Part 16 (1/2)
”I would not hurt him, yet he fears me and will not come,” Magenta said to Deacon as he came and crouched down at her side. Stretching forth his hands, he urged the spitting fury to come to him, using all his consciousness to make it. When it did nothing more than grow wilder, Deacon reached forward and suddenly took hold of the soft, struggling thing. He spoke unknown words that Magenta thought most beautiful, and the rude critter grew civil at his touch. He held it gently with firm, confident hands. It was then she noticed how lovely his hands were. They were strong, young, and well-kept. The skin was sun-bronzed and lightly covered with fine, dark hair. He didn't mind that she observed his hands. He wanted her to look at him.
The little animal was quite content, loving Deacon, and he handled it with the utmost care. Soon, when he was certain it was calm, he held the fluffy handful out for her to touch also. Gently she stroked it, letting the softness run through her fingers.
Deacon regarded her curiously and with gentle amus.e.m.e.nt. What could be more trivial, more insignificant, yet her face hardly seemed her own, so luminous and sweet-just like a flower that, once wilting, blooms to life after a warm spring rain. To see her thus amused thrilled him and gave a warm sense of content. He saw the gentleness of her nature. Discovering the truth of a person's character is tremendously difficult, but any lingering doubts Deacon may have harboured about her had vanished. He could not believe for an instant treachery flowed through her veins. For a moment his face, as he looked on the young woman, was enkindled with tenderness, but it fell quickly back into the dark, inscrutable sobriety that was characteristic of him.
”You are wonderful,” Magenta said to the animal, not the man, but when she lifted her eyes the words might well have been directed at him, so filled with love as they were. Deacon was quite absorbed with the bundle. With a bowed head and preoccupied manner, he did not know that Magenta had been watching him.
When he lifted his gaze again, he saw that she looked at him and was leaning forward to be near him. His eyes fell to where her slim white hand was close to his darker hand. He knew she would let him hold it, but he denied himself the pleasure of her touch. He would not risk his heart, or hers. Inside he felt too knotted and conflicted. He did not want the woman to get entangled with him.
”He is soft, isn't he?” Magenta said. Her stroking had slowed to a languid caress. ”Never have I known the life in these woods to be so fond. At the temple I linger in darkness, where life is meager.”
The soft bundle grew tired of their attentions, and with startling suddenness, bit the masculine hand that held it. With a sharp exclamation Deacon released it, and it scampered off out of view.
Magenta rose to her feet after Deacon. ”Are you hurt?”
”Not very much,” he said. Her little look of distress amused and pleased him.
”How did you learn that?” she asked.
”Learn which?”
”To draw animals tame to your hand?”
A looked of satirical amus.e.m.e.nt crossed his face. ”Evidently only tame as it pleases them,” he said, nursing his a.s.saulted finger.
”What did you speak?” she asked, enthralled. ”Were they elven words?”
”Yes, they were,” he said. An odd note came into his voice, as if he was regretful to have uttered them and betray that part of himself to her.
”You have dwelt with them?” she asked. There was a refinement about him not often seen in this world, an unusual gracefulness and dignity, which at once commanded respect.
”I have,” he answered.
”I've heard wonderful things about the elves. Is all that is said true?”
Deacon paused. He knew for her the elven world represented grace and beauty. ”Their ways are not our ways,” is all he said, but his expression revealed a hidden suffering. She felt she scarcely understood him. She wanted to know him down to every last detail. He returned to his book, and she sat down again. Looking at him, she wondered what miracle of fate had brought him to her. In her heart she had cried out for him with all the anguish of her soul's pa.s.sion and yearning. Always her heart had called out to him. Now he had come.
Over the course of the next few days, Magenta spent many hours with him whom she thought the most interesting of companions. She spent every moment she could with him, often absenting herself from the temple for long hours without permission. She would generally find him seated on the fallen tree, book in hand, looking solemn and profound. In spite of the short time they had spent together, he had not grown ordinary to her, but instead became more and more absorbing.
Deacon came to depend on her presence. His need for her was every day implied but never uttered. The sweet stillness of her atmosphere was a comfort. She made the air about him seem richer, fuller, warmer. Never had he such a pa.s.sionate love for the beauty of all things round him as he had when with her.
He by no measure received without giving, for new thought was open to her through him, new feeling awaked. Only in the night did she experience the full power of such feelings, when she wished more intensely that he was beside her. Unfortunately, sleep would not come to alleviate the pain of such longing, and while the hours waned away, Magenta lay with thoughts of him. Not long was it before they had possessed her utterly, so that she could think of nothing but him, an irrepressible beating in her breast that kept her awake.
Chapter28.
Yearnings Of The Heart -o sound broke the sweet-scented hush. Deacon and Magenta had fallen easily into the habit of sitting with one another in the intimate seclusion of the woods. Neither feared the silence, and each found profound comfort in the other. He often sat near and read quietly, looking up from time to time. And often he found her eyes fixed on him.
For Magenta it was an overwhelming pleasure to be thus alone with him, capable of causing intoxication. Many women had been enthralled before her, but none had been so enveloped by his atmosphere as Magenta. There was a silent communion and gentleness between them.
Yet she did not know the man-he was as yet a presence and a stranger. An aloofness clung about him like a dark cloak. He was distant, self-contained, his temper reserved and serious. When he was deep in study an abstraction seemed to possess him. This dedication and patience in a man by nature impatient and pa.s.sionate captivated her.
For long minutes she had been watching him. So insistent was her gaze that he soon felt it and looked over his book. A smile went over his face, very unexpected and with an unusual sweetness. She felt a surge of love, in response to the recognition and regard held in his gaze, as if a flame came alive within her, growing in intensity with each tender throb in her breast. He had a wonderful way of looking at her with those eyes, yet always they had this strange, black, half-tortured look.
When his gaze lifted again, Deacon saw that her attention had moved on to a flower that grew near the hem of her gown, a single flower struggling for its existence in such a place, a lonesome thing, morbid in its singleness. Magenta observed it with a strange and intent yearning.
”You find pleasure in flowers?” he asked.
”There are not many here to take pleasure in,” she said in her hushed way of speech. For a moment he observed her. ”This particular type is unusual,” she said, brus.h.i.+ng her fingers over the delicate petals. ”If you plant them close to another of their kind, the colours will mingle and become one.”
Deacon watched her with a blank, heavy look. A protective restlessness was taking possession of him like an affliction and roused thoughts of the man he remembered pursuing her.
”Does that fellow bother you often?” he asked, looking at her in a heavy, inscrutable fas.h.i.+on. Magenta appeared a moment startled. ”From the emporium,” he explained, though she already knew.
”There are moments,” she said. ”He has long served my father.”
”And he visits you often?”
”Yes.”
”What does he mean by that?”
”He is quick to forget what he can and cannot have.”
”Are you going to let him keep at it?” he asked.
”I don't let him.”
Anger came hard into Deacon's face. ”Am I to have it out with him?” he said, hastily and with hostility.
”No,” she said, and her face went pale.
”Why?”
”There would only be greater trouble.”
Deacon was very still a moment, displeased. He wondered if ever there had been an attachment between the two, or if the pursuit somehow gratified her. He looked at her and tried to determine designs of mischief. His eyes were dark. He seemed waiting to be told, not quite daring to ask. Then: ”What do you mean by it?” he asked, very low.
”There is no meaning. He does as he wills, and I make certain it does not touch me.”
Something about her mouth was unbearable to him. He wondered why she did not let him help her. He did not understand, but felt she must have her reasons. They went quiet and returned to their separate occupations, content to seek their own thoughts. Presently Deacon looked upward, his eyes searching. Above her was a tender vine with delicate white-flowers, twined about the trees, hanging gracefully. With a gesture so subtle she did not see, he slowly brought it down.
Magenta roused from her gentle musing as if suddenly awaked-something brushed her cheek, soft as a feather. She looked up and watched as the flowering vine moved down, evidently by another source than that of the wind. Pleasantly, sweetly, the creeping plant very slowly, very gently, twined about her waist and around her limbs. The tendrils brushed against her luxuriously and touched her lips, twining about her, caressing her.
A prisoner to the tangled vine, she glanced up from under fine lashes toward the source. He watched her distantly. A hint of a smile began to play about his sweet strong mouth. Though never far from her, Deacon had always seemed remote and removed, but this gesture of playful tenderness brought them together as if he himself had touched her.
After a moment she began to disentangle herself from the loosened tendrils, and Deacon came to crouch before her. Hesitantly he reached forward to a.s.sist in the removal with a faint gesture of his kindling affection, but she had already brushed the last vine from her. His withdrawing hand touched hers, and the moment of contact, slight as it was, aroused in both a certain remorseful yearning for resumed contact, yet the intensity of this emotion put discomfort between them, a jarring note of disunity, and so there was even less possibility of touch than before, unless modesty pa.s.sed away and unity came in a torrent of undeniable pa.s.sion. This estrangement came more from him than her. She was very much in love with him.