In Other Lands

  “It’s like seven-thirty, loser,” Elliot pointed out.

  “And I may never get up!” Luke shouted over his shoulder.

  “What I just said was disrespectful and I’m sorry,” Serene said after a moment’s pause.

  Elliot took her hand, lacing her fingers with his own. “That’s okay, baby, I’m pretty comfortable with being a wanton.”

  He looked over to Serene with a smile, but she was not looking at him. She was looking off into the distance, and the pin-scratch mark between her brows, Elliot knew, would have been frantic worry on a human face.

  “Elliot, those other boys on the mission,” she said slowly, and Elliot’s shoulders relaxed because it was not about them. “None of them were saving themselves?”

  “Saving which part of themselves exactly?” Elliot asked. Serene looked put out with herself for putting it wrong, and Elliot grinned. “I know what you meant. Well, I suppose we’re all on the young side, but given that they’re in military training and constantly exposed to mortal danger—I’ve read about emotions running high, and life-affirming . . .”

  He trailed off. He had never considered that Serene had kissed him for the second and more frenzied time after the library attack, that they had come together after the battle. He had not applied what he’d read to his own life. Elliot glanced at Serene again, nervously, unable to look at her steadily but likewise unable to stop looking back.

  Serene still looked worried. “None of them want to wait and be courted?”

  “Well, we’re all definitely too young to get married!” said Elliot. “But they might get married later on. It’s not like you’re disqualified from being married if you’ve dated before.”

  “Oh,” said Serene. “Oh, I see, of course. Of course, that makes perfect sense.” She gave Elliot a small smile, dazzling as a single ray of light on snow. “Of course they might change their minds later, and of course nobody should be disqualified.”

  She squeezed Elliot’s hand. Elliot felt the impulse to go with it, to smile at her, to not raise a question or face a challenge, but he had never gone with that kind of impulse before in his life and he did not know how to do it now. He did not know how to let anything rest.

  “Change their minds?” he asked. “Do you think that dating is—a whole different thing from courting?”

  Serene’s head tilted interrogatively, and then he felt her hand in his, her whole body, go still.

  “It isn’t,” continued Elliot, speaking with difficulty. “Dating can be casual, but it isn’t always. Sometimes people who are dating get married, and sometimes they don’t. It’s a way of—testing out a relationship. We have dating instead of courting, not as well as.”

  “Oh,” said Serene, the sound abrupt and terrible, and then with gathering anger: “That shouldn’t be how it works. That is totally confusing and inefficient!”

  “This isn’t a humorous cultural difference, is it?” said Elliot. “We shouldn’t be talking about this in public, should we?”

  Serene took a breath, and Elliot almost thought that she might brush this off, instead of him. He almost wanted her to. But his Serene had never been lacking in courage.

  “No, we shouldn’t,” she told him, squaring her shoulders. “Let us go discuss it in your cabin.”

  They went. They did not speak again until they were in the narrow confines of the wooden cabin where he had spent his first night in the Borderlands, wondering what he had done by deciding to stay for Serene. It was so different from being with her at the start of this, with no walls and both of them free under a night sky filled with stars and possibility.

  “I’m so sorry, Elliot,” said Serene, as soon as she had shut the door on them. “I got it all wrong from the beginning. This was much more difficult than I thought it would be—it should be easier than this.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” said Elliot. “I’m not sorry. And don’t talk to me about what should be easy. I’ve never had anything be easy in my whole life. I don’t want easy. I wouldn’t know what to do with easy if I had it.”

  Serene was pacing the cabin floor and not listening at all. “You’ve been insulted because you were with me—not just insulted by my mother, but I made so many mistakes, and I heard people whispering, I know what things my cousin must have—and all the time—”

  “I don’t care!” said Elliot. “I got insulted a few times? Don’t act like it’s never happened to me before. I know it’s happened to you before. As for the other stuff, what your mother and your cousin said, even the stuff you said sometimes, do you think the humans do it any better? Do you think I want to make a girl feel the same way I’ve been feeling? Relationships are difficult. Every world I know of is messed up.”

  He spoke as quickly as he could, desperate to convince her. He had messed up: in two worlds full of blundering and flaws he was always the one who made the worst mistakes, the one who ruined everything he touched. He remembered how Serene and Luke had read out his love letters to an army troop. How stupid could he be? Had he really thought Serene would do that, if she knew he’d meant them?

  She didn’t know, just as Luke hadn’t known and Myra hadn’t known. But he could tell her. He would tell her now.

  “I am—I’m serious about you,” Elliot said. “I’m not saying that any of this is easy. And you can—there could be years before you decide what you want. There will be more insults and more misunderstandings. I know that. But I . . . I really love you,” he said. “And I think we have a chance of making it work. If you love me back, enough to work through every difficulty, the way I love you.”

  Serene was silent for a long time. Her pallor was alarming: she was white as salt, white as exposed bone. There was so much pain in her face that she almost looked like a different person. She almost looked human.

  Elliot felt his heart sinking in that cold silence, as if he had thrown it like a stone into a deep dark pool.

  He had to look away. He stared at the wooden walls, which bore the marks of countless knives thrown by countless careless children who had not known what they were getting into.

  “You don’t,” he said quietly.

  “I do!” said Serene. It came out as a cry, like someone had hurt her when she was already injured.

  Elliot lifted his eyes to her face, but hope died when he saw the expression she was wearing. There was too much pain in it for any possibility of falling into each others’ arms.

  “I love you very dearly,” said Serene. “I would gladly die for you. But the kind of love needed for courtship . . .”

  “It’s fine if you don’t feel ready for courtship,” Elliot broke in.

  He hated himself for being so pathetic. He wished he could be nobody at all, as long as he could stop being himself and feeling like this.

  “I don’t think I could ever feel it,” Serene continued doggedly, as if he had never spoken.

  “Not for me,” Elliot finished for her, when she could not seem to. They could both hear the bitterness in his voice. “I’ll stop,” Elliot said. “I won’t be any more trouble. I won’t keep bothering you with—with feelings that aren’t your responsibility. But I need—I need to hear you say it. Could you just look at me and say it.”

  Serene was a soldier, before she was anything else. She was brave and never backed down from a challenge. She met his eyes when she spoke, and he saw how sorry she was to say it.

  “I do not think I could ever feel that way about you.”

  Elliot drew in a long shuddering breath. He’d asked for it, as he had asked to be hit once when he thought she and Luke might be dead. “I understand.”

  He was about to turn away, never mind that he was in his own cabin. He was sick of this whole world. He had flayed himself in front of her, and he didn’t have to suffer through this for a single moment longer. He was going to leave.

  But something else occurred to him, with a hundred times the force that it had in the library, when it was a fear and not his reality. She said she loved him
, and nobody had ever loved him before. He couldn’t lose that, even if she loved him so much less than he had hoped.

  He didn’t have anyone else.

  He swallowed: he tasted bitterness in his mouth and felt as though he were swallowing something broken, sharp splinters all the way down.

  “Thank you for being honest,” he said finally. “That’s best, isn’t it?”

  Serene nodded. “Yes.”

  This was diplomacy, as he’d played it with the elves and the general. The first yes was the most important. It meant another yes would follow, each one more easy than the last.

  “We’re friends, and that’s what is most important, right?”

  “Right,” said Serene, and almost smiled.

  “So you—made a mistake, and I got—carried away. Better to end it now, before anyone’s feelings are too hurt. I don’t want to mess up our friendship. I know you don’t either.”

  “Of course I don’t,” said Serene. “Elliot. You’re absolutely right.”

  Elliot wanted to smash things, wanted to shout things at her until she hurt as much as he did. But he couldn’t hurt her as much as she had hurt him. He didn’t have that kind of power over her, and that was not her fault: it was his.

  He went and leaned against the knife-scarred wall, looked out of the window where night was falling on the Border camp.

  He heard her approach him, walking softly. He looked down at her, and she was standing very close to him. She leaned into him and kissed him on the cheek. He put his arm around her waist and thought: I will never hold her like this again.

  “I’m so sorry,” Serene whispered. “But thank you for understanding.”

  “What are friends for, am I right?” Elliot asked. He made himself smile: it felt like his face was a stiff piece of paper, and he had folded it sharply in half. “I’m sorry for going overboard. Let’s go back to how it was before.”

  “Yes,” said Serene. “It will be just like it was before.”

  It was nothing like it was before. He had never lied to her before, never acted a part to convince her. She was the only person who had ever liked him before he learned, however poorly, to be tactful and hide some portion of who he was. He felt as if he was losing that, as well as her, as he watched her walk out the door of his cabin.

  The next day at lunch, Elliot decided to get the news out before Serene could. Serene was looking hesitant, opening and shutting her mouth like a coy goldfish, and Luke was still sulking over the horrific indignity of a unicorn seeing his bod. Elliot had no pity for either of them. There was an empty space where he might have felt sorry, or amused, or even fond: he just had to keep going despite the emptiness.

  “Serene and I decided to call it quits while there were no hard feelings on either side,” Elliot said. “Pass the butter.”

  Luke sat frozen, only his eyes moving. His gaze was flicking back and forth between them, as if there were an invisible racquet sending his pupils bouncing back and forth across the tennis court of his eyes. Eventually, Serene passed Elliot the butter. He accepted it.

  “I know what you must be thinking, right?” Elliot asked. “You must be kicking yourself that you didn’t place any bets on how long it would last.”

  “I wouldn’t make bets about my swordsister’s love life,” said Luke. He had been using the term “swordsister” since Serene’s mother had denied it to him.

  Serene pushed her shoulder gratefully against Luke’s and, after an instant, they started talking casually about archery. Luke relaxed. He did not leave and go to practice anything: he stayed where he was all through lunchtime, and he looked pleased, glad to have a situation that Luke-Everything-Goes-Right-For-Me-Sunborn had disliked resolved, smug that his best friend had been restored to him and was now focused on him again. The world was back the way it should be, clearly, as far as Luke Sunborn was concerned.

  Serene was sitting on Luke’s side of the table. From now on, Elliot supposed she always would be.

  Luke and Serene continued to make Elliot exercise, which was the despair cherry on the sundae of misery that was his life, and he had to go along with it because he had promised Serene that everything would be like it was before.

  Besides, what was the point of doing anything else? He would just make Serene unhappy, and he could not make her love him. Luke would only triumph and potentially find his unhappiness hilarious. He could freeze them both out and have no friends at all. That would be worse than this.

  He didn’t know how to be blatantly miserable. He never had, through all the long years of childhood knowing that nobody cared what he was feeling. Even if he worked out how to show what he felt, he would only put people off. He knew, from long experience, that he was too much trouble as it was.

  At least the late spring had turned cold, rather than mellowing into summer, so they used the indoor practice rooms and Elliot was spared the outdoors. That meant he took every possible opportunity to sit down and read. It wasn’t like that was unusual behavior for him: neither of them would think there was anything wrong with that.

  “All I want you to do is watch this and try to replicate it,” Luke ordered.

  “I’m not going to hurt anyone,” Elliot said stubbornly, clinging to his book like a life raft in a sea of violence.

  “It’s a defensive move,” Serene explained.

  “Like so,” said Luke. “Watch.”

  Serene grabbed both of Luke’s wrists, and Luke hooked a foot around her ankles and pushed forward, sending Serene stumbling backward while bracing his other foot to keep his balance. Since it was Luke, he was able to catch Serene before she fell. Since it was Serene, obviously she had let him accomplish the whole move, and obviously she had trusted him to catch her. She grinned up at him and Luke grinned down at her: both of them content, uncomplicated, secure, and first place with each other forever and ever.

  “Were you watching, Elliot?” Luke asked.

  Elliot raised his book to hide his face and said cheerfully: “I was not!”

  As summer drew in, everyone was always determined to show off their athletic prowess to prove their absolute dedication and that they would not be slack during the holidays. Elliot was so looking forward to being slack over the holidays. He was not going to move a muscle, and he was going to read near a radiator, and he would not have to see Serene’s relief that the situation was resolved, and he would not almost get anyone killed. He would not have to try so hard because his father would not notice anything he did, and perhaps he would finally stop feeling cold.

  It was odd to think like this. He had never wanted to go back before.

  He could not help thinking of Peter’s father, who could never go back.

  They had a day of contests, showing off what they had learned. Serene and Luke won basically everything, as they usually did. Elliot clapped and cheered for every win of Serene’s, as he always had and always would. There were always so many people watching who would not applaud an elf, or who did not like to see a woman win. Everybody always clapped long and hard for Luke, so Elliot felt there was absolutely no need to join in. When it was Luke’s turn he made sure to always be buried in his book and not to let anyone catch him when he looked up.

  Commander Woodsinger even handed out little prizes to encourage morale, which Commander Rayburn would never have thought of doing. Elliot was amused to see the absolute dismay on Dale Wavechaser’s face when given the third prize of a book.

  They had an impromptu celebration that night, lighting bonfires and sitting around on log benches chattering about their summer plans.

  Luke and Serene were on the bench opposite, talking quietly with their heads bowed together. Elliot was staring into the bonfire when he was startled by Dale appearing behind him and clearing his throat. Elliot turned his head and looked behind him.

  “Hey,” said Dale. “It’s your birthday over the summer, right?”

  “Yes?” said Elliot, puzzled, but remembering he had to stay in good with Dale and trying to be
polite.

  “Rotten to have a birthday over the summer with no one around,” said Dale, waving the book vaguely over Elliot’s shoulder. “Fancy this as an early birthday present? Believe me, I don’t want it.”

  Elliot actually felt so confused he was almost disoriented. It was a confused gratitude, so he said the right stuff, but he almost stammered: “Y—yeah, thanks, Dale,” and he actually twisted around, put his arm around Dale’s neck and kissed him on the cheek. As if he were four years old, how embarrassing, but that was how he felt: reduced to being a kid, and with even less idea of how to behave than usual.

  Dale looked surprised but pleased. “Glad you like it,” he said, and with a friendly nod to Luke and Serene, he jogged off back to his friends.

  “That’s weird: I hardly know him,” Elliot announced, since Luke—who everybody liked—would not understand that Elliot had to make an effort to persuade people to put up with him, and it would be humiliating to explain.

  “What a kind action,” said Serene, and jostled Luke in a comradely way. “A sweet temper and good looks: all anyone could look for in a paramor.”

  “He could get the wrong idea,” Luke said in a hard voice. Elliot looked up from his book to see Luke glaring.

  It was lucky that snarking at Luke was habit by now: Elliot remembered a line from a book he’d read once, that habit was second nature, and nature stronger than the first. It was a comfort, to have a natural expression rather than one he had to pin on.

  He raised his eyebrows and smirked. “You don’t have to be jealous. I’m not going to steal your boyfriend. I told you, I barely know him.”

  “If you want a book . . .” said Luke.

  Elliot hunched his shoulders. “I’ve got one,” he snapped. He smoothed a hand over the leather ridges of the spine, the uneven cover, and then opened it. It was cheap paper, for a book in the Borderlands where books were rarer and more precious. It was also a history book, and from the very first page Elliot could see that the so-called history was biased and inaccurate. He kept reading.