of a child, but her lips were soft and a tiny bit parted. For weeks now Talis’s lips had fascinated her. They were full and soft-looking and she liked the way they moved when he talked. In fact, lately she had not been able to hear him for watching his lips curl about the words. Sometimes she had angered him by looking away when he was telling her something, but she had needed to break the connection between her eyes and his mouth.

Now she felt his intake of breath when her lips touched his, felt his body soften, then his strong arms tighten around her. He was always showing off his newly discovered strength and picking her up and twirling her around. He delighted even in turning her upside down, or tossing her in the air. So feeling Talis’s arms around her, feeling his body close to hers was nothing new, but today this was somehow different. Today she could feel his strength, feel his big body, feel the power of him in a way she’d never felt before.

Callie wondered at his touch, wondered at the feel of her lips on his. Her inexperience, her awe, made her hesitant, but Talis did not seem to be hesitant about what to do.

For just a second, at first, he pulled away from her, looked at her, his eyes wide, then, with great assurance, he put his hand to the back of her head, turned her head to one side (she’d always puzzled over what to do with the noses in a kiss, but obviously the question had not plagued Talis. He just, somehow, knew what went where), and kissed her hard.

She was awfully glad for his strength because her knees gave way under her and Talis had to support her body fully against his. He did so easily, without seeming to notice that she had melted into the consistency of butter left in the sun.

For just a second, Callie’s eyes opened wide as he somehow managed to support her weight with his upper arms, leaving both his hands free to roam unobstructed and firmly over all of her body that he could reach. Callie had nearly despaired because she had not curves in the front of her body, but it had never occurred to her that her backside was very curvaceous and that that curve had caused no little interest in most of the boys in the village. She didn’t know that Talis had once shoved a boy three years older than himself into the mud for making a remark as Callie bent over a barrel of pickled turnips.

Now Talis cupped her buttocks as he kissed her sweet mouth in a way that made Callie nearly faint. She felt some timidity, but he didn’t. He had always been the aggressor between them, the one who walked into a cave without any thought of caution. He was the brave one, is what Meg said. And now, he was the adventurous one when it came to kissing.

He thrust his tongue into her mouth, hard and firm.

Startled, Callie pulled away from him, looked at him in surprise. Had he done something like this a few months ago, she would have thought it was disgusting, but now…now, she liked it.

One minute they were standing in the open air and the next Talis had shoved her against the tree, and it seemed that he was taking her clothes off. Callie could not think. It seemed that everything in her mind had fled and she was just one mass of feeling. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from Talis and she didn’t know if he knew what he wanted from her, but she was certain that she wanted to find out.

She was never to find out what would have happened because suddenly the cacophony surrounding them was deafening. Men thundered by on horses; men were shouting; armor clanking; chaos; confusion.

Talis was the first to hear it. Horses and men, with or without armor, were of no interest to Callie. Her one and only interest in life was Talis.

But not so him. Pulling himself away from her, his hand still on her bare thigh as it rested on his hip, he cocked his head to one side and listened.

Callie, impatient, tried to pull his face back to hers. They were safe and secret under the tree; no one would see them, no matter what they were doing.

“Something has happened,” Talis said.

“Yes,” she answered, meaning something totally different. In the last moments everything in her life had changed: The way she looked and thought about life had changed.

As though what was going on between them was no longer of interest to him, he dropped her leg, then took off running toward the house. After allowing herself a brief luxury of

cursing him, she began running after him. How could what had just happened between them affect him so little that he could just leave her like that?

But by now her brain had recovered enough to think that perhaps something horrible had happened to Meg or Will. It did not occur to her that, horrible as that may be to her and Talis, the mishaps of two peasant farmers was hardly cause for an alarm raised that involved shouting knights on horseback.

Lifting her skirts, she took off running, as close to Talis’s heels as she could manage.