Sasha Chapter V: A Meeting with Effie

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“About to get frisky with the sheep, I see.”

Sasha didn’t need to look up but still did all the same. Even now, he couldn’t help but be as he had always been around her, a moon chained to her orbit.

Effie was as dirty as ever, from the strands of her hair to the tips of her dirt smudged fingers and toes, shoeless as ever now that they were safely in the city and off the road. She couldn’t have been more beautiful to him in that moment, and he wanted to leash it forever so that it would never leave him. He could carry it with him forever—to Lanry and beyond—and spend his days with her memory at his heal and his nights wearing nothing but the shadow of her arms about him.

But then suddenly the cool air danced across his bare skin and Sasha had to admit it to be nothing more than a mirage, for he had not been born to happiness and so why should Haelom show favor now?

He reached for his shirt lying on the bale and a warm hand stopped him.

“Now, you know I was only playing about the sheep don’t you? The horses are more attractive—I’d go for them. Just think of all that wool, how it must chafe-like. Gives me the shivers.” There was laughter in her voice but it died when he failed to respond to her waggish attempts to get a rise out of him.

“Hey,” she pushed his arm, “that was funny. I’m funny, alright? You should laugh. You always laugh.” Her dark eyes glittered with mischief and something unidentifiable. Sasha almost thought it was sadness, but Effie had never taken to morose feelings before. Not really, but then what was he to know of a woman’s heart.

Now, if she was sad, then Sasha was the culprit. He felt like such a fool.

A half-naked fool, his mind whispered, even worse.

Sasha pulled the shirt over his head and grabbed his pitchfork. He gripped it hard and let the splintered wood bite into his hand.

“I’m sorry, Effie. Just…not really here, I guess.”

“I know, I know. You’re forgiven,” she said with a smile that was crooked in the corners. Her features took a dark turn. “Turel said you were ill before, during the ceremony. I didn’t even notice when you came back. Just in shock myself, I guess. I’m sorry. I’m,” she shook her head, “I’m terrible, aren’t I?”

“Hey,” Sasha reached for her and tried to meet her eyes but she wouldn’t look at him now. “It’s all right. I wasn’t hurling my guts so I did better than Petyr last year anyhow. We all know that’s what counts, eh?”

“I don’t hear that. Your calling. Sasha, I, I wanted you to know that I just—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” he hoped his hold was soft, and his words softer.

"What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’ll go then?”

Sasha blinked at her a bit slowly.

“ I just mean, this fortnight you and Turel will be leaving. Or you’re meant to. But I wanted to see if…well.” Her eyes darted to and fro now, a nervous but unyielding energy seeming to fill her very being. “Will you really be leaving us after all?”

His hand slipped from her shoulder. “Effie…”

She stepped back as though startled. “Oh, I don’t mean that you’re a coward!”

Sasha closed his eyes and thought of what his father might have said.

“Eff,” he said, nearly faltering. “I’ve been yielded as a son of Hylenia. There’s little I can do now to stop it without outright running away and dishonoring myself and our village. It’s…a burden we all are duty bound to bear.”

Oh, such brave and honorable words, his mind hissed, but we both know you don’t honor them. We know what you hide. We know you will run.

No. He could never bring shame to them by running. To even think it now caused an anger achingly close to a feeling he’d tried to leave in the past.

Your father did not run, it said, but you are not your father’s son, are you?

Effie took a step back. “I’m sorry. Please, forget it.” She wouldn’t look at him anymore, but he knew her. Behind all the cheek and banter, she was swallowing her heartache.

He turned to hide his face from her and spoke lowly. “I have to go, Eff. Even if I should wish it weren’t so.”

“I know. I’m just being a real lout, yeah?” Effie inhaled sharply and laughed. Remembering the rake in her hands, she set the grate against the dirt floor. “Shall I help then?” she said in her best posh imitation. “Bet you won’t miss this job, eh, oh great defender of the land.”

“Stop teasing, Eff.”

“Not teasin, you lump,” she poked his leg with the dull end of the rake. “Can’t do when you’re so mopey.” A painful tenderness in her face softened the nip in her words.

It went all wrong in an instant starting with a quiver of her lips, then a tremble weaved through her frame, then—to his horror—he caught sight of the wetness clinging to the corners of her eyes, warm and brown as molasses. She was still the most beautiful woman he may ever lay eyes on, ragged and tear-stained though she was swiftly becoming.

He dropped his pitchfork to the ground and let it clatter at his feet, crossing the divide between them as she rose up to meet him. His arms went round her, and he hoped that their warmth imparted some great feeling. Because the truth was, for Sasha, words were worth little when one could gift the power of presence. He believed nothing was the best balm to ease any sadness, cross over any misguided divide, mend any heartbreak like the power of comforting another through sheer feeling. He had received so little comfort in his life. Surely if he could, he would choose to hold each and every person dear to him and tell them of his love while he still breathed.

And he had so little time now, while she had all the time in the land.

One day soon, someone would come calling for her and she would respond to his spell in kind; it would only be a matter of time for others to see the real beauty hiding under the muck and the mockeries.

He only hoped that they valued her happiness and never sought to replace it for their own.

Gods, he felt like weeping himself.

Sasha cradled her head to him. “It’s alright, Eff. Everything will be alright.” He tried to be soothing but they both knew the words were empty. There had never been any pretense between them before—save for his own sealed confessions—and it felt awkward now for having turned that corner.

Effie came up to just chest height, and her face fit snuggly now into the crook of his shoulder. Her trembling had ceased but the tears were unceasing. She clung to him as though he were a sturdy tree in the middle of a fierce gale.

Then her hands were rising to grip his shoulders, and she pulled away from him for the briefest moment.

And then she kissed him.

He waffled for a moment before responding, stuck somewhere between boyhood affection and terror. Her body was warm against his, and he didn’t mind the roughness of her tunic at all. He didn’t immediately feel the strain in his neck from meeting her lips. This moment was everything he had wished for; no, he’d prayed for, on the nights when despair threatened him with the thought of never receiving love in kind again. Never since he felt his father’s gentle hand or heard the warmth in voice had he truly believed anyone could love him.

The thought stilled him as they broke apart for a moment, until there was nothing left to be heard but the sound of their pants in the close air.

That was right. His father had left. He had loved them and yet honor trumped love, and so he left them to follow his duty and uphold those most sacred oaths. Sasha had never understood how sacred they were for him to break the same-told oaths he had sworn to wife and child, to love and protect them for eternity.

Now, he felt closer to understanding than he had before. There simply was no other way. Some binds are woven into the fabric of a person so deeply that to tear free from them would only be to their shame and ruin. His father’s shame, and his family’s ruin. In the end, the embers of his anger must have been nothing compared to the raging fire of his father’s love, the man ready to swallow his pride as a father for the sake of a son who had not the maturity to know the difference. And what was anger but a pillow for shame to land upon.

Angry that they could not be together, not truly now, and ashamed at himself for what he knew he had no choice but to do.

Effie tilted her head to meet him again but he did not let her. She looked at him for a moment before giggling, perhaps in nervous confusion. But then he took her wrist in his hand before it could touch his cheek, and she simply stood and watched him, trying somehow to decipher the meaning of it all.

“What’s the matter? Didn’t you like it?”

Sasha held her for a moment while he still could—while they were still just a girl and a boy having a warm connection in the dead cold of winter.

He spoke gently, praying she would understand.

“Effie, in less than a fortnight’s time I will be leaving.” He paused at her questioning look. "For a very long time.”

“You’re not yet gone though, are you?” she smiled as she placed her other hand on his cheek.

Haelom, is this what it felt like to be touched? He had forgotten so much.

“Please, I want to be with you.”

Because he wanted her, too, his resolution grew stronger. So he took her hand in his, cherishing the brief warmth, before lowering them both to her side. And he watched as her smile faded to a frown when he let her go. “I don’t understand.”

“I know what you want. I want it to, Eff. I promise you that much, if nothing else. I would up everything if we could be together in happiness. True happiness, not some portrait of it.”

“Sasha…”

“The only way we could be together now would be to live in shame. If I were to run, they would find us. We would forever be hunted or worse, forced to live with the cloud of dishonor over our heads.”

“Oh, aye, but we could still be together now, before you leave. It doesn’t have to be the end before it’s even begun.”

“And what if a child were born? I won’t make a whore of you as my last act.”

For a second or two she was all breath, but then her eyes filled with a darkness. “Sasha, don’t get daft on me.”

“You know what will happen. You’ll have to leave the village. They wouldn’t accept you that way. I won’t see you suffer in ruin all because I couldn’t be bothered to control myself.”

“And what about me, you bastard? What about what I want?” She stepped forward again until their chests touched, and her could feel her heart beating under the rough fabric of tunic. “What if I want you to ruin me?”

He gripped her shoulders and put space between them.

Effie exhaled in frustration, and maybe hurt. “Don’t you know me at all?”

“I know that you’ll find happiness with someone, and that maybe you’ll wish you hadn’t said these things. It will never be me. And for that, I truly am sorry.”

Anger, it seemed, would now have to suffice as the pillow for shame once again. Her anger, and his shame. But he was doing what he knew was right.

If only it felt right.

She swallowed thickly and squared herself, shaking his hands from her.

“Well, glad we could come to an understanding. Must be on now, before someone sees us,” she said with as much ferocity as she could muster with a curtain of tears in her eyes. “Wouldn’t want anyone to gossip.”

He watched her back as she walked away from him.

Somewhere behind his ribs, there was a painful untethering.