Page 23 of The Second Marriage

“Is that so?” Sejun said.

Taral had him right there, on the ground in the tall grass, his thighs open around Sejun’s hips as Sejun rutted into him. There was no grace in their joining, but Taral came so hard he had to bite down on Sejun’s shoulder to keep himself from filling the valley with his moans.

Sejun rolled off him when they were done. “Well,” he said to the puffy white clouds high above.

“I can’t believe we just fucked in a field,” Taral said, and Sejun laughed and brought Taral’s hand to his mouth and kissed it.

* * *

Taral did verylittle for the next few days but sit in the garden with Gurratan, sleep to excess, and talk about going fishing with Ram without ever actually going fishing. One evening they all went to the main house for dinner and dancing, which Taral found exhausting as Gurratan’s family was both large and boisterous. Sejun, though, was in his element and spent the evening charming Gurratan’s sisters and his notoriously cantankerous grandfather. He laughed and danced and told a series of jokes that had everyone in an uproar. Taral watched him from where he sat with Gurratan, who had declared he was too pregnant for dancing, and couldn’t fathom that Sejun would ever be content with him.

“Congratulations on successfully conquering my grandfather,” Gurratan said to Sejun as they walked back later in the warm night, loud with insects. “He hasn’t liked anyone that much since my grandmother died.”

“He’s never spoken more than three words in a row to me,” Ram put in. “Although I know my acquisition was considered something of a coup by your parents.”

“Youracquisition,” Gurratan repeated, laughing. “Are you cattle?”

They were so easy with each other. Taral glanced away from Gurratan’s smiling face and found Sejun watching him, his expression more somber than it had been all evening. When their eyes met, Sejun smiled at him, not an entirely happy expression. Without meaning to, Taral stepped closer and tucked his hand into the crook of Sejun’s arm.

That was the fourth thing he did in those days: Sejun, whenever possible. He hadn’t wanted Sejun to join him on this trip, worried that Sejun would want all of his attention and he wouldn’t have a chance to visit with Gurratan, but instead, Sejun was an undemanding companion who kept himself occupied most of the time, and Taral found himself seeking Sejun out again and again. He could blame his oncoming heat or the constant pull of the bond, and did, privately, needing some excuse to justify his behavior. As Gurratan rose late every morning, Taral had no compelling reason to leave his own bed, and the very tempting reason of Sejun’s wandering hands to stay. Taral felt somewhat dazed from Sejun’s attentions and the extent to which Sejun seemed to desire him, baffled by the customs of the foreign country of his marriage.

He was married; as married as Gurratan and Ram were, as married as Iniya and Abiral. He didn’t feel married, and yet he woke up beside Sejun every morning, nestled in blankets that smelled like Sejun; and when Sejun invariably rolled over and tucked his face into Taral’s neck and slid his hand down Taral’s hip, Taral invariably let him. Welcomed him. Was glad to have him.

“Mm, good morning,” Sejun would say in a low, pleased voice when they were finished, and Taral would stare at the ceiling and say, “How did you dream?”

“You know,” Ram said to Sejun over dinner one night, “there’s an abandoned quarry downriver from here, not more than an hour’s ride. Taral likes to go there when he visits us, to look for his rocks.”

“Fossils,” Taral said, unable to restrain himself even though he knew exactly what Ram was doing. “They’re fossils.”

Ram made a dismissive gesture. “Fancy rocks.”

“We can go tomorrow, if the weather holds,” Sejun said, stepping neatly into Ram’s snare. “If you’d like, Taral,” and Taral wasn’t quite cold enough to deny him. And he did want to ride to the quarry.

The weather held. They woke to sunshine, as they had every morning in Barun, and after their requisite roll in the sheets set out down the river. On the road they passed farmers heading to market with their hand-carts full of produce, and a single wagon of monks headed out on some pilgrimage. Sejun whistled as they rode, in a state of good cheer as he seemingly always was, impervious to whatever misfortunes life threw his way. Not that there appeared to have been many.

The quarry was cut out of the face of one of the mountains. Starting at the valley floor, a swath of bare, terraced limestone had been carved from the trees, as if some huge razor had shaved the hillside bald. At the base lay a pile of discarded rubble and a few stone blocks that had been quarried out and then, for whatever reason, never transported away.

They tied the horses to a tree and left them contentedly grazing in the shade. The fossil bed was on the highest level of the quarry, a not-inconsiderable distance up the slope.

“You’re joking,” Sejun said, when Taral pointed out their destination. He shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted up the hillside.

“No,” Taral said, then laughed at Sejun’s expression. “It’s not so high as it looks. Anyway, it’s good for your health to break a sweat.”

“You sound like my family’s physician.” Sejun scowled at the quarry. “Fine. I won’t be defeated by some rocks.”

The sun was hot on Taral’s face as they climbed. He broke a sweat by the third terrace, and by the time they reached the top he was drenched. But then they were done, and the breeze dried his face, and the valley lay before them dappled with sunshine. Sejun, panting, dropped to sit on the rock edge and mopped his brow with his sleeve.

Taral sat beside him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you up here. We can leave if you’d like.”

Sejun frowned at him. “It was my idea to come in the first place. I want to see these fancy rocks of yours.”

“Putting you and Ram in a room together was a mistake,” Taral said, and Sejun grinned.

When Sejun had recovered from his ordeal, they rose to survey the rock face. Sealed there in the limestone, dark brown against the paler rock, was a skeletal turtle, with its shell intact and all the bones of its tail and feet; and some distance down was a fish of some sort, with its long backbone straight down the middle and fins above and below, and the bifurcated tail. Beyond that nestled a spindly thing Taral had never been able to identify.

Sejun spent a long time studying the turtle before he moved on to the fish, and spent an equally long time there. Taral had brought a small chisel and hammer with him and set to work on chipping away at a part of the face where another fossil was emerging, likely a fish from what he could see of it. In his younger days, he had ruined more than one fossil through haste and impatience, so he kept his motions slow and small and made a little more progress every time he visited.

He didn’t think anyone would mind. He didn’t know for sure, but he suspected these fossils were the reason for the quarry’s abandonment. He had asked the local farmers what they knew of the place, and they all told him it was holy, marked by the One God, although they couldn’t say why. No one came here aside from children who liked to play on the lower terraces. Holy places were best left alone, in peace. But it was also holy, wasn’t it, to admire all of the One God’s creations, and anyway, if the One God objected to Taral’s fossil hunting, They should have made him to have different interests.