Breakfast is simple this morning, as it always seems to be. Bread, meat, cheese, whatever berries can be scavenged from the brush. We've continued traveling on horseback for nearly two weeks, and I've begun to understand their manner of speech--ascertained that the people who the knights have been escorting have gotten to safety and this specific "quest" is over.
Now, it has been a never ending rotation of riding, camping, bathing when there is water, and riding again. Tristan hasn't taken me, not in the way he did after I had slapped him. He has touched me, rubbed his length against me in the early hours of the morning, but not forced himself on me.
That night, after moving from the banks of the lake to warm us by the fireside, he touched me as if I was fragile. At one point, days later, after bathing myself with a spicy smelling soap that the youngest knight handed me, Tristan sat me in front of him and softly combed out the tangles in my long hair. Now, the curls bounce around to my hips.
He seems to like my hair, twining his fingers through the strands while we ride.
The knights talk to me, and I listen. I've learned the names of the men around me--and to my horror I've found that what I refused to acknowledge before must be true.
The leader they call Arthur. His second, the pretty knight goes by Lancelot; the one who stitched my wounds is Bors; the other bald one is Dagonet; Galahad is the youngest; Gawain is the one that wears his hair long and blond, who held me as I was bound.
I have read of these men--know a bit of their deeds. This knowledge twists uncomfortably in my stomach.
Despite this knowledge, I know little more about Tristan than I learned the first couple of days under his care. The stories about him from my time are ones that I barely recall--not that I could rely on them as reality any way. Despite my being thrown back in time, the dragons and quests and unrequited love of those tales still seem too fanciful.
The idea it might all be real scares me too much to examine.
For the most part Tristan remains quiet and serious. Strange in his way of solitude while being a key link in the chain of these knights. A scout, a man whose natural inclination is to do what is needed of him. Anything it seems. I find him stranger now that he has decided to keep me, I don't understand to what extent he has decided this.
I wonder if not understanding is preferable to the alternative.
Although he doesn't speak much to me other than the orders here or there, Tristan has been gentle; a restrained sort of gentle, as if he is being careful to control his natural instincts. His natural impulse to cause pain. The silence wraps around us like a cocoon as we ride hours upon hours.
Truth be told, I don't mind his silence.
While the others have talked to me, I do not respond. I am resigned to my being here, resigned to being pulled across the countryside, to being held by a madman throughout the day and night, but I have not resigned myself to giving them the satisfaction of answering their questions of me.
They could have killed me. They would have if I didn't pass their ridiculous test, I don't owe them anything.
This morning, however, I feel differently. I feel restless--uneasy with how quickly I have gotten accustomed to the ways of this antiquated time. How quickly I've learned their language, how I awaken before light, how I know how to stoke a fire, saddle a horse.
I feel flames of anger heating my body at my own apathy.
Tristan is holding me on his lap as I nibble on the hard bread. His hand smooths along my waist as he listens to the conversation with the other knights about where they are headed.
Home, they say. I feel myself flinch at the word.
This draws the attention of Dagonet, who always seems to be trying to needle information from me. He examines Tristan and I under furrowed brows, "And, darling girl, where do you come from?"
It is a question asked of me many times, and even though I chose not to answer before--I know I wouldn't know what to say anyway. I can't tell them the truth: they have already decided I am not a witch, and something so fantastical will only cause the suspicion to remerge.
No, the land I come from is too distant, too out of grasp to even speak of anyway.
Instead, this time, I answer the only way I can muster, "Far away".
The words are rusty from my lack of speaking. But, I am able to twist it in the way I know they speak Welsh. A much older Welsh than I had ever thought I would speak while I was taking those extra credits for my English degree so long ago.
Or, rather so in the future.
My words, or my choice to finally speak, bring the other knights to silence. Tristan tightens his grip around me as if he is pleased. Across from us, Lancelot brushes his hair from his eyes and leans in closer.
"How is it that you are here?"
I shake my head. How do I explain this?
"I was... taken." I stumble over the sentence, but my meaning is understood as the knights stare at me silently. I don't want to lie, I've always been a terrible liar, but I figure that I was taken--in some form of the word.
Taken.
At the thought, grief moves through me, for everything I have lost in the last two years and for everything I have been through in the mere weeks that I have been in this place. I don't feel like talking anymore. I tilt my head down so that my hair covers my face as I pull out of Tristan's arms.
I am almost completely out of the circle before my own question arises. Turning back to the knights, I look directly at Arthur. I force myself to make eye contact, to keep it "what-- what become of me?"
Arthur doesn't answer immediately. He sets down the food that was at his mouth and considers the question. "We will take you home."
I resist rolling my eyes at the knight's answer. How naive, how noble he is just like all of the stories told.
I was hopeful when I was released from my imprisonment, hopeful even through the horror and terrors of learning of this new barbaric world. But now, after being here for what must have already been more than a month, I knew there was no going back. It was a sick twist of fate that brought me here--it would have to take something unimaginable to send me back.
I toss my half-eaten bread into the fire, watch as it is enveloped by flames and slowly withers away.
"Is impossible."
My voice wavers in the way that makes me feel weak; I turn and head out of the camp. The forest here is thick, but from the change of terrain--I can tell that we have left the mountains. There are wildflowers around us, and in any other situation I would have been pleased with the scenery. Now, I am only pained.
I sit in the flowers, watching as bees buzz around to pollinate the landscape.
Lost in my own self-pity, I don't hear Tristan walking up to me until he sits across from me, the flowers crushing under his muscular frame. Leaning in, he catches a strand of hair. "You are mine and I will protect you."
In theory, the words are sweet. But, I think back to his actions--to his relishing in the agony of others and his own. I don't believe I will ever be safe, not with Tristan and definitely not from him.
Shaking, I pull back away from him--my hair slips from his fingertips. "And, to protect me from you?"
Those words tickle him, as the wolfish grin of his spreads across his face indicates. My eyes snare on his facial tattoos as his body leans in to follow my own.
"You are mine." The statement is possessive: an order, a threat, a compliment all wrapped into one.
"Why?"
I want to know--need to know why he is so intent on keeping me. Tristan's stare at me becomes blank, as if he doesn't understand my question. The silence is heavy.
"Why do you keep me? Am I not trouble to you, the way you haul me around this place? Why not kill me, allow me to drown? Wouldn't it be easier. Tell me why. Why, Tristan!"
I realize that I am so wrapped up in my panic that I am yelling this in English, but Tristan seems to understand my meaning, my tone, as he leans in to grab my throat gently. The knight's dark eyes are steady as he looks down at me.
"I like having you."
The panic at his threatening touch, the words he has just spoken to me, pulse through my body. I am reminded of his ruthless actions, the blood from the beheading soaking into my skin, the brutal way in which he didn't even think twice about taking me.
This knight that leaves for hours only to come back drenched in blood, a wicked gleam in his eyes.
It becomes overwhelming. I am no one's to have. To have is to own, it means I am an object--I am expendable. One day, this knight will tire of me and I will be disposed of as thoughtlessly as he claimed me.
With that realization in my mind, I run.
I don't hear or feel or smell, I just run. My vision has become pins as I dodge boulders and creeks, tree limbs that seem to reach in my direction. There are no thoughts in my head. I don't know where I intend to go or how I intend on surviving, all I know is that I have to put space between myself and Tristan.
In the end it is pointless. The stitch in my side forces me to slow down, and when I do I am yanked into the side of a strong body.
My arms are twisted behind me.
"eiddof fi," Mine.
"No. I never will be." My breathless voice hangs in the air, not as strong as I intended--but the words themselves cause a scowl to shadow the knight's face.
"You are mine, Julietta." he growls, taking me by my long locks. I am forced to look at his face, my head wretched back by the pulling of his fingers. His stare moves from my eyes, to my lips.
This man has never kissed me, but as we stand suspended in time I know that he is going to now.
