She wasn’t truly expecting an answer, not a real one. His lips were still curled in the barest hint of a smile as he rolled to his back, keeping her pressed to his side. "I did, when I was very young. I was obsessed with beating my grandfather, and we played every evening when he and Nan came home from the shop."
Silva blinked in surprise. The slight inhalation of her lungs suddenly seemed like too much movement, as if any distraction, no matter how slight, might halt his story in its tracks, and she wondered if she would be able to hold her breath for as long as he kept talking.
"I’d have everything set up and would meet him at the lane . . . and I was also very good, so don’t go overplayin’ your hand just yet, dove."
A million and one thoughts and questions raced and tripped through her mind, the same desire inflating in her that always did — a desperate need to know, to inhale him and absorb everything that he was and had ever been.
"Did-did you play at school too? You said you went to an Elvish school, right?" The quiet that followed her query seemed larger than her bedroom's confines, pushing out the windows and silencing the birds in the bush on the side of her building, silencing the traffic in the street. Her heartbeat had gone mute, the blood that pumped through her veins slowing to a halt, and her breath stilled . . . until Tate sighed, breathing life back into the space, and the sound of the small, inquisitive chickadees who nested in the bush began to chirp once more. His fingers pushed through her hair, scraping over her scalp until he was palming her head, his thumb tracing a lazy arc behind her ear.
"Yes. I did. Go to an Elvish school, that is. For a time. I was going up to the secondary school at the new term and there was a team," he began slowly, his nails dragging lightly against her neck. "My grandfather was so excited. Finally, I’d be good at something normal." His laughter was a short, sharp burst; broken glass replacing polished crystal, and Silva winced. "We played every day that summer, until it was too dark to see the wickets. He was positive there wasn’t a single person in the village who’d be able to beat me." His laugh was gentler that time, a soft huff that vibrated against her. "The school’s pitch wasn’t far from the shops in town, and before the summer was over he’d already made arrangements to close early the day of matches. Had me letter a sign for the door, ‘closed for croquet match.’ Said he wasn’t going to miss a single one."
She hadn’t realized his family had owned a shop and wondered what sort of business they’d been in, if Tate had worked there when he was young. Smiling against his skin, she tried to envision him as a lanky youth on a team like the one on which she’d played, a miniature version of his wide smile stretching across a slimmer, boyish face, his green skin glowing against the crisp whites. Her own family had displayed a similar reaction to her participation in the school’s club, coming to every match, strolling around the garden pitch afterwards, chatting with the other well-to-do parents and grandparents, an extension of weekends at the club . . .
Her fantasy life bore little resemblance to her current reality though, and she supposed that meant the fantasy life she created for him likely didn't either. For the very first time, Silva tried to imagine what it would have been like if he had been her peer at school, if he had gone to Cevanorë and lived in the community. He would have been shunned by her vicious peers, she knew without question, and his family the source of gossip amongst the well-heeled adults.
She remembered one of her classmates, Dorea Eillis, whose entire existence in school had been upended the year she spent the summer several states away with her mother’s kin. Silva had no idea how it had been found out that her classmate’s mother was a half-troll, but she vividly remembered listening to her own mother and grandmother discussing the surgical procedure it was discovered the woman had undertaken to shorten the length of her ears and have her tusks removed. By the time Dorea had returned from the summer intersession, her family was the talk of the club, her schoolyard reputation in tatters, children picking up on the animosity of their parents as they listened to the cutting, careless remarks made over Sunday lunch in the club’s formal dining room all summer in the Eillis’s absence.
It was hard to imagine that the community Tate had grown up in was terribly different, she knew with a heavy heart. He rarely talked about his family, and there must've been a reasonwhyhe never spoke of them, a reason why he'd walled off his past so completely. There must've been a reason, she thought sadly, why he was the way he was. She wondered if his grandparents had been ashamed of him, the very thought causing a bubble of fiery fury to take up residence in her chest, making it very hard to breathe.
"What happened?" The words had escaped her lips before she had a chance to suck them back, and she tightened the arm around him, as if she’d be able to pull him back from the story’s inevitable unhappy end, to protect him from whatever happened next, for although she didn't know any of the details, she was certain his stories of childhood would likely not have the same happy endings as her own.You shouldn’t make him talk about it, what’s wrong with you.
"Well, I shot up that summer. This might be hard to believe, dove, but I was a very small child. 'A wee mite,' is what my grandmother called me. Didn’t stay that way for long, though. By the end of the summer that year I was a head and shoulders taller than my grandfather. ‘Too tall for the regulation mallets,’ that’s what they told me. Didn’t want to hear that I had my own. I couldn’t use anything but the school’s equipment, and that was designed fornormalelves. So my illustrious career as a scholastic croquet star was over before it had a chance to start, I’m afraid."
"Were they mean to you at school? I mean . . . kids are terrible, I already know that. What about your teachers? Did-did they care about you being an orc?"
He snorted against the pillow. "Silva, what kind of daft question is that. Are you still hung over from last night? Of course they bloody cared. How many orcs did you go to school with in your posh little community, hmm? Not many, I reckon. They cared, and they never let me forget it for a minute."
She was certain her chest must have been glowing red from the anger she felt, the bubble in her chest expanding, pressing her lungs until she was sure she’d be able to breathe fire. She tried to imagine the disappointment he must have felt, his childish excitement extinguished, and then having to go home and break the news to his expectant family. If they’d treated him cruelly, she thought, vibrating in fury, she’d combust.
"Was your grandfather very disappointed?"
"Oh, I imagine he was crushed." His hand drifted, the pad of his index finger tracing down her spine before his palm flattened out against her skin, spanning across her back. His voice was casual, as though he were describing a long line at the post office or something similarly trivial, fingers dragging in slow circles against her skin. "Disappeared into his workshop that evening and didn’t come out again all night."
The fire had moved up her throat, choking out her words, preventing her from silencing him. Silva was well-acquainted with how cruel and judgemental elves could be in a group, particularly those in positions of privilege within their community, but the notion of him being similarly mistreated in his home was one she couldn’t entertain without crying ugly, angry tears. He rarely spoke about himself and thus it was easy for her to forget, easy for her to put him on a shelf on Sunday afternoons and go back to her perfect, glossy life and daydream about him slipping into it with ease; easy to push away the fact that an elf who presented as a different species would never be fully accepted, not truly.You’ll have to be like Lurielle and move away after all,Silva thought, for she would breathe out her rage and set the entire town ablaze if her own child was ever treated as poorly by her community as Tate had been by his. She didn’t want to hear anymore, regretting her infernal need to keep asking questions, forcing him down this unhappy trip down memory lane, needed to stop him before he told her something truly horrifying she’d not be able to forget—
"And then I came home one day later that week, and he was home and the croquet set was gone. There was a billiard table in the parlour, just delivered. We never played croquet again, but we learned billiards and played every night. No need to stop when the sun went in." Abruptly, the fire within her extinguished and she sunk into her too-soft bedding, the arm anchored around his body the only thing keeping her from being sucked out of existence. The edge of his well-trimmed nails skated up her spine once more, fingers pushing into her hair. "Not a lot of money to be made hustling croquet, so I’d say I came out ahead, on the whole."
"He wasn’t upset with you?"
She watched the corner of his mouth upturn again at her question. "No. Not like I’d done anything wrong, at least not that time. This will probably be quite hard for you to believe, but I had an appallingly bad temper that got me into trouble a fair bit. I was rather spoiled at home, though. Only child, of course, no playmates, of course. So . . . I got rather everything I wanted. Books, toys, endless attention . . . we lived outside of the village and there weren't any children around, so I didn't notice there was anything to be missed until I went to school. Even then, I didn't think anything of it, not for a few years at least. I went to school and I came home, and I assumed that was what all the other children did as well. But no, he wasn't upset with me. He was a good man. Ridiculously kind heart, never had a bad thing to say about anyone." He grinned in remembrance and she bit her lip, overwhelmed by the unprecedented sharing taking place. "He had an absolutely filthy mouth though, and he taught me how to swear. I went into his workshop to learn a new way of telling someone off every week, I only had to promise not to say it in front of Nan, and if I got caught not to say where I'd learned it." She dissolved into giggles at the thought, trying to picture Tate as a miniature version of himself, getting an education in profanity, until his smile faded, his eyes seeming very far away. "He never let it matter that we weren’t blood. At least, he never let me feel like it mattered. I was his, as far as he was concerned."
Tears pricked her eyes as his voice trailed off wistfully, and the number of questions his comment raised were too numerous for her to count, so she decided to focus on the questions still rattling in her mind from the last time she'd had him in her bed. "What kind of shop did they have? How did they die? Were you very young?"
He was silent for a yawning stretch of time, and Silva closed her eyes, nuzzling her cheek against his skin, the solid thump of his heartbeat pressed to her lips as she kissed him, knowing she was pushing too much. "I was a teenager, I think? I really don't remember, to be honest. I wasn't there. They had a shop, my grandfather was a goldsmith. Nan would design all of the pieces and he made them . . . but I wasn’t there. There was a fire. Half the shops in the village went up. They were in the cellar, that's all I know. I don't know why. There was nothing down there of value, the safe was upstairs, the jewels were kept in the safe. There was nothing but . . ."
"But what?" she echoed softly, not wanting to push too hard.
"A canvas on the wall where we used to draw and paint when I was a boy. That was it. They didn't keep anything of value there, it would take on water sometimes and wasn't worth the risk. I don’t know why they were there, but I can guess that she went down first and he went after her. He would've followed her to the ends of the earth. I don't know if the roof caved in, or if the steps had burned away . . . they were together, though. I'm glad for that, because I can't imagine how either of them would've survived without the other. But I wasn't there."
She wanted to ask why, wanted to ask where he was and why it seemed so significant to him that he wasn't there . . . But he had stopped talking as she sniffled against his skin, and she decided the forced trip down memory lane had concluded, for now.
"But none of that takes away from the fact that I was still averygood player, and if you think I’ll go easy on you, dove, then I regret to say you’re very much mistaken. Are you going to wear one of those little white dresses with the pleated skirts? Or the shorts with the grosgrain bits?"
She was unable to breathe through her laughter as his lips moved down her neck, teeth catching at her clavicle, wheezing when his head disappeared beneath the duvet. She was unwilling to compromise, she decided. She didn'twantto deviate from the blueprint of her life, wanted all of the things her parents had sketched out for her — a handsome husband, a home in Cambric Creek, a child of her own and her community at her back. She liked the roadmap they had set for her, and she loved her family too much to be able to simply walk away from them, unless they forced her to do so. She wanted to have everything; wanted to be Silva of the daytime and Silva of the nighttime both, and she didn't see why she had to choose. She could still get her house in Oldetowne and weekend afternoons in the park. She would make him fit into her world, she thought, or burn it down trying.
