Vanessa
I took great pride in my ability to mask my feelings. My dad, who had developed the same ability in the military and used it to great effect while starting his law firm, always repeated a mantra to Tom and I: “never let them see you bleed”. Whether it was a mean comment by a classmate or the final look from my mom as she drove away with her new husband, I refused to give any satisfaction to the people who hurt me. Ballet had taken this skill and honed it to an art, allowing me to receive brutal corrections in class, and take the bad news of a lost role or the pain of a torn meniscus with grace. These days I mostly used my ability to smile in the face of my manager when she told me I was passed over for another promotion.
As I sat playing cards with my grandmother, I was sure that my face was a mask of total nonchalance.
“Okay dear, what’s up your ass?”
asked Grandma Shirley.
I slapped down a pair of sevens on the table in front of me, and grimaced. It had been almost an hour since Torwood had gone out to shovel and then departed for the store, tasked with replenishing the eggs and fetching ingredients for dinner. After much coaxing, my grandmother had persuaded me into a game of high stakes poker, with unshelled walnuts and almonds as the chips. I’d just wanted to pout in peace, but she was having none of it.
“Noth-”
I began, but Grandma Shirley cut me off with a sharp flick of her hand.
“I know you better than almost anyone else alive, and I will not have you lying to me, telling me nothing is going on.”
“I’m just tired,”
I said, exasperated.
“And I’m the queen of fairies,”
she retorted. Then she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “I know this is about Torwood. Out with it.”
Damn this fiendishly perceptive woman and her runes and her tricks and her stupid, stupid words of wisdom.
“Okay, yes grandma, I am having a difficult time with your houseguest. We have...some history.”
“Ah yes. History. Would this history in any way be related to a series of late nights and long phone calls during the summer after your senior year of high school?”
I rubbed the bridge of my nose. You just could not get one past her.
“Why didn’t you tell me beforehand that Torwood was staying here, if you knew about all that? When I called to tell you I was coming, maybe you could have mentioned, ‘oh, and by the way your first love who broke your heart and destroyed your relationship with your brother is going to be staying in the spare room’?”
I had just called Torwood my first love. I’d never said it so plainly before, but it was undeniably the truth.
“To be frank, dear, how would you have reacted had I said that? You’re both adults now, and for all I knew you’d either patched things up a long time ago or forgotten about it completely. But now you’re here, and you’re walking around like a thunderstorm upsetting the delicate balance of energies in this home, and I think it’s time we just spoke plainly about it.”
To say I felt like a teenager would be an understatement. I couldn’t believe I was sitting here, a grown woman, being lectured by my grandmother about boy troubles.
“He’s an asshole,”
I said. “He looks at me like I’m causing him problems just by being here. This is our family’s house, not his.”
Grandma Shirley sighed. “Well, Vanessa, I think you’re right about one thing: you being here is causing him a lot of trouble. Do you know what his life looked like before he moved into this old house with me?”
I shook my head. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought too much about it.
“He was living alone, in an apartment a few blocks from here. He’s been a handyman around town for a few years now, and a damn good one too. Very reliable. And of course, all the old ladies he worked for kept trying to set him up with their young daughters. Unfortunately for them, those girls just bounced off him like arrows off dragonscale. It got to the point that there were awful rumours, like he wasn’t giving those young women the time of day because he was too busy with their mothers and grandmothers,”
she said, giving me a pointed look. I grimaced, not wanting to admit that I’d been having the same thought.
“Of course, nothing could be further from the truth,”
she continued. “He was never anything but the picture of a gentleman. He was fixing a leak in the garden shed last month when I slipped on a loose patio stone, and, well,”
she said, gesturing to her braced leg. “His rent was going up, and I suggested he move in just to keep an eye on me as I recovered. Truthfully I just thought the boy was lonely. It turned out to be not such a bad idea, as he was with me when I took another spill the other day. If he hadn’t caught me, well, who knows what would have happened,” she said.
I realized idly that this was one of the longest monologues I’d heard my grandmother go on without uttering a single dirty word.
“The only break in his facade that I’ve seen is when I told him you were coming to visit. He nearly had a stroke in the living room,”
she laughed. “There’s not a lot that can faze him, you know. His mother died last year, and I only found out when I read it in the newspaper. But you seemed to have taken a really good crack at his shell,”
she said, and broke a walnut open with her silver nutcracker.
I was quiet, absorbing this information. The Torwood I had known ten years ago was like a big, clumsy puppy, unself-conscious and unaware of the effect his golden eyes and strong hands had on people. Had on me. I had thought it strange that in the last decade he hadn’t become attached to any of the eager local women. The image of him leaving his small apartment in the morning, doing jobs for old ladies all day, and going home alone again made me strangely sad. I recalled my words from the night I’d arrived.
What’s your angle here, Torwood?
It seemed simple now. He wanted to stay here because he was lonely, having just lost his mom. Because Grandma Shirley was great company, and he could take care of her. And, perhaps...did he know I would eventually come back? Despite my hurt from the previous night, something fluttered in my chest.
My emotions must have played like a movie on my face. Grandma Shirley chuckled, and placed her own poker hand down across from mine. Full house.
***
Satisfied with our little talk, Grandma Shirley allowed me to recuse myself from the game, sacrificing the pot of hard-shelled nuts to her, which she began to crack with glee.
I decided it was time to get out of the house for the first time since arriving here. I tugged my boots on, bundled up, and headed out into the bright winter day. I began to stroll down the street, looking fondly at the neighbors shoveling their driveways, kids of all shapes and sizes bundled up in bright little snowsuits, building forts and rolling down the plowed mounds of snow by the side of the road.
My mind drifted back to Torwood. Okay, I had to admit that he had a lot to offer, and we had history, and a big part of me still wanted to jump his bones six ways to Sunday. But I just couldn’t forgive his behavior from last night. What kind of fucked up promise had he made to my brother that would keep us, two consenting adults, from sleeping together? It made me wonder if-
And in the space of a breath I was on my ass on the ground, pain sprouting from my left shoulder. I had collided head first with a lamp post, lost so totally in my thoughts that I hadn’t noticed the tall brass thing until it was too late.
“Are you okay, ma’am?”
someone asked, and a hand extended down to me. I looked up. It was a middle aged human woman with pale skin and a crooked nose, wearing a funny yellow cap.
“Yes, oh my gosh, I just lost my balance there for a second,”
I said, my face flushing crimson. I brushed myself off and stood, waving away her hand, needing to prove that I was still capable of standing on my own, even if I wasn’t capable of avoiding stationary objects. “Thank you for asking. I’m fine, really.”
She laughed very strangely. “I think our meeting here was providence, don’t you? Our Mother acts in funny ways like that. Tell me, have you yet taken her pollen?”
I paused brushing the snow from myself, and took another look at the woman. Her funny hat was in fact knit to look like a daffodil sprouting from her head, and her eyes were strange and glassy. Oh god, she was one of those weirdos that followed the Herbaceous Mother. They lived in a big compound in the hills west of town, but usually kept to themselves. This one seemed to have gotten loose.
“No, no, and I’m not interested, sorry!”
I said, and began walking away.
“Don’t ignore me, you bitch! This was not a coincidence,”
she called from behind me. Her voice was getting louder and reedier. “Her vines connected us. You’re so young and beautiful, I can see the Mother’s sap leaking from you! What do you think you’ll gain by denying her?”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and began to speed walk. I heard the rapid crunching of snow behind me. Her hand grasped my shoulder, surprisingly firm, and she spun me around.
“You can be the seed bearer for our ceremony tonight! You’ll come, won’t you?”
Her eyes were wild, and her long nails dug into my flesh. I cried out. “I was a ripe young fruit like you once, I was a seed bearer once. Look how it transformed me!”
I tried to push her off, but her grip was too tight. My heels slipped on the icy sidewalk, and my cheek struck the ground with a smack. As I tumbled, the woman came down with me. Her words were inaudible now, just a high pitched squealing from her mouth, so close to my face that I could smell the awful too-sweet scent of her breath. I screwed my eyes shut, fearful that she would attempt to claw at my face.
And then she was gone, wrenched off me. A statue stood over me, lit from behind by the brilliant morning sun, a silhouette holding the screaming woman aloft with one hand by the back of her jacket. The figure wrapped its other hand around the woman’s ankles, drew her back, and tossed her headfirst into a nearby snowbank. I blinked away tears, my vision blurry. My savior knelt down, and the sharp angles of his face came into focus, the gloss of his tusks, his golden eyes burning with feeling. Torwood.
“Vanessa! Did she hurt you?” he asked.
“I’m okay, I’m okay,”
I said automatically. I wasn’t okay. The smell of her breath was still in my nostrils. I knotted the front of Torwood’s shirt in my fists and pulled him to me, leaning my head into the crook of his chest. He placed a hand on the back of my head and began to stroke my hair, making quiet shushing noises.
We stayed like that for a long moment. I heard shouting, and cracked my eyes. A small crowd had gathered, and was shouting after the Herbaceous Mother cultist, who had worked her way out of the snowdrift and was now beating a hasty retreat. Torwood glanced back at her, but made no move in pursuit. The whole world of his attention was focused on me.
“Come now, let’s get you home,”
he said. I hesitantly untangled from him, and he helped me to my feet. I noticed a discarded paper bag of groceries on the sidewalk, split down the side. An egg had escaped, and its yellow yolk was leaking out onto the snow.
“The groceries,” I said.
“I can get those,”
came another voice. It was an older elf man I recognized as a neighbor. He knelt and collected the scattered groceries as best as he could in the torn bag.
“Are you sure you’re alright? My clinic is right down the road, I can take a look if you’re hurt,”
said another woman.
“Those people are a menace, I don’t know why they haven’t been run out of town. Torwood, you did a good job with her. I doubt she’ll be harassing anyone else anytime soon. You should probably make a statement to the police, though,”
said a lizardfolk girl who I dimly recognized as the conductor from the train. Others in the immediate area murmured their agreement with her sentiment.
“Thank you, but right now my only concern is to get Vanessa home,”
Torwood replied. He took the groceries from the elf in one arm, waved off the crowd of onlookers, and began to guide me home. As we walked away, I realized that his arm had remained wrapped around me, both supporting me and giving me protection from the prying eyes of the neighbors. In that moment, despite the terror of the last few minutes, I felt a deep and reliable safety that I had not felt in, well, I didn’t know how long. Ten years? Yes, it had been at least ten years.
***
“Those Herbaceous Mother...fuckers! They just keep getting bolder and bolder. They give a bad name to plants, I say. No, don’t go to the police, Torwood. They’ll just traumatize my poor granddaughter further, and of course they won’t do jack shit about the cult. The chief of police goes to their meetings, for god’s sake. Here, take this,”
said my grandmother, ladling a large quantity of some kind of tincture into my mouth. It was gritty and bitter, but spread a fuzzy warmth through my body, calming my rattled nerves and dulling the pain in my bruised cheek.
“I’m really okay, Grandma,”
I said, swallowing. “What did you just give me?”
“Dandelioness paste. I grow a patch every summer and keep a jar for the whole year. Effective, isn’t it?” she said.
“What does it do, exactly?” I asked.
“Relaxes that which needs relaxing. Some say it’s best as a topical, but I like to mix it with whisky and take it orally.”
The nice feeling in my body seemed much more in line with the effect of liquor than that of ground up flower paste, but I wasn’t about to tell that to Grandma Shirley.
“Thank you, I feel better already. Torwood looks like he might need this stuff more than me, though,” I said.
The big green man was leaning with his butt against the kitchen counter, arms crossed, wound tight as a bowstring. His brow was knit, a sexy muscle twitching at the corner of his jawline.
“I am just happy that you are not hurt,”
he said. “I wish I had tossed that damned woman further.”
I laughed. This was the first time I’d heard Torwood express ill will towards any creature. “Get your mind off it, big guy. Hey, you got dinner stuff, right? What are we having tonight?”
I asked. I realized that it came out quite a bit flirtier than it had sounded in my head. I felt the flitting of a side eye from my grandmother. Damn plant paste. Wasn’t I mad at him?
Slowly, Torwood’s shoulders relaxed, and he refocused on the preparation of the meal.
He’d bought venison steaks just for me, from a local hunter who sold to the butcher.
I was skeptical that the improbable vegetarian would know how to prepare the excellent looking cuts of meat, but his marination process put my mind at ease.
Another surprise awaited when Torwood retrieved from the icebox a banneton full of dough, and set it on the counter to proof.
I had no idea when he’d had the time, but it looked like sourdough.
We passed the afternoon easily as the meat marinated and the bread rose.
I snuck a few more spoons of dandelioness paste between card games and book chapters, finding the taste more agreeable and the effects even more pleasant as the day wore on.
In the late afternoon, after so much reassurance that I was okay and could be left alone, Torwood took his promised walk with Shirley.
I sat on the couch in the living room holding a mug of tea, a low fire burning in the hearth.
The sun had gone gold, and was illuminating small specks of dust that hung in the air.
The copper pipes that ran through the house rattled, replenishing some hidden basin, the sound like the comforting voice of an old friend.
How many afternoons had I passed as a child in this exact spot, watching guests come and go, trying to evade the chores that my grandmother doled out to idle children?
I leaned my head back, and gazed out the room’s big south facing window.
The familiar branches of the oak tree in the yard greeted me.
A neighbor was taking advantage of the sun to string laundry on the line between his building and the next.
A bird flew overhead.
Without realizing I had begun to cry, I tasted a tear at the corner of my mouth.
I didn’t want to leave.
I wanted to be with my grandmother, in this house.
I wanted to be in the Pigeonpond that I knew and loved, the one that I had thought was no longer available to me.
I wanted to feel what I had felt when Torwood held me, all of the time.
My heart did a small flip, the same flip it had done when he bandaged my hand.
At the time I had thought, not entirely incorrectly, that what I had felt was lust.
Now that I scratched against it a little harder, the feeling’s true nature began to shine through.
Torwood, as infuriating as it was, knew the real me.
His patient eyes saw through all the defenses I put up between myself and the world, and cared for me despite them.
I felt the care in his arms around me, in the food he cooked and the way he said my name.
He was a good man, better than I deserved.
Oh god, I was falling for my brother’s best friend. Again.
The door opened, and they were back. I wiped the tears from my eyes and greeted them. I shouldn’t be so emotional, it had just been an intense day— an intense few days. Once I was back in the city, would this all seem like a hazy memory?