“I am here. I never left,” she murmured, her heart quickening at his familiar grin.
“You’ve grown too. You were once a flower. Now you’re a sapling,” he said, each word a well-placed rumble. “I can hardly lift you. What will I do when you want to fly?”
“A sapling? I am an oak,” she said with mock outrage. “Another year or two and I will be as tall as you.”
He laughed again, the sound so filled with fondness that her tears welled again, and without hesitation, she stepped back into his arms.
He welcomed her return to his embrace, his arms tightening around her, and she stood, breathing him in, her nose pressed to his chest. To tell him she had missed him would be false. She had ached and mourned and cried and counted the days. She’d banished him from her thoughts and her heart only to beg the gods for his well-being. Last year, she’d even given up hope. Another year, another gift, and still no Bayr. Now that he was here, she wanted only to hold him for a moment, to feel only the joy of his return.
“Are you s-standing on your t-toes?” he laughed, his stutter peeking through to remind her of the boy he’d been. They put her at ease, those small hitches. He was still Bayr.
“Yes. I am.” She laughed with him, the sound choked by emotion she could not contain. The top of her head didn’t even reach the top of his shoulder, and she was taller than most women, or so Dagmar claimed.
“Seventeen years old,” he whispered. “Tomorrow is your birthday. W-what would you like, little Alba? Seventeen roses? Seventeen sugared plums? Seventeen d-diamonds to wear in your crown?”
“I want seventeen days,” she countered quietly, stepping back in the circle of his arms so she could see his face. As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized there was nothing she wanted more. “Seventeen years would be even better.”
His eyes changed, softened, and he touched her nose with the tip of his finger.
“I can’t give you that, Alba.”
“Twelve days?”
He shook his head.
“Ten?”
Another no.
“Nine, then. And that’s as low as I’ll go. I’m Princess of Saylok, and you must do as I say.”
He laughed again, a booming sound that made her chest swell with so much happiness, she thought she might burst into tiny particles of light.
“I can give you a week. Maybe less.”
“A week?” she whispered. “You are leaving so soon?”
“Yes. I will only stay until the k-king returns.”
Her happiness seeped from her chest, ran down her weak legs, and pooled beneath her feet, leaving her as empty as she’d been yesterday and the day before.
“I promise you s-seventeen perfect hours. All yours. The b-best hours in all of existence,” Bayr whispered. “We will fly and s-swim and swing and eat all our bellies can hold.”
“Fly?” she asked.
“And swim.”
“And we won’t waste time with sleep?”
“Not a wink.” He grinned, and she realized suddenly how weary he must be. How far he had come. Yet he stood before her, and she would not waste her time dreading his absence. She took a deep breath and released it. Grabbing his hand, she pulled him to the bench nearest the rainbow colors and sat down, unwilling to wait to embark upon her perfect hours.
“Tell me where you’ve been,” she demanded, breathless. She wanted to know everything. Every moment of his every day for the last ten years.
“Everywhere. Though in these last y-years, I’ve rarely left Dolphys. Until now,” he replied, sinking down beside her. She didn’t release his hand, but kept it wrapped in both of hers.
“Everywhere? I want words, Bayr. Details,” she cried.
He smiled again and groaned. Then he tapped his ear.
Her heart leaped at the old game, and she let him maneuver around her request, the way he used to do.
“Have you been to Eastlandia?” she asked, settling into the rhythm of their old ways. Yes or no questions so he didn’t have to speak.
He nodded.
“Is it bigger than Saylok?”
With his free hand he plucked a candle from its holder and, tipping it to the side, drew a shape with the melted wax on the stone floor in front of them. He drew another shape, a star, about the distance of a handspan away from the first.
“Saylok,” Alba said, pointing to the star.
He nodded.
“Eastlandia,” she guessed. “Is it really that big compared to Saylok?”
Again the nod.
“Where else?”
Little by little, he drew the shapes of the countries, the world beyond Saylok, and Alba studied his map in fascination.
“For all Dagmar’s knowledge, he has not been to these places either, and the maps he created are not to scale,” she murmured.
“I know only what I’ve been told and what I’ve g-gleaned from the people we brought back. Size is hard to measure w-when you are only a man and not a great, soaring bird.”
“But you are a chieftain,” she said, a smile teasing her lips.
He nodded, reverting to their game, but his eyes were troubled.
“Isn’t it what you wished for?” she asked quietly. Most men would.
He shook his head once, a single, firm denial.
“No? Why?” she pressed.
“I have only ever w-wished for one thing.”
“Tell me.”
“To be here. Near you. That is all.” His face was so raw with honesty, with truth, that Alba could not look away. The people around her were careful with their secrets. The temple girls. Dagmar, Ghost, Ivo. Her father. Everyone lied or misled or simply stayed silent. Some did it out of love. Some out of fear. Some for power, some for protection. But not Bayr. He had never been like that.
She didn’t ask him why he couldn’t stay. Dagmar had explained, time and time again. And Alba understood what it was to want what you could not have, to not control your fate or your fortunes. She bowed her head, her hand tightening around his, and when she found her voice again, she moved on.
“Tell me about Dolphys,” she whispered, and he relented, his voice low and careful, forming his words far better than he used to, and she listened, intent upon each one. One question spurred another, and Alba found herself speaking more than she cared to, though Bayr listened with the same rapt attention she had shown him. When the colored light disappeared, darkness chasing the day away, Ivo opened the sanctum door, his long staff clutched between his knotted hands. He didn’t move as well as he once had, and didn’t see as well either, though he peered at them with all-knowing eyes.
“Ten years is too great a span to travel in one afternoon,” he rasped. “Come join us for supper, and we will continue the journey.”
Together they rose, her hand tucked in the crook of Bayr’s arm, and followed Ivo from the sanctum. Alba did not allow herself to count the hours that had passed.
24
Twenty-nine. He’d been back for twenty-nine hours. Alba had bidden him goodnight just as she had the night before, and her guards, who had waited outside the temple all day, escorted her from the temple to the palace, where she was greeted by her aging maid. She dismissed the old woman without making use of her services, telling her she would manage on her own, and climbed the many steps to her room in the tower. Now, hours later, she waited, hoping Bayr would keep his word. He had promised not to sleep.