Chapter 27
The Exchange

eaconwaited for Magenta where they had last spoken. With quiet intensity he sat deceptively calm, his head down-bent, hands clasped tightly in his lap. He rubbed one thumb persistently over the other. His face, taut and serious, almost feverish, bore an expression of heavily contained impatience. He felt restless and wasted. It was past noon and still he waited. Lifting his face with slow anger, he tried to breathe the air freely. He didn’t want to feel any pain. He felt tight and bound within himself. Cruel thoughts of past evils tormented his tortured consciousness. Again Deacon lowered his face, dropping his chin, and drew a deliberate breath to regain some self-control. He closed his feverish eyelids and became quite still. The only sound, a gentle breeze, marked the passing minutes, and he sat listening to time. All his body was tense and hard. He was isolated in a dark shadow of resentment, and although he fought it, a single tear burned down his cheek.

At last, like a dream of night, Magenta came. He rose to greet her, relieved to see that she carried with her three books. “I could bring no more without causing concern,” she said.

He reached out his hands. “It is good of you to bring them to me,” he said, taking the books and looking over them as if anxious to determine their value. A smile broke across his dark face, but it was closed, as if his heart was full of bitterness.

She watched as he stood there, searching through the pages with deep attention. “How do you like Cheydon?” she asked at length.

“The sight of you is all the pleasure it has afforded,” he answered, preoccupied. Finally he looked up. “Who is your father?” he asked, impressed if not cautious.

Magenta answered without boastfulness. “The one who administers rules regarding magic. And for those who breach the code of regulations, determines punishment.”

“Makes sense,” said Deacon, admiring the fine covers again. They were visibly superior to the ones he had previously studied. “I wasn’t aware priestesses had any kin beyond their own dark kind.”

A smile came her lips but did not reach her eyes. Deacon lowered his chin, feeling he had somehow offended her.

“It’s not common for those with family to serve. Seldom do I see my father, and of my mother I know nothing but the little he has told me. She passed into death before I had chance ever to know her.” Magenta’s pale countenance and saddened eyes told of an anguish far deeper than her speech portrayed. She returned his question after a moment. “What of your family?”

A slight frown crossed Deacon’s brow. Aimlessly, he rubbed his finger over his top lip, back and forth. “My mother left me not so long ago,” he muttered. His expression remained unchanged, but his lips compressed tightly as if to keep command of his emotions.

“Have you no other kin?” asked Magenta.

Deacon moved his hand and gave a short laugh. “I have three cousins, one of whom will not touch me because she fears me. The other two I cannot persuade to leave my side, even when I threaten them.” A smile crept to Magenta’s lips. She felt warmed by the affection she knew he felt for his family. “Also I have an aunt, their mother,” he continued. “She dotes on me until I go mad. And an uncle who—” He paused a moment as if he might not finish, then added, with an odd note of bitterness, “who reminds me too much of my mother.” He glanced at Magenta briefly, then looked away, and the conversation was ended. She asked no other questions, and he volunteered no other information. He took himself over to the fallen tree. “When am I to return these to you?” he asked, resuming his usual tone, holding up the books.

“I’m certain for a while yet he’ll not find them missing. But best, perhaps, if you keep them no longer than absolutely necessary.”

“I’ll not waste the time I have, then,” Deacon said.

“Would it bother you if I remained a while?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “It would not bother me.” He removed his cloak and laid it on the ground for her to sit upon. “Please,” he said when she hesitated. Grateful for the gesture, she did as asked.

Deacon remained over on the tree. She had turned her face from him so he would not feel the need to entertain her. Quietly she sat there, and to Deacon she was a book written in strange runes, indecipherable to him. Soon he returned to reading, vaguely, mechanically, looking at the page in a sort of stupor. He could not concentrate with her so near. Before too long, however, he was well-absorbed, but always half-aware of her.

Magenta’s mind was adrift with pleasant thoughts. She could feel the texture of his cloak beneath her fingertips. It looked as if it ought to be coarse and durable yet was exceedingly soft to the touch. When certain his attention was elsewhere occupied, Magenta brushed her slender hand across the material, allowing herself to feel every fiber, letting her fingers linger over the softness. She trembled almost as if it was the man she touched instead, glancing over to Deacon from under fine lashes. He was profoundly serious, his face down, his eyes concentrated. All his features were indicative of the keenest intellect and the fiercest passions.

Something very near to awe touched her whenever she looked upon him. His face was very beautiful to her. Without taking her eyes from him, she adored him feature by feature. She loved his black, straight, hair that fell so often into his blue eyes. She longed to kiss it, to run it through her fingers and hide her face in it. She loved his firm, proud lips and the manner in which he compressed them when deep in thought. His eyes particularly attracted her attention. The eyelids seemed always drooped with a kind of satiric contempt, but from underneath the heavy lids looked intensely observant eyes. How fine his face was. She could weep over him. Yet for all that she knew not what truly drew her so inexplicably to the man. She looked at him for a long time, trying to distinguish the indistinguishable.

In spite of his apparent unconsciousness, Deacon was acutely aware of her every move, her every sigh. Soon she arose. He was sensible of the movement but did not alter the direction of his attention. When she had wandered a little way, his eyes lifted to watch her. She crouched down, trying to coax some little animal to come to her. They had evidently encroached on its territory. It hissed and spat, trying to assume a formidable look, which only seemed absurd.

“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 amusement. 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 amusement crossed his face. “Evidently only tame as it pleases them,” he said, nursing his assaulted 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 passion 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 passionate 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.