“Four Legs and a Tale (Part X)”

Sian is unprepared, but not surprised, especially when her method becomes clear. Kev is with her. By asking for him at the hut, Roanne unwittingly revealed the way to find their hiding place. Kev sees the girl on Sian’s far side and blurts a few heartfelt words in Lirosi. Sian does not need to speak the language to understand an apology. Standing at his shoulder, Roanne assures Kev that he is forgiven. Joel, for once, is in agreement.

Alarice ignores the children. Her brown eyes roam Sian from head to tail. “I had to be sure it was really you,” she says, softly.

Sian is silent and wary. She sounds sincere—and she may well be, having successfully run him to ground. His main concern is to protect the children; he would be willing to talk if he had something to say, but he left off speaking to Alarice after she put herself between him and his brother.

She sees her husband’s name cross his mind. “Derrick has been distraught since you disappeared. Every day, he leads the search party and comes home despondent.”

Sian can’t imagine that. Derrick is moody, but disinclined to wallowing. He is more likely to come home in a shivering temper than deepening despair—and Sian has no doubt that he has tried more than once to wring the truth from his wife.

A disturbing thought occurs. He looks toward his sutured hip with a sudden, savage understanding. His widened eyes find Alarice once more. She meets them with an icy smile. “I’d rather that he find you dead,” she says.

“ ‘Dead’?” he echoes, horribly amused. He spreads his hands to encompass his altered form. “Like this?”

“Dead is dead,” Alarice replies. “If I cannot have you, my beautiful Blais, I’ll see that no one can.”

Before she is finished speaking, she is calling the power she used to fool Derrick into wedding her; the same power she used to make her own brother vanish and later turned on Blais. The air thickens about her, blurring her features. A cold wind swirls through the cave. Kev is rigid with terror and deaf to the sound of his name. Joel calls to him, but Alarice’s rising magic has him immobilized. Roanne moves instead. Sian swings to shield her with his quarters, but even as he means to protect her, he realizes that Alarice will not stop at killing him. She will take the children, too. She must, if she hopes to preserve her secret.

Sian decides. He has no weapon but his hooves and his strength; against dark magic, his effort may be wasted. As he charges the sorceress, the children scatter. Alarice throws up her hands, her voice raised in pagan entreaty. The muscle stiffens in Sian’s legs, in his chest and back and shoulders. Each stride becomes as ponderous as running through honey, slow and sticky. In contrast, she is as quick as a lizard’s tongue. A dark sparkling orb blinks into her palm. She flings it at Sian. It strikes him full in the chest and sends him high on his hind legs, front hooves flailing. A girl screams. He rears impossibly high, teetering on his hooves, twisting to catch his balance, and falls heavily backward. His chest is numb. Beneath the skin and muscle and bone, his heart is ominously still. 

* * * 

Roanne knocks Kev from his feet. They spill together, rolling with the force of her assault, from the cave’s entrance. She cannot think of Sian. She can only hope that between them, she and the manhorse have sufficiently distracted Lady Alarice. If they have not, then Joel is dead and she must face the witch alone.

She knows what she must do. Kev grabs at her ankle. She screams at him to let her go. He holds on, yelling that she’ll be killed. She doesn’t care. Her brother is in there with Lady Alarice; she has to go, she has to try—

Inside the cave, Joel looses an agonized howl. Roanne kicks Kev in the face and scrambles free when his grip gives on her ankle. Behind her, she hears Da shout in alarm and thinks here too late as she lunges through the cave’s rocky maw.

The feeble fire has gone out. Roanne cannot pause to let her eyes adjust; she races blindly and promptly trips over something she knows must be a body. Horror springs from not knowing whose it is. “Joel!” she cries in a panic. “Joel, where are you?”

“Here,” he says, from a little way to the side.

She peers hard in that direction. Shapes are forming in the gloom; she spies her brother’s face, pale and serious in its corona of blacker-than-black curls. “You screamed.”

“I had to touch the arrow,” he replies, matter-of-factly.

Her eye moves reluctantly to the thing that tripped her. Faint light glimmers in pale hair and glows on moon-coloured silk. Lady Alarice is sprawled on the dirt floor, impaled on her own poisoned shaft. Tears spring unbidden to Roanne’s eyes. She and Sian have succeeded. Joel was able to dig up the magicked arrow while the witch was distracted.

“How?” Kev wants to know. He and the children’s parents crowd in the cave entrance. Sunlight flows around them, floating Lady Alarice in a benign white pool.

“Magic destroys the one who calls it,” Joel says, solemnly.

“But she used it on others.”

For once, Roanne’s brother tries to be patient with the manor oaf. “You don’t use magic on yourself, Kev.”

Roanne’s throat aches. Beyond the pool where Lady Alarice lies, the manhorse is a motionless tangle of golden limbs and flaxen curls removed from the reach of the light. She cannot bring herself to venture closer, yet she cannot make herself look away. All she can do is sit and stare and wait for the tears to take her.

Da is demanding answers from Joel, who behaves as if he slays witches with their own magic every day. Kev hunkers at Roanne’s side and lays a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Roanne. I thought she was going to kill you and I … well, I mean … I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t, you know … ” He trails off when he sees that she isn’t listening. He looks at Joel instead. “It was her along, wasn’t it? It wasn’t Lord Derrick at all, was it?”

Joel shakes his head. He quickly hops up to get in the way when Da steps toward the manhorse’s body. Roanne is roused as well. Without regaining her feet, she throws herself between Sian and her father. “He saved us,” she declares, daring Da to do any of the hundred things she fears Da might do.

His tone is firm. “Let me by, child.”

Joel signs reassurance. He’s told Da all he knows—which is probably more than Roanne knows, given her brother’s possession of the sight—and all Da wants is to get a better look at the creature who sacrificed himself for Da’s children.

Roanne steps aside, but she can’t look behind. She can’t bear to see him dead and cold. It’s easier to look at Lady Alarice. She was always cold. Now she’s just dead.

She hears a voice remarkably like her own though she’s unaware of speaking. “He was Lord Derrick’s brother.”

“Da knows that, Roanne,” Joel whispers. “Kev told him.”

She looks at Kev, who is still hunkered where she had been sitting. Smiling is out of place in this moment, so the smile he offers is a weak one. Roanne feels an answering smile, just as weak, on her own lips. When she gets past the grief of losing Sian, she’ll think about Kev’s intention and realize that he feels as deeply for her as she feels for him. Maybe between them, and with Mam’s help, they might persuade Da to let them marry. They won’t be old enough to wed for some years, of course, but they’ll need that long to bring her father around.

The first tear falls. It trickles silently over Roanne’s cheek and settles in the corner of her smile for Kev. She is startled from shedding a second by a jubilant shout from her brother. “Roanne, Sian is moving! He’s moving!” 

To be continued …

 

copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig

Auto Biography VI

“Black Jeep”

He drives a black Jeep, a hardtop Renegade or Rubicon that resembles the thousand other black hardtop Jeeps cruising around town. I don’t know the year; Jeeps look pretty much the same no matter how old they may be. His has chunky tires and an impressive stereo—I hear Pearl Jam playing when heʼs idling at a stoplight.

He has curly dark hair and the lanky grace of a hockey player, slightly at odds with solid ground but a guaranteed swan on the ice. Heʼs handsome, of course, with bright dark eyes and an irrepressible grin. No slave to fashion, heʼs usually in jeans and a button t-shirt. His style hints at a love of the outdoors, of hiking in the wilderness or windsurfing along the sea coast. Heʼs a nature boy, tricky to capture and trickier to tame, but like all wild creatures, if you are quiet and bide your time, he will come.

I donʼt know who he is, but I want to find out, so Iʼll be quiet and bide my time, and one day, he will come.

Feed a Cold

... sniffle ... sniffle ...

Why is it called a cold when the only thing "cold" about it is the menthol effect of the Vaporub smeared under my stuffy nose?

My head is full of wet cement, my skin is fevered, my eyes and nose are dripping like wonky faucets, and my chest is smoking like a peat fire. It started on Sunday with the ominous scratchy throat. By Monday I was in full-blown sniffling self-pity, and am only slightly more miserable today than I will be tomorrow.

So why is it called a cold? And why can’t somebody cure it? I don’t get sick that often, otherwise I’d be tougher about a stupid little virus … you’d think.

Nights are the worst—and why is that??? Why do the symptoms return with a vengeance when the sun sets? I’m too hot, I’m too cold, I can’t breathe, my throat hurts, whine whine whine …

I will happily, however, tout the healing properties of green tea, won ton soup, chicken soup, and my wonderful Ter, who has supplied me with everything designed to help me feel less like death warmed over. The one thing she couldn’t make happen was a Flyer win last night—they lost at home to Vancouver, and while I snagged 4 pool points from the 3-2 score, I still wanted to shoot myself.

Wah.

Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?

More care to stay than will to go ...

Romeo and Juliet are like vampires: a permanent fixture in popular consciousness who lie dormant for a while then, when the cycle comes full circle, are revived once more. The latest version of Shakespeare’s homage to star-crossed love is adapted by Downton Abbey’s Julian Fellowes and produced in part by Swarovski Entertainment—the crystal people. Ter and I saw it on the weekend and yep, it’s a gem.

I’m a big Shakespeare fan, but not such a snob that I have issues with a writer tweaking the lingo. “Adaptation” suggests that a script will differ somewhat from the original, and what tinkering Fellowes did with the dialogue worked fine for me. The scenery was stunning, the plot true to form, and the lovers were indeed young enough if not to be actual teens then to be taken for them.

My benchmark production is Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version with Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey—that film boiled over with the tangled emotions of new love blooming amid ancestral hate. This one fell a little sort in that regard despite some serious smouldering by the fabulously hot-tempered Tybalt and the poetic portrayal of Romeo himself. The kid who played him made this movie more than a pretty bauble. He was Romeo: the sweet, ardent, honorable fool of Fortune. The guy who played Friar Laurence was equally good.

No complaint about anyone else, either. They all wielded Will’s words with relative ease. No society ever spoke in iambic pentameter, so it was refreshing to hear the iconic lines delivered with an everyday rhythm that made them sound natural. The one thing I would change—and Ter didn’t notice it, so I may be picking nits—was an overused soundtrack. There were scenes where the music was unnecessary and even, so I thought, intrusive. That said, this is easily the most beautiful version of the story I’ve ever seen, and I’m watching for more of Douglas Booth (Romeo) in future.

Zeffirelli’s masterpiece still trumps them all, and Baz Luhrmann’s modern-day version with Leonardo diCaprio and Clare Danes sits firmly in second place, but for sheer gorgeousness as well as a decent effort, this one is a hair more than too flattering sweet to be substantial.

Gratitude

 

Today is Canadian Thanksgiving. I’m unsure why we have such a holiday, truth be told, unless it’s a nod to evading conquest by America in the war of 1812. It certainly isn’t about winning independence from Britain, since the country was originally claimed by the French, who lost it (sort of) to England on the Plains of Abraham way back when. We weren’t even a country at that time; before and after the war, we were a colony. Confederation didn’t happed until 1867—is that when the holiday started? Or is it simply an excuse for a long weekend in October? (Insert shrug here.) Whatever the occasion, I’m always grateful for a stat holiday.

 

The past few years have taught me a lot about gratitude. After love, it’s the most powerful of the virtues. Combined with love, it can work miracles on one’s view of the world and one’s place in it. The daily gratitude list has been part of my psyche for so long now that I can’t recall which of my gurus planted it there. It began as an experiment a few years ago: every day, I wrote down things I was grateful for, including things I didn’t have but hoped to have in future. The things I already had meant more to me and the things I hoped to have … well, now I actually have some of them. Others yet elude me, but I’ve also learned that things come when and if they are meant to come, not before or not at all. Life isn’t about getting everything you want. The Rolling Stones had it right: you get what you need. The hard part—the really hard part—is being grateful when what you get sucks out loud. The disappointing stuff. The challenging stuff. The aches and pains stuff. Running life’s gauntlet is fraught with “woo hoo!” and “why me?” Appreciating the “woo hoo”s are easy, and though I struggle to do it, I make myself grateful for the “why me”s. I’m even more grateful when I get past them.

 

It is Thanskgiving, so here we go …

 

I am grateful for Ter;

I am grateful for family;

I am grateful for music;

I am grateful for art and film;

I am grateful for inspiration and creativity;

I am grateful for chiropractors and massage therapists;

I am grateful to live in Canada;

I am grateful to be richer than I think;

I am grateful for breath;

I am grateful for laughter;

I am grateful for rain;

I am grateful for abundance;

I am grateful for love;

I am grateful for life.

 

With love (and gratitude),

“Four Legs and a Tale (Part IX)”

By the time they slow their pace, Sian is favouring his far hind leg. He perseveres, lurching gamely up the trail until he reaches the familiar haven of the cave. Joel immediately jumps down to inspect the injured limb. Roanne stays mounted. “We have to go back for Kev.”

“We can’t. Sian’s lamed himself. I hate to say this, but Da will have to look at him.”

She wants to burst into frustrated tears. “Da can’t look at him! We’ve gone out of our way to keep Da from finding him!”

“And a fine fat load of good we’ve done, too,” Joel grumbles. He’s as wrought with the manhorse as much as with his sister. Going anywhere near the manor is foolish in the daytime, yet both Sian and Roanne decided to double the peril and visit after dark.

“She said his name,” Roanne murmurs. She glances down at Joel, keeping her voice low. “Did you hear her? She called him ‘Blais’.”

“You told me that’s his real name,” Joel reminds her, peevishly.

“Yes, but … ” She hadn’t believed it; not really. Not until Lady Alarice had softened and called out to him. “Joel, do you think it’s true? Do you think Lord Derrick’s brother really loved Lady Alarice?”

“Maybe you should ask if Lady Alarice really loved Lord Derrick’s brother,” Joel retorts.

“Of course she did. Does. Why else would she have called his name just now?”

“Why else would he have run from her?”

Roanne strokes her hand over the muscle of the manhorse’s shoulder. He stands immobilized, shaken but breathing more calmly since the end of their flight. She wants more than anything to ask him Joel’s question herself.

“You didn’t hear, did you?” Joel asks her.

“Hear what?”

“When we first came on Sian in the orchard tonight. He called you ‘Norra’.” 

* * * 

The sound of her name stops the breath in Sian’s throat. Is it possible? Can the boy know anything about his past? He has believed that the slip went unnoticed, but hearing her name again, spoken with the Lirosi lilt, sends a quivering warmth through his entrails. He would look at the children’s faces, but he is suddenly, unaccountably afraid of what he might see in them. Particularly in Roanne’s.

You have already seen her in Roanne’s face. And in her mother’s. If he looks closely, he will see her in Joel as well, in the arch of the boy’s brows and the wry quirk at the corner of his mouth. The brown-eyed girl with the straw-coloured hair. That is the difference, the hue of the hair; a slight, single difference, yet enough to cast doubt on the obvious.

An unbidden rush of imagery flows past his mind’s eye. The summer fair. Dancing to the music of fiddles and flutes, linking arms with a graceful girl, letting her go at the end of the round. Seeking her out when the dancing is done, knowing none of her words though their meaning strikes deep in his heart. But she speaks the manor tongue with a melodic accent when she comes to him in the dark, when she whispers his name and tells him her own …

Then the other voice, the woman’s voice, the woman’s rage, so powerful that it makes itself heard though she says nothing aloud.

Mine!

He closes his eyes and breathes. He was a man, then. He had two legs and no tail, but his hair was as long and blond and curly as it is now. He was Derrick’s younger brother, younger by more than a decade, and of an age with Alarice.

Alarice.

He covers his eyes with his hand, staggering under the onslaught of memory loosed without warning: Derrick, dark and furious, accusing him of theft and corruption, of perfidious betrayal, of incest and adultery though he, Blais, vehemently denies the claim. I have not touched her! but his brother disbelieves and storms from the room in a glacial fury, leaving him bereft in the deafening silence.

And Alarice smiles from her listening place in the corridor …

He shakes his head to stop the deluge. The cave reforms around him. Roanne yet sits, a subtle weight at best, on his back. Joel has ceased his inspection of the far hind leg. Both children are quiet, either disinterested in talking or mutually alert to the turmoil within their manhorse.

For he is theirs. He belongs to them as he once belonged to their sister, to beautiful Norra with the dancing brown eyes and the silken, straw-coloured hair. He belongs with them more than at the manor, for when he met Norra, he met his destiny. That was what Derrick refused to accept; not that his little brother lusted after his wife—which was easier to believe, whether or not it was true—but that his little brother had fallen in love with a Lirosi girl, that he wanted to adopt their ways and restore them to their rightful place as stewards of the land taken from them by force.

How they had argued, he remembers now. Again and again, almost daily, they had feinted and parried, debated and discussed, usually at full volume with no care for listening ears. Derrick is a man of action, quicker with a sword than his wit; he considers the natives to be idle and inferior, content to tend their herds and cheat their betters. Their one honest quality is their skill with horses, else he wouldn’t bother with them at all. Blais feels differently—Blais feels, after all; he doesn’t think as his brother insists he should—and Alarice is clever enough, spiteful enough, to await her moment. When she does, when she did, Derrick took her side against his brother and cast him out in a boiling tempest of self-righteous indignation.

And Alarice smiled from her listening place in the corridor.

He remembers nothing after that. Nothing. Nothing until he woke at the base of the sheer cliff and found himself reformed with four legs and a tail.

Alarice has seen him. Alarice knows what has become of him.

Of course she knows. She did this to me. 

* * * 

“We’d better get back,” Joel says, without much enthusiasm. He knows, as does Roanne, that Mam and Da have already discovered their absence and will be on their way to the cave. Whether their parents find Sian or not, the children are about to discover how deeply in trouble they are. By any account, the prospect is grim.

But Sian will not let them go. He puts himself squarely in the cave’s entrance and blocks every attempt they make to get by him. He paws the ground and shakes his head, his blue eyes more fierce than Roanne has seen them. “I think he knows something, Joel.”

“Like how much of our hides Da will take when he finds us?”

She studies the manhorse for a moment. He stands quietly while the children are still; only when one of them tries to dart past him does he rear or kick to discourage them. It’s like he’s trying to warn them … but they already know Da is going to kill them. There’s no fate worse than that.

“He won’t let Da hurt us,” she decides.

“What’s to stop Da from hurting him, too?”

“Besides four hooves waving about his ears? Not much.” Roanne has one hope, though—a hope that her brother, in his youthful stubbornness, has not considered. Mam and Da speak the manor tongue. It could be that the manhorse has a story to tell, and he wants to tell their parents. About Lady Alarice, perhaps? Or about himself, now that he knows his name. Though what he thinks her parents can do—will do—escapes her. She was certain that Da would take him straight to the lord. Now she is not so sure. It depends on what he has to say.

Whatever it is, he had better be convincing. Their fate is never more reliant on him than when rustling footsteps herald the approach of newcomers outside the cave. Sian moves to keep the children behind him. Joel sets his shoulders and prepares to defy the manhorse’s strategy, but on identifying the form that takes shape in the cave’s mouth, he sees the wisdom in relenting.

It’s neither Mam nor Da. It’s Lady Alarice. 

To be continued …

 

copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig

 

"Cafe apres le Nuit"

The Green Fairy turned, inevitably, with the coming of winter.

She went early to the café, her head bowed and hooded, her boots crunching in new-fallen snow. The proprietor let her in and she sat by the window, close enough to feel the chill off the pane. She ordered claret. She was given coffee: dark, strong, deliciously bitter. Like her men, she thought, wearily.

Like me.

She was tired of being their muse. Tired of being handed from one to the other, of being admired and abused, of the continual play between drunk and hungover. She was nineteen and felt ancient. Ragged, wrung out, on the brink of being tossed aside for the next shiny new trinket. She had not bothered with a mirror this morning. Her hair was uncombed and her dress lacked the odd button, and for once, she did not care. Pierre had let her in, expecting a favour in return. Tonight? She wondered, eying him behind the bar. She decided not. He was too cautiously avoiding her gaze. Wisely, she realized. Tonight was Henri’s turn, and Henri disliked sharing her with his companions. He would not willingly forfeit her to the café owner.

He would not fight for her, either.

She sipped scalding coffee as the café stirred around her. China clinked and steam hissed from the counter where the exotic grounds were brewed to magical elixir. The back door slammed and murmured voices drifted her way, heralding waiters arriving for the midday shift. Snow fell indifferently outside, frosting the street in pristine white. Fresh. Unspoiled. As she had been, when she first came.

“Why did you come?”

She looked up, sharply. The boy François stood by her chair with a cup of heaven in his hands. “Is that for me?” she asked, hopefully.

He set the cup before her. She almost wept at the sweet creamy scent wafting upward in the steam. Her favourite, as only the boy could make it, her sublime café au lait.

Pierre appeared behind him. “Drink up and be gone,” he advised, gruffly. “We open soon.”

She understood. She could not be seen by respectable customers. Only after hours, when the artists and writers arrived to quaff forbidden absinthe and smoke opium cigarettes, when the music was racy and the laughter raucous, was her presence truly welcome, at least for as long as she continued to beguile.

She had not expected the attraction to fail her first.

“Go back to Georges,” the boy whispered.

“Georges is a snoring pig.”

“Go to Paul, then. Or Henri. It’s his night, is it not?”

She glanced up in surprise. “How do you know that?”

François flushed like a shy girl, but he was in it now and could only go forward. “I know,” he said, simply.

She looked hard at him, seeing him clearly for the first time. A genuine boy, straight and slender with ingenuous eyes and a pale wisp of mustache adorning his upper lip. “What business is it of yours?”

“None, I admit. How can I not know when I am here every night that you are?”

“Go away,” she said, dismissing him as irrelevant.

He made to obey, then hesitated. “Where will you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then come with me.”

Again, she looked up, this time astonished. “What?”

“Come with me.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.” He stood a little taller as he said it, as if being eighteen made him a man of the world.

She smiled. “You can’t even grow a proper mustache.”

“Does that make me less a man than the apes who paw at you every night?”

Her smile vanished. “Don’t speak to me that way!”

François stepped back, turning from her as if she had cut him when he had been the first to draw blood. She put out a hand to stay him.

“The truth, it hurts when spoken harshly by one so tender.” She rose from her chair. “I must go. Thank you for the café au lait. No one makes it better than you do.”

“Don’t go,” he blurted. He shook his head briefly, impatient with inexperience. “I mean, wait. I’ll fetch my coat. You can’t go back to Georges.”

She could, but she would pay. Georges habitually passed out on her breast and woke in the morning eager to finish what he had begun, only to spend himself in a brutish rage when she was not roused quickly enough. He would forgive her for slipping out while he slept if she did not return too soon. Returning now, though, would subject her to attentions more urgent—and even less effective—than usual. She could try Henri, she supposed, but she was not up to appeasing his manhood with the required blend of praise and ardent moaning. Jean-Claude performed like the virile hero in a play, sometimes dressed for the part and spouting his own poetry as he thrust. And Paul, Paul was likely the safest of the four because he liked to look and feared to touch, being attracted to boys yet willfully unaware of it.

“Why do you bother with them?” François asked, walking her through the snowy streets.

She sighed. “Because they bother with me. They buy my clothes and my meals and all I need do is be their inspiration.”

François was silent. She fell silent with him, knowing as well as he did that the life of a muse was vastly different from the life she was living. She may have started on the right course, but somewhere along the way, she had lost sight of herself.

“Why did you come to Paris?” he asked at last.

“I followed my heart. Regrettably, when I knocked and his wife answered the door, my plans changed.”

“You couldn’t go home?”

“I thought perhaps I could make something of myself. This is Paris, after all. A world of opportunity, full of potential for a pretty young thing. I didn’t know how cold it would be, or how cruel.” She shook her head clear of broken dreams. “Why did you come?”

“I was born here,” the boy said.

Startled, she glanced up at him. He walked with his head up and his eyes forward, his profile as clean and pure as the snow clinging to his lashes. A waiter in a café, his coat was wool but well-worn, his boots scuffed and sporting new laces. He wore no hat, baring his fair hair to the elements in a most un-Parisian fashion. “I thought you were from the country,” she said.

“Like you?” He smiled when she balked. “The absinthe recalls your accent.”

“When did you learn to speak?” she inquired, tartly.

He laughed. “I learned not to. Here we are.”

She stopped with him. “This is a boulangerie.”

François grinned, digging in his coat pocket. “Upstairs,” he said, nodding to an alcove by the display window. Artfully arranged loaves of bread and trays of pastries so dazzled the eye that no one who was asked could say a door, let alone an alcove, existed beyond the entrance to the shop. François slid a key into the lock and motioned her ahead of him. She went carefully up the stairs, feeling her way after the bright snow light.

“In the morning,” he said, unlocking one of two doors when they reached the second floor, “the smell of baking bread fills the apartment and lingers all day long. It’s the most comforting smell in the world.”

It was making her hungry. François ushered her over the threshold, leaving the door open as he showed her about his home. Small, neat, smelling of bread and sweet pastry, its simplicity made her want to smile and weep at once. The lavatory was shared with the other tenant, a little old woman who brought leftovers from next door almost every day. “She fears I don’t eat well,” the boy confided, chatty with nerves but utterly charming for it. “I ask you, how does one live above a boulangerie and not eat well?”

“I’m not good at riddles,” she replied, unable to disregard the single bed in the corner. She confronted him. “François, have you ever been with a woman?”

He blushed so fast and so violently that she had her answer before he could lie. She thought he might stammer a bit or stay quiet, but he did neither. “I didn’t bring you here for that.”

“I know. I wouldn’t have come otherwise. I can’t repay you for your kindness.”

“Accepting it is payment enough. I want you to be safe and—and—” He cut himself short, clearing his throat and half-turning to the door. “I must get back before Pierre dismisses me. My home is yours, mademoiselle. Please, make yourself comfortable.”

“Should I be here when you return?”

He turned back, suddenly unable to make his eyes meet hers. “I hope you will, but that is up to you. There is no obligation, mademoiselle. I have only wanted to do something kind for you.”

“You do that every night, François. You make the best café au lait in France, let alone in Paris. I’m sure that no one else savours it as dearly as I do.”

“I don’t make it for anyone else,” he said, softly. His eyes came up at last, sky blue and shining. “I make it only for you.”

She smiled. “Je sais. Merci.”

He nodded, suddenly awkward, and turned to go.

“François—”

He faced her again, his blond brows raised above those sweet eloquent eyes.

“You said you want me to be safe and—something. You didn’t finish.”

“I don’t know your name,” he said.

“They call me Anise.”

“I know what they call you. That is not your name.”

“No,” she allowed, suddenly fearful of this intimacy. She had come to Paris on the heels of romance and been dismayed. Disappointed. Disillusioned. Romance, pah. There was nothing but lust and power and misdirected dreaming. How often had she glanced past this boy and laughed at the soul in his eyes? How often had she bared her flesh and taunted him with the others who begged for it? How often had she hurt him with her carelessness, her bawdy drunken behaviour and derisive jeering, yet through it all, every night without exception, at closing time, there was the café au lait, made just for her, delivered in silence and tasting of love.

“My name is Odette,” she said.

“I want you to be safe and loved, Odette.”

“By you, François?”

“By whomever you choose,” he replied. He paused, but when she said nothing, he inclined his head and pulled up the collar of his coat. He left his key on the table by the door. She watched through the window, waiting until he appeared from the alcove and retraced their steps to the café, nodding politely to passersby and deftly sidestepping the horses in the street. He looked neither up nor back, and when he returned hours later after closing the café, the snow had stopped and she was still there.

copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig