Authors: Laura Kinsale
"So if you could be anywhere in the world, this is it?" He looked at her sideways. "Because I'm here."
She nodded.
He slid down, turning onto his elbow. "Then do us both a favor and imagine me making you happy somewhere else."
Olympia smiled.
He played with her fingers, then shifted closer, resting his head in the crook of her arm. "Imagine us in a garden. Sitting on the grass in the sun."
"With lilacs," she suggested.
"Lilacs. Roses. Pink-and-white camellias that match your skin. What else?"
She closed her eyes, dreaming. "Violets in the shade of the trees. A statue of Aphrodite…with songbirds eating seed from the dip of her shoulder."
"Imagine we have cakes to eat."
"Strawberries and champagne."
"Mmm. You're good at this. Champagne it is, and I'm sure I've plied you with too much and got you nicely tipsy and kissable, wicked bastard that I am."
She stroked his cheek and bent to press her lips to the top of his head. "Wicked."
"Imagine your hair has come loose around your shoulders. God, it's so beautiful in the sun—with little rainbows of color in it. Imagine—" He paused. A long moment went by, with the wind keening around the hut. Then, very softly, he said, "Imagine that I've asked you to marry me."
Olympia's hand went still. She looked down at him, but she could not see his face.
"Would that make you happy?" he whispered.
She moistened her lips. Her heart thumped in her throat, blocking words.
"I love you, mouse," he said. He curled his fist in the fabric of her dress. "I love you."
Still she could not force her mouth to speak. She stared at his dark hair. It began to swim before her eyes, blending with the firelight and foolish tears.
How strange that it should happen this way—so far from the world she knew; so different from the dreams she'd dreamed.
When life was stripped of everything: when there were no politics, no princesses, no heroes, no glory…when nothing mattered but life itself, reality came down to this. There was food enough to survive today, and fuel enough to keep warm tonight, and something that had built between them in the long, brutal months of desolation—something more real than anything she'd ever hoped or imagined could exist.
As the silence lengthened, his body grew tense against hers. Finally, he took a deep breath and rolled away. "Not in the mood for sentimental sap, I see." Locking his fists behind his head, he frowned into space. "Never mind it. Starvation makes me maudlin."
Olympia bit her lip. But she sat silent still, ashamed of herself for having claimed long ago that she loved him—for wasting the words when she'd been too stupid, too blind, too selfish and small to know what they really meant. She'd loved an illusion made of fantasy and glitter. Now she knew a man, and had no way to tell him what was in her heart.
As the canvas rattled at the door, she stared into the red glow of burning peat, thinking. About love, about how poor the words sounded and how much she'd have liked to give him if she had it. After a long time, she reached across to the small bag that held her scissors and needles and harmonica and precious little else, and found a sandy piece of horehound candy, broken at one end.
She looked at him. His eyes had drifted closed. His head rested at an awkward angle against the boulder, his face turned into one open palm.
"Sheridan," she murmured.
She had no answer beyond the deep, exhausted pull of each sleeping breath.
With a little smile, she tucked the candy into the curl of his fingers. "Imagine," she whispered, snuggling down into the sealskin next to him, "that I've said 'Yes.'"
When the moans woke her, there was just light enough left from the glowing coals to see. In her sleep, she'd turned partially against him with her elbow pressing his back. He'd changed position entirely—he faced away from her, his arm curled over his head, his body making little jerks punctuated by the terrible low sounds coming from deep in his throat.
"Sheridan." She shook his shoulder.
With an explosion of breath he rolled, coming up clutching the knife, his body taut and his eyes wild in the half-light. He sat sprawled on his knees, panting, staring into the hut in a quick, wary search, half hostile and half bewildered.
Olympia stayed still, looking past the gleaming blade to his face. "You were having a bad dream," she said carefully.
He looked at her, and then at the knife in his hand. And then he just seemed to sag, his shoulders and his head, and he flung the weapon sideways away from him. He sat for a long moment with his fists pressed together beneath his mouth.
"I thought somebody had a bayonet in my back," he said, muffled.
"It was me." She bit her lip. "I'm sorry. You were dreaming, and I had my elbow pressed against you."
He took a deep breath and shoved his hand through his hair. There was a weakness at the corner of his mouth, a peculiar quiver. It hardened into a bitter grimace as he stared down at the sandy floor.
Olympia put out her hand and touched his knee. She moved her fingers in a soothing stroke.
"Damn it to hell. Why am I like this?" He tilted his head back with a fierce sound of anguish and stared at the shadowed roof. "Why now?"
She reached up and squeezed his hand as if he were a frightened child. "Everything's all right," she said. "Go back to sleep."
The hard set of his mouth seemed to crumple; he brought both hands up suddenly, covering his face.
"Everything's all right, Sheridan," she repeated. "I'm here. We're safe."
He shook his head silently, still hidden.
"Do you have nightmares often?" she asked gently.
"Leave off. Leave me bloody well alone." He got up, averting his face, retrieved the knife and placed it carefully on the stone shelf far out of his reach. Then he lay down, his expression a mask, turned away from her and pulled the sealskin over his head.
Olympia lay still, gazing at the shadowy hump of his shoulder. A lock of dark hair spilled out over the fur. She moved closer, slid her arm around him and curled against his back. She held him close, resting her cheek on his warm skin.
He made a miserable sound and tried to push her hand away. "I'm not good enough," he muttered. "Friggin' maniac. Not good enough for you."
She only lifted her hand and stroked his forehead, nudging the thick hair tenderly back from his temple. He gave a long-suffering sigh and ignored her. But his body stayed tight and his breathing soft and alert, and she never knew if he let himself sleep at all.
On the twenty-second of October, by the charcoal marks on the hearthstone, Sheridan came back from his daily foraging hours early.
Olympia looked up from the bubbling pail, where she was making soap with seaweed ash and seal blubber. Spring wind blew her hair in her face as she straightened up from the fire.
Napoleon flapped his wings and waddled happily toward Sheridan as he approached. The plump bird bowed and clapped his beak, bobbing and waving in his exuberant greeting ceremony. Sheridan stood looking down at the ardent little figure.
"The penguins are back," he said.
He brushed past the enthusiastic welcome without offering the usual treat and walked into the hut. Napoleon marched anxiously in pursuit until he stumbled into a hole and fell on his face. He worked himself uptight, looked around as if he were astonished to see there was a hole there, then turned, muddled, in several directions until he noticed a pile of pebbles he'd made in the past week. He picked up one pebble in his beak and carried it solemnly to Olympia's feet, dropping it next to several others he'd brought in the course of the day.
She bit her lip.
The penguins were back. Napoleon would have to return to the rookery, of course. He was well grown and perfectly healed; he splashed and swam in the tidal pools among the rocks with ecstatic vigor, trekking back up to the hut like a stoic little soldier to settle down in his corner and wait for Sheridan to lay the grass-thatch over him. But he'd grown restless as spring approached, repeating his greeting ceremony again and again with relentless patience, moving pebbles from place to place and then standing sadly over the pile, his head cocked, first on one side and then on the other, as if puzzled as to why he'd put them there.
He wanted a mate, Sheridan said. His own kind.
Olympia looked at the canvas door of the hut. Sheridan hadn't come out. She lifted the pail off the fire and followed him, Napoleon at her heels.
Inside, Sheridan was leaning against the wall, staring at nothing. He turned as Olympia and the penguin entered, shoving his hands in his pockets and resting his shoulders against the rock. Napoleon, having been fed his fill of limpets by Olympia a half hour earlier, waddled over in his rolling gait and nestled between Sheridan's feet.
He pushed the penguin off. Napoleon tumbled, picked himself up and lifted his beak toward the roof, flapping into another shrill greeting. Then he bowed toward Sheridan and dipped his head zealously. When the ceremony was finished, the penguin regarded Sheridan expectantly.
"You're looking at the wrong chap," he said in a curt tone. "I'd think you'd have figured it out by now."
Napoleon waddled a few steps away, picked up a whalebone spoon and carried it back to drop at Sheridan's feet, wiggling his pointed tail.
"Stupid little bastard, ain't you?" Sheridan said. He tossed the spoon on a rock shelf and glanced at Olympia. "Give me your cloak. I'll wrap him in it and get rid of him."
Five months ago, Olympia would not have recognized what lay behind the callous words. She knew better now.
"May I come?" she asked.
He stood frowning down at Napoleon, his jaw set. "There's no reason."
"I'd like to."
"You're busy. I won't be back till sunset." He took the cloak and scooped Napoleon into its folds. The penguin wriggled and squawked once, then ceased to protest. Sheridan headed toward the door with the bundle under his arm.
"I'm going to miss him, too, you know," Olympia said softly.
He stopped and looked back. Napoleon made a smothered coo, barely audible above the ever-present sound of the surf.
"Hell," Sheridan said. He held out his hand to her. "Come along, then, if you must."
The instant their fingers touched, his hand enclosed hers, rough and firm, a welcome far warmer than his brusque invitation. Olympia let go a breath and met his eyes.
He pushed her ahead out the canvas door. "Just don't start sniveling on me, damn you. I can't stand that kind of rubbish."
She ducked her head, hiding her expression. "No," she said, feeling his hand pressed close at the small of her back. "I know you can't."
The penguin rookery lay on the windward side of the island, where the ocean broke with smashing white violence against the shelving rock. Outside the surf, strange ripples adorned the heaving sea—the plunging black bodies of the swimming penguins, diving together in flocks to avoid the sinister gaping mouths of the leopard seals that glided just beyond the rocks.
When an immense flock of penguins had collected in the sea, they all came together, a wave of splashing shapes that went pouring past their sleek enemies. Some always fell to the teeth of the leopard seals, but the agitated crowd swept past, protected by sheer numbers and confusion, to be hurled up in the surf toward the rock. They popped out of the sea like fat torpedoes, hurtling by the hundreds onto the flat shelf, stumbling and lurching away from the crashing waves on feet or flippers, often skidding along on both, using their bellies as sleds.
Once they reached shore, the hovering rooks were ready to attack any weak or injured strays, but most of the penguins made it up through the rocks and into the gully that led to the rookery. It was serious business, a life-or-death trek, but they were so comical and earnest as they waddled and hopped and trudged along with their flippers out for balance that it was impossible not to smile. A thousand little Napoleons—ten thousand—were on their way home, to set up a nest of pebbles among the albatross and the early arrivals and start a family.
Napoleon himself had begun to squirm as soon as they came within earshot of the raucous throng. Sheridan held the bundle tighter. They stopped at the top of the slope, watching the black-and-white bodies slog their awkward, patient way up to the rookery.
"There aren't too many yet," he said. "In the fall, they were stowed in here like smoked kippers."
The penguins ignored them. It was possible to walk right among them, attracting only a moderate curiosity and a halfhearted peck or two when Olympia or Sheridan stepped too close to a ring of nest pebbles. She wrinkled her nose at the pungent smell.
Sheridan went to an open area and bent down, unwrapping Napoleon from his woolen prison. The penguin flapped wildly and raced toward the nearest occupied nest without a backward look.
Where a human passing seemed to cause little comment, Napoleon's approach precipitated a riot. The closest penguins met him with chatters of rage and battering flippers, knocking him off his unsteady feet. He scrambled up, retreating, only to run into an attack from behind. He tussled, nipping back, and dashed in another direction. There, too, the residents objected to the trespasser with shrilling beaks and blows, until poor Napoleon was running a gauntlet of assault.
Olympia started forward to rescue him, but Sheridan caught her arm.
"They'll kill him!" she protested.
"There's nothing we can do about it."
She frowned anxiously at the commotion. The only way she could tell Napoleon from the others now was that he was the one every other penguin attacked. He lurched from one assailant to the next, crying and flapping, beset on all sides as he zigzagged his way down the slope.
"Oh, what have we done?" she moaned. "Do they hate him because of us?"
Sheridan was silent, watching. After a moment, he said, "Look there."
Napoleon's miserable progress had taken him off to the side of the nest area, where a huddle of penguins sat looking world-weary and blasé, staring around leisurely instead of collecting pebbles and squabbling over nest space like the rest. Bursting out of the nest area, chased by a penguin that nearly took the feathers out of his tail, Napoleon fled toward the silent group. Olympia tensed, waiting for this new company to turn on him. There was a brief skirmish when he cannoned into the nearest, driven by the attacker on his rear. Penguins toppled and scattered in a mass of flailing flippers. The aggressor marched back to its nest, preening itself irritably. The group of bystanders re-formed quietly, and Olympia suddenly realized that Napoleon had vanished from recognition, camouflaged among a host of identical bodies.