Seventh Son

CHAPTER 19

  “Guy! Stop! What are you doing?” With a few steps, Cat was beside him, and reached out a hand to grab his arm.

  He whirled around at her touch, his eyes blazing turquoise. But his bad leg could not take the sudden motion; he staggered, swayed, and clutched at his knee, barely catching himself from falling. He stood like this, half-crouched, his head bowed, drawing a deep breath, then another, and another, and finally breathed out a deep sigh. When he looked up, the fury had drained from his eyes. Slowly he straightened, steadying himself on the branches he had been tearing at just a minute ago.

  “You came,” he said, bewildered. “Why did you come?”

  Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Cat thought, enough with the dramatics already! Her adrenaline rush was ebbing, leaving her feeling more than a little exasperated.

  “Of course I came,” she said briskly, looking around for a suitable spot to sit. “You give me dramatic looks, then you storm out of the house, leaving me with the baby. Who, incidentally, is getting really heavy.” A few yards over she spotted a large flattish rock, brushed it off with her foot, and sat down on it, settling Bibby in her lap. “What was I meant to do, sit there and wait until you came back? If you came back? I’ve had about enough. So suppose you tell me what is going on?”

  His eyes never wavered from her face as he painfully limped over to where she was and settled on the ground beside her. (So he had hurt his knee again with his careless behaviour. That figures, thought Cat; I’ll have to get Ouska to give me more ointment for it. And again she pulled herself up short—there was that assumption again that it would be her task to look after him, that she would be there to do it…)

  “Well?” Cat gave him a straight look, the determined one that had been most effective with library patrons who tried to wiggle out of paying their overdue fines.

  Guy looked down at his feet and pulled out a small stick from under his right heel. He cleared his throat.

  “It’s true, isn’t it,” he stated, breaking inch-long pieces off the stick and dropping them between his feet. “I asked you to marry me, and you said yes.” A fourth piece followed the first three.

  “Yes,” said Cat, and wondered that she wasn’t blushing this time. “Yes, it’s true, not yes, I’ll marry you. Like I said, I’m quite sure you didn’t know what you were saying. I certainly didn’t think you did; you even called me by some other name, I can’t remember what it was now…” (That was a lie, Cat. You know exactly what he called you. And you also know there’s something important about that.)

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said dully. “I was conscious, and I remember what I said. How I said it. And what you answered. Don’t you see—” (the last piece of stick was snapped in half) “—those were the words of marriage.”

  “What?!? What on earth do you mean?”

  He looked up at her, his brows drawn together in a look of pain.

  “It does not mean we will marry, it means we already are.”

  Okay, Cat, don’t hyperventilate.

  “It can’t! I didn’t mean what I said!”

  “I know. But that does not matter. You said it, and that makes it true. Damn!” He slammed his fist into the little pile of stick pieces between his feet.

  (Not very flattering, Cat thought in a corner of her mind. Is it that upsetting to marry me? But then, men don’t want me. Just look at Ryan.)

  Aloud she said: “I don’t understand. Just because we said those words—that makes us married? What about—what about some kind of ceremony? That chain thing? Can’t we just un-say the words?”

  “I don’t think so.” He had found another stick and was mangling it. “The wedding chain, it’s the second part of it. The words are the first. But they’re just as binding.” He fell silent.

  Cat stared at the tree trunks across from her, not really seeing them, even though the light was still just bright enough to make out the individual branches. So what did this mean then? Was there a way out? They were in the place where she had first arrived. Maybe that magical tree he had mentioned…

  “Guy—what were you doing, ripping at those branches there?”

  He looked up at the tree screen.

  “I—I hardly know. This is damnable, all of it. I thought, somehow, it’s that tree which is at the root of it all—I know the real fault is mine, but I thought—no, I really didn’t think. I was just angry. I’ve trapped you, just like I trapped her. It can’t happen again, not again—I need to find a way out… and the tree, perhaps…”

  Suddenly, the air in front of them began to shimmer. An iridescent glow, sparkling and shining in the dusk, became a whirling vortex, like a miniature localised tornado. The luminescence thinned, then dissolved, revealing at its centre a person with his back to them. He staggered, lost his balance, and fell backwards, landing hard on his rear.

  Cat stared. He seemed to be wearing a light-coloured, well-fitting t-shirt and pair of jeans; on his feet were a pair of runners. The back of his head showed black hair, long enough to brush the collar of his shirt. He was clutching something in both his hands, something that looked like a bowl.

  He turned his head, taking in the trees surrounding him, then looked clear over his shoulder, and his eyes met Cat’s.

  They spoke at the same time.

  “It’s you!”

  It was the turquoise-eyed man from the Sammelhauser Museum.