“It is for the better, I think,” she said. “It was a silly girl’s dream.”
“To imagine a land you could rule safely, with someone whose reputation you trusted beside you?” I said. “That doesn’t seem silly to me. It seems like what your parents have, for the most part.”
“Yashaa,” she said, “you’re still doing it.”
“Doing what?” I asked.
“‘Someone whose reputation you trusted’?” she repeated. “If you were any more courtly, I think you’d split down the middle.”
“I am nothing of the sort,” I protested. “I grew up in the dirt, princess. I don’t know anything about how to live at court, not anymore. I never learned how to run the spinning room. I never even wanted to. Then I met you, and I saw what service was supposed to be.”
“I don’t want service, Yashaa,” she said. “Not from you.”
I knew what she meant. I knew what she was trying to tell me. But I couldn’t keep my disappointment from my face when she said the words. I had been directionless for too long and had only just made peace with my circumstances. I needed time to readjust. I watched her face fall.
“I’m sorry, Yashaa,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done any of this.”
She moved to stand up, and I grabbed for her hand and missed it. I caught her veil instead and pulled it off her head. I let go and she scrambled to fix it, covering the mess I had made of cutting off her hair.
“Wait,” I said. “Zahrah, please.”
She stilled.
“I will try,” I told her. “I will try to understand. I will think about what I say before I say it, and make sure that I say what I mean.”
“You have always said what you meant, Yashaa,” she told me. “I only misunderstood you.”
“But I know that now,” I said. A thousand things that she had said and done in the past few days suddenly burned in my memory, lit by new light. “I know it. Please, let me try.”
“Yashaa,” she said. “I don’t want you to do this because you think it is your duty.”
“You told me you don’t want my service, even though I thought that was all I had to offer you,” I told her. “Let me do that anyway, and if something else grows beside it, so much the better.”
She breathed a great sigh, and I saw Zahrah for the first time. The Little Rose wasn’t gone, but she was centered in new ground, and it was a ground I could see clearly and understand. It was the start of something new, but something that would be the better for what had come before. It was something that would be strong, even if we stumbled through the beginning of it.
“Do you want me to kiss you again?” I asked. My heart raced at the thought of it, though I couldn’t have given good words as to the reason why. “I think it’s the only way we’re going to get better at it.”
She turned her face toward mine, and I learned that kissing is much easier when you are closer in height, and when you have the advantage of warning, and when neither of you is knocking the other off their feet. It was still very strange, but it was no stranger than climbing down a tower with a princess above you, and no stranger than searching the wide world for one specific piskey. This time when we parted, I felt the loss of her closeness and a surge of the want for it. That was something even I could recognize from stories.
“That was better,” she said, laughter in her eyes.
“Indeed,” I said, nearly breathless.
In the face of my attempt at solemnity, she cracked, and her laughter joined the buzzing of the bees in the air around us. I could have watched her forever, but I was trying to remember that she wanted me to do more than watch.
“Come on,” I said, and pulled her to her feet. “I didn’t even ask if you caught anything.”
“Rabbits,” she said. “Three of them.”
“Saoud will have them all dressed and half cooked by the time we get back,” I told her. “And we’ll be stuck with the washing up.”
“I think it was worth it,” she said. She looked down at the well cover. “You did good work. I didn’t realize it could be made so quickly.”
“It won’t last forever,” I told her. “But it will last long enough. And it is a good gift for the piskeys here.”
“Do you think they will give us something?” she asked.
“I am nearly certain they have heard every word we’ve spoken since we got here,” I told her. “In which case, they know about the piskey we seek. Maybe they have a way of communicating.”
“That would be wonderful,” she said. She looked around and raised her voice. “And very much appreciated.”
There were four stones on the well cover, one holding down each corner. I had picked them because they had flat tops, and because they were broader than they were deep; I hoped that this would make them the best at securing the screen. On the top of one of them, next to the bucket I had filled, was a large green leaf laid out like a table linen. On top of that, there was a honeycomb.
“Everything is appreciated,” I said, stooping to pick it up. It was awkward to carry, because I also had the bucket, but I managed.
Zahrah had not let go of my hand.