***
I suppose I could remedy what I assume you perceive to be a showing of unforgivable cruelty and lack of sympathy by recounting mine and Penny’s reunion. But instead, I will jump straight to another conflict, though this one is much more personal and involves another reunion, albeit one that is very different from the rest. That night, James and I attempted for the first time since my return and my forgiving of his terrible lie to have reconciliation and reunion sex. Violet was over at Nick’s house, I had just finished telling Penny a ridiculous tale of white witches and evil raccoon-men that I had made up randomly and in glorious detail in the moment, and then James and I were left, somewhat awkwardly, alone.
There was certainly sexual tension in that awkwardness. Perhaps that was why it was so awkward; it was that desire for action, not inertia, and that inertia’s continuation despite the drive for action, that spurred to life my anxious thoughts. When he kissed me, I kept my eyes open, I remember now, because I was so vividly recalling the few times Ray had chanced joining his mouth with mine in a forceful, painful kiss, during which he had just narrowly avoided my fangs nearly ripping his lips away. I watched James as we kissed so tenderly, feeling his hands so gently pulling my shirt over my head. The moment I felt the chilled air of our room assault my bare skin, though, I remembered the frigid air of the forest night when Ray had ripped my shirt down the front; the invisible wounds that cold air had slashed into me were opened effortlessly but also, against all logic. There was no comparison between that disgusting, sick man and the “punishment” he wished to inflict on me, and James, my boyfriend of one year, who loved me and was only showing me, as he had done so many times, how much by making love to me.
My body tensed beneath him, and I began to breathe somewhat deeply, not in the way that was normal for those heated moments between us. He sensed that change in me, that remembrance of something terrible, and he pulled away, looking at me with such concern that those tears which took me without any warning at all threatened to grab hold of me aggressively once again.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Tell him? Tell him what? My panicked brain asked frantically. Had Savannah told him the lie I had fed her about mine and Adam’s short meeting earlier, and if so, was he thinking that my reluctance was the result of that meeting, of the deep fondness for him that would not waiver even when I needed it to so desperately? Did he know that I had seen Adam? Why wasn’t he sufficiently outraged?
“Baby, if you’re not ready right now…”
“It’s not you.” I told him, shaking my head somewhat rapidly. My entire body was beginning to tremble. I wanted nothing more than to run outside into the open air and take in slow, deep breaths. Only then would I be calmed.
I also wanted to smoke one of the cigarettes from the pack with which I had been gifted by Don earlier in the day.
“You look like you could use them, Brynn.” He had told me, and in his eyes, I had seen a recognition of something that I could only assume was his knowledge of what had happened to me. Just like right then with James, I had wanted to run away, but instead, I had merely taken the pack from his hand and murmured a quick thanks, completely apathetic about breaking my nearly one year-strong cessation of nicotine use.
“I know it’s not me.” James replied instantly. “Baby, I know that. You don’t have to worry that I’m offended, okay? I just need you to know that now.”
“That is quite good that you know that.” I told him, still nodding. “It isn’t you. It could never be you. It has nothing to do with our fight or what caused our fight. It’s just…” I looked up at him, and two strong-willed tears poured from the corners of my eyes. “This is so unfair. To you, to me, to everyone. Everyone wants to be happy that I am home, including myself, but I am acting like a mental patient!”
“You’re not.” He told me firmly, his hands clasped tightly around mine. “You’re acting exactly as you should when something bad happened to you. Sweetheart, I don’t mean to push you, but you really will feel better if you just tell me. You know I won’t judge you, or pity you, or have any reaction that you’re worried about. Whatever it is, you can tell me, and I’ll listen, and…”
“And you’ll be furious. You’ll be murderous. But that’s not what I’m concerned about. And I know that I will not have your pity or…” I stopped, realizing that I was lying. “I would, and you cannot say that I would not, because you don’t know what it is that happened. I can see in your mind that you think you have a pretty good idea, but you don’t. And I can’t say it. My stomach, my heart, and my mind can’t handle how it makes me feel when I even think about saying it out loud. It’s so unfair to you.” I buried my face in my hands, and when he pulled me to him, I cried bitterly into his chest.
“I should be able to say it, and it’s not you, it’s me. All of this is me, and it’s not fair to you to have to sit up with me at night, and deal with all of this, and have to pretend with me that all of this, everything I am doing, is not completely ridiculous, given that what happened was not that bad. I have no right to be acting this way…”
My breathing was getting faster and wheezing at the end. Without a word, he scooped me up and carried me outside while I clung to him tightly. We sat in silence on the loveseat on our back porch, him staring up at the stars again, and me steadying my breathing and calming my anxieties by staying curled up in his lap with my ear pressed to his chest, listening to the sound of his heartbeat.
“I am being such an enigma, and it is a pain in the ass, I know.” I whispered to him after a moment. “I know, James.”
“That’s not what I’m thinking.” He told me softly. “I’m not angry at you, and I don’t think you’re crazy, Brynna. I think that whatever happened to you out there is weighing on you, and I want to help you, but I don’t know how. I’m frustrated with myself, not with you.”
“I don’t want that, either, James.” I told him, “This is why I wanted to keep all of this to myself. I didn’t want anyone else…”
Almost unsurely, he kissed me, and I could sense that he was afraid of pushing things too far. When he pulled away, I swiped at my eyes, hating that even something as simple as kissing me was a source of uncertainty for him now. I thought over and over again how unfair it all was, how my mind was boggled unforgivingly, reeling forever from what had happened, and yet I still felt like my feelings were unjustified given how tame what happened was in comparison to what had happened when I was a child.
“I don’t know much right now. I don’t know how to help you, baby, but I do know that we’re going to figure this out. I’ll be honest with you: I have no idea how we’re going to fix this, but we will. We have a year’s worth of proof that we fix things together, right?”
I smiled through my tears and nodded again.
“Why do you make it so hard for me to tell you that it would be prudent for you to go? That you should find someone who isn’t so… I do not even know what I am. But whatever I am, I should be telling you to go.”
“You’re not telling me that because you know it’s a waste of the energy you barely have.” He told me with a slight grin. “You know I’m not going to leave you. Come on, how long do you think I would stay out of their jail if I didn’t have to live in fear of that scary glare you give me every time I screw up?”
As always, he managed to elicit a smile from me when the world was weighing down heavily.
“Oh, honey, you would be singing ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ while trading cigarettes within the day.”
Any instance of privacy, any moment of solitude after that resulted in us trying and failing to reach even the beginning stages of physical intimacy. James would tell me he understood while I cried and cried, apologizing and trying to convince him that it was not his fault, which, of course, it was not. A part of him got frustrated, and I did not know if it was because our relationship had turned into a chaste one against our wills and he had no outlet for his hormones, or whatever you wish to call
them, or if he was frustrated that I would not confide in him, but that frustration was there; I could read it in his mind and perceive it in the house around us, like it was a silent, stalking apparition that no chant or prayer could exorcise.
Somehow, we began to accept that those attempts would fail before they had even truly begun, and still, we tried, hoping that this time, maybe, something magical would remedy my shame and disgust, and we would make love gloriously, and all would be right with the world. Truly, we felt that way; like something as simple as a sexual tryst would solve all of our problems.
“I am so sorry, James.” I told him after yet another attempt, for perhaps the thousandth time.
That time, he didn’t say anything. He just squeezed my hand.
Quinn
When James and Brynna had returned from rescuing Savannah and her children, we were hanging out at the house of Olivier with Violet, so Alice and I got a front row seat to the reunion of Penny and Brynna. Even though it had been difficult, we had kept Brynna's return a secret from Penny, who had woken up hours earlier and began asking for details on her older sister's whereabouts the minute her eyes had opened. When that same sister walked through the door, Penny gasped sharply and looked around at all of us as though we were playing some kind of trick on her that involved dressing someone up as her sister and parading that person before her to see if she could tell the difference. Then, when she realized that it really was Brynna, she ran to her and jumped into her arms with a gleeful squeal of, “Brynn!”
Penny was adapting at a rate that was confusing to the doctors James and Brynna had been taking her to see. The other kids were certainly experiencing some minor changes, but Penny was already to a point where she possessed great strength, could use really in-depth logic that almost baffled the rest of us, and could change over to her beastly side at will. The other kids could only change when they least expected it, which had led to some interesting scraps among the various play groups, according to Alice, who watched those sorts of things out of habit.
When Penny leaped at Brynna and wrapped her small arms around her, Brynna stumbled back a few steps into James, who was right behind her and who caught her with ease. Penny was locked onto Brynna with her arms and legs tightly, and nothing and no one could break her off.
“Hey, baby.” Brynna whispered softly, and out of respect for her, we all turned away, as we knew by the crack in her voice that she was about to cry, even though she had never cried before in our presence. “Are you okay?”
“I'm fine! I'm so happy you're finally here! Jamie and Benedict said that their mommies and daddies said that you were...” She looked around before whispering conspiratorially, “in heaven... but I knew all along that you weren't! And so did James! I knew you'd find her, James!”
“I promised you I would, didn't I?”
“Yeah! And you haven't broken a promise to me yet. I've thought about it a lot today, and I've realized that you haven't. You and Brynn never break your promises.”
“Of course not, baby!” Brynna told her, “Who breaks the promises they make you?”
“Eli!” She pointed at him accusingly, and Brynna scowled at him in scorn that was only half serious.
“Thanks, Penn.” Elijah said, “Where have you been, Brynna?”
“Working. Discussing. Negotiating. Saving lives. Where have you been?” She snipped at him coldly, “More importantly, why are you asking me where I have been in that suspicious tone?”
“Well, I see that he's back. That's why I asked.” Elijah turned his fiery glare to James.
“I was never gone, which you know very well.” James snapped.
“Gentlemen...” Brynna cut them off, “That is quite enough. Are you hungry, sweetheart?”
“Brynn, let me do it. You sit down and chill out. Hang with Penny.” I jumped in.
I could tell by the way she was crouched over that she was still in a great amount of pain. Holding onto Penny, who was skinny as a rail, just like Brynna, was enough to hurt her. When she sat down, the slight grimace of pain on her face lessened, and she told me quickly yet sincerely that she was thankful for my willingness to help her so readily, or something to that effect.
Alice followed me into the kitchen and started rooting around in the cabinets.
“She needs a slumber root and chamomile tea.”
“She's not going to drink it.” I told her, “You're right that she does need it, but that doesn't mean that she is going to actually drink it.”
“Did you see her back? Did you see how she's walking? Someone needs to make her sleep.”
“She's not going to now that Penny is up.”
“Well, if you hold her down, I'll knock her over the head with something heavy.” Alice told me as she grabbed the kettle from the cabinet. “Oh, I meant to tell you this! Something really weird happened last night!”
“You went to another planet and started life over among mysterious natives!” I interjected randomly.
“Ha-ha, very funny, jackass. No.”
“You discovered your ability to fly!”
“No!” She exclaimed through her laughter before whacking me hard in the arm. “Wait, did you? Can we fly?!”
“No!” I was the one laughing now, “I was just kidding. That would be pretty sweet, though, wouldn't it?”
“Oh, my God, that would be crazy!” She was grinning gleefully at the thought of it. “Anyway, Violet and I were talking, and at the same time, we both sensed something was close, and that it was dangerous. So, we went outside, and on the ground... Well, actually, it was in the tree first, but there was this weird tree-man thing.”
“A what?” I asked, and I couldn't help but laugh again.
“I know it sounds nuts. But it was this guy, and his hair was like, branches, and his face was like the trunk of a tree, kind of. But he was covered in these black leaf-like things, and bugs, too. I saw a lot of bugs. It's so hard to describe without sounding like we were dropping acid...”
“That was going to be my next question.”
She punched me lightly on the arm again and continued animatedly.
“I would be freaked out if it had gotten close to us, but it couldn't come through the barrier.”
“What barrier?”
“There's an ash circle all around us. But it was really weird, because it talked to us telepathically.”
“What did it say?”
“I don't know. Given what we've experienced with these fantasy creatures so far, and I'm talking about how most of them have tried to kill us...”
“Demonic, fanged, shark-serpent...” I muttered, and she giggled again.
“Exactly. I don't trust what that thing said.”
“But what did it say?” I was barely prodding her when I asked, as I agreed with her determination that the creatures we had encountered thus far had less than admirable intentions when it came to us newbies on Pangaea. She sensed that lack of worry in my tone and shrugged her shoulders accordingly.
“I don't know. Violet said it mentioned that the forest people were 'bad.'”
I had thought that whatever the thing had said could not possibly affect how I saw our current living arrangement. I was thrilled to be settling into a society that seemed to have been established many years earlier, and yet was still thriving. Don was already going around assigning jobs, and I discovered (after he had assigned me to security detail once again) that the forest-people, as this strange creature had called them, had a large army ready to go to battle at any given moment. It was certainly impressive, and it certainly helped me feel safer.
“Bad?” I questioned Alice.
She turned to me, and swooped her hair over. As she chewed a carrot, she smiled slightly.
“Don't think about it, babe.” She shrugged again and rolled her eyes, “I don't trust the word of a tree-man. He looked way sketchier than these people. Everything here flows smoothly, and Don says that Adam trusts Janna, and Brynna trusts Adam now, so we're fine.”
br /> “That is the weirdest progression of thoughts. Like, I get what you're saying, and I kind of agree, but the way you got to that conclusion is weird.”
“Well, I'm sorry. But at least you agree. That shows that you still have at least half a brain in that thick skull of yours.”
I laughed and kissed her.
“Oh, really?”
“Well, I say that, and then you question me randomly like that. That proves that you probably don't even have half a brain.” She bit into her carrot obnoxiously with a shrug.
“Oh, no?”
“You're down to like, a quarter of a brain.”
“Am I?”
“Stop!”
She wrapped her slender arms around my neck and kissed me for one long minute. I slid my arms around her back and held her to me tightly, delighting in the feeling of her soft sweater beneath my hands.
You might not believe this, but Alice and I had never had sex. Are you still reading? Do you still think I'm a straight guy? Well, if you're still reading this, and you still believe that I'm straight, then understand this: Though there was a sufficient amount of interest on my part, she was not ready to go there. So why didn't I leave her for someone else? Why didn't I get a girlfriend who would, as Elijah always says, “chuck her woodchuck” at me every time she saw me? Well, as you've gathered, Alice and I were friends before we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We spent a lot of time around people who were chucking their woodchucks, or whatever you want to call it, all the time. You've also gathered that Alice was raised devoutly religious, and though she did believe that having sex outside of marriage was alright as long as it was with someone you loved, she just wasn't ready to go there with me. The weirdest part of all of this is that I was fine with that. Sure, I tried just like every guy would, but I never even thought of finding someone else. You can doubt all of this. But even then, even at eighteen, I knew that there were more important things. All I needed was her.
People have suggested that Alice and I couldn't have possibly loved one another without going to that level. Think again; I loved her then, and I still do.
I gave you all of that background so that what she said next doesn't confuse you.
“I've been thinking...” She murmured timidly, even though we were alone in the kitchen, “Maybe we can...”
“What?” I asked, and my heart gave an almost ridiculously overjoyed leap forward.
She giggled and covered her mouth with the back of her hand to hide it.
“I think we should try.”
“Seriously?” I asked, and I couldn't fight the huge smile that had formed on my face against my will. Typical guy, I know...
“Yeah. I mean, only if we figure out how people aren't getting pregnant. Have you noticed how only a handful of people have gotten pregnant since we got here? Even James and Brynna, who go at it like rabbits, haven’t even had a scare. Well, at least as far as we know.”
“I have noticed that, and you're right, we need to take preventative measures to... to prevent that...”
“Oh, my God, you are such a dog right now!” She exclaimed, and she walked over to the basin in the corner to wash one of the glass dishes off. I walked over to stand next to her, and watched as a piece of her hair fell into her face. After I had brushed it away, I could see that she was blushing.
“You can barely talk.” She told me with a smile. “You can barely think, it seems.”
“I'm a guy! You just threw that news at me. Not that I've been counting the days or anything, but it’s been roughly…” I looked up and did the math in my head, “…one thousand, four hundred and sixty days, give or take a few.”
“You dog!”
“I’m sorry! I am just so stoked about this!”
“So stoked that you actually used the word 'stoked.' Interesting. And sad. No one has used that word since 2000, I think, unless they lived on a beach or at least owned a surfboard.”
“Indeed!”
She looked at me with one eyebrow raised.
“And now you've used the word 'indeed.'”
“Baby...” I realized suddenly that I needed to embrace some seriousness in order to stay on level with the gravity of the situation. “I'm taking this very seriously. I'm happy, obviously.”
“We should just let it progress naturally. I'm not saying the next time we go to sleep that it's going to happen. But I just want you to know that I'm there. It's just jumping over the hurtle, if you will.”
“And I will!”
“Babe!” She whacked me lightly in the chest, leaving her hand-print on my shirt because her hand was wet. “You're not being serious at all!”
“I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I love you. I'm serious about that. And you're right; we'll just let this progress naturally. I get what you're saying, and I'm totally on-board with it. I'm on-board, and I'm cool, and I'm happy.”
“You're a dog.” She kissed me again, “But I love you. I just wanted you to know that I'm at that point. I know, finally.”
She had started to walk away, and I knew that she was using self-deprecating humor as a defense against her beliefs that I was impatient and questioning our relationship and questioning her. I couldn't let her think any of those things, so gently, I grasped her wrist, careful not to let her drop the plate of food that was in her hand.
“Babe...” I told her softly, “I've never been in any rush. We're not all like that.”
“That's what James always said.”
“What?!” I exclaimed, “You talked to James about this!?”
“I did. Weirdly enough, it was easier to ask him these questions than it was to ask Eli. Of course, James cringed at first, and said that he was seriously contemplating holding his head under water until he lost consciousness after we were done talking, but he was supportive. It was just hard for him. It's like the talk, except I'm a girl, and he wants my virtue to be protected.”
“That is hilarious. Have you ever talked to Brynna about this?”
“No. But we'll be talking soon. I like using them as my therapists. They give good advice after they stop squirming in discomfort.”
When we returned to the group, Penny was still telling Brynna all the things that had happened while she had been away. James and Brynna were listening intently, both trying not to laugh in what could only be described as parental adoration. Elijah was sulking in the corner, glaring at them both as he cut an abnormally large tree-nut into slivers. Every couple of seconds, he ate a handful, and then he would return to cutting more, but never once did he take his eyes off of them. I suddenly worried that perhaps he couldn't be trusted with a knife.
“Just leave it.” Alice murmured to me when I took just one step in his direction.
I was just going to go ask him if he wanted to take a walk to clear his head or even to vent. But Alice was right; there was no use starting a huge argument when everyone else was perfectly content, and if Elijah and I left, Brynna would demand that I not coddle him, and then he would retort with all of the most insulting comments he could think of regarding her and James, and then James would get into the middle of it, and say that it was none of his business... You know how this fight works by now.
When Alice handed Brynna her tea, Brynna thanked her but continued to listen to Penny.
“And I could have sworn that I saw that pretty girl from that show on Disney today, but it wasn't her. This girl was pretty, but not that pretty, and she was doing something really gross with a boy behind the cafeteria.”
Brynna lurched forward and covered her mouth as her shock led her to almost spit out the tea she had only just taken a sip of. After she had swallowed it, she coughed violently for a few minutes, and banged on her chest with her fist as she tried to take a breath.
“What were they doing?!” She exclaimed, and Penny looked at her in mild concern but more in an almost condescending surprise that Brynna had not been able to gather what she had been talking about.
“No choking.” Penny told her blithely, and
Violet burst out laughing. She looked up from the mass of red fabric that she was knitting, of which no shape was discernible yet, and shook her head.
“She's been using so many of your lines, Brynn.” Violet informed her.
“Have you?” Brynna asked Penny.
“Mm-hmm.” Penny nodded and smiled gleefully, “The boy and the girl were kissing behind the cafeteria. Duh! What else could be so gross, Brynn?!”
“Nothing. Nothing is that gross.” Brynna replied quickly, “This tea is very good.”
“Thanks. I made it myself.” Alice told her, “With my cold, dead hands, I made you that tea.”
“Are you cold?” Brynna asked, “I can add more leaves to the fire.”
She went to get up, and immediately, Nick, James, and I went to jump up, all saying loudly and emphatically, “No!” to stop her from getting off of the couch.
“Brynn, you have to sleep. You're probably really tired. And you said your back kind of hurts. So you should just let James do everything, okay?” Penny instructed her strictly, and James gave a loud laugh behind us.
“You hear that, man? Penny says that you have to be Brynna's servant.” I told him.
“No, I didn't say 'servant,' Quinnevra...”
“Oh, my God!” I exclaimed, “Not you, too, Penny!”
“I said that he has to help her!”
“God, Brynn...” Violet sighed, “Pretty soon, she's going to start saying, 'For the sake of all deities and Gods,' and 'for the love of Homer,' and ‘for the love of Atwood’ and 'for the love of Rowling,' and all your other little sayings. She'll probably get glasses and look condescendingly over the tops of them...”
“I do not even have glasses anymore. They were lost, I'm afraid. So, now, there is nothing to deflect my scorching glare of derision. There is no thin lens to block my wrath. You all must prepare yourselves for that. It is going to be most frightening.”
“Can you see better?” Alice asked her randomly, “I lost my reading glasses when the house burned down...” She stopped, and looked up at the ceiling as she contemplated something. “No, you know what? I think I left them at the campsite. No! I'm wrong. I left them behind when we were running out of the city. Wait a minute, no...”
“Alice!” Brynna cut her off. “Perhaps you can arrive at the point that you are struggling to make. That entire progression of sentences felt like a verbal representation of stop-and-go traffic.”
“You caught me.” Alice told her seriously. “That's what I was going for.”
Brynna frowned at her and then screwed up her face briefly to pretend like she was laughing raucously, an expression that Alice immediately mimed.
“I'm asking if you can see better, because my glasses got lost, and I can read everything just fine. I used to have to wear them any time I read something, and now I don't have to.”
“Yes. My vision has improved substantially. I do not need glasses at all, whereas I used to have to wear mine all the time. My left eye was very severely afflicted with astigmatism, and everything was always blurred on that side more so than the left. It was quite irritating. Oh, yes!” She nearly sloshed her hot tea onto James when the realization gripped her and she jerked upwards in response to it. “I wanted to ask this! I saw very briefly into Don's mind today, and I discovered that he is going to start having weekly meetings. Are any of you aware of this?”
Everyone except for James was unaware of that.
“Why are you asking us? You're his second-in-command, aren't you?” Elijah asked snidely from behind her. “Why hasn't he told you about it?”
“I was a little too busy reading him out for his less-than-moral hobbies, so you will have to excuse him for being unable to get a word in edgewise. You do know how I can get when someone's flawed character traits make me very angry.”
Even though she couldn't speak as quickly as she normally did, her verbal finesse was all there. Elijah scowled into her eyes when she looked back at him, and that scowl darkened even after she had turned away.
“Guess what else, Brynn?” Penny said, and I noticed for the first time that Brynna was curling her fingers into a fist, and Penny was pulling them back out one by one until her hand was open. Once her fingers were stretched out, Penny pressed her palm to Brynna's, and then Brynna closed her fist again. After that, the process repeated. When Brynna caught me looking at this strange activity in curiosity, she explained.
“She has been doing this since she first began to develop small motor-skills.”
“Doing what?” Penny asked, looking between the two of us.
“Nothing. I was talking about Violet. What else am I guessing, honey?”
“They have a school here. I met a boy named Idan, and his mom, Janna, is the queen of all the people here. He says his mom will let me go to their school. Actually, he says that all the kids can go to their school. Isn't it weird? I actually miss school. Remember how every morning, I'd be so tired, and I wouldn't want to go?”
“Of course I remember that.”
Brynna's body was turned so that her back was rested against James's side, and his arm was over her shoulders. Her eyes were beginning to droop lazily, but she seemed to have no fear of that particular sedation. With the hand that Penny wasn't playing with, she rubbed James's arm, and because she thought that no one was watching them (Alice was knitting the other end of Violet's large piece of fabric, Nick was flipping through an old book on the floor by the fire, Elijah was still shredding the tree-nut, and I had been lying with my eyes closed), she reached back and touched James's face gently. He kissed the palm of her hand and held it to his cheek.
The sun was streaming through the windows, and there was work to be done, but none of us were willing to be the one to break up that peaceful scene. Brynna had been gone for three days, and we had all feared the worst. Over the past year, we had grown closer and become more like a family than just a group of fearful survivors thrown together by strange circumstances and coincidences. We weren't being lazy; we were taking a moment to relax and appreciate a peaceful time that we more than likely would not have again. We could all appreciate the relief we felt now that Brynna was back, healing up nicely, and had finally decided to fall down and relax. The problems of our world could wait; we just needed that time to pretend like nothing was happening all around us, that everything was standing still.