Sloe Moon--Tall Trees by C. M. Kuhtz

Author:C. M. Kuhtz [Kuhtz, C. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Caroline Kuhtz
Published: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

When they came back to the quarter after dark, none of them was particularly forthcoming about what had happened at the council meeting. As the hostage whose life depended on their prince, I was the last to know what was really going on. If Sjunil or Siw tried to get any messages to me, they weren’t coming through, but I figured they probably tried not to alarm me too much. I wanted to ask Olas but after he drank down a bowl of beer in one gulp, he retired behind his curtains and left the other men to brood.

Tjal didn’t come back until much later. I was tucked into our blankets and impatient to talk to him, but he seemed so exhausted that I thought better of it.

I waited for him to come close to me in the night; I was getting used to him, yearned for the moment in which he jostled against me in his sleep and I woke up entwined with him. He kicked the boots off his feet and crawled into bed. He smelled of icy rain and wind and a dampness came off him that made us both shiver. I heard his stomach rumble in the dark; he was obviously hungry but had decided not to eat. I knew that he’d push me away if I tried to hug him while we were awake—me squashed to the wall and he on the edge. It was a weird illusion we both tried to keep alive.

“You can tell me what went wrong,” I offered at last.

He flinched. “Oh—I thought you were asleep.”

“What happened today?”

He secured the blankets around him, pushing them under his sides and feet. “Olas has asked us not to speak about it while you and Qes are around.”

“Is it that bad?”

He sighed. “Please don’t, Sloe. I’m … so tired tonight.”

I turned away from him. The situation felt oddly familiar, me asking for attention from someone who wasn’t prepared to consider my needs. Things with Saon had been different—we hadn’t been exactly well-suited, while everything was much more complicated with Tjal. With him I longed for something else, something much less definable. It probably was as fundamental as my body fearing to freeze to death overnight—a desperate bid for survival that awoke memories.

Sure enough, when I came to later, his knees were snuggled into the back of mine and his arm was around my waist, holding me against him. I could feel the slow movements of his chest against my spine and even if I tried to rationalize what was happening, it didn’t change the fact that I felt hungry for him, for another one who made me feel bad about myself when his friends were around but used my softness to his advantage when no one else was paying attention. His fingers were burrowed into my belly, holding on to me as if he was scared of drifting away.

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