Part I  |  Part II  |  Part III

The Tavernkeeper's Sister

by Ella Quince

Part III

We lie in a tangle of limbs, bare skin cooling and drying in the night air. The moon has risen and then set again; the camp fire has burned down to ashes. We are wrapped in darkness and tree shadows and not even the stars can cast enough light to show me the face resting on my shoulder. I don't need to see; I know every curve and plane of her body by touch. I sigh out my contentment, and in response Xena stirs in my arms.

"Again?" I ask, only partly teasing.

"No... wore me out," she mumbles. Her arm snakes across my stomach and she pulls me closer. "Met my match...."

I laugh, but she's already fallen asleep again.

And I lie awake, studying the patterns of the night sky, not willing to let sleep waste away this serenity that visits me so seldom. I worked hard for it tonight, battling against consciousness and self-consciousness, fighting down my stubborn tendency to watch myself as if I'm a player in a story. Tonight I lost myself in sensation moment by moment for what must have been hours...

....and emerged with a calmness born of satiation and exhaustion.

If I bathe myself in Xena's desire long enough, letting it crash over me wave after wave, her love fills the hollowness inside me. The peace is fleeting, an illusion burned away by the rising sun of each new morning, and so I stay awake as long as I can....

---

Just past dawn Xena's whispering voice wakes me, but when I roll over to greet her the bedroll is empty of her presence. I jump to my feet at the sound of faint, mocking laughter, but the clearing in which we have camped is empty, too.

I whirl around to confront the soft rustle of leaves and sigh with relief when my warrior parts a bank of bushes and walks toward me. I almost ask her if we have company... but a vague unease holds me back.

"Another headache?" she asks, after one look at my face.

"Yes," I say, realizing for the first time that my head is throbbing with pain.

"You need more rest." It's an order rather than a suggestion, and I wonder if she thinks I'm still too crippled to make my own decisions. "We'll camp here another day."

"But Xena, we need fresh supplies."

She shrugs off my protest. "They'll last one more day." Barely. Would she have dismissed Gabrielle's concerns so easily?

Stepping closer, I take a breath to argue the point, then notice that Xena's face is drawn and her eyes are smudged by fatigue. Since our escape from the tavern our trek toward friendly territory has been relentless. She could use this rest as much as I can, or so I tell myself. "Thank you. I wouldn't mind the break."

I see the surprise in her vivid blue eyes. So Gabrielle would have persisted, and I gave way too easily, but it's too late to change my mind now. As always, I'm a step behind the bard, no matter how hard I try to keep up with the memory Xena has of her.

Without further comment, Xena strips down to her shift and grabs her sewing kit. She sits cross-legged on the ground, painstakingly examining her leathers, mending small tears with quick, sure stitches, while I munch on a dried apple and worry about how we'll afford the staples we need to survive. A decent bard can earn enough dinars to buy cheese and bread, but I'm no bard....

Tucking myself around my discontent, I doze for the rest of the morning until the sharp cry of a raptor pulls me out of sleep. The forest is ringing with the call of birds. They're raising such a clamor that the sky should be dark with swooping, diving forms, but all I can see are darting shadows out of the corner of my eyes, as if I'm not fast enough to catch anything more than a gliding wingtip. I watch Xena grooming Argo with slow, steady brushstrokes. Despite her keen hearing she doesn't seem to notice the uproar and so I say nothing. Perhaps this is a normal rhythm of nature that I've simply forgotten, as I've forgotten so many other aspects of our traveling life. Gabrielle would probably laugh at my naivete, and just as surely the bard would have more patience with a warrior's single-minded absorption with the maintenance of her horse and equipment.

I take advantage of Xena's preoccupation to quietly prepare an elaborate meal of all the delicacies the forest offers for free. My leisurely activities go unremarked and by late afternoon all my ingredients are assembled. To my gratification our last strips of dried rabbit meat take on an appealing aroma once I mix them with a stew of wild onions and mushrooms, seasoned with fresh herbs. Even Xena, usually oblivious to the subtleties of cooking, can tell the difference. Despite her rapt involvement in sharpening her sword, she eventually looks up and sniffs appreciatively. "When do we eat?"

"Soon." I know her well enough now to be flattered by the brusque inquiry. "I even managed dessert," I say, flourishing the limp wineskin I've kept tucked in my saddlebag for just this moment. There's not much more than a half-dozen swallows of port for each of us, but in our impoverished state it's a treat nonetheless.

"What's the occasion?" I can tell from Xena's careless manner that she doesn't really expect an answer.

"It's my birthday," I announce proudly. "I'm three months old tonight." Three months since I awoke with a clean slate where my mind used to be, three months since I wrote the name Larissa with such a firm hand that even now I have trouble erasing it.

Xena's face freezes, leached of any emotion. "Oh."

"Hey, this is a celebration, not a funeral." And suddenly it's very important to make her understand, to get behind the hard mask that shields her discomfort. "Three months may not seem long to you, but it means I have a few memories of my own now," I explain. "I can actually look back and see a trail behind me instead of a wall. And I'm finally forgetting things, little things that are too trivial to remember. There's no room for them up here anymore." I tap my head lightly with my knuckles. "See, no echo."

She chuckles, not quite easily, but enough to break the tension between us. And a steaming bowl of food, followed by a few pulls from the wineskin, puts her in a mellow mood. We sit in companionable silence while Xena polishes her boots and her chakram and I stare at a scroll. She thinks I'm reading one of the bard's stories, but it's hard for me to concentrate. The bird calls have given way to the lilting tune of panpipes carried on the evening breeze.

After nightfall, wrapped around each other in the comfort of our shared bedroll, Xena says, "If I'd known it was your birthday, I would have gotten you a present."

"Well, it's not too late yet," I answer.

She hisses when I touch her breast, but her lips curl into a smile despite the pain from her tender nipple. "No, Gabrielle," she says with an incredulous laugh. "I couldn't possibly, not so soon after last night."

I'm disappointed and can't resist a protest. "But I need the practice," I say lightly, teasing at the ache that never seems to leave me. "After all, how many nights like that have I forgotten?"

"None," she breathes, her reply so soft I almost don't hear it. Her face has turned somber. "We never... not like that."

Her answer startles me. I had assumed my every action is familiar to her, that every experience that is new to me is a tedious repetition of events she's already lived through. "But why not?"

Xena shrugs, a bewildered gesture. Then, drawing me close, she buries her face against my neck. Her teeth fix on my pulse and I groan at the sharp pressure. When she pulls away, her breathing is ragged, her eyes so bright that heat sparks to life low in my belly. "I didn't realize until now how much we both held back from each other," she says.

So, this wildness is all mine, newly minted, not a ghostly echo from a borrowed past. And the thought that I exist — apart from the shadow life of Gabrielle — gives me a new sense of weight and substance. "What's changed?" I ask. "Why me?"

"Maybe because we started over... a little differently." Xena's brow furrows as she reflects on a wealth of memories; there is no hollowness in her. "Before, you were the one who took the first step. You had to persuade me that I had a right to this kind of happiness. That took courage. You declared your love even though I hadn't given you much reason to expect that I would love you back." She lapses into a brooding silence.

Impatient, I call her out of the past. "And..."

Her eyes sharpen and fix on my face with an intensity forged from fresh insight. "And looking back, I think you paid a price for that courage. I think you always believed that I was... reluctant, that you had to coax me into loving you. So you never asked for more than you thought I'd give." Reaching out, she caresses my face, fingers absently feathering down my cheek, as if wiping away tears.

"But I know better," I say smugly, quick to draw yet another distinction between myself and the phantom who hovers between us. "When I talked to you in the tavern, I could tell you wanted me."

Xena's hand falls away from my jaw and down to my breast, where it settles with easy familiarity. Her smile returns, predatory and triumphant. "I had to seduce you. There wasn't time to win you over with friendship."

Her instincts were sound. Only lust, heady and entrancing, could have lured me away from Nicos and the life I thought was mine. "You cheated though," I say with mock disdain to cover my embarrassment. "You knew how it would end. You knew how much I was attracted to you."

"Strategic advantage." She smirks, although there is a fleeting dark shadow to her expression that tells me she wasn't as sure of the outcome as I have assumed.

"That explains why Gabrielle held back, but what about you?" I insist, my curiosity still unsatisfied.

She draws a breath, mustering her own brand of courage. I've learned that confessions don't come easily for her. "We were friends first, and then when we became lovers... I just didn't know how to shift onto new ground. Or maybe I was afraid to change our friendship into something too different and risk losing you. I've never been friends with my lovers before... and I need you in a way I've never needed them."

"So what am I now?" I wonder out loud.

"Gabrielle... my lover... my friend..." She embraces me, her body trembling with a sudden surge of desire. Her voice drops to a hoarse whisper against my ear. "All things... everything."

Our talk gives way to showing, demanding, needing — all the forms that love can take between two bodies. Once again we touch without holding back the need to grasp and bite and stroke and lick and suck and scratch and then, finally, cry out.

"By the gods," Xena pants, as she recovers her breath. "I'm going to be so damn sore tomorrow."

We dissolve into laughter, and this night I forget to stay awake.

---

The voices return the next morning, loosing a steady stream of words that whisper seductively in my ear, tempting me to stop what I'm doing and listen until I untangle their meaning. I try to focus on the urgency of my chores, the need to break camp so we can be on our way....

"Gabrielle... Gabrielle!"

It takes me a moment to realize that it's Xena speaking, not the phantoms. She's shaking my arm to bring me out of my daze. The blanket I've been clutching slips from my grasp, but before I can stoop to pick it up, Xena says, "Leave it. It doesn't matter."

She leads me to the campfire; her hands push gently down on my shoulders to make me sit on a fallen log. If I weren't so tired, if I could only find the strength to focus, I could do these things for myself.

Her palm comes to rest against my forehead. "How bad is the pain?"

I shrug. I've learned to ignore the headaches; surely I can ignore the voices, too. But it's so hard not to listen....

"Here," she says. Kneeling beside me, she thrusts a cup of steaming tea into my hands. "Drink this."

I take a sip, then almost choke on the liquid that fills my mouth.

Xena frowns. "Too hot?"

"No, no... it's..." Too thick. There is no other way to describe the taste of too many flavors, as if I'm drinking every kind of tea ever made, each one distilled and distinct as it hits my tongue. I take another cautious sip and somehow manage to swallow the stew. "It's fine, Xena. Just right."

She's not convinced by my deception. Her frown deepens. "Gabrielle...."

"I'm fine—" I start to say, but my reply is drowned out by a rising tide of sound, as if the babbling brook I've been avoiding all morning has suddenly overflowed its banks, angry and impatient for my attention. The cup falls from my hands as I try to scramble to my feet, desperate to keep my head above the swirling echoes.

"Xena! Help me..."

I can't tell if she heard me. Her mouth moves, but her words are swept away by the chorus that has turned the air as thick as my tea. Shouts and cries and laughter, people talking quietly, children chanting, the clamor of war... too many, too much....

I see fear written on Xena's face, and confusion, then her features begin to shimmer with every emotion of hers I've ever seen. I close my eyes against the sight of her blurred, radiant beauty.

She catches me when I fall, holds me tightly. Too tightly. I struggle to get back to my feet, but I can't escape her embrace, her comforting, fatal embrace.

"No," I scream. "I'll drown!"

And then, finally, I understand what is happening. I stop fighting — I let the flood claim me — and my limbs are pinned beneath the weight of returning memory. I am buffeted by images of horror and sweetness, of darkness and light and all the colors in between, an endless stream of remembrance stretching back and back until it disappears into the shadows of my earliest infancy.

Gradually the chaos subsides. I've swallowed it whole, sheltered it in the hollow spaces that belonged to Larissa.

Larissa....

I search for her, but she's gone, overwhelmed. Her few months of existence were no match for the years that belong to me. She's the ghost now, not me. And yet, despite her brief life, she had the strength to leave me one precious gift.

I lie still in the shelter of Xena's arms, savoring the familiarity of her body against my own. Thanks to Larissa, my warrior and I know each other in ways I have only dreamed of before.

Xena, frantic and pleading, calls to me. With effort, I open my eyes.

"Gabrielle!"

"Yes," I say, smiling up at my love. "I am."