I do still stick the hair clip in my ponytail.
Nariel doesn’t comment.
At Kyoto Station, we pick up bento boxes for the road while we wait and then hop the soonest bullet train we could get to Hiroshima.
Unfortunately last-minute travel in Japan between two top tourist destinations during the summer means we couldn’t get seats together. I’m sitting next to an elderly Japanese woman in a light kimono—nothing showy, but the kind of thing a person would wear day-to-day if they were a person who worekimono on the regular, which is not most people—who is extremely polite and friendly and more surprisingly interested in practicing her English on me, which is a fantastic distraction.
Because whatever I think about making a clean break, and even after all the time we spent together last night and how much I wonder about whether I messed things up, it’s like a goddamnitchthat Nariel isn’t sitting with me.
I don’t even know what I would say to him if he were here. Probably nothing, given how hard I’m avoiding talking about anything that matters! And he’s been all business this morning, which is super valid, because I ought to be focusing on the task ahead and probably that’s how he’s going to use our time apart rather than playing at silly magic with me.
Still.
I’m as selfish as I’ve always been, because if it’s the last time I have, I want to spend it with him.
So I am actually grateful to be able to chat with the old woman about nothing of substance until the conductor finally gets to our car and checks our tickets.
And then shortly afterward, another shadow looms in the aisle.
Nariel sports a more impish look than I’ve ever seen from him as he affects shyness, rubbing a hand in his hair awkwardly and looking especially devastating, as he asks my seatmate in Japanese if she’d be willing to swap seats.
She glances back at me, presumably to confirm I do actually want this, and then whatever she sees in my face causes her to actuallysnort, in the most delicate and refined way, the wrinkles around her eyes creasing as her lips quirk with the gentlest amusement.
I did not think I could be embarrassed by a stranger without even a word, but here we are. Apparently my admiration of Nariel isthatobvious.
She tells Nariel that since he is so polite, she will do him this favor, and then turns back to me and withdraws something from her purse.
“And for your kindness to an old woman,” she says, “please accept this small token.”
I am totally startled. My general experience of train travel in Japan is that people avoid foreigners whenever possible lest someone try to speak English to them and in so doing obligate an awkward interaction.
And then with a wink she hands me a small pouch clearly made from kimono fabric that matches my hair clip exactly, and I have the strangest feeling that magic must be involved in this somehow, though there’s no kind of spell like this that I know.
The world is still full of magic even when I’m not using my wand, and it can still surprise me.
I fall all over myself to thank her, but eventually she manages to depart and Nariel slides into her seat and stares at me expectantly as I gaze up at him in total bafflement at what has just occurred.
Proving once again he is not actually telepathic, Nariel asks, “Did you think wizards were the only ones who could learn the many languages of this world?”
Okay, that’s fair. His native language almost certainly can’t be English, but I have no idea what it is. High Earthers use spells to make themselves understood by the Low Earthers they train, though I was there long enough that I learned some of the more common languages there. Do Bright Earth and Dark Earth have as many languages as we do in Low Earth?
It’s a good question, but instead I find myself asking, “How long did it take you?”
“I’m not answering that,” Nariel says with faux hauteur, clearly to make me laugh, and I do.
Stupid, stupid heart, to be so relieved that he wants to see me too, that he’s happy to just be with me, that he’shere.
Abruptly, Nariel elaborates, “I didn’t start learning languages for a while after my exile. I’d known a few in Dark Earth but resented that my caring had cost me all my power, and I was so busy scrambling it was easy to pretend it simply wasn’t a good use of my energy.”
The matter-of-fact way he delivers this makes my heart ache. I can only imagine the mind-fuck of having tried to save spirits only then to be desperately killing them to stay alive. He must have been impossibly lonely.
Maybe that’s why he gave me the time of day.
“I only started much later, once I began trying to actually work with spirits in Dark Earth—and then, of necessity, Low Earth—rather than against them.” He glances at me. “You started where I ended.”
I huff, even as my heart clenches. “A pretty thought, but I started learning languages here because it was easy and I wanted to keep the part of my mind that figures out spell patterns active, not to help people. Then it made it easier to get to places I wanted to go. It’s selfishness and expediency, not a desire to forge connections with people.”
To my surprise, Nariel regards me with a frown. “Surely you’ve known enough other travelers here to realize there are far more selfish ways to travel. And when I tell you I spent years killing, you don’t accusemeof selfishness like you accuse yourself. You’re allowed to want things, and to enjoy things, Sierra.”
