The Silver Thread (16 page)

Annika woke up with a jolt and found herself in the dark, moist with feverish sweat, like she’d been fighting some kind of infection and the fever had only just broken. She couldn’t believe she had really slept away the entire afternoon, but the sky proved her wrong.

She walked into the dark and deserted downstairs and warmed up a plate of the quiche that Chivanni had made earlier, and found Talvi on the living room couch with a book, reading by candlelight. An empty box of his licorice candy lay on the coffee table. He didn’t look up at her when she sat down beside him.

“Are James and Chivanni still at the gallery?”

“Mmm hmm,” he hummed slowly and turned a page.

“What about Charlie? He must have given Patti a ride to work.”

“Mmm hmm.”

“I’m sorry I was such a grouch,” she said after she’d eaten a bite, noticing her audience wasn’t paying attention. “Are you still mad at me?”

“Mmm hmm.”

She sighed, watching his eyes pass over the rows of unfamiliar text. He flipped another page, devouring it visually. “How about now?” she asked as she slowly ran her hand up and down his thigh, but he ignored her, not missing a beat in his reading.

“Mmm hmm,” was all he responded with.

She wrinkled her nose a little. Surely this should have gotten his attention.

“You must be pretty mad if you won’t even respond to me,” she kept waiting for him to scratch his head so she could see that he was lying, but he never did. The more she thought about what he had said to him earlier, the worse she felt as she gazed at him in the dim light.

Maybe I think because he’s a guy, that his feelings aren’t as easily hurt as mine. He’s been nothing but calm and understanding, and I’ve been a total bitch. I should be ecstatic that we’re together, not looking for things to tear us apar
t again.

Talvi flipped through a few more pages in the long, awkward silence that filled the space between them.

“I guess what I said was really mean,” she admitted out loud finally, after finishing her dinner.

“It was downright vicious,” he said, looking right at her. “I didn’t think you had it in you to be so cruel.” He set his book down on the coffee table, but his eyes did not leave hers. They had no anger in them, but they weren’t twinkling either.

“I’m sorry for lashing out like that.”

“It’s human nature to do that when you are injured or frightened, Annika,” he said simply. “But I suspect that you are less human than you care to admit. Perhaps you’ve been trying to fit back into your old skin, but you find it can no longer accommodate you as you are now. You can’t keep living in an abyss of melancholy. I wish you had inherited Runa’s immunity to it. Nothing seems to weigh her spirits down.”

He kept looking at her, waiting for her to talk more about the things that she was scared of saying out loud. His expectant gaze was so intense, she had to look away.

“Maybe you’re right,” she said, and swallowed hard. Before she had met him, her life felt so certain. She was Annika Brisby, with a pretty defined role among her friends, her family, and in her band. She was determined to make something of herself and her talents, and to hell with anyone who suggested otherwise. After she had met Talvi, those things had begun to seem less concrete. Her friendships felt shallow, her music seemed insignificant, the world around her was overwhelming, and she felt somewhat detached from her former life.

“Maybe I’m trying to be something I’m not,” she mused, and fiddled with her wedding band. “I thought I could just go back to my old life like nothing happened, but something
did
happen. I’m trying to be Annika Brisby, and I’m not that girl anymore. I’m Annika Marinossian now. I just don’t know what that means. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know
wha
t
I am.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Talvi admitted. “All I know is that things become complicated when humans and elves intertwine their lives. That’s why they don’t do it. Look at us now…look how complicated things have become in so little time. I say, we’ve really outdone ourselves, don’t you think?”

Annika sighed. If there was one thing she knew about her husband, it was that he never did anything half-assed. He was Mr. All or Nothing. She supposed that made her Mrs. All or Nothing.

“So what are we going to do about it?”

“We’ll see how things play out, and we’ll get through it together,” he finally said. “You know, my parents didn’t give me much advice about being married, but my mother told me that we should never go to bed upset with one another.” He reached an arm out to invite her to curl up against his chest, and she jumped at the opportunity.

“Aww, that’s a sweet thing to say,” she said as she cozied up in the crook of his arm. “What did your dad tell you?”

“He told me to be certain that the sofa was comfortable, just in case. So I thought I would look into that possibility,” Talvi said, and raised an eyebrow at her. “Just between us, I don’t think it matters where I sleep, as long as you’re in my arms.”

A warm tingling sensation blossomed at both ends of Annika’s body, causing her to forget about their argument. She wondered how he could know the perfect words to say, like it was something he learned in sensitive husband school. He must have studied hard, because all she knew was that she felt much better than earlier.

Talvi had gone back to reading his book, and at first Annika thought she might follow along with him, but when she examined the yellowed pages, the text printed upon them was in a language she had never seen.

“What language is this?” she asked. “It kind of looks like a blend of Arabic and Swedish.”

“I suppose it does, now that I think about it,” he said, turning a page from left to right instead of right to left. “It’s Karsikko.”

“I didn’t know you were a linguist like your brother,” she said, wondering what native Karsikko speakers looked like, and where they were from.

“I do not have the interest nor the discipline in languages that Finn has,” Talvi admitted. “I only know fifty-six, nineteen of which I’m fluent in.” Annika felt her ego take slight injury when she heard this new fact. She’d always been proud of her knowledge of French, Spanish, and Macedonian thanks to her mother, but his fifty-six blew her measly four completely out of the water.

“So what’s Karsikko? I’ve never heard of it. Who speaks it?”

“I do,” he said, still trying to focus on the book’s contents. “It’s my native tongue.”

“Then why did everyone at your house speak perfect English while I was there?” she said, somewhat puzzled.

“When you are a guest in someone’s home, aren’t you more comfortable if they speak your language? Personally, I think it’s extremely rude not to, unless you don’t know it.”

“But how come you never told me you spoke so many languages?” she pestered. “How come you never told me that your native language is Karsikko?”

“You never asked,” he said with the faintest smile, and went back to his book. There was so much about him that Annika didn’t know…so many mysteries and quirks and preferences and personality traits that she had no idea about, not to mention all the ones that he didn’t know about her. So what if he had no idea how she liked her coffee? There was plenty of time to learn those kinds of things. But what was he like before she’d met him? At the core of his being, who was he, really?

Annika closed her eyes and imagined him surrounded by a dense forest of the tallest white birch trees she had ever seen. Here, in his native home, he was truly a free and wild creature, free from any obligations to anyone or anything. She saw him riding Ghassan, clad in his black suede traveling outfit, carrying his longbow, moving with ease through the woods, communicating with the animals around him. He had the power to heal with his touch, he could ask a tree how it was doing and it just might tell him, and he was equally as capable of sleeping on a bed of leaves as he was on satin sheets. He could shoot a moving target from a galloping horse, he could recite texts from memory that had put her to sleep in literature class, and he somehow managed to be on a first name basis with her parents mere hours after being arrested for molesting her in public. He had captivated her at first glance, something which no man had ever accomplished. It was too easy to forget that he wasn’t human.

She opened her eyes to see this exotic creature from another world sitting next to her, holding the worn book in his careful hands.

“What’s that book about, anyway, since it’s got your attention so well?” she asked of his reading material.

“It’s a history of the relationship between the Kallo and Näkki elves. We were originally the same race, but the Näkki chose to interbreed with demons in order to acquire their powers. That’s why they’re so physically different from us, what with their yellow eyes and sharp teeth. They offer sacrifices to their demon gods for their dark gifts. They’re very similar to vampires.”

“Do they get along with each other?” she asked, deeply intrigued.

“Well now, that’s an interesting question,” he said, and closed the book. “They were at war against each other for centuries, until quite recently.”

“Aww, they must finally be getting along. That’s nice.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, looking serious. “It means they’re likely to direct their aggression elsewhere.”

“Like where?”

Talvi gazed at her for a long time before he gave a response.

“I don’t wish to speculate, and I wouldn’t concern myself about it if I were you. All I can say is, I can’t think of a safer place to be right now than here. That spur-of-the-moment, secret wedding of ours turned out to be much more convenient than we ever could have planned.”

Questions about vampires and evil elves bounced around in Annika’s mind, but then the side door of the kitchen opened and in bounced James and Chivanni, with a cardboard box hovering behind him.

“You guys were gone for a long time,” she said, sitting upright. “I was starting to think you forgot about band practice.”

“We stopped at the wine shop,” James said, nodding his head at the cardboard box, which was now headed for the countertop. They watched as Chivanni made a little hand motion and twelve wine bottles rose out of the box, and arranged themselves in a row on the counter. “I wanted to be ready to celebrate whatever your results are. Or help you forget them. Either way, we’re prepared.” He picked up a plastic bag and waved it in the air, and Annika trotted into the kitchen, leaving Talvi on the sofa with his book.

“Okay, so I already read the directions, and they say you should wait until first thing in the morning to take them for the most accurate results,” James said, handing over the instructions. “But I think you should take one now, because oh my
god
I’m dying to know!”

“
Them
?” she asked, looking up at him from the unfolded paper she held. “How many did you get?”

“Three boxes with two tests each,” he said, setting his crocodile bag and car keys on the kitchen table. “All you have to do is pee on a stick, and then we’ll know in three minutes!”

Annika’s brain felt on overload, having another huge dose of reality knock her upside her head. Deformed twin elf babies began to haunt her mind again.

“James, what am I going to do if it comes out positive?” Annika asked. “How are we ever going to be successful if…” she trailed off, realizing it wouldn’t be that long before her free time might be a thing of the past. She felt regretful that the most productive thing she’d done for the past three months was support the nearest liquor store and watch every zombie movie ever made. Sure, she’d written a few songs, but they weren’t perfect yet. She could have done so much more with her time, besides feeling sorry for herself and debating her sanity, dwelling especially on a messed up teenage druid girl named Denalia.

She closed her eyes and saw herself in a filthy fur cloak, caked in dirt, spattered with blood, with both hands holding a sword. She could see lightning flashing, and trees crashing down around her. There were bodies strewn about all over the ground, lying in the mud, being rained on. She saw Denalia kneeling down beside two of them, grieving for her parents. She saw herself in the reflection of a bathroom mirror in a Paris coffee shop, washing mud off her face and rinsing blood off her shoulder.

A cold shiver jolted her out of her trance, and James’s voice brought her back to the present moment as he rattled off the names of people from some of their favorite bands.

“All those people have kids,” he said, as he inserted a corkscrew into a bottle of Montepulciano. “It can’t be that hard.”

“Yeah, but they’re all rich enough to have nannies when they go on tour,” Annika said, still very unconvinced. “Or they just fly home to check in with the fam.”

“Well how rich do you need to be?” James asked as he set the bottle on the counter to breathe and took four wine glasses out of the cupboard. “You see how loaded my family is, and we hardly speak to one another. I think I only inherited this money pit out of my aunt’s spite for her ex-husband. I mean, it’s not like she refused to give back his record collection; it’s a friggin’
house
!”