KALEIDOSCOPE II
Cynthia Hatch

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PART 11

She stared at him, confused. Such words -- words that found their way to her own uncertain thoughts, infusing them with light, as if some passing angel's wings had briefly touched her soul with a confirmation of miracles. Why should they be spoken with such reluctance?

"I don't understand. If you share that feeling, why does it bother you to speak about it?"

His only reply was a shake of that beautiful profusion of hair, so maddeningly blocking her efforts to read his expression.

"Don't do this, Vincent." Her voice was steely. The awful disorienting sensation of being cut loose from him, the knowledge that he was purposely thwarting their empathic link, produced a cold fear that only anger could hold at bay. "It isn't fair. Whenever it suits your purpose -- when you decide that I shouldn't know something, you isolate yourself this way. I don't deserve it, and I hate what you're doing to our bond. It feels like you're using it as a weapon."

It wasn't the first time she'd been angry with him, not even the first time she'd raised her voice to him, but it was the first time that a vision of how this confrontation would appear to an outside observer flashed across her mind. As he straightened and turned toward her, she thought she must be the picture of foolhardiness, a slight young woman in ribbons and a summer dress, blazing green fire at the huge figure that towered over her, the essence of barely restrained primitive power. But there was no answering fury in him, only a confused dismay.

"I don't mean to hurt you, Catherine."

"I know that, but it hurts just the same -- feeling cut off from you, from our connection. Nothing could be worse than that." Her tone was softer now. In protecting her from some imagined pain, he had caused another, and the remorse, the self-accusation implicit in every line as he leaned back against the railing touched her, even as she refused to back off. "Talk to me, Vincent. Why do those feelings trouble you?"

"Because," he said finally, turning to face her, but keeping still a careful space between them, "because to acknowledge those feelings is to accept that there is a design, somewhere outside ourselves . . . a destiny waiting to be fulfilled."

She nodded. "I feel that, but it isn't like something we have no control over. It's more like a miraculous opportunity, a plan we have a chance to perfect. It doesn't complete itself, Vincent -- the choices are ours." The quick look he flashed her told her instantly that she had hit at last on the source of his turmoil.

"Catherine, your choices are almost limitless. There is a whole world of opportunity open to you, countless lives you could choose to live. Those choices must be made freely. If you were to believe that fate had set down certain pathways -- for your steps alone -- you might feel an obligation to follow them. You must not. The choices are everything, Catherine, do you understand that?"

She closed her eyes for a moment, immeasurable relieved, immeasurably relieved to feel once more the soft current of his feelings nudging against her own, to hear and to recognize the familiar line he refused to cross.

He would never ask her, no -- never allow her -- to sacrifice her own chances for happiness for his sake. The problem lay in his tendency to determine where that line should be himself, when it was hers to draw, hers to know if such a line was itself an illusion.

"I understand, but this isn't the 14th century, Vincent. I have to make those choices for myself, and I'm the only one who knows what they're worth to me. It doesn't help to have you assuming what they might be, imagining that there are fantastic options in my world that it would be foolish of me to ignore. That's for me to decide, and I do feel an obligation, but it's nothing imposed on me by you or by some fate I'm powerless to resist. It's an obligation of the heart, Vincent, of what I feel for you, of this incredibly beautiful gift we've been given that shouldn't be wasted."

In the flickering light of the torches his eyes were in shadow. Still. she could sense his dilemma. The rare conflict between them had left them both adrift. She knew he ached to hold her as surely as she longed for the haven of his embrace. But certain questions needed to be faced, if they were ever to find their way to the answers. The peace that awaited them in each other's arms could be just as much a means of avoiding the issues, as his attempt to throw up walls between them had been.

"You told me that we must go with courage and with care. I know that's true and that sometimes I push you . . . about certain things . . . but you do it too, Vincent, only when you do it, it's to push me away."

"Catherine, it isn't that I don't respect your right to make your own choices -- or your wisdom in choosing. It's merely that I fear for you -- for how trustingly you accept what you cannot understand --what I am powerless to put into words."

"It's called 'faith,' Vincent. Some of the most precious things in the world depend on it. I have faith in you and in myself and in what's meant to be if we are only strong enough to make it happen."

"Your strength, Catherine, has never been in doubt."

"Is that really so? Then why am I shaking?."

"Because I upset you." The soft words, tinged with remorse, floated to her on the shadows. She let them hover there, unanswered, praying he'd sense what she needed most and reaffirm that the silent stream once more ran clear and deep between them. "And.' he said finally, "because you are not where you need to be."

He reached out to her then, and she went to him like a grateful wanderer, finding shelter from the storm.

"Forgive me," he whispered, head bent to her ear, and she did, wordlessly in the tender pressure of her lips against his neck, her hands that slid from the smooth leather at his waist, up and under the loose-fitting vest to the taut muscles of his back, their warmth evident to her fingertips through his knitted shirt.

"Perhaps it's over," he murmured, after a while.

"What?" The word was muffled in the delicious comfort of his embrace.

"The War of the Tapestries."

The smile in his voice brought an answering one to her lips, and she twisted slightly in his arms to look at the scene hanging behind them: soldiers frozen in combat. Regal and determined, their courage forever etched in the delicate pattern of woven threads. "Someone should tell them."

He turned her gently, till she was facing the wall, sliding his arm across her, allowing her to lean back. relaxed against his greater strength, his head lowered close to hers. "Perhaps I should write to Devin and tell him that at last I know what the war was about."

"Will he believe you, do you think?"

She felt, rather than heard, the small laugh. "Catherine, who would believe in a conflict such as ours? We are a battle that has never been."

"I think Devin would. He loves you. He knows who you are. I sometimes think he barely notices the things that make you so extraordinary, that to him you're just his kid brother."

"I wasn't thinking of myself, Catherine. It's you who makes this conflict so extraordinary. That you care to fight it at all never ceases to amaze me."

"Oh, I'm going to fight it, and I'm going to win. We're going to win it together, Vincent." She hugged his arm, his warmth pouring through her like honey as he rubbed his face against her hair.

"Someday we may come here to find the battle ended, the soldiers gone from the field."

"Do you think so?" She tilted her head, eyeing the huge piece of cloth critically. "Wouldn't it be rather boring -- such a big. empty space?"

"This hall is a big, empty space, Catherine. Are you bored?"

She laughed softly, brushing her lips against the soft sleeved arm that held her. "Not in the least."

"Perhaps the tapestries will be transformed. When next we see them, there may be scenes of celebration."

"All the knights, ridden home to claim their ladies?"

"Mm-hmm. Feasts and tournaments. Dancing."

In the sweet, deep poetry of his voice, the one word somehow stood alone, caressed into significance, and she leaned her head back to look at him. "No waltzing though. They'd have to wait centuries to take lessons."

"Some things are timeless. To hear the music is to know the movements."

"We could show them," she whispered, turning to look at him fully. that is -- if the music's still playing.'

"It plays forever, Catherine." The look in his eyes cast her shimmering into some dimension that was all anticipation, all promise. It let her descend the wooden staircase with no awareness of the steps beneath her feet. She was floating long before he encircled her waist and took her hand in his.

She scarcely felt his touch, yet it was all she felt, at once subtle and profound, and his eyes held her as surely as his arms. They swayed together, slowly circling, gliding in and out of the shadows. A simple dance, fluid and deceptively sedate. Father's anecdote about the waltz being considered scandalous swam into a consciousness lost somewhere in the blue. How quaint that had seemed -- how naive, but now she felt the people who had held that opinion might have been more sophisticated than she assumed, more aware of the sensual lure in its rhythm than she had ever been until this moment. A rhythm that spoke in the strength of the hand that held hers so tenderly.., the brush of his powerful body against her own . . . his eyes that never left her face, that seemed to be making love to her with a thoroughness that took her breath away.

As if the invisible musicians had halted, laying their instruments carefully aside, they slowed and stopped as one. He kept possession of her hand, his other remained at her waist. Her fingers lay quiet on the creamy suede of a patch at his cloaked shoulder, velvety moss over smooth stone. They stood in the center of the drafty chamber, her smaller shadow lost in his, while from the walls lords and ladies, knights and peasants flared briefly into life in the bouncing light. And they looked into each other's eyes, as if somewhere within the dance had never ended.

"It's late, Catherine," he whispered to her mute nod. With a visible effort he pulled his gaze from hers to look beyond. "The lights will need to be put out."

"We can do that."

He scanned the room. It almost seemed he was counting the number of torches that had been lit. "We should go."

"Yes, we should, and we will in just a minute, I promise, Vincent." His eyes looked into hers once more, drawn by the same mesmerizing spell that made her forget to blink, that and the message hidden in the words, a yearning and a resolve. "Then . . . perhaps, Catherine . . . "Just one," she whispered. "Yes . . . one."

He released her right hand and with a dreamlike slowness brought his left one to her face. His fingers traced with infinite tenderness the shape of her parted lips. The gold fringed eyes lowered to study what he touched. Half-closed, their pale blue had turned to cobalt, their glow kindling the waiting embers within her, and she shivered with their heat. He was holding her now, her face cradled in the seductive power of his hand, at once cherishing what he held and utterly possessing it. A last rational thought -- that if there was only to be one, he obviously intended to make it count --skipped wildly past the perimeter of her mind, as his mouth met hers.

Then there was only the exquisite taste of him, the translation of his fathom less love into a language so sensual that her mind would have been helpless to interpret what her body instantly understood. They no longer occupied a spot deep under the city, nor even in some idealized kingdom where princesses in fantastic hats awaited rescue. The world blew away under the rush of emotions, stronger than the wind that howled beyond the doors, to a place where there was only his indomitable spirit, filling her, the sensation of that incredible body pressed so achingly close against her own.

As with their dance, some intuition, shared or simply transmitted from one to the other, told them when to pull back from the precipice that beckoned, and they edged away together, lips parting, a single sigh shuddering between them. He scooped her close, and she clung to him for a moment, kissing the cloud of tawny hair into which she'd burrowed, as he said again, "We should go now."

"Yes," pulling back, she looked up at him. "Now we'll go." It was a smile of encouragement and triumph at the proof that they could indulge in the intense pleasure newly offered to them without succumbing to its temptations. His eyes returned her smile, and together they moved around the chamber, extinguishing the torches, leaving the Great Hall to wait in darkness for the next moment when love would demand so much attention that it could only be contained in this vast space.

They spoke little on the journey back. There was no need. A sweet contentment traveled with them.

"I'm going to spend the day with Nancy Tucker tomorrow -- in Connecticut," she told him as they reached the park entrance.

"Good."

"But we'll see each other soon?"

"I'm certain of it." He was watching her, head to one side, and she was sure he saw something in her demeanor that she wasn't yet aware of herself. "Catherine, there's no need to worry.."

"I guess I was,' she admitted, surprised. For so long their partings had brought anxiety that she was automatically nervous. That anxiety had come, she thought now, as much from their unspoken feelings, as the partings themselves. Not knowing how he truly saw their love, or if he ever would accept her desire for him, had tinged every moment with uncertainty. In some ways leaving was harder now; she knew she'd never be able to walk away without longing to turn and run back into his arms, but the awful sensation of losing a part of herself -- that was less, simply because he lived more surely in her. Their bond had grown stronger, shown itself to have dimensions they hadn't dreamed of, so though she would miss him, even ache for him, she could no longer doubt him.

"I won't be needing this . . here." She slipped the bulky sweater over her head, handing it to him. "It will probably be muggy outside." He looked at the soft bundle for a moment and said nothing. "Maybe you can save it for me -- in case I need it again sometime. Unless, of course, someone else needs it."

"No, Catherine. It will be there for you . . . waiting."

It was some time later, as she made her way across the nearly deserted street to her apartment, before she thought to wonder if there was a deeper meaning behind the statement. Waiting for some evening when she happened to be in his world, needing something warmer to wear, or waiting for another time, as yet unclear in her vision, when it would truly be hers?

Where this road they'd chosen was leading no one could tell. The end of it still shimmered, indistinct in the distance, the bends and turns before them, obstructing the view. She only knew that fate had marked it lovingly with the pure light of star shine and that every step along it was sweeter than the last.