River

Stephen

We are enjoying our little hotel balcony overlooking the busy avenue in New Orleans. There is always something to watch, some activity happening below us. Music, carousing, parades, revelry, arguments, something. It amuses me, but it astonishes Margaret. Her life has been so sheltered, growing up at the remote Ellis Cliffs, isolated from most other people. This is the exact opposite of that quiet existence, here in this vibrant city full of noise and light and chaos and life.

She is enjoying herself, I know she is. Especially with me, in our private moments, in our marital bed. I had worried about that, thought that she would endure my advances as patiently as she could, but that if I kept at her too much she would consider me to be an insatiable beast, and would grow to loathe my touch.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. She was utterly innocent on our wedding night, and was somewhat confused with our activities, but she obviously trusted me completely. She didn’t know what to do or what to expect, but she simply allowed me to guide her. I was as gentle as I could be, trying to make sure that nothing I did was uncomfortable for her. And she tolerated it very well.

What I did not expect, what has delighted me beyond all expectations, has been her growing enthusiasm. Once we got past the first night, and she received the basic education that I provided about how our bodies can fit together, she became quite the explorer. She doesn’t just tolerate me. A week into our marriage, and she seems just as eager for me as I am for her. We are quite wearing each other out, and I have never known such delights. I am the luckiest of all men.

For the past day or two, though, she has seemed to grow somewhat quieter. Although clearly enjoying herself, both in private and out and about through the city, she seems distracted. Tonight, watching the revelry below the balcony, I realize that her eyes are more gazing past the activity than focusing on it.

“What is it, my dear?” I ask her. “Are you well?” She doesn’t respond. “Margaret?”

She starts, moving her pale blue eyes to rest upon my face. “Oh, I am sorry. Yes, I am well.”

“You seem distracted? Or troubled? Is something wrong?”

She shakes her head, but then bites her soft lip. “Nothing is wrong that I can see, but I just have a strange feeling. I don’t know what it is.”

I take her hand, and bring it to my lips for a kiss. “Are you getting homesick for Ellis Cliffs?”

She smiles softly at me. “I cannot be. My home is Homochitto now.”

I feel a rush of love. “So it is. Still, it seems like there is something bothering you. What can I do?”

She is quiet for a moment. “How long will it take for us to get home?” she asks.

There is something troubling her, I am sure of it. Perhaps she needs to know that we could be home in days if needed. “If we hire the fastest stagecoach, we could do it in three or four days, possibly even less if we trade horses and drivers and go through the night. Do we need to?”

A slight frown furrows her lovely brow. “I don’t know. I just feel … something.”

I take her in my arms. “Let’s have one more night here, together, then decide in the morning if we want to set out for home.”

She nods, against my neck, my arms still around her. I ask her, “Would it make you feel better if we stop by Ellis Cliffs on the way?”

She exhales shakily, and I know I have found the source of her unease. “Yes, if we could, I would like to stop by home. I mean, my parents’ home.”

“Very well, darling.” I think she will want to leave in the morning. So, I’d better take advantage of the time we have left. I pull her back inside, back off the balcony overlooking the crowd, back into the privacy of our room.

Gregor’s

It is almost physically painful to him, the separation from the other Seer. He had grown so accustomed to her presence during the week that she was here, that the sensation of their joining souls had become a natural part of his day. Without it, he feels an emptiness that cannot be filled.

He worries that she is missing him even more, since he dropped Dalila and her child off at Homochitto earlier today. “Misty reports that Ayola misses you, yes, but she is coping with your absence. Apparently better than you are dealing with hers.”

“Great,” he thinks sourly. “A toddler’s coping skills are superior to mine.”

“So it seems,” I mildly tease him, hoping to lighten his mood. He knows what I am doing, but it fails to improve his demeanor. He continues staring glumly at the papers on his desk, in the dark, Rosalind asleep upstairs, the house feeling otherwise quite empty to him.

I try to distract him. “When the sun rises, you can finally return to the dock project. Perhaps a day of physical labor will refresh you.”

“Perhaps.” He continues glowering.

“There is another option for your relief. Rosalind is upstairs. You haven’t engaged in sexual relations with your wife for over a week, since the night of the Duncans’ wedding, because you had guests in your house until now. Nor have you slept. Do not forget that these are also needs that must be fulfilled.”

He looks up, as though this is a startling revelation. It is endearing how, over and over and over through the long years of his life, he will forget that he needs to sleep, and be amazed all over again at the method he knows can best bring him fulfillment and rest.

“Oh, yeah,” he breathes. “Is she asleep?”

“Yes, darling, but I suspect that she would find it quite exciting to discover you awakening her in the night. If you will recall, when you did so long ago, she was very happy to find you at her bedside.”

He remembers, how soon after he arrived in Natchez he realized he had spent too long away from her, and paid Beverly to allow him to wake her up in her modest nightgown that customers were never meant to see.

He is immediately aroused and inspired. I am pleased to have found a suggestion from which he will benefit. As will she.

Rosy

In my dreams, he is caressing me, intimately, moving his hands across my body. I feel myself responding to his phantom touch, my hips moving, pressing myself against his hand, and suddenly realize that it is not a dream. I am really moving, really pressing myself against his hand, which is really there caressing me.

I gasp.

His other arm has gathered me against him, my back pressed to his chest, and he whispers into my ear, his hand continuing its work, “Please, Rosalind, will you have me tonight? It has been such a long time.”

Words are not needed. I roll into him, reaching for his lips with mine, and reaching my hand under the covers to caress him as well.

He gasps.

Nicholas

I’m slumped outside, at night, behind our house overlooking the shipyard on the northern bank of the river. Pittsburgh looms behind me, while in front I see the New Orleans setting there, the steamboat rocking gently in the water of the Monongahela. It is the culmination of all our dreams, all our work. It is too dark to detect the lovely color of the blue paint, but I can make out the masts, the huge wheels along the sides. We’ve started firing up the engine each day, driving the wheels while holding the boat in place with ropes, just making sure that the mechanism is all in functioning order. So far everything is working perfectly.

It is hard, though, to do this in such a public way, thousands of people in Pittsburgh constantly watching and gossiping and, yes, laughing. The wheels make it look like some sort of monstrosity, I have overheard, the engine like a peculiar sawmill on a boat, the entire thing far too huge to ever make it intact over the falls at the end of the Ohio river. It is doomed to fail, they all predict, maliciously, eager for the scandal and the spectacle of what they are sure will be my downfall.

Lydia is the only thing that keeps me going, even more than my own certainty that it can work. It can. It must. She has never faltered in her determination, or in her faith in me. If I ever begin to doubt, she talks me out of it, reminding me that she has calculated everything a thousand times, and is completely sure that we will succeed.

I hear the sounds behind me in the house start to quiet, and know that she has gotten Rosetta off to sleep. I turn around to go back into the house, and as I do, something in the sky overhead catches my eye.

What is it? It is a little smudge of something, probably some steam or smoke drifting past from one of the many chimneys here in the city. But no, it isn’t moving. I stand still, gazing upwards, trying to solve this puzzle. It is a little blurry line in the sky, brighter on the lower end, dangling there immovable in the north.

I don’t know how long I stand there staring at the thing before I hear the door open. “Nicholas?” Lydia asks me. “What are you doing?”

“Come and look at this,” I tell her. She moves forward, leans back against me, and I use my arm and hand to trace a line in the sky for her towards the bizarre object.

I hear her intake of breath when she sees it. “What is that thing?” I ask her.

It only takes a moment for her to answer. “It has to be a comet, right? I’ve never seen one, but that matches the descriptions I’ve read.”

“A comet? Huh!”

“You know, comets are often seen as omens, or harbingers of important things to come,” she tells me. I’m sure she has read all about this somewhere. She is astonishingly well-read, for someone so young. “I think it is a sign that our steamboat is about to change the world.”

I burrow my head down into her hair, which only looks gray in the darkness, not the fiery red that I know it to be. I move my hands lower to rest against her expanding belly. The baby won’t be too long now. Probably soon after we start our journey. “I’ll agree with you, then. It is a good omen.”

We gaze at the comet for a while longer, before heading back inside our house.