Chapter Two

Choose your words wisely

Hope

I woke up earlier than him. Again. Lewis’s hot even breath tickled the gentle skin of the naked back under my neck. His hand was on my breast–our favorite position of sleeping. My left arm was in agony from the prolonged lying on it, but I didn’t want to disturb my husband’s sleep. Millimeter by millimeter I was slowly shifting to a more comfortable posture.

His breathing pattern changed, hinting at the slow awakening. My plan to let him sleep a little more before the most important day in his life came had failed. Lewis was still half asleep when his soft full lips with a small scar right in the middle of the upper one touched my spine, giving me pleasant chills.

“Good morning, love,” he whispered into the flesh of my body, warmed by his breathing, and kissed again.

I turned to kiss him back, rustling the sheets beneath my nudity. My hands were traveling on his face with the prickly, two-day-old stubble. At the moment the pads of my fingers groped for the familiar spots under the soft earlobes, I cupped the sharp jawline and tenderly pulled him toward me.

“Morning, my darling.”

The tip of his cold nose brushed my cheek, and Lewis buried his face in the curve of my neck, inhaling the scent of the persistent expensive perfume he’d presented me with for our fifth anniversary two days ago. I liked the magnificent notes of vanilla and patchouli it’d left on my waist-length hair.

Getting out of his warm and strong arms, I pulled away the duvet, dressed in a smooth, atlas cover, and placed my bare foot on the hard and cool parquet flooring.

“Where are you going?” his still husky voice sounded somewhere behind.

The second foot touched the floor, and I stood up with my back turned to him, revealing my naked ass, “To the bathroom. The second pack of chips was too much. I really love lime and chilly flavor, but waking up in the middle of the night out of excessive thirst and the overfilled bladder in the morning drives me insane.”

I turned left and made three moves to reach the wooden lacquered chest of drawers by the west wall of our small bedroom. Sliding on the surface with furrows from the brush and sloppy deepening, my hands found the plastic, rough handles of the second drawer from the top and pulled it out. I felt the ties of my knit sleeveless jumpsuit and retrieved it to put on, escaping from the cool claws of the last of Fierce day air.

“Don’t,” purred Lewis, “You look striking with no clothes on.”

I shrugged, lifting the synthetic straps on my chiseled, according to my husband, shoulders. “I’m blind. I can’t see how I look.”

“But I can.”

He could. His eyes were able to spot a microscopic piece of anything. Lewis had a worthy-of-envy talent to describe things and people and was keen on doing it. He’d detailed me so many times I knew what each of my tiny moles and wrinkles looked like. Once I’d asked him to describe the turquoise color because I’d never seen that before. I’d been six when I’d lost the ability to see and hadn’t been able to recall a lot of what I’d remembered especially colors. Nobody had ever explained to me what turquoise looked like. Or any other colors.

Nobody.

Excepting Lewis.

We’d been smoking weed on the balcony of our common acquaintance’s house when I’d asked him to do it, thinking he’d fail like everyone before him. But Lewis had burst into amazing pure laughter and had said, “A piece of piss, Hope.”

That’d been the moment he’d interested me.

“Have you ever been by the sea during a storm?”

I’d had no will to make it easy. And neither to complicate. “Perhaps,” I’d managed.

Lewis had chuckled. “Then you, perhaps, felt the spray of sea waves on your face.”

Again, “Perhaps.”

“And smelled the salt in the fresh air.”

That was the moment I’d noticed that I had been nodding all the time.

“This is the way I imagine turquoise, Hope–the splash of salty water in the ozoned air.”

That’d been the moment I’d fallen in love with him.

The king-size bed squeaked when Lewis made his way to me. I’d never felt anything more exciting and seductive than my man’s scent, and when he reached me, the smell drugged me again, and I smiled, leaning back on his jacked, hairy chest. He slid a strap away, letting it fall down my arm freely. The touch was so mild.

“Wait a few minutes,” I asked Lewis, adjusting the jumpsuit, “I’ll get washed and be back to help you with the speech, my newly minted rector.”

He was eloquent, no doubt, but when it came to public speaking, my husband acted like an insecure teenager in an attempt to invite the most beautiful and popular ample-bosomed star of the school to prom. The way he stuttered was so cute I couldn’t help melting.

“Three minutes,” Lewis whispered into my shoulder.

“Five.”

“Four.”

“Lewis.”

He pecked my forehead, “Five. Four fifty-nine. Four fifty-eight.”

“Ass,” I elbowed him and rushed out of the bedroom as quickly as my state let me, but not because of the timing. I couldn’t handle the liquid inside me anymore.

It took thirteen steps to get the divided bathroom. Lewis had fixed all the door handles in our flat at the same height, so I didn’t need to search for it every time by touch.

Finally revealing myself, I went to the bathroom and started the morning routine. Stooping down to braid the long hair, my head hit the plastic corner of the new washing machine which we’d bought in need to replace the old one that had broken down three weeks ago. The new washing machine was a little wider, and I still couldn’t get used to it. I’d been facing that corner every morning and evening since it’d been delivered. Thank Ranita, this time hadn’t been that hard. I didn’t even feel like losing my balance or vomiting.

My sweaty palm found the ceramic, rippleless sink with a small breakaway piece on its left side, which felt another way not because of the hole, but because the gritty structure was completely different from the slick surface. The motion sensor detected my hands and turned the water. A gelid flow wet the skin, getting warmer little by little. I squirted a small amount of medical cleansing foam from the soft velvet bottle on my left and put it on my skin massaging it, then splashed it with water. The gentle tickling I’d got used to appeared on the toweled face. My fingers applied and rubbed the stink ointment into the scar tissue in the area where my eyes should’ve been, but after the accident in my childhood I didn’t talk about, there were empty eye sockets, covered by the strange felt skin with no hair on it. I didn’t have eyelashes and the left brow. Neither had I the eyelids. That was why I was wearing huge sunglasses which could disguise this horror on my face all the time. Lewis and his parents were the only men who saw me without them.

Through the noise of running water, I heard the joyful chirping of a young titmouse and the howling wind from the Sacral Sea. When I’d lost the vision, the entire feeling had escalated. I could feel the slightest disturbance in the air or the temperature changing. Tastes had become more distinct. As they said, “There are benefits of being blind.” I wouldn’t say that. They didn’t know what it felt like to ‘see’ with your hands, not your eyes.

The baseboard from our bedroom cracked, giving out my husband. If I needed thirteen steps to get to the toilet, for him it was eight. A minute later the door to the bathroom, where I was finishing the teeth cleaning, swan open, and Lewis came in.

“Time’s up, love,” he announced. His voice. His freaking velvet low voice.

“I can slide over,” I said and moved away and slammed into the stupid piece of… metal and plastic called the washing machine.

“Be careful, Hope.”

Rubbing the left side, I came up to the sink to spit out the remains of the peppermint toothpaste and to rinse the mouth. The cotton T-shirt rustled, and it wasn’t my hand on the slightly injured site anymore. Lewis’ attentive hot palm was caressing back and forth, moving me closer to his strong, elastic body. The bristle of his bamboo brush gnashed on the right of his lower jaw. As he always started cleaning from the left side, I could say he was about to finish, so I decided to leave him alone.

But when I found myself at the bathroom door with the handle in my grip, Lewis picked me up and took me away to the hall with no warning. I cried out in surprise, then smirked. I knew where he was heading.

Eight steps straight, turning left, two more steps, and I was on our still warm bed again, and the love of my love nestled himself on top of me, balancing on his stretched arms on either side of my body. His peppermint breath was so tempting when he got close to my ear and ordered, “Take off your jumpsuit.”

Saint Initiatoress, he drove me crazy.

Lewis didn’t wait for me to begin the obedience and lowered the upper part of the knit cloth I was wearing to the waist, revealing my chest. Unhurriedly, he started kissing me from the sensitive spot on my neck he knew about and used this information against me every time, immersing me into oblivion.

“Lewis,” I moaned.

“Shh, Hope.”

“Lewis, you…” another kiss, “You have to go over your speech.”

“We have enough time,” he said and directed his lips to the soft hollow between my small breasts.

“Lewis…”

“Today a new beginning has its start,” Lewis voiced the words we’d been choosing for him for the last two weeks with his lips on my nipples, “I cannot predict the way we will follow or the challenges that we will face in the future,” my husband’s hands glided up under the fabric of the jumpsuit and put it off in one movement.

“Lew–”

“But what I know …” he cut in and didn’t finish. Lewis spread my legs, and I felt his wet impish tongue between them in a matter of seconds. I curved my back, and groaned so loud, being unable to handle the growing will.

“Fuck it,” I exhaled and grabbed his shortcut, directing him to give me the pleasure I was craving for.

***

It is the supreme honor for me to invite to this stage the new rector of Nordery University–Lewis Branon Hill, former art history teacher of the architectural faculty,” the very low for a woman voice of the leader of Calire town–Ralody Brine–thundered from the speaker we were sitting near to, and the audience burst into applause. I squeezed Lewis’ sweaty hand before he left his seat next to me and went to the stage to make the speech, we’d ‘practiced’ thrice this morning.

“I love you,” my words were no more than a whisper.

“I love you too, Hope,” Lewis kissed the back of my hand.

The rubber sole of his dress shoes made a barely noticeable rasp against the old flooring, which seemed to be linoleum. He was further and further from me. A step on the hollow sills on the left of the stage echoed with a muffled sound. Several of the wooden planks creaked beneath Lewis when he was going to the mic. I might have heard Ralody Brine shake my husband’s hand, but I wasn’t sure. Plenty of whispers and soughing people in the assembly hall confounded me.

The audience applauded again, and Lewis started, “Thank you. I’m glad to see so many students and professors gathered here this afternoon. Today a new beginning has its start. I cannot predict the way we will follow or the challenges that we will face in the future. But what I know…” he paused, and I prayed to Ranita for him not to forget to take the speech on paper.

“What I can assure you is that I am going to be one of the best rectors. The doors of my office are always open for each of you…”

I’d never heard these words before. Lewis, you silver-tongued ass. I was so proud of my husband. The swishing synthetics shifted my attention to the noise source. A strong scent of tobacco mixed with luscious notes of fruit perfume stroke my olfaction. A woman took a free seat on my right and leaned on the hard and squeaking armrest, according to my flair, to talk to me without someone else’s ears.

“I don’t think we were introduced to each other,” the familiar almost masculine voice resounded now right in front of my ear, “Ralody Brine.”

I felt the weak disturbance of the air, what could mean she lifted her hand up to shake mine by way of greeting, but realized her mistake, seeing the massive dark glasses that were concealing half of my face, including the scared part. It was so typical for seers, and I couldn’t help smiling.

“Hope Jordan-Hill,” I said and stretched my hand so as not to make the leader of the town we lived in feel embarrassed. Though Ralody’s skin was so smooth and soft, her palm was enormously big and the grip with which she squeezed my hand made me think it should have been a man.

“I like your dress, Hope. I wish turquoise suited me as flawlessly as it suits you.”

Bastard. Lewis had told me the dress was red.

“Thank you, Ralody. My husband’s chosen it for me.”

She shifted on her seat, “He’s got a good taste not only in choosing wife.”

“Don’t flatter me, please. I could become conceited, and you’d have to explain my rapidly grown-up demands to Lewis.”

The leader laughed, “Beautiful and witty. I love it.”

It was so unexpectable for me to hear someone else call me beautiful besides my husband that I could hardly prevent my lower jaw from falling down to the linoleumed floor. I made an attempt to thank Ralody, but Lewis’ words caught me off guard.

“…and I’m really grateful to my first and only love in my life for supporting me in these circles. I don’t think I would ever reach any of the achievements without my wife. Hope Hill, thank you. You believed in me at the moments when I didn’t. I’m standing here, on the stage of the Nordery University as a new rector thanks to you and your faith in me.”

I expected everything, but this. The love of my love had thanked me from the stage in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. I didn’t know what to feel. Delight? Confusion? Proud? I was still not over the fact that Ralody Brine found me beautiful. There’d been too much astonishment for one day.

The applause and cheering deafened me. For a second I lost orientation. Fortunately, my ass was comfortably adjusted on the velour, soft seat, and no one noticed my passing disarray. At least, I hoped so. The warmth of the tobacco-scented woman’s hand on my forearm brought me to the senses.

“You should join your amazing husband on the stage.”

“What? No–”

The leader left me no chance to object. Against my will, she put me on my feet with the strength I could compare only to Lewis’s. I tried to make it clear that the surroundings were unfamiliar to me and it would be quite difficult to move there for the first time. However, it didn’t work out.

“Don’t worry about it, Hope. I’ll lead you there.”

I worried just about how she’d lead me there. Saint Initiatoress. I wasn’t used to anyone’s touch on me, except my husband’s. It felt so strange and scary. Her movements were so fast my booted in light flats feet couldn’t adapt to the pace of her steps. I twisted my ankle on the roughness of the way Ralody was ‘guiding’ me, and it bothered me with frustrating burning in the muscles. It was so embarrassing.

Ralody Brine stopped with no warning, and my pointed shoe flew into the foot of the hollow but not less hard sills. There’d probably be a bruise tomorrow on the toenail which had taken the hit.

My ears caught the approach of the familiar rubber soles. I’d recognize his step pattern by the habit of bearing weight on the feet' sides at any time. A wooden plank creaked very closely to us.

“I’ll take her from here. Thank you, leader.”

“For sure, you’ll do it better.” The leader of Calire patted my back as if I were an old friend of hers, “Good luck, Hope Hill.”

I turned in the direction where her voice had come from, “Thank you.”

Only when I smelled the besotting scent of absinthe and lavender, I could release the tension in my body.

“I’m here, love,” his hand snaked around my waist. “Lift your leg, there’s a high sill. Higher, love. Okay, that’s it.”

The love of my life knew I didn’t have a soft spot for being carried by him in public, but I wished he’d done it. The eight sills drained as much of my powers as if there were a million of them. I even got sweaty and prayed to Ranita the dress Lewis had chosen for me wasn’t visibly soaked for I was going to be in the limelight for an indefinite time.

“What happened to the shy lady of my heart who avoids groups of people when there are more than two of them?” Lewis asked me the way the question was reachable only for my ears.

“Ralody Brien happened.”

“Oh, this little blondie in her repertoire as always.”

My husband was talking about the leader of the town like they’d been acquainted with for ages, and I hadn’t a clue. “Do you know her?”

“Kind of that.”

The conversation piqued my interest in the relations between my husband and the leader of Calire, but it might be discussed later on the way to my in-laws’ house. For now, my urgent problem was that I could get with each creak of the floorboards beneath our steps that we were coming closer and closer to the microphone, and I hadn’t been told yet what was going to be.

“What am I supposed to do?” Lewis held on more tightly, and his rapid heartbeat went pitter-pat near to my left shoulder. At least I wasn’t the only one so nervous.

The heat of his breath burnt my ear, “Say a few words. Tell everyone in this assembly hall how lucky you are to have such an imposing and intelligent husband,” he said with a wide smile. Bastard.

“Let me introduce my wife–Hope Hill,” the microphone echoed his words all over the hall. “I hope you don’t mind if your new rector gives the floor to the most inspiring person you’ve ever met.”

I heard clapping and shouts again, being led by Lewis to the mic. He placed me in front of it and started adjusting the height for I was only one meter fifty-four centimeters tall. His strong and hot hand landed on my lower back, pushing a little bit forward as if telling silently ‘You can start.’ So, I started.

“I’d like to thank my husband for saying ‘don’t attract much attention today’ and then taking me to this stage,” I attempted to joke my anxiety off, and, hearing the chuckles and giggles of the audience, concluded that I wasn’t that bad.

“I didn’t say that, love,” Lewis tried to make an excuse, but I was on a roll.

“Dear, I’m blind, not deaf.”

I heard Ralody Brine burst into an awkward laughter, mirrored by a good half of sitting in the hall. I hoped it hadn’t been too much. A low snigger came from the spot where my husband was standing. This sound made me realize it was going nice for a person without a pre-prepared speech in one's pocket.

“On a more serious note, I’m truly proud of my husband–Lewis Branon Hill. And note, please, I didn’t help him. He received the position thanks to cleverness and hard work, not me. I was just sitting on the couch, not attracting much attention.” I thought this stand-up at Nordery University would be widely known. “And, for sure, I can’t pass by–” ‘My husband’s merits for Calire’ I wanted to say, but a weird thump from behind the hall walls distracted me. I strained my ears to figure out what was happening there, but regretted it immediately after hearing, “Shots.”

“Shots?” the word swept over the audience, starting the murmuring.

“Hope?” My husband touched my elbow. At that moment the shooting appeared closer and became louder for seers to be heard. At first, there was no reaction, but a second later…

The first cry of panic that pierced the hanging silence was female, accompanied by sounds of clicks of high-heeled shoes and uncontrolled body movements. Then it grew into a cacophony of shuffling boots and shouts, and I didn’t notice instantly that the one with a gun had been already shooting in the assembly hall.

No, not one.

Two.

No, three.

Saint Initiatoress, there were more than six of them.

The ground literally slipped from underfoot. Lewis held me in his arms and carried us out of the living hell.

“What’s going on?” I hoped for an answer.

“It’ll be fine, Hope, just hold on.”

I clasped my hands behind his tensed neck and lowered my head.

“Lewis, here!” the leader of the town shouted, and my husband headed in the direction she’d shown him, I supposed, “There’s a hidden staff door to the basement o–”

We stopped, and it did not foreshadow anything good. Lewis’s heart was pounding rapidly against my head. He put me back on my feet and strongly yanked by his arm, taking me behind his back. He was shielding me, but from what? Lewis stood back, speeding up and making me do the same.

“Ral,” his voice was no more than the likeness of a loud whisper, “when I yell, take Hope and run as fast as you can.”

I clung to the crispy sides of his cotton shirt, “No.”

“Hope, please.”

“I won’t leave you, Lewis.”

“Hope, you must.”

A bullet whizzed and smashed into the wall on the right, interrupting us. Then a series of shots thundered from six different sides.

“DOWN!” Ralody shouted.

I fell forward, hitting the relatively soft linoleum flooring with my face. The huge sunglasses flew aside with a crush. For the first time I was so happy there wasn’t hard, cold tile on the floor, otherwise, my nose would have been a bloody mess of tissues and cartilage. The weight of solid muscles dented me into the linoleum. Lewis’s shaking hands surrounded my head. I couldn’t breathe. The claws of panic fettered my lungs. I was suffocating.

“Love,” he called me, and, for a second, it seemed to me that everything was fine, “Babe, you need to calm down.”

I gasped for the air.

“I know, it sounds so stupid now, but we have to pretend to be dead, okay?”

There were fewer bullets, flying out of the submachine guns, in the air. And less cries.

“Hope?”

I smelled a metal scent of blood mixed with something else. Urine.

“I–” inhale, “I’ll try.”

“Good girl. Ral? How are you?”

Her hair fell down her hands, scraping her skin, when Ralody slowly, barely noticeable in the din, turned to us.

“Fucking scared.”

For a fucking scared woman her heart rate and voice were surprisingly tranquil. Maybe it was just a defensive reaction to everything.

“Who are they?” I asked from under Lewis’s body. “What do they want?”

“No idea, love.”

“I’d venture to suggest,” the low voice came from the right side, “that this is the hand of the Reunification cult.”

My heart skipped a beat at the mention of this name. Lewis felt it too.

“I haven’t heard from them for ages. Why today?” he asked.

The last mass murder of the Reunification cult had happened twenty-three circles ago–a month after my parents’ death. The sectarians had taken over the Main Temple of the Saint Initiatoress Ranita in Mavrony–the capital of Ranita–during the Praising Day and had burned the building with the worshipers inside. One thousand seven hundred twenty-six people had been burnt alive, including forty-four followers of the cult.

“I don’t know. Heirs of the crackpots grew up and continued the business of their insane ancestors?”

I felt my stomach twist. No, no, no. I couldn’t vomit now.

“A good theory, but it’s not very likely.”

There was a gunshot, and something heavy collapsed near us with a chilling slap. The scent of gunpowder and blood burst in my nose. My husband flinched at me.

“Lewis, is t–”

“Shh, Hope, it’s just a… bag. It’s a bag.”

Ralody gasped, covering her mouth and nose with her hand to make it not that loud. I knew he’d lied because my panic attack hadn’t let me yet, and we couldn’t allow a new one to start. I was repeating ‘You can handle it. You can handle it. You can handle it quietly. This mantra helped me not to become hysterical even when a warm and sticky puddle of a stranger’s blood wet the sleeves of my turquoise dress.

I couldn’t hear a shot anymore. The floorboards of the stage cracked, and all of the people who remained in the assembly hall sank into silence.

“Brothers,” the nasal male voice appeared from the speakers, “this day will become the beginning of a new era. We’ve been gathering our powers for more than twenty circles, and finally can eradicate the absolute iniquity called the Authority of Ranita.” The man spat, and his henchmen mirrored the action. One of them spat next to us.

The commander of the sectarians went on, “Today these infidels will be brought to justice. All of them. And their supporters too. The Five will be thriving and great again! The Reunification is coming! Ave Unio!”

“Ave Unio!” the gunned men all around the perimeter of the assembly hall exclaimed.

Some girl not far from the place we were lying sobbed aloud, which didn’t go unnoticed either by us or by the terrorists.

“Brady, please.”

The cult follower headed to the opposite side from me shielded by Lewis’s weighty body, shambling his feet in the heavy leather boots. My heart stopped when he paused. I perceived that the gun was pulled on the girl by the smell of urine that grew stronger.

“What’s your name?” the commander crooned into the microphone.

The girl fell into a stupor, terrified. She couldn’t manage a single word. I didn’t want to even imagine what she felt at the point of a gun.

“I thought I asked you a question,” the nasal voice said.

The poor student was shaking so hard that I heard the metal necklace tapping against her chest.

And then a shot.

A smell of gunpowder and blood.

Cries and sobs.

“Brady,” the man on the stage addressed, “you do not need to be so radical, you know.”

“The bitch deserved it,” Brady threw casually as if the killing wasn’t anything horrible and forbidden.

Before her breathless body hit the floor, immobilized by the bullet in her head forever, the words the girl had murmured before her death glided up under my skin. More likely, Brady gunned her down for them.

Saint Initiatoress, save me, she’d vocalized her last words.