The Long Road To... - 46. One Night In Between

When I woke, I was spread around in the tent as if it had been mine alone.

I poked my head out into brisk air and gray sky. Leaf was standing barefoot in the water, casting a line into the bay.

It was a little too cool for me to go without boots, I had no idea how he was even standing in the cold sea. When he caught sight of me he smiled and waved. I stoked up the fire for warmth and wished I had not left the tent.

When he finally came back, he was wet to the knees and empty handed.

“Nothing,” he sighed. “Nothing on or around this entire island.” He sat next to me and put his feet up near the fire. I handed him some food from our pack.

“Still, it is beautiful in its own way. Unblemished. Serene.” He slowly took in the views around us. “To bad there is nothing here to live on. Nothing anywhere.”

I looked out over the empty water.

We decided to go a different route to get back to the landing site, one that would swing us around the hills. We walked along the shore the rest of the day and camped off the beach. I slept on my side and he, his.

The following morning we went inland keeping the grassy mounds at our side. Late in the day, the sea appeared in the distance over a small rise. We continued until we reached the dunes leading to the beach.

“We should be able to follow the coast back, I expect,” Leaf yawned. We had lit no fire, so we were sitting close. “Hopefully the ship is ready.” He lay back to look up at the sky.

I nodded. We had plenty of food, at least for now. This island though, once we were through our supplies, there would be no replacements it seemed. We could probably get fish out farther, by the boat maybe. Fresh water we could find in a few places. A brisk wind brushed my face. I turned to see his eyes closed in sleep.

Around the middle of the day, one or two places had a certain familiarity to them. For a time I thought it just my mind playing tricks on me. Everything would look the same on this island after all. Then I caught sight of the top of the tree.

Leaf smiled. “Well, here we are again.”

I nodded in response and we continued on. Well before sundown, we made it to the tree and bones.

“We know where we are for sure now.” Leaf leaned down and refilled his water.

A cold wind gusted through and then was gone. I looked at the setting sun.

“Early night?”

“I’ll make the fire.” He grinned.

We set up beside the stream again, a warm fire in front of us. The moon drifted into the sky, partially hidden by the top of the tree.

I lay back and closed my eyes. Not quite tired enough to sleep. I felt Leaf stand.

“I’ll be back.”

He left, most likely to relieve himself. I remained alone where I was. I hoped that there had been progress with the ship. We could not stay here forever. There was so much more for Leaf to see out in the world beyond.

I rolled on my side.

If the Inferno was sound, as had been thought, we could continue on. We had had a few nights where the stars were visible, so they should have been able to get our bearings by now.

Something brushed my face and I opened my eyes. It was a little twig, a frond. One from Urusulla’s clandestine mission. In the low firelight, it looked to be still full of color. I could see another one down the way poking out of the ground.

I turned my head to find Leaf, to show him. He was not there. I went back to studying the someday-to-be tree in the glow.

“I hate to think of anything so alone… even a tree…” Urusulla had said that night in the dark.

I glanced down further at the other sapling in the moonlight. Even this one had a partner it seemed.

I rose to look for Leaf and found him in a shaft of light between the tree and bones. He stood alone in the darkness looking to the sky. Oddly, his hands were, once again, not up to his patron, maybe because the clouds partially obscured the moon’s face. Its light showed steady and clear on him all the same. I walked evenly to stand close and try to think of how to begin. He did not turn his head.

“Do you know when I first saw you?” He asked into the sound of rolling waves.

I thought about the night in the Boar’s ravines.

“In Wild Crossing.”

I turned to him. He still had not turned to me.

“Oh, I did not know you yet, but I saw you with Foal and your niece.”

My head must have moved in surprise.

“Foal filled in more of that story for me later.” He shrugged. “You gave her a great gift and did your brother honor by getting her away from that profession.” He nodded to himself.

“I had been asking for a purpose in my own life again. For rescue. Every night I looked up into the sky and I asked why. Why was I still here when she was not?”

I felt a short shudder at the mention of his wife again, from both of us.

“Horn brought me with him to trade in Wild Crossing to distract me from my pain.” His head bowed slightly. “She had died less than a year before you see.”

I could not help but think about Thorn and what I had done and what I had become in the time following his death and who I was now.

“We were in the same wagon train as you were when we went to the gates near Oxenajo. The first night there, I went out again into the fields and pleaded again.”

He looked toward the pile of bones. I studied it in the shadows.

“Please give me purpose, please help me not be so alone. Show me the way.”

He turned his attention to the moon.

“I got no answer and in fact the clouds drifted into the sky making it dark.” He gestured up to the clouds above us. “I walked back down to the town filled with my aloneness.”

Slowly, he turned past me and faced the tree. Once of the limbs rustled in the wind.

“Then I ran into you.” I could hear his wonderful smile through his voice. “You know the clouds actually broke and caught you in the moonlight? I can tell you, I was quite surprised.”

So was I. I remembered a man in the field, I did not realize or remember it had been Leaf, my Leaf. The light had blinded me if I remembered correctly, and he had never told me.

“The next night, I went out again. I asked if this was really a sign meant for me. A man I didn’t know. Was it our destiny to be part of each other’s lives?”

We stood together now, in the half darkness, in the half light, between bones lying in death and a tree hanging onto life. We stood together on a barren shore, the farthest away from everything we had ever known before.

“Then when you helped rescue Horn from the Boars and we were alone in the dark… we were answered again. We were shown the way out. Together. We were meant to find our way, together, in this life.”

I studied him. He still did not face me.

“My wife was my one true heart. You are my one true soul. As she will always be, so will you.”

There it was. Somehow, I understood something about us, all of us. Leaf, his wife, Thorn, and myself. Thorn and I. He and She. He and him. She and I. He and I.

He had understood everything faster than I had understood myself. It was clear to him. We belonged to each other in a way that they had not and they had belonged to us in a way we would not.

I felt certain shame when part of me rebelled and screamed inside. It wanted it all. That piece of me was swiftly squashed by a stronger, much less selfish voice from within. I trusted that inner voice more than it trusted me it seemed.

I put a hand on his shoulder. He nodded once and we both looked up searching for the sky for more signs. I saw none that I could recognize. Judging by the wry smile on his face, perhaps he had.

We slowly made our way over the last hills to the boat. I think we both felt a certain peace and understanding between us now. I think we both were better for it. I had not realized how much of a strain it had been to keep things so unsettled. I felt lighter and was finally able to genuinely smile with Leaf again.

A second skiff was ashore along with more men. I could smell the scent for roasting fish on the fire.

“They brrought morre phood and phish! Good thing too. We could not catch anything from the shorre.” Urusulla laughed.

I saw Revinn, by the fire, smile at Leaf and nod. Leaf returned the gesture.

We came in to eat. Leaf sat next to Revinn and filled them in on what little we had seen. I got some fish and rested on the beach near the water.

The feast, such as it was, went late. They had caught so much from the boat it was amazing we could not get anything at all from the island itself.

Late in the night, I fell asleep against the dune, side by side with Leaf.