Sleeping Beast Ch. 05

Nivid lifted Troi easily over the bench and hugged her against his chest, pressing a kiss to the top of her head as though she weren't holding herself rigid in his embrace.

Argus slumped in his seat, relieved that Nivid was here to aid him. He happened to glance at Talgut, who was staring at the couple in surprise.

Talgut had seen Troi in Nivid's arms yesterday, as well, but hadn't thought twice about it. He'd only glimpsed a few seconds of what happened before, but Nivid's embrace had seemed like the natural response to what was apparently a very emotional exchange.

To watch him standing calmly in the kitchen of Zamok Denova nuzzling a woman's head as he tried to pacify her... Talgut had never imagined Nivid behaving like this with anyone. It made him seem so... human.

He scowled to himself.

Had he been underestimating Nivid all these years? Had he underestimated the depth of Nivid's loneliness, too? His pain? Talgut lowered his eyes, covering his shame and allowing Nivid and Troi some scant illusion of privacy.

Argus didn't share a mind with Talgut, but they'd been friends for close to two decades, and he could guess what the other man was thinking. It made him look again at Nivid, wondering what Troitsa saw so differently from all the others. How was she able to ignore what Nivid was?

Argus felt his brother's faint, eternal disgust for what he'd become in the shadow of the curse, but he lived half his life in Nivid's mind. How was Troi able to look past the deformed surface of the beast and into his heart? How was it that an enslaved nomad-- a girl who'd never crossed the Volga, never walked the sand at the edge of the sea-- of all the women who had been brought here for his brother to use, how was she the one to see past the monster and into the man?

Wedging her hands against Nivid's chest to hold herself away from him, the former slave broke the silence. "How did you--"

She stopped, glaring from one to the other. Then she wriggled out of Nivid's embrace and backed up, pointing at the bench. "Both of you sit over there and tell me what's going on. Now."

Talgut's eyebrows rose, but the other two men betrayed not a hint of surprise at the command or the tone in which it was spoken. Talgut repressed a smirk.

Exchanging a glance, Nivid and Argus positioned themselves side-by-side on the bench, facing outward.

Argus rubbed a knee as though it ached, something he always did when he was upset, and jumped into the unavoidable confession. "When I told you about the curse, I didn't tell you everything."

Troi blinked once, showing no other sign that the hangman's noose had come undone and slithered harmlessly from her neck. This was not what she'd anticipated.

Argus cleared his throat, still not meeting her eyes.

She shored up her defenses. Maybe he was just wrapping a perverse plot in a clever package.

"What I told you when you arrived was the truth: at a young age, my mother was betrothed to a man she'd known since childhood. She didn't love him, but that wasn't expected of her. Their parents had arranged the match and it was thought to be beneficial for both families. My mother came from nobility and wealth and cared about neither."

Independently, unaware, Troi and Talgut shifted slightly. People born into wealth could afford to disdain it.

Argus continued. "My father's family were traders from Arkhangelsk. His father ran a shipping line on the Baltic. When my parents fell in love, her mother was the one who helped them elope. By then everyone in Finland knew that war was coming, and my grandmother feared for the safety of her daughters. My grandfather settled a third of her dowry on the jilted bridegroom and his family, and everyone was satisfied. My parents were still there-- waiting out the winter before returning to Russia-- when an epidemic of lung fever swept through the district. Her jilted fiance was one of many who succumbed. His mother was devastated at losing her only son. She blamed my parents and hired a witch to curse them and their descendants for eternity."

Argus paused for breath, trying to gauge whether Troi's attitude had improved. Her face was fixed in the same uninformative mask she'd worn her first night here, when he was telling her she'd been captured to serve as the sexual plaything of a monster. He found her apparent calm just as unsettling as he had that night. He lowered his eyes and reached for his tea to cover his unease.

Troi looked from Argus to Nivid, who, unlike his brother, hadn't taken his eyes off her. She could see nothing but sadness and love written there, along with a shadow of the same fatigue she'd felt emanating from her friend. He must have woken too often in the night. Troi tore her eyes away from Nivid and her mind from their intimacies they'd shared, hardening her heart as Argus continued.

"I didn't lie-- I just didn't tell you everything."

Another pause.

"I didn't tell you that it affects both of us equally, though Nivid's physical symptoms are much more visible."

Troi's bone-deep sense of doom had begun to dissipate more rapidly. Her face said nothing of the change.

"I told you they were cursed with a weak, good son, and an evil, strong one."

Troi frowned, her eyes twitching sideways to Nivid. She hated the ease with which he called his brother "evil."

Studying his thumbs, Argus missed it.

"We-- their sons-- are cursed--" His pitch and tempo changed into the universal voice of a person repeating by rote words heard many times. "-- never to be together and never to be apart, never to wake but never to sleep, never to be completely evil nor completely good, never to die and never to live--"

The room was silent when Argus lifted his eyes.

With a deep breath, he finished, "--until we find true love."

The first sound to breach the quiet was Talgut, Argus, and Nivid exhaling noisily as one, an echo of the wind outside wrapping itself around the corners of the castle.

Troi had an incomprehensible urge to laugh, muffled by a feeling that she still hadn't heard the truth. She waited, having found that people often volunteered more information when one said nothing.

"So... my parents didn't take the curse seriously until several years later. They'd returned to Arkhangelsk and settled down by then. Everything seemed fine until Nivid was about--"

Nivid felt his uncertainty. "Ten," he offered.

"Ten," Argus repeated. "He started... changing... then and they believed."

"My father sold nearly everything we had, exchanging it for gold, and we left Arkhangelsk without an explanation. We never returned."

Argus heaved a sigh and glanced sideways at Talgut, who took it as a cry for help. After a harumph to gain Troi's attention, he went on. "Best way to put it is that Argus and Nivid are one person."

Troi turned a less-irate expression on him, though her confusion was clear.

Talgut waved a negligent hand at the duo on the bench, "They came here, hiding Nivid, an' it was like the curse said, Argus was good and Nivid was bad. It was okay for a while. Nivid wasn't full-grown, and their father was around to keep him under control, more or less. But then he died."

Troi moved away as he spoke, turning to glance behind her before lowering herself to the hearth.

Argus controlled the shudder he felt when Nivid's relief flowed into his own.

Talgut went on with the story. "Their Pa was down below, taking care of business, and the buggy got struck side-on by a team of runaway oxen hauling freight. Argus was with his father when the accident happened, and the boy got killed, too."

Troi's mouth opened, but Talgut's palm stoppered her objections.

"It was wintertime, and there was an old vagrant lying soused and half-froze against a building. Argus--"

He stopped, staring at the other two men, and twisted his hand up, turning a gesture to a shrug. "We talked about this about as many times as people can talk about one thing, and none of us understand it any better than we did before, but somehow, Argus' soul ended up in that old man's body. Best we can tell, the old man died at the perfect moment for Argus to take his place. Anyway, whatever caused it, Argus took the body, but his mind merged with Nivid's. Nivid was back here, locked up b'cuz it was one of his bad times, and he felt it happening right along with Argus."

Nivid nodded at Troi when her gaze hopped from Talgut to him to Argus and back again.

Argus took over again. "I was only seventeen, and it took a while for me to piece together even an inkling of the truth. I was in the carriage, then I was in the gutter, looking up at the carriage and two dead bodies-- my father's and mine-- but at the same time, I could feel the stone of the tower walls against my back and sense dim light coming in through the arrow slits above me. The alcohol in the old man's body didn't affect my thoughts, but I wasn't overly steady on my new feet, and the body was in bad shape even without the alcohol; I had to get warm, get sober-- and get back here.

"My mother had stayed home to take care of Nivid, but after the second day, she didn't come again. I could see through his eyes as well as my 'own' and I could feel him getting hungrier and hungrier. It took me four days to walk here-- we were together, in each other's heads the whole time."

He looked at Nivid, who'd turned to look at him, too. "He already knew our father was dead, of course, but when I let him out so he could hunt, I found Mother--"

An echo of the old shock was in his eyes, and Troi understood instantly what those four words meant.

"--and--" Argus shrugged. "--that was twenty-four? twenty-five? years ago."

Troi felt like she needed a pause to absorb what had already been related, but she wasn't getting one. Her head was still spinning when Talgut took up the tale again.

"He was still in the old man's body when I got here a few years later, but they knew he was sick, knew he was dying.

Talgut went on. "Argus discovered that he-- they-- b'cuz they were sharing heads half'n'half by then-- could borrow the body of a person who wasn't using it, and he picked that--"

Talgut waved at the now-handsome Denova sibling.

"--fellow's body out of the loony bin he was in."

Apparently that was the end of their story, because everyone's attention turned patiently to Troitsa, whose own crippled focus was blinking back and forth between the men. She didn't look indignant any more, Argus thought. She looked empty and forlorn.

Troi would have agreed with his opinion, had she known. She did feel empty.

Suspicion and ire had been consumed by her confusion, but even that was gone now, and nothing else had come to fill the spaces. She knew she should have a thousand questions, because she didn't understand a quarter of their tangled, improbable tale, and it didn't come close to answering her original concerns... but her head was empty.

Her only conscious thought was a foggy memory of the Bashkir legend about a giant bull who carried the world on his back. Supposedly, the earth shook when the bull moved. At the moment, Troi thought that bull must be having an frightful fit, because everything in her world was aquiver, from top to bottom and around the bend, as Asa used to say.

Yesterday morning's brouhaha with Argus had been annoying, but the kiss had been truly upsetting, and the turmoil hadn't ended there. She'd gone from ardent arousal to abject fear to gambling her life on Nivid's uncertain emotions. And all that was before realizing she'd fallen in love-- for the first time in her life-- with the beast who'd imprisoned her.

For a few moments, the sound of the wind-god caressing the corners of the castle filled the quiet kitchen.

All her questions had been trampled into senselessness by the world-bearing bull. Troi didn't know what to believe, or what to say, or what to do. She uncrossed her arms, stood, and left the kitchen.

--o--

Talgut talked them out of following her, though initially he had to throw himself in Nivid's path to prevent it. He didn't miss the irony of his choice, after the second-hand criticism he'd bestowed on Troi for doing the same thing when Nivid charged Argus. The brothers relented swiftly, seeing that Troitsa needed time to reflect, if not to recover. After all, it wasn't as though she could go anywhere-- the wolves were running free in the taiga.

The three men returned to the table, where breakfast was waiting, still warm. It was the first time Nivid had eaten with them in well over a decade, and no one missed the significance of that event, nor the fact that the woman responsible for the change was absent. It would have been a happier occasion if she'd been there to share in it, but her cooking was still the best thing any of them had eaten in the many years of their mutual imprisonment.

After the meal, Talgut shooed the brothers outside like a pair of children-- Nivid first to contain the wolves.

By then Troi had been alone for an hour, and Talgut was hoping that would be enough to open her ears. If he could find her, he grumbled under his breath-- it was a damned big castle.

--o----O----o--

He finally found her at the rear of the building, on a balcony which used to harbor a rooftop garden. The pots and urns and pails were filled with dirt and weeds now, but the balcony was still a beautiful place by virtue of the vista below. Troi's wind-god was still whipping around the corners, rattling shutters occasionally to remind them of his presence, while Troitsa was sitting in the recessed bit between crenelations, dangling her feet over a drop of a hundred yards or so. Talgut made plenty of noise crossing the tiled floor. He'd never seen her this close to the edge of anything.

He leaned on a parapet one over from hers, giving Troi a bit of breathing room, and looked out over the valley. For a long time, neither spoke.

Finally, in the space between gusts, Troi asked, "Are you here to plead with me on their behalf?"

"Nyet," Talgut huffed. "I thought mayhap you had questions, though you might be ill-inclined to tolerate those two as yet."

Troitsa turned glossy eyes his way.

Talgut inhaled sharply, and faced the valley again while he bridled his emotional response. He'd never seen Troitsa weep. Nary a tear. As young as she was, the woman was as strong as anyone he'd ever know. The fact she was near tears now made him question whether he should be here at all, invading her quiet balcony, much less with another motive in mind.

She spoke before he could ask if she wanted him to leave.

"I was barely out of girlhood when my family was killed." Her voice had the thick sound of one who had been weeping. "I was betrothed to a boy from another clan-- my mother said he'd make a fine, strong husband, my little sisters thought he was handsome, and my brother said he'd be kind. We wouldn't have been married for another two years, but I knew what my life would be, and I was happy with the notion.

"Then... then the soldiers came. My father---"

She was silent for a few minutes after she broke off, save for a few wet-sounding sniffles.

Talgut's teeth ground together.

"This." Troi made a half-circle with her palm facing up, indicating the fortress and surrounding lands. "Them. You. The past month has been... this is the first time I've felt safe since then. I feel like a person again. Every day, I've thanked whatever deity brought me back to my homeland and into the care of the twelve gods waiting for me here."

Troi wiped her cheeks on the wide sleeves of her cotton chickmen. The wind-god quieted, listening.

She looked at Talgut, not hiding the wounds bleeding behind her eyes. "But mayhap I was wrong. They-- and you, too, Talgut-- have been deceiving me since my arrival, though I considered you kin. One doesn't lie to one's family. Mayhap the gods are forever beyond me."

He heard her pain, but ignored the fist around his ribcage telling him what a bastard he was; sympathy wasn't what she needed from him now.

"Pssht," he hissed, loud and dismissive. "That, dyevushka, is nonsense and you know it."

The quivering sense of uneasiness he'd felt emanating from the girl gelled into expectation.

"Your gods aside, we had no inkling you'd be different than those who came before you. You didn't expect them to pour the story out as soon as you got here, did you?" Talgut got a taste of what he wanted when her head came around. Maybe he needed to emphasize the quantity. "How were they to know you weren't going to be like all of those other women Nivid had up here?"

Ahh... there it was... the sparks in her eyes which said Talgut would soon be building his own funeral pyre if his feet kept to their current path. He held his face firmly in check. He'd never met a woman who liked hearing about her predecessor.

Her lips had thinned to a fine pink line.

When she ceased breathing fire, Troi breathed a quiet query. "What did you think I would ask-- no... wait...

"You clearly think there's something else I should know. What did you come here to tell me?"

Talgut sighed, his satisfaction dulled. He was going to hurt her again, and he wished it weren't necessary.

"They were only boys when the curse hit Nivid, Troitsa. He lost himself in a hell he didn't understand and hadn't a chance of controlling, and Argus lost his older brother. 'Twas only a few years later that their parents died, and excepting me, they've been alone since then.

"You think you've been lonely for five years?"

She winced.

"Argus and Nivid have not seen a single glimmer of light nor hope in twenty-five years. Not until you came along and started treating Nivid like a man instead of a monster, which was all of five minutes ago, in the gods' grand scheme. Could you not find it in yourself to be a mite more patient when they're befuddled by the niceties of social discourse?"

He turned his head and met her eyes, which were awash again.

Troi set her feet down when he lifted her out of the parapet, and he held her while she wept, thinking it was a good thing Nivid couldn't see through his eyes as well as Argus', because Talgut was quite sure holding Nivid's woman this close would get him killed.

Not to mention making her cry.

--o----O----o--

NOTE- Yes, I know the boys' Explanation left a lot UNexplained, but that was my intention: Troi is overwhelmed by all that's been happening to her, and Argus was so focused on the big secret they've been keeping that he forgot to address the incident which precipitated his confession. Don't worry... Troi recovers and is back to being her astute, curious, questioning self in Chapter 6. She'll clear things up for you then. Plus there's sex. :)

I can't promise 2 weeks for this one... My parents live 5 hours away & have been experiencing some medical issues. I'll do my absolute best. As usual, thanks for the love you've been giving this story. I like it, but it's nice to hear I'm not the only one.

♥ Love ♥ Stef