11 comments/ 14204 views/ 3 favorites Matching Day By: SmallTownPrincess Girls spend their entire lives looking forward to the fateful Matching Day - and whether or not they will admit it, boys, too, have at least a healthy curiosity. It's so reassuring, knowing that in your eighteenth year, you and your age-mates will be paired off, brought together with another from their own community or a surrounding one that match them perfectly. No song-and-dance dating rituals, like the ones in the books Lenei liked to read, no old maids, no riotous bachelors; just simple, comforting compatibility. "Have you heard?" The hushed, conspiratorial tones issued from the pink-lacquered lips of Lenei's best friend, Miska. "What?" Lenei's low-pitched voice always made her sound disinterested, but she paid close attention to Miska when her friend sounded this urgent. "There was a big accident over in Micrague. One guy died!" "Oh, that's terrible," Lenei murmured, letting her eyelashes drop and rise again to half-mast in a brief show of empathy. It was all she had time for, as Miska leaned suddenly, ever more urgently forward, gripping Lenei's arm in both hands. "That's not the worst thing," she rolled on. "The guy who was killed? He just turned eighteen. That makes the numbers for tomorrow's Matching uneven!" Two full breaths, painful to the impatient Miska, passed before Lenei spoke in response. "So, what, someone won't be paired? A girl will be left without her match?" "Whoever matched with him will have no pair on Matching Day," Miska proclaimed ominously. Her eyes were wide and glittering with morbid excitement. "What do they do about that?" It was unheard of, as far as Lenei knew; there were always even numbers, always a perfect match for everyone. Miska gave an exaggerated shrug. "Maybe she'll never be matched." Lenei was surprised into laughter. "They can't leave her without a match forever," she said with certainty. "Maybe they'll search out another community for someone that fits even better than that poor boy who died." Her reassuring confidence sent Miska, humming, away to terrify someone else with proclamations of an eternity alone for some poor girl. The thought nagged at Lenei for the rest of the afternoon, though. What if he was matched with me? *** "Verin Massada," the stern voice called from the central platform, and a stick-thin brunette drifted toward the three steps that lifted her above the circle of impatient teenagers. "Philip Pressia." The broad-shouldered redhead that stepped up to take Verin's hand smirked and bowed at the polite smattering of applause that ushered the happy new couple off the stage. Lenei smiled approvingly; Verin needed a little more humor in her life. Lenei watched each girl she'd grown up with walk back into the circle, shyly clutching the hand of her new mate, and twisted her skirt nervously in her fingers. It seemed forever before the 'R's were called, and the wad of boys brought in from all the different communities steadily shrank. She met the clear grey eyes of one of the remaining boys as Clanley Ritchell was met by a generic-looking, dark-haired boy, and she thought fleetingly, I hope I'm matched with him. He seemed to be thinking the same thing; his face fell a little when he was called up to greet a willowy blond on the dais. "Danica Soress," the voice demanded, and Lenei stood a little straighter with a sharp intake of breath. Had she been skipped? All the vague, incoherent fears that had accompanied Miska's morbid pronouncement coursed through Lenei, charged with shame as some girls recognized the omission and turned to look at her with expressions of varying pity. Lenei felt on the edge of tears. She saw the blond - that wretched Salvia - pull the grey-eyed boy down to whisper cruelly in his ear and point in Lenei's direction, and she contemplated melting into the dirt. With the blood roaring loudly in her ears, she heard no other names called, and stared fixedly at a nondescript blade of grass in front of her to avoid the glances that were flickering toward her. How can this be? she thought frantically. How can I not have a match? "Lenei, what's going on?" Miska's face held ghoulish curiosity with only an edge of concern for her friend, and Lenei couldn't deal with her. She turned without a word and marched to the fountain a good distance away from the platform. People were breaking off now, finding secluded spots to get to know this person with whom they'd be partnered forever. Lenei, wrapping her arms tightly around her gut, had never felt so alone. How could she have lost a lifetime of companionship without ever tasting it? It was too, too cruel. What right did that boy have to take away everything in one fell swoop? How could he die? She wanted to shake her fist at the heavens, demand an explanation, but she just trailed her fingers through the rippling water in the fountain basin, swallowing hard against the wave of emotions that threatened to show itself grotesquely in her features. "His name was Bracken, if that helps," said a voice behind her, and she jumped, throwing water onto her dress. She turned to see that grey-eyed boy approaching, and she prepared herself for the humiliation she was sure to experience at his hands; he had, after all, been matched like everyone else, and she was alone - possibly forever. He did not mock her, though; his eyes held the soft, cautious understanding of someone who pitied another, but was not sure whether that person desired sympathy or not. When she said nothing, he shrugged self-consciously. "Sorry, I realize you might not have wanted to know. I just...he was my best friend. I thought if you did want to know about him...I'd at least let you know who you could ask." A flood of gratitude made it temporarily impossible for her to speak, and then she forced a smile. "I think I'd like to know," she said hesitantly. She wasn't sure; would it be better to know nothing about what she'd never have, or to at least have pleasant thoughts about what could've been? "Can I ask you something now?" "Absolutely." "Would I have liked him?" The boy nodded. "I think so. He was quiet at first...it took a while to get to know him. But once you did, there was no one you trusted more." He added, with the hesitation of an afterthought but the seriousness of something he'd intended to say all along, "Seeing you here, there's no doubt that he would have liked you." He gave Lenei one last smile and lay his hand over hers for a moment, ignoring the water droplets that sat on it like dew. For a warm second, she felt a rush of what it might have been like to have someone get to know her intimately over a lifetime, to love and understand her and for her to love back, and then the grey-eyed boy was walking with wide strides back to Salvia, and nothing but a hollow sadness remained beneath her breastbone. *** Lenei hated them. All of them. The girls with their softly rolling curls, teased and coached for hours in order to look casually delicate when the boys, their shirts tucked in and their shoes shined, arrived at their doorsteps carrying one or two or twenty flowers in one hand and a shining invitation in the other. They walked with springing steps the short distance to the gathering hall in the center of town, hand in hand or arm in arm, and Lenei wanted to throw rocks at the whole lot of them. She had been invited, sort of, to join in on the festivities. The community officials, not sure what to do with the first single person over eighteen in a century, had hesitantly allowed for her participation in all the new couples' activities; so far, she had partaken in none of them. Desperately, she wanted to be a part of the revelry, but she could not force herself to walk into the rooms full of happy girls and their happy boys, and have nothing herself. Her mother, unable to comfort her, had begged her to go to the dance. It was the last night before all the boys would be returning to their own communities, taking their matches with them. It was the last night she would seek Miska, who had paired with a boy from Onek. And she'd tried: she'd gotten dressed, piled her hair up on top of her head and pulled her elbow-length gloves on, but nothing could motivate her to step outside her house as streams of giggling lovebirds trickled by on the way to the hall. "Go, Lenei," her mother said, coming up behind her with a basket of laundry on her hip. "You should at least go long enough to say goodbye to Miska." "I can't, Mama. Think of how they'll look at me!" Her mother bent Lenei's head down to kiss her on the forehead. "It's not your fault, Neinei, and they know that. They feel bad for you. They all want to see you. The world didn't end when that poor boy died." "Bracken," Lenei said defiantly. Her mother had refused to say his name, insisting that it was better for Lenei to know nothing about what she had lost. Patting her daughter's shoulder, she adjusted her basket and turned to leave. "Go." Lenei had retreated around the side of the gathering hall, standing just outside the golden pool of light that poured like honey from the windows. Sobs caught in her throat and were choked down, unvoiced, as she watched Miska and Verin and Danica and dozens of others receive chaste pecks from shy boys as they spun by in their brightly-colored dresses, waving fluted, bubbling glasses and laughing with abandon. And there, the grey-eyed boy, Bracken's best friend, was seated quietly with his hands folded in his lap, listening politely to an enthusiastic rendition of some trivial event or another by Salvia; it was always easy to tell when she was excited about something, as her arms pinwheeled and hands fluttered with no thought to how the gestures went along with the story. He glanced up, and his eyes met, for a moment, Lenei's. He looked surprised to see her there, and then a bit sad, and then his gaze drifted back to Salvia, who had grabbed his knee in her earnestness. This infinitesimal rejection, the refusal to even meet her eyes for more than a moment, pushed Lenei over the edge. Tears, burning like acid, washed over her face, and she stumbled away from the window, crying with pitiful lack of restraint. She staggered into the sparse forest, the trees providing scattered shelter from curious eyes, if any should choose to drift away from the golden party, and the darkness of the night fit her mood, a strangely soothing thought. "Are you alright?" For the second time, the grey-eyed boy's voice jolted her out of her own misery. She would not face him; not now, when her eyes were puffy and irritated, her nose red and her face streaked with dirty tear tracks. He would see her and compare her to Salvia, and she would fall short; she could not handle right now seeing him weigh her that way and find her lacking. His hand on her back was another surprise, and then both his hands weighing down on her shoulders as he stepped closer behind her. "Hey," he said gently. "Everything will turn out fine. Maybe...maybe you'll find someone better than Bracken could have been for you." She forgot her resolution not to face him then, turning toward him with her eyes narrowed to angry slits. "How could I, when everyone is paired already? Besides, I had my chance - he just managed to get himself killed before I could even meet him!" The words came out much harsher than she intended, and the young man in front of her actually took a step back from her ferocity, hunching like she'd landed a blow to his gut. "I'm sorry," she said immediately, automatically. "I shouldn't have said that. He was your friend..." "It's alright," he said, giving her a ghost of a smile and waving his hand with a nonchalance that didn't show in his eyes. He had that gentle look of quiet appreciation of life that came to some people who lost loved ones, but knew that lost friend would be offended if they did not continue to smile. "I know it's probably really hard on you, seeing everyone so...happy." He trailed off, not looking happy in the least. "Speaking of happy people, shouldn't you be in there with Salvia?" His face took on the contemplative expression of someone deciding how to phrase something delicately. "Salvia...she's not quite what I expected to find, on my Matching Day. She's..." "Lively?" Lenei suggested. "Brazen? Exuberant?" "--obnoxious," the grey-eyed boy said decisively. "I don't like her at all." Lenei smirked. "Well, you have to like her. She's your match. You love her." He shook his head. "No," he said quietly. "I don't." "But she's your perfect match," Lenei insisted. "But what if she's not?" Lenei heard her heart beat twice before she asked, "What?" "What if Salvia is not the perfect girl for me? What if the girl that I would love more than anyone else in the world couldn't be matched with me because...there was someone else our age who she would like a little bit better?" "That doesn't even make sense," Lenei said, shaking her head. "The matches have always been perfect: even numbers, complete compatibility--" "--but this time they messed up, right? I mean, you should know. You're the person who's affected more than anyone else." "Well, yes, but--" "So why isn't it possible that they aren't right on everything else? What if they didn't match this girl with me because she would love this other guy more?" "Well, so, maybe they did. But if you would love her so much, surely you would want to see her happy, with the man she was meant to be with...right?" "Yes," he said, very seriously. "I would want to see her happy." "Then you should leave her in peace with the person she was matched with, and focus on learning to love the girl you were paired with." The interminable silence stretched between them as the grey-eyed boy stared down at the leafy ground and Lenei watched the way his hair blew across his forehead in the breeze. At last he said, "What if she wasn't matched with anyone?" Lenei's heart sped up, beating double time as she realized what he'd been saying all along, what she'd been too dim to put together until he'd spelled it out. "But you are matched," she said numbly. "Salvia has you." He leaned dangerously far forward, his lips brushing her ear as he whispered into it, "I don't want Salvia." Lenei shrank back, confused. These were dangerous words he uttered, dangerous thoughts. People were matched with the people they were meant to be with. How could there be any other way? They couldn't be wrong; there'd been no divorce, no infidelity, no broken hearts in the decades people had been paired this way. Surely it was the right way. It had to be. "I don't even know your name," Lenei said resolutely, as though that settled the matter and proved him wrong. She pushed against his chest to force him back, feeling the blazing heat of his heart under her palm. "It's Mason," he said quietly, and his words had the sound of discussion-ending power to them too. Lenei was conscious of the fact that she had not moved her hand from his chest; her fingers curled slightly, enjoying the silky feeling of his shirt over his skin, and the warmth that radiated from his flesh. "Go back to Salvia, Mason," she whispered. She realized she was shaking from head to toe, and not from cold. Here was everything she had ever wanted, everything she had imagined when she thought of her Matching Day, but he was not hers. "Please, go back to the party." With a sigh, Mason touched her cheek briefly, the lightest of butterfly wing contacts, and then he turned and vanished into the night, not toward the party, but deeper into the forest. Lenei stood for a long time without moving, her mind racing and her heart pounding like a runner's feet, and then she walked, slowly, directly away from Mason. *** "You didn't come to the party last night," Miska said, breaking the silence that stood like frosted glass between her and Lenei. "No." Lenei had gotten no sleep the night before; lying in bed, replaying continually the frightening moments with Mason, her heart had never slowed. "Well, I just wanted to say goodbye..." Miska twisted her hands for a moment before wrapping Lenei up in a warm and desperate hug. "I'm sorry, Lenny. I'm going to miss you so much." The tension between them melted, and Lenei returned the hug tightly, sighing. "It's hard to believe I'll never see any of you again - all the girls I've known all my life! Except for Maize and Crista...they're the only ones who matched with boys from here, right? And I don't really even know them." "Well, you'll see Salvia too, for a little while." Breathe in. Breathe out. "Why's that?" "Oh, that fellow she paired with - Mason, isn't it? - his parents have some sort of huge wedding ceremony planned, and they've got a house mostly built for the two of them. They told him to stay here a while, get to know his partner's family for a bit, let her spend some more time with them, and then head back once the house and all the plans were done." Wedding were an extravagance, a luxury that most people went without, especially if they didn't have the means to make it a massive event. The fact that Mason's family was going to such lengths meant they must be well off indeed. "So Mason...and Salvia...will be around for a while?" "Yeah, at least a month, I'd say." A buzzing numbness in her extremities made it difficult for Lenei to respond. She had thought Mason would be gone today, that she'd never have to see him and Salvia together again. But they would be here for a month... "Speak of the devil," Miska said cheerfully, skipping over to greet Salvia as she pranced up the path with Mason's hand gripped in her own vice-like claw. The dark circles under his eyes said that he, too, had had a night with little sleep. "Good morning, Miska, Lenei," he said politely, giving each of them a little nod. His eyes lingered on Lenei, though, and she found herself blushing and rushing to hug Miska goodbye again and begging for many letters describing life in Onek in great detail. But then Miska left, and Salvia, Mason and Lenei were left standing in an awkwardly isosceles triangle. "So..." Lenei said at length, rocking back and forth in her slippers. "How was the party last night?" Salvia's face split into a smug smile, and her eyes flickered over Mason possessively. "It was great fun, of course. Although I preferred what happened afterward." Her voice held a torte of suggestive layers, and Lenei felt a little sick as she pictured Mason cornering a coy Salvia, taking out his frustration at Lenei's denial in an aggressive, passionate-- "For heaven's sake, Sal," Mason said, sounding irritated, "I wish you would stop talking like that. You know nothing happened after the dance. All I did was walk you home!" Salvia flushed brilliant crimson, her smile sliding off as if greased. "Mason!" she hissed, but he rolled on, unperturbed. "And what are you trying to prove to Lenei, anyway? It's not like you can have some sick competition going with her, like you do with Danica and that twit she paired." Lenei thought, for a moment, that Salvia was going to slap him, but instead she stormed away, her face schooling itself into a grin again as she spotted Verin coming up the way with her redheaded match, who was carrying a good chunk of her possessions on his back. "If she tells one more person what a great time she had 'after the party,' I swear..." Mason muttered, just loud enough for Lenei to hear. She suppressed a giggle; it wasn't that she wished ill on Salvia, really, but it was nice to see the girl taken down a peg or two...especially by Mason. "Have you thought at all about what I said last night?" Mason asked quietly. Matching Day Lenei tried to look less haggard as she answered, "We settled it, didn't we? You belong to Salvia." Mason grunted, looking insufferably unhappy. "I'm meant to be with you, I think," he said abruptly. "How could you possibly know? How could anyone possibly know they were meant for someone without knowing anything about them?" "Ha!" Mason said triumphantly. "That's what everyone's doing anyway, isn't it? Aren't they all just assuming that they're meant to be together without knowing anything about each other, just because the community leaders say they are?" "Mason, stop," Lenei said firmly, shaking her head. "Don't you realize that this is what our society is built on? I think you're just being lazy, not even trying to get to know Salvia." "Have you met her?" Mason's strained question revealed his frustration. "She's...she's awful! She parades me around like a - gods, like a show dog - and constantly makes these ridiculously shady comments about our 'evening activities,' as she likes to call them -- the girl's determined to get me decapitated by her war axe of a father!" "You know, it's not unheard of for matches to..." Mason's scowl made her trail off. "Don't even suggest it. We are going to have an actual wedding, after all," he said sulkily. "You'd think she could at least wait that long." Lenei giggled at the absurdity of it. "You are concerned about her impatience for--" "--She's got a running bet with several other girls about how quickly she can tempt me! They're all competing, like it's some sort of game or something. Well, she's figured out by now that I'm more tempted to run like hell back to Micrague than..." He didn't need to finish the sentence. "Then why haven't you?" Lenei asked quietly. "Because there is a girl here in Treston that does tempt me," he said, sliding a little closer to her without appearing to move at all. Lenei's eyes darted back toward Salvia, but the girl was obliviously half-shouting in her eagerness to say goodbye to all the girls who would be leaving. "Mason..." "Meet me tonight, Lenei." "What?!" "Please, Lenei." "I can't!" "Why not?" "It's just...it's not done! It's not right." "It's also not right to leave a dazzlingly beautiful, possibly perfect girl alone for life, but they've done that, haven't they?" "Mason!" Salvia's brutally nasal voice broke into the steadily intensifying argument with the delicacy of a hammer, and she swooped in between Mason and Lenei with calculated accuracy. "Come on, we've got brunch with Tevia and Bryce this morning before they leave, or don't you remember? Goodbye, Lenei." As he was steered away, Mason shot one last pleading look at Lenei, who shook her head slightly. She could not meet him, not tonight, not ever. He was not hers; she told herself that repeatedly, never letting the words slip from her mind. If she did, even for a minute, and she allowed herself to believe that he could fill the void that Bracken had left, she would find herself drawn to him, wherever he was. She hoped the repetition of that thought would be enough. *** "Gimme'nother'un, Sally," Lenei slurred, grabbing the glass away from Salvia, who was chatting with the other girls who had not left that morning and trying to pretend that Lenei was not there. "Get your own!" Salvia objected, jerking the glass back hard enough to slosh it on her dress. She and the other girls laughed uproariously, as though this was the best joke in the world. Lenei was not as drunk as they all believed she was, but she made a good show of it; she had found that, when people believed she was totally inebriated, they tended to speak as though she was not there. She could sit apart from the group and observe the social undercurrents beneath the surface of this small fireside gathering. The boys were seated largely separate from the girls, who whispered theatrically everything they did not shout, and who screamed with laughter at every other word or so. Lenei watched the way Maize's blond boy hovered just behind her, talking to the guys but turned a little to the side so that he would immediately know if she needed anything; he was already besotted. The other boys kept a watchful eye over the group of girls, but seemed more intimidated by the giggling gaggle than enamored of them. Mason sat at the back of the group of guys, shrouded in flickering shadows, as far from Salvia as he could get. He had been nursing the same drink since the party had begun, and had drunk maybe two sips, as far as Lenei knew, so he was certainly the least impaired of all of them. She stood and pretended to stagger, actually tripping in the process; she would have tumbled headlong into the fire had it not been for a fortuitous snag of her wrist by Maize's blond. "Thanks," she mumbled. She poured herself another tall glass of whatever Crista had brought and threw back a burning mouthful of it. "Hey, leave some for the rest of us, Lenaninny," Salvia drawled, smirking. "That's for celebration; don't take it all up with your pity party." "Shut it, Salvia," Lenei muttered, taking another drink. "I've got as much right to talk as you do! Maybe more...since I can actually contribute to society. What can you do? Matchless...childless...hell, maybe they'll give you a pet so you don't suicide." "That's enough," Lenei said with a little more heat, her generally slow anger bubbling up hotly in response to the burn of Salvia's words. "Tell us, what's it like to be without a match?" Salvia continued cruelly. "To know that you'll be totally alone for all eternity?" "Probably about what it feels like to know you'll be ugly and obnoxious for all eternity," Lenei replied nastily, her anger peaking. "That's pretty funny, coming from someone so unattractive that a guy actually killed himself so that he wouldn't have to be paired with her," Salvia retorted, sloshing her drink over both of the other girls with the intensity of her gestures. "And you think Mason is so thrilled to be your match?" Lenei cried. "He'd rather--" "--Hey! Calm down, both of you." Mason stepped between the two of them, hands raised in case the argument came to physical blows, which it might have, if Lenei had finished her sentence. "Why the hostility all of the sudden?" "She started it," Salvia said poutily, and Mason shook his head. "No, she didn't. Regardless, I'm finishing it. Somebody should take Lenei home." "Let her take herself home," Salvia hissed. "Maybe we'll get lucky and she'll impale herself on a tree branch or something." "Salvia, come on, break up the party. I'll walk you home," Mason said patiently. "No!" she whined. "I'm having fun. You just sit back down and have yourself another drink. You're clearly not having a good enough time." Stone-faced, Mason watched her flounce back to the fireside, flanked by Maize and Crista, and then he turned to Lenei. "You want to go home?" he asked brusquely. She nodded, consenting to being led along the tree line back toward her house. How he knew where she lived, she had no idea. When they were out of sight of the fire, Mason took her hand, and she responded with a faint smile, letting his warm fingers be a talisman against the cold night. "Lenei..." he began, but he seemed to rethink speaking as they took a few more steps side by side. "What?" she asked, and it was a long time before he answered with a question of his own. "What is it that you don't like about me?" "What?" she repeated. "Why don't you like the idea of being with me?" "Who said I don't?" "Well, you say you can't possibly be with me because I'm Salvia's match...but it can't just be Salvia, can it? I mean, it's not like the two of you are the greatest friends, based on that show back there." "You're...not mine," she said, repeating that mantra that had run like a hamster in a wheel through her mind all day long. "But I want to be." Lenei shook her head slowly, deliberately. She didn't even realize she had stopped in the middle of the forest, still clinging to his hand like a drowning person to a floating bit of flotsam. "You can't. They won't let you." "Who won't let me? Who's to say that I can't love any woman I want? Who on this earth has the right to tell me I can't be with you?" "Well...they do," Lenei replied vaguely, trying to concentrate on his words as he spoke too fast. Mason shook his head in fierce denial of the indistinct statement. "No. The only person who has the right to govern who I fall for is me, and I pick you." "Gods, Mason...do you even know what you're saying?" "I know what I want, and I know what I don't want. I don't care about society's norms or whatever it is that makes you so scared." "I'm not scared." "Then what are you?" "I respect the system." "The system has destroyed your life, Lenei." "What's better, then? Chaos?" "What's better is being able to choose. I would never, never have chosen Salvia. In a thousand lifetimes. But you?" "Why me, Mason?" "Because you're different! You're not just beautiful and sweet and quiet; you watch people, you notice things. You see the world a little differently than everyone else. You're above the pettiness of girls like Salvia." "Obviously not...I just let her get to me." "Yeah, well, you're drunk." "I'm not drunk!" "Gods, Lenei, of course you are. I saw you staggering around back there." "I am not," she maintained. Truly, she was barely buzzed, but Mason didn't seem to believe her. She wondered if he would try to take advantage of her apparently inebriated state, and decided he would not. "Would you be angry if I kissed you?" Or perhaps he would. "Would you kiss me if I didn't want you to?" she countered. "Do you really not want me to?" "You're Salvia's," Lenei said stubbornly, running those words through her mind again: He's not yours. "Lenei, for once, could you think with your heart and not with your head? What do you want?" "Mason..." "What do you want?" he insisted. She stared at him for a moment before sighing in defeat. "You," she muttered. His smile was triumphant. "Then I'm yours." "Salvia will never let you go that easily." "What Salvia doesn't know can't hurt her." "Mason, no! People would find out. Salvia would find out, and I don't know what the consequences would be for breaking a match, but I'm sure it wouldn't be pretty." "Then we'll get out of here! Come on, we'll leave tonight. Let's go somewhere where they've never heard of Matching Days. We'll find a place where people pick their own people to love and we'll settle there." "I can't leave, Mason. This is my home! And besides...do you even know if such a place exists? We could run through the wilderness for the rest of our lives and never find anything like that. We could die looking for it." "Then we'll stay," Mason said with a sigh. He studied Lenei seriously for several long minutes, his face serious. With a quick dart forward, he pressed his warm lips against hers, surprising her into a gasp with the suddenness of the contact. When she didn't immediately push him away, he stepped closer, running his hands down her arms from shoulder to wrist. She shivered and pulled back, her eyes wide. I can't kiss him, she thought frantically. It goes against everything...he's not mine...he's not mine...he's not-- His leaned forward again, catching her lips with his, and her train of thought was completely derailed. She was startled to find her own arms wrapping around his neck, drawing her closer to his warm body. His hands found her waist and lifted her so that she was standing tiptoe on his feet, putting her mouth level with his. It was him that broke away the second time, with a rueful grin. "Ah..." he groaned. "You're drunk..." She shook her head. "I'm not, I promise." He eyed her doubtfully. "Regardless, I should take you home," he sighed. "Salvia's probably wondering where I've wandered off to." "You're going back to her?" It shouldn't have bother Lenei, but after that kiss...the boundary lines had shifted, somehow; she felt she should have sole ownership of those lips. "For a while," he said, his smile seeming to suggest that he understood her thoughts. "Will you meet me tomorrow night? Here?" Lenei contemplated it for two fractions of a second, and then her heart spoke for her. "Yes." She felt like that one kiss had been a crucial moment, setting her feet on a path from which she could not stray. She had to meet him; fate demanded it. He walked her briskly to her back door and kissed her sweetly on the forehead in farewell before turning to jog back to the fireside gathering. "Wait, Mason?" Lenei called when he was almost out of hearing range. He turned and cocked his head to the side questioningly. "Don't kiss her like that, okay?" His face split into a pleasant grin. "Only you," he assured her, and then he melted into the darkness like the dream he was. *** One more step, Lenei told herself, Just one more step. He'll be on the other side of those trees. No one followed you, Lenei. No one knows you're meeting him. You can't be caught. Just take one more step, She took a step, and then another, forcing herself across the strip of scant foliage and sliding as quickly as she could back into the blessed anonymity of denser trees. Her heart, once speeding like a runner's, was now making sick, wet thumps in her chest; she was afraid she might be having a heart attack. Fear made every limb shake uncontrollably, and each breath quiver in her chest. Gods, I should not have come, she thought frantically. And then she saw him. He was looking up at the stars, his grey eyes luminous with their light, his hands shoved in his pockets as he took one deep, calm breath after another. Why wasn't he as nervous as she was? She shifted, and a twig snapped, bringing Mason's eyes down to earth. Perhaps he had been nervous after all, because when he picked out her face among the leaves, he let out a momentary sigh, his mouth sliding into a smile of relief. "You came," he breathed, extending a hand toward her, beckoning for her to come out of the trees. Lenei nodded, glancing in every direction at once as she slipped out of hiding cautiously. "I was afraid you wouldn't." He took her hand when she was close enough. "Are you alright?" She was panting with the effort not to run. What if someone came upon them? What if they were discovered, here, together? It had been bad enough when she thought she might be caught sneaking out of her window in the middle of the night, dressed like it was daytime, or skulking through the woods on her own; if they saw her with Sylvia's match--! "Hey," he said gently, kissing her softly on the forehead. "It's alright, I promise. No one will find us. No one will ever know anything about this." "How can you know that?" "Whatever happens, Lenei, I promise you'll be safe. I won't let anything happen to you." She wanted to laugh at the words, at the hollow promise that he could not hope to keep, but he enfolded her in warm, unyieldingly strong arms, and she felt safer than she had all night. He tried to comfort her, kissing her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, but she still stood stiffly in his arms, trembling all over. "Here, come here," Mason murmured, sitting down on the leafy ground and pulling her down next to him. He tucked her against his side, wrapping an arm around her waist and shifting his shoulder so that she could comfortably lay her head on it, if she chose to; she did. "Why did you ask me to meet you here, Mason?" she whispered. "I've told you...I think we're meant to be together. And I wanted to be able to talk to you without, you know, the entire community looking sideways at us. Or Salvia's interruptions." "So you just wanted to talk?" Lenei's mind flickered back to that fate-altering kiss the night before, the experience that had made her jittery all day, wondering what another nightfall would bring. Mason laughed quietly. "As reluctant as you were to meet me here at all, I figured I wouldn't push my luck," he said, flicking a mischievous grin down at her. "A kiss might not be totally out of the question," Lenei said after a pause. "Your wish is my command." *** "So, tell me about your family, Mason," Lenei said, tracing the lines of his palm with one finger. How long had they been out there? Although it felt like she'd been with Mason for only a few minutes, at most, she was deathly afraid that dawn would break soon, and they would have to part ways, sneaking back into their respective beds. "Oh, they're nothing special," he said with a shrug. "My father's done pretty well for us with inter-community trade, and my mother's a self-proclaimed busybody. I have two little sisters who must hate me, for all the grief they cause me, and a cat that only eats because I ask him to every day." Lenei sympathized with the cat; she would follow Mason to the ends of the earth, if he asked her to and really meant it. She wouldn't tell him that, though. He still believed that the answer to all their problems was to run off into the wilderness and never look back. "They must love you a lot, to plan a big wedding for you - and build you a house! My father expected my match to do that with his own two hands." "Nah...they mostly just like being a spectacle in town, and a big wedding's the best way to ensure that everyone's talking about you. As for the house, I'd rather build it myself, honestly. I feel like a child with them paving the way for me like this." "I'll bet Salvia's bragging to everyone who'll listen about her fairy-tale wedding and big stone house - at eighteen!" Mason shrugged, looking stormy. "She keeps asking me when we can have our first baby boy. A baby? I'm not ready for a baby. I could go another decade before I would even think about having kids. I'll be nineteen when we get married, for gods' sake." "Nineteen?" "I barely missed the cutoff for the last age group, so I think I'm probably the oldest in ours." A chill wind snuck down Lenei's collar, and she shuddered, enjoying Mason's immediate response of wrapping his arms around her and pulling her back up against his chest. She could get used to being held that way. She lay her head back against his shoulder, and he sighed happily. "Mason?" "Hmm?" "Do you still intend to marry her?" He shook his head, tousling her hair where his chin rested on it. "That big house will be ours - yours and mine - or they can give it to one of my sisters, for all I care. All I want is you." The chuckling scream of an owl broke the silence of the night, foreboding as the lustrous moon lay silver-lined shadows over the pair. "What are we going to do, Mason?" "What do you mean?" "What are you we going to do? I mean, you're supposed to get married in a month, to Salvia, and I'm supposed to spend the rest of my life unhappy and alone. People are going to notice if either of those things don't happen." "We could tell them that I prefer you to Salvia..." Mason said doubtfully, and Lenei didn't even bother to reply. That was clearly not an option. "Or we could run, like I said originally." "There's nowhere to run," Lenei murmured. "Then, I suppose, this is our only option." "What is?" "This. Meetings, like this." "What, you mean you want to keep meeting me in secret like this?" "Sure, why not?" "Won't someone in Salvia's house notice that you sneak out every night?" Mason was living with Salvia's family until his own house was built in Micrague, but, to Salvia's dismay, he was not taking advantage of sleeping just down the hall from her. Matching Day "Probably not, and even if they do, I told them the very first day I went home with her that sometimes I preferred to sleep outside, under the stars." He chuckled. "They probably think I'm quite odd, but it really is nice, sometimes, to just lay out here and look up at them." Lenei snuggled closer to him and followed his eyes up to the dancing points of light in the rich blue-violet night. "But then, what happens next month, when your family send word for you to come home with her?" "Hmm...the guys from Micrague probably don't remember what my match looked like, and you could answer to Salvia for the rest of your life..." "But the girls who matched those boys would know I didn't match you. They'll definitely remember that I was the one who ended up with no one to love but a dead boy I never met." "Gods, Lenei, I don't know," he said, sounding frustrated. "What do you want me to say? That this can only go on until I'm called home?" "Can't it?" "Maybe it'll have to stop when I'm called home," he said, then shook his head fiercely. "No. No, one way or another, I'm going to marry you someday, Lenei Russing." Hearing her last name from his lips sent a jolt of reality through her system. "I don't know your last name, Mason," she said, eyes still fixed on the glittering treasure of the heavens. "It's Griersley. Don't let that be the deciding point against me when you're deciding whether or not you want to marry me," he said with a grin. "It's not bad." "S'bad enough." "But I still don't know you well enough to say that I love you, Mr. Griersley," she said, grinning a little herself. "For all I know, you could be an axe murderer." "Well, you've been alone with me for hours now. Have you seen any signs that I'm going to be a danger to you?" She giggled, then settled into seriousness. "No, I don't think you would hurt me." He was still in a silly mood, grabbing her lightly around the neck and cackling evilly. "Now I've got you, princess!" he said in a nasal, grating voice. "You only thought I asked you here because I'm falling for you. In fact, I'm a hideous villain, bent on killing the loveliest and most brilliant girls in every community. You're my next victim!" Lenei laughed, twisting to kiss him again. It felt more natural every time their lips met; after hours of it, she felt like she'd been born to kiss him. Dawn bleached the horizon and made the trees stand like motionless skeletons. Lenei savored the taste of Mason's lips on hers as she clambered back into bed, wishing her quilt-shrouded mattress was half as comfortable as his arms. With the promise of seeing him again that night, having him all to herself for hours and hours, she could make it through another day. She just wished night would come a little sooner. *** There were moments, in the next few weeks, that made Lenei wonder if the gods were making up for tormenting her with Bracken's death by saturating every moment with exhilarating euphoria. -- Mason, his face glowing with the radiance of the simple joy her presence brought him, danced with her in the moon's spotlight, humming a song he made up on the spot, her twirling feet sending leaves spinning all around them and making the breeze whirl and seethe with jealousy. His teeth stood like pearly bits of star against his tan skin as he laughed, dipping her low enough that her hair brushed the dirt forest floor, then bringing her lightly back to her feet with an easy, undemanding kiss. -- Combing his fingers through her hair, he poured nonsense pieces of poetry into the night, laughing occasionally at a particularly horrible rhyme, calling for her to contribute as well. But she wouldn't interrupt the uninhibited rhythm of his deep, pleasant voice; she let his words roll pleasantly over her soul while his fingers did the same to her scalp. -- Electricity lanced the night as their lips mimicked each other's shape, and each of them drew life from the other's wholehearted ardor. -- Lenei whispered, "I do, after all." "Do what?" "Love you." -- Mason wrapped around her, keeping her warm as her discarded clothes could not. His lips were drawing a lazy line of kisses from her forehead down her nose, over her lips and onto her neck. He sucked gently at the spot where her neck ended and shoulder began, then dusted kisses across her collarbones. His hands ran lightly along her sides, fingers brushing her skin from breasts to hips and back again. She brushed her fingers through his hair, tugged on it in a mute request for him to make his way back to her mouth and kiss her as he had been for weeks, but his mouth was quite busy venturing to previously unexplored territory. Mason's lips pressed against her sternum, and the softness just above her belly button, and then the softness just below. He shifted back onto his heels so he could more easily massage his way down her thighs and to her knees. Hungrily, he eyed her body. "Mason?" She could barely manage the breath to whisper his name. Something was making her chest tight, making it hard to bring in air; she realized after a moment that it was fear. That was the thing with Mason -- he frightened her. Not because he would ever hurt her, but because he looked at life and asked for more than he was given. He pushed boundaries. His fingers were testing her boundaries now, working their way back up the inside of her legs and finding the intersection of her legs. He bent low, kissing her thigh just south of where his fingers rested, and his breath was both hot and cold on her body. It made her suddenly aware of a dampness there she did not recognize. "Mason," she said again, more forcefully this time, and his eyes met hers. "Yes?" She licked her lips, trembling as he continued to breathe on her slick folds. "Are you planning to do what I think you're planning to do?" "Only if you want it," Mason replied. He stared up at her for at least a minute before she realized she was meant to respond positively or negatively, but she had no answer. How could she think with his mouth practically pressed to her lips there? "Lenei? Do you want to?" "I..." She observed the tenderness with which he was stroking her thigh, and melted a bit. "Yes. Please." Mason grinned. He leaned in just a bit closer and touched his lips to her, then slid his tongue between her folds, trailing it up to the nub of her clitoris -- she gasped and tried to keep from shuddering, not wanting to break the contact -- and then down until he circled her slit. His eyes sought hers, looking for approval; he must have seen it in her face, because he began to move his tongue in earnest, sliding it up and down, then delving into her opening as deeply as he could. Lenei squeezed her eyes shut to concentrate on the feelings, but the intensity gave her a sense of vertigo so intense she almost felt herself sliding along the forest floor, as though the world had tipped off its axis. She clutched at Mason's shoulders to steady herself, digging her nails in harder than she realized. As Mason's warm mouth moved against her most sensitive places, she began to feel something completely new. It was a need she had never experienced before, an urgent and desperate desire so foreign that she could hardly guess how to fulfill it. She would have thought that Mason's current activity would relieve it somehow, but it was only sharpening the edge on her hunger. "Mason, I need--" she started. She wasn't sure how to finish. Mason stopped immediately, sensing her distress, sitting up and wiping his mouth. "What? What do you need?" "I don't...know." She spoke quietly, distractedly. When Mason sat up, he revealed the entirety of his nude form, and Lenei found her attention drawn to his sizable manhood, standing at attention. She stared, beginning to get an idea of what it was she needed. Picking up on her thoughts as though she was speaking them aloud, Mason abandoned his eager, if inexperienced, efforts to please her with his mouth and bent to press his body against hers again. He held himself just far enough off her that his weight would not oppress her, but the full length of his feverishly warm body covered hers, and the full length of his member pressed against her mound, pulsing slightly with each heart beat. Slowly, painfully slowly, Mason slid his hips down, pulling his penis down her body until the head rested just where her lower lips parted, and then gravity and her own moisture pulled it the rest of the way. It came to rest just where it belonged, against her opening. "Is this what you want?" Mason asked. With his mouth on her throat as it was, she felt more than heard his words. She nodded, eyes closed. "Yes." There was really no pain. Lenei was surprised; she had heard from other girls that it was quite unpleasant the first time, sometimes even traumatic, but perhaps they had not had such tender first lovers, or perhaps they had not been so achingly, drenchedly eager to have their lover inside them. Lenei hadn't even been aware of how badly she wanted Mason within her until he was, and all her tension drained out of her with a long sigh. "It's perfect," she said, marveling at the fit of him in her. They were made for each other. For many long minutes they were motionless, sharing each other -- they were no longer two people, but a single entity, joined intimately. "I'm yours, Lenei." Mason's voice was husky, and Lenei saw that it was costing him something to remain still, not to just claim her from the inside out; she saw also in the way he wrapped his arms tightly around her and squeezed as if he would never let go that he was happy to remain frozen in place and share the moment, happy even as he strained for more. "And I'm yours. Take me, Mason." And he did. Eventually they fell asleep, still connected, and didn't wake until larks' songs began to break the stillness of the air with the dawn. *** Just when she thought nothing could be more perfect, more beautiful, the gods realized their carelessness in letting too much rapture concentrate in just two small hearts, and they began to set things back to rights. Lenei picked her way through the now-familiar path from her house to their meeting place in the trees, stepping lightly over fallen branches and dodging snags and thorns with ease. She'd sat at her window all afternoon, watching the sun in its path, wishing it haste as it progressed toward the horizon. Her mother wondered what had gotten into her, but didn't mourn the change. It had been painful to see her daughter in such misery after Matching Day. Just a little ways now, she thought cheerfully, wanting to whistle but deciding that would be imprudent. The fear of what they were doing didn't eat at her anymore, and she could almost forget, in the flawless moments with Mason, that there was anything wrong in what they did. When she saw Salvia, her face did not burn with blood, as it did at the beginning, and she did not hunch her shoulders against imagined accusations as she crossed the town now. At the very moment it always seemed she had been walking too far, that she must have passed the clearing completely and needed to turn around, she saw Mason. He was standing much as he had been the first night they'd met here, his hands balled into fists in his pockets, his eyes on the sky, standing in what she now recognized was his tensest stance, directly in the center of the clearing. He was wholly illuminated by a moon that approached full, and she could see the glistening tracks of tears on both cheeks, the slightest quiver to his bottom lip. Pain spiked just beneath her breastbone as she wondered distressedly what had upset him. "Mason?" she called, tumbling out of the trees and into his arms. He barely caught her as she tripped over the undergrowth, landing ungracefully against his chest, and when she looked up into his face, she had never seen such despair. "You came," he said brokenly. "I hoped you wouldn't." "What?" Rustling footsteps all around them told of the presence of others, and Mason's hands tightened on her upper arms as if he could somehow squeeze her out of sight. Lenei's head swiveled frantically from side to side as she tried to see each face as they appeared, grimacing, out of the shadows; at the front of them all, she saw Salvia's triumphant countenance. And Mason's eyes never left hers, never stopped pleading with her to forgive him for asking her to meet him the very first time. She had the horrible, world-shaking, vomit-inducing thought that, perhaps, he had tired of her and betrayed her. Her eyes begged his to assure her that this could never be true, but there was too much self-condemnation in their greyness for her to be sure. *** "You have broken a match, you and Miss Lenei Russing, who was unmatched and took it upon herself to tear apart two compatible souls" "Lenei did not take it upon herself," Mason interjected. "I convinced her. I persuaded her to meet me there." "Regardless, she took part in the breaking." "No, no, none of it was her fault. Aren't you listening to me? She didn't intend to do anything wrong. If anyone deserves any sort of punishment, it's me. I knew full well what the consequences would be if I were caught, and I chose to do it anyway." "Did you ever stop to consider your matched pair? Salvia?" "Salvia and I were never compatible. Never. You must have made a mistake--" "We do not make mistakes! We are the Matching Council. We know what is best for the community, and it's self-important children like you that sow dissension." "You made at least one mistake, didn't you? Or did you forget so easily that you left Lenei without a match?" "Her situation was unfortunate, but not the fault of the Matching Council. If anyone should be blamed, it's the elders of Micrague for allowing such a tragedy to happen on their ground." "Unfortunate? Unfortunate? You condemned her to a lifetime alone. And someone like Lenei should never, ever be left alone. Someone like Salvia, on the other hand..." "Enough! Talking to this boy further serves no purpose. He has already told us what we need to know. Tomorrow, he and the girl will receive their twenty lashes." "Wait, wait, you're not listening! Lenei didn't do anything wrong! Just by being caught, she's probably punished herself more than you ever could. Please, please, by the gods, have some mercy! She doesn't deserve any punishment!" "Whether or not you feel she has done anything wrong, the law states that forty lashes will be dealt to the breakers of a match." "Then give them to me. All of them." "Excuse me?" "This is completely my fault; I want the complete punishment." "Young man--" "Please." A long pause from all of council members for thought, and then, "Very well." They swept out of the tiny room like so many heavy shadows; they must have worked to make their flat black cloaks billow that way. Mason's head dropped to his chest, the ropes that held his arms behind the chair stretching his shoulders almost beyond their limit. I promised I would never let anything hurt you, Lenei, he thought. Gods, I'm doing my best. *** "You're free to go," the elder said blandly as he released Lenei. She stared unbelievingly at her unbound hands. "Where's Mason?" "The convicted young man awaits his punishment, to be dealt within the hour." "His punishment? What about mine? I was there in the clearing as surely as he was..." "Your punishment is to witness his flogging. We believe no other discipline will be necessary, in your case." Lenei's mouth opened and closed as she tried to find the words to express what she wanted to say to the man; at last the only word she could summon was, "Why?" He said nothing, just dropped his eyes and led her out of the cell. The whole community had gathered around the platform, the same that had been used for the matching, only now a low block sprouted up from the wooden slats, looking ominously innocent. None had been told why they were gathered there, except that there had been some crime committed and they were to witness the punishment. Only Salvia's family, and Lenei's, understood what was happening. Lenei was kneeling to the side of the crowd, the council member standing behind her one of the youngest - still spry, in case she tried to bolt. She ripped dying grass out by the roots and shredded it, releasing the pieces to the wind. When Mason was led out, gasps peppered the assemblage, and curious whispers erupted from the collected people like ants out of a kicked anthill. He was shirtless, his hands bound in front of him, and he was flanked by four elders. They forced him to his knees, bending him over the block and retying his hands around the metal ring in the deck of the platform so that he had no escape. His eyes scanned for Lenei's but he did not turn his head far enough to catch sight of her, so low to the ground and separated from the rest of the crowd by guilt and empty air. He sighed, seeming a little relieved. "State your name and your crime," one of the elders demanded. He was not the one holding the cruel whip, a man of middle years with deeply etched lines in his face and a cold, set line of a mouth. "I found love outside of my match," Mason said clearly. A few women squawked at the brutality as the whip snapped across Mason's back, eliciting a cry from him; his eyes went wide, as if he was surprised at how much it hurt. "Let us not have your lies, boy," said that head elder, the oldest of them, the only one who would speak in public when they were all gathered. "Explain your crime." Panting, Mason spoke again. "I fell desperately in love with the perfect woman for me - and it was not the girl that I was paired with." Crack "Enough! You pollute the minds of our community with your fabrications." "Admit it, you were wron--Crack--aah!" "This boy coerced--" "I loved--" Crack "--a young woman of our community--" "--the beautiful Lenei--" Crack "--with empty promises!" "--with all my heart!" Crack "He wants to destroy our society--" "I just want to be with her--" Crack "He broke faith with another--" "I never loved Salvia!" Crack "--and destroyed her happiness!" "The Council made a mistake!" The last crack resounded into silence, broken only by Mason's painful gasps. Eyes of the gathered flicked between Mason and his trembling Lenei, her lovely face marred with tears, and to Salvia, who looked as though she would be sick, and to the elders, whose faces ranged from clearly uncomfortable to purpled with rage. "That's eight," the eldest Councillor said at length, waving for the man with the whip to continue. The crowd was silent through a few more strokes as Mason bit nearly through his lip to keep from howling. Gradually, whispers spread sporadically again, people began to shake their heads, drifting away from the platform in small chunks. Council members watched their disgusted people leave and wondered if they had, at last, gone too far; but they dealt out the punishment, as they must, and then dragged Mason to his feet with a Council member holding him up under each armpit. They towed him back to his cell, unable to force him to stand up on his feet and walk the distance, and dropped him face down on the bench that served as his bed, though his legs hung off from the knee down. "What now?" asked the second-youngest of the elders, barely old enough to be called an 'elder' at all. "He will be taken back to Micrague, to be sentenced there as well," said one of them. "They've had this problem in the past; they know how to deal with it properly." Matching Day "And their people aren't so fragile as to sneer at the law," said another, sneering himself. He was the thirstiest among them for brutality, for swift attacks on anything that threatened the community. "What will they do with him there?" asked the young one again, his shoulders drawing up as though it were him being sentenced, and not Mason. The others did not try to protect his gentler sensibilities. "Once they've heard what he has to say, he'll be killed, just like the last one. The Matching Council will not be questioned." *** Salvia sat on her bedroom floor, her knees drawn up to her chest and her head resting atop them. She had not cried at the whipping, but she'd wanted to; her pride had prevented her from making any show that the other girls could use against her in a pity attack. Now, though, with only her cat Lollaine to see her, she shook with quiet sobs. "I just wanted them to have to stop," she whispered. "Mason...poor Mason..." *** Lenei lay curled on the forest floor, where she had lain with Mason every night before. She wished they had not let her go; she deserved to be in a cell, for what she'd done. And Mason...oh, poor Mason... She spent the night not looking at the stars, and crushed dried leaves into dust that, dancing on the breeze, still looked more alive than she did. It began to rain in the wee hours of the morning, a steady, mournful downpour that soaked Lenei through immediately and began to make the leaves float in anonymous streamlets. She unfolded herself for the first time since she lay down, feeling the creak of limbs as they complained about hours of stillness. Her hair plastered to her face, water running into her eyes, she considered going home, but decided against it. Once there, her mother would comfort her, and coo over the state she was in, and find her warm clothes, and stoke up the fire for her; she knew she didn't deserve any of it. Her jailer-of-sorts, the youngest of the elders, had informed her that Mason would be taken back to Micrague in the morning, to be sentenced there by his own Council. She hoped they would be more lenient with one of their own. "I wonder if they'll let me see him?" she wondered aloud, her eyes settling on the nearest tree as though it might provide an answer. A tree branch shuddered in the wind, restlessly nodding, its leaves quivering. Taking that as an answer, she floated back toward town like vapor. There was no one in sight until she reached the doorway of the internment building, and even then it was easy enough to slip past the man as he leaned inattentively against the brick wall; even with this obvious crime as evidence that humans were not incapable of treachery, the people of this community were unused to deception, and knew little of how to guard against it. Lenei darted through the hallways, remembering from her own brief imprisonment here that the dungeon-like cells were on the lower floor, beneath the benign entry hall and waiting room, the beautifully carved desk that blocked the entrance to the stairs and which Lenei leapt easily, and the offices of each elder, some of which were still dimly, warmly lit. She slowed her steps as she approached the final corner in the cell hallways. Once she turned it, she knew she would see someone sitting vigil at Mason's door, and she did not want to alert him to her presence until she learned whether he was one of the younger, more sympathetic ones, or an older, unsentimental hard-nose. Taking a deep breath, she leaned out just far enough for her eyes to be past the edge of the wall, then jerked back. There was no one in the hall. Offering a quick prayer of thanks to whatever gods were listening for keeping the way clear for her, she strode down the hallway, peering into the small, barred window in each door to find Mason. At last, in the next-to-last cell, she spotted him, still lying just the way they'd dropped him face down on the bench, his feet dragging the ground. She knocked quietly on his door, and when he didn't move, whispered, "Mason!" He raised his head slightly, his eyes straining to see over his lacerated shoulder; they widened when he recognized Lenei. "Lenei? What are you doing here?" he mumbled. He sounded like his mouth was stuffed full of cotton. "I had to see you, before they sent you away. Can you come up to the window?" "I can't...can't really move, Lenei. I mean, it's hard." She could see the admission was hard for him; he wanted to seem always invincible. "Hold on," she said, then darted toward the closet at the end of the hall, where she was sure the keys were kept. She was right; she found the rusty skeleton numbered to match Mason's door and hurried back with it. The lock grated open with a corroded screech, and she heaved on the handle to gain entrance. Kneeling next to Mason, she was horrified anew by his injuries. Her hand, hovering just above his tender skin, passed back and forth over his back as if she could somehow erase the bloodied lines that way. "Oh, Mason," she breathed. "S'not so bad, Lenny," he said sweetly, if insincerely, gritting his teeth as he strained his shoulder backward to grab her hand and pull her in front of his face. "Listen, you've got to get out of here. If they find you here, they'll think you were trying to help me escape, and you'll be in more trouble than ever." "Escape?" Lenei repeated, her eyes curious. "Why would you escape? You're just going home, aren't you?" "Yes..." Mason said, watching her with cautious eyes, wondering how much she knew. "Well, they'll be nicer to you in Micrague, won't they? I mean, you're one of their own..." He sighed infinitesimally and forced a smile for her benefit. "Yeah, they'll go easier on me, I'm sure." Her eyes flickered between his eyes and his mouth: he was a master of lying with his eyes, where most people would read an untruth, but she had noticed the way his lips tightened, showing more gum when he lied, and she saw now the way his lips drew back from his teeth. "What?" she demanded. "What are they going to do to you? What can they possibly do that would be worse than what they did today?" He sighed heavily this time, wincing as an attempted shrug made his back muscles scream. "They've had this problem before, Lenei. A couple of years ago, a boy who grew dissatisfied with his pair was caught with a girl a year younger than him, who hadn't been paired yet." "What happened to him?" she whispered. "He was...put to death. The girl killed herself a week later." Lenei gaped in horror, mouth hanging open like the connection of her jaw to her skull had gone slack. Abruptly, she said, "Can you walk?" "What?" "Can you walk, or do I have to try to carry you? Well, no, not carry. I don't think I can carry you, but I could probably drag you, if I was careful. Maybe you could wrap your arms around my neck and--" "Lenei, stop," Mason said sharply. "Like you said before, there's nowhere for us to go. We'll get caught again, and this time there'll be no way to protect you--" "I don't want to be protected, Mason! I want to get you out of here!" She seized his arms and tried to move him, succeeding only in stretching his wounds and nearly knocking him off of the bench onto his back. His muscles were too stiff from laying the way he had for hours for him to help her much. She let out a small cry of frustration, but Mason quickly shushed her. "Lenei, I hear something." Both of their heads swiveled toward the doorway just in time to see someone appear, framed by it. The next-to-youngest elder looked as stunned as they did, his hand going immediately to his heart as he spotted Lenei kneeling there next to Mason. "Miss Russing? What do you think you're doing?" he said at length. "I have to take him away," she said boldly, ignoring Mason's eyes, that pleaded with her to hold her silence and not incriminate herself further. "Do you know that they're going to kill him? What has he done wrong that deserves that?" She was on the edge of tears; she knew there was no hope now of Mason escaping his fate. She had almost resolved to follow the path of the girl who had been in love with the last Micrague resident who'd stood against the Matching Council. "I...I did know that..." the elder said, struggling for words in the face of Lenei's misery. "But he - he's a...lawbreaker! And we...er, that is, the Council...must follow the, um, law..." "But look at us!" Lenei begged. "Are we criminals? Do we deserve punishment and public humiliation? Our only crime was falling in love." "Ah, yes, but...you see, you fell in love with the...uh, the wrong person." "The wrong person? Who was I supposed to fall in love with then?" Lenei persisted. "A ghost? My pair was gone before I even knew him, and Mason saw me as something more than an object of pity. He saw me, and he fell in love with what he saw. How could that be wrong?" "I...I really must ask you to-to leave, Miss Russing..." the elder said, desperate not to have to report her. He'd always rather liked Lenei. "I'm not leaving without Mason. I'm afraid he's my other half; where he goes, I go." She clung protectively to Mason's arm, squeezing her fingers tight against his skin so that she could not be seen to shake. Her heart knew that what she said was right, but her head was packed with the logical arguments against her that came from a lifetime of listening to the community elders, and that was hard to ignore. The elder looked first at her - her face pained, but resolute - and then at Mason, whose eyes never left Lenei, and his heart battled his head in much the same way. Here was his chance to prove that he was not the weak-spirited, soft-hearted one, that he could stand for justice and law just as surely as any of the other elders, that he could look impartially at any situation and choose the wisest course. But here was also his chance to see in action real, honest to gods true love, and to protect it rather than stamp it out. Several long minutes passed without anyone moving, and then the elder spoke. "He won't want to wear a shirt right now, but you should take one just the same, and a cloak, so that you don't freeze to death. There are bandages and such in that cabinet where you must have found the key, so that you don't have to break into the infirmary." And then he left, returning to the cup of tea and paperwork that had held his attention in his office upstairs until the sounds of voices below had alerted him to Lenei's presence in Mason's cell. At this hour, he was alone in the building; in the morning, when someone came to relieve him, he would be conveniently asleep, close enough to the cell that he could have been keeping watch, but far enough away that the young lovers could have snuck out without alerting him. It was a miracle that they made it out of town at all, with Mason so incapacitated and Lenei's strength hardly adequate for carrying a young man his size, but somehow, leaning heavily on each other, they made it into the woods. For a long time, they heard only their own heavy breathing as they fought their way through the undergrowth, moving always away from the community, but then, just when it seemed they might have gotten clear, a voice said clearly, smugly, "I knew it." Lenei's head shot up immediately, with Mason's following more slowly on his unsteady neck, and their eyes both settled on the form of Salvia just in front of them, standing with her arms folded across her chest against the cold. The mist of rain - all that was left of the earlier storm - frosted her hair with shimmering droplets. "I knew you would try to run. I knew it," Salvia repeated, anger licking like flames at her words. "What else would you have us do?" Lenei demanded. "Stay here, of course! Well, not you," she said to Lenei. "I wouldn't mind if you ran off into the forest, but Mason is mine. Now that he's been thoroughly chastened, he should be returned to me." "Salvia," Mason said wearily, "you would not have me either way. If I do not escape now, they will send me to Micrague." "Fine, I'll go with you. We should be getting married soon anyway." "They are not sending me there to get married, Salvia. They're sending me there to be sentenced - and if Micrague tradition is to be upheld, I'll be killed." Salvia's eyes widened; this must be news to her. "Killed?" "Yes, killed," Mason said, his voice still heavy with exhaustion. He spoke matter-of-factly, not begging her, but not antagonizing her either, as Lenei clearly was. "If it's dead you want me to be - and I suppose I'd understand that, considering what I've put you through - then announce our presences here to the elders. By all means, sound the alarm, let them know we've escaped. I'll be dead by this time tomorrow." Salvia just stared at him, aghast. "I...never wanted you dead..." she said at last. "I just wanted them to stop you..." "Whatever your intentions, Sal, they will have me executed. They can't afford this kind of infraction against their authority. " He could see her resolve faltering, could see the wheels turning in her head, and he took a couple of painful steps forward, desperate to take advantage of her momentary weakness. "Think about it, Salvia: wouldn't it be amazing to be able to choose who you want to love? To entrust your heart to someone that you know wants it just as bad as you want to give it?" She looked torn, confused; her eyes were shiny with impending tears. "But that's not right..." "Salvia," he said seriously, setting his hands on either side of her face, "there is nothing in this world that could be more right." She shook her head, breaking away from his hands. "No, no, you broke our match...you broke everything." "I'm sorry, Salvia. I'm so, so sorry that I hurt you. But you've got to know that we were never right for each other. You could see that, couldn't you? Please, Salvia, please understand that I would never have hurt you if I could have helped it, but my heart was making the decisions for me. I had to follow love." Salvia's eyes blazed toward Lenei and then dropped to the diamond droplet-studded grass. "Why her?" "I can't explain," Mason said, shrugging. "There's no explanation for love." There were distant male voices in the trees now, coming closer. Mason's eyes bored into Salvia's, begging her to understand. "Do you want me to die?" he asked quietly. Eyes finally overflowing, Salvia shook her head. "No," she said miserably. When she met his eyes, they were hurt, accusing, but also relenting. "I won't say anything to them." Mason kissed her on the forehead. "Thank you, thank you," he whispered. As the voices floated ever closer, Lenei gripped Mason again wherever she could tightly hold him without further injuring him, and they stumbled into the darkness. Before they left, though, Mason whispered to Salvia, "Find someone you truly love." Watching his retreating back, she said, too quietly for him to hear, "I already did." *** "That was so, so close to being the end of us both," Lenei said, her voice breaking with relief. "Gods, I wish none of this had ever happened." "I don't," Mason said. "I'm glad that Salvia and that elder both found us. Because of them, it was all worth it, even the punishment." Lenei was stunned enough to come to a complete halt. "How do you figure?" "Now we know that there are at least two people in this world besides us that believe in love. Maybe there's hope after all. Maybe someday, people will be allowed to choose whoever they want to love. It'll be messy, and hearts will be broken, but in the end, when it does last, when you get to the end of your road hand-in-hand and turn around to look back at your life, you'll know that it was real love." And with those words echoing prophetically through the trees, Mason and Lenei began again to slink through the trees, stumbling one step at a time toward their messy, beautiful, imperfect forever.