The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [136]
“You sang that like you meant it.” Her voice barely rises above the swishing of the surf below the terrace. The breeze is soft but brisk and cool off the ocean.
“I did.”
“I know, and it hurts.”
“Hurts?”
“Hurts. I can feel the longing there. No one . . .” She stops, then starts again. “Sometimes you can be so gentle . . . and I think . . . it could work out. It really could, and then . . .” She shakes her head, and her hair sparkles like flame in the darkness.
Creslin notes that faint huskiness in her voice, the slight poised tilt to her head, and holds them within himself.
“You know,” she continues, “you once spoke about seeing songs, or notes, shining silver in the air. For the first time, tonight, when you sang, I saw the words glistening there. They glistened silver.”
“I’ve tried to make the gold; only one person I knew could sing gold.”
“Your father?”
“Werlynn.” In the cooling night, he still prefers not to look directly at her.
“You don’t call either parent mother or father. Why not?”
“I didn’t understand that he was my father until long after he was dead. The Marshall never treated me like her son, so I didn’t really understand that she was my mother until I was old enough for her to forbid me to call her mother.”
“You don’t think of her as your mother, do you?”
“No.”
“I wish she could have heard you sing. I wish . . .”
Creslin waits, even though the stone is hard under him.
“Wishes just don’t come true,” Megaera finally goes on. “No matter how hard you wish, life doesn’t work that way. And if you wish someone would do something and they don’t, it spoils everything if you have to tell them what you really want.”
“It does,” he agrees, wishing that Megaera could come to love him, wishing that he could understand why she continually pushes him away, when he knows somehow that she is drawn to him.
“I am drawn to you, but that doesn’t change anything.”
As she answers his feelings, he swallows. So close to her, he has few secrets. “Why not?” he asks, reaching out and touching, barely touching, her hand.
“Because I did not choose you. Because we never had the freedom to decide.”
He looks past her toward the southwest, where the stars glitter coldly above the hills. “Will it always come to this?” he asks.
“Yes.”
His fingers tighten ever so tightly around her hand. “Doesn’t it matter that I love you?” He does not look at her as they sit so close, yet so far apart, and he tries to think of the cold stars in the cold sky.
Yet the stars do burn in the sky, and Megaera burns like a black flame that he cannot, dare not, touch. Instead, he slides a trace closer, continuing to hold her slender fingers. “I don’t think you want to find out whether we might be meant for each other,” he ventures.
“You might be right. But don’t push me.”
Don’t push her? When has he ever pushed her? His feelings are so strong that he has to bite his lips, swallow his words.
“Everything you’ve done pushes me. You got me to marry you when even sister dear couldn’t manage it. You got me to come to the most desolate spot on the earth, and you’ve forced me to give up what little I had that was superior to you.” She withdraws her hand from his, deftly but abruptly. “And now you’re angry because I’m upset about being pushed around.”
He stands, only to find that she has risen simultaneously. “I’m angry, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”
“I know you love me. But you’re so practical that you’ll just destroy me without even thinking twice.” She turns and walks toward the seaward end of the terrace. “You’d be sorry afterward, but then it would be rather late.”
“I’m not sure I understand. How could I destroy you? I don’t push you. I let you make your own choices. If you want to learn blade-work from Shierra, that’s fine. Or order-mastery from Lydya—”
“You’re right. You don’t understand! I tried to let you know who and what I was . . . just once . . . and all I got