David Farland - Lords of the Seventh Swarm

“Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled.”

The hairs raised on Orick’s back. To open the Scriptures three times and find such passages, it seemed more than pure coincidence could claim. Surely this was a message. He squinted up at the ship’s lights, saw that they were not brighter. He looked back down on the page. Surely that verse stood out more than all others. He gazed at it for a moment, saw the difference-the paper behind those words was whiter than the rest, somehow highlighting that verse. It was a miracle!

“But what of my vows?” Orick asked.

Tallea looked about warily. Gallen and the others were all still asleep. She whispered, “Perhaps this is God’s way of telling you that it’s all right for us, that this is more important to Him.”

Orick didn’t like the idea of taking spiritual direction from someone like Tallea. She hadn’t been baptized for more than a few months. Her fur was hardly even dry, and here she was expounding the will of God to him.

“One more. Let me try one more!” Orick said. He flipped open the Bible and read silently:

“Doth not even nature itself teach you, that, if a man have long hair, it is shame unto him?”

Orick frowned. This had something to do with prayer-Paul spouting nonsense about the virtues of baldness, something Orick sincerely doubted he would ever experience firsthand. But then he saw it, the brightness three verses higher on the page, and he read aloud:

“Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, nor the woman without the man, in the Lord.”

Orick’s heart pounded, and he could not think straight. Surely the Lord willed that Orick take Tallea to wife, and Orick could think of no commandment he would rather keep at the moment, yet somehow it saddened him.

He felt, in a way, that God rejected him. Orick set the Bible down.

“Tallea, will you take me to be your lawful husband?” he asked. It was a simple vow, the kind poor folks who could not afford donations to the church would make back home. Yet all his life, this vow had been treated as sacred by everyone he knew.

“Yes,” Tallea said, not knowing the more proper response. “Will you take me?”

“How can I not?” Orick whispered. “God commands it.”

“Then I don’t want you,” Tallea said, turning away. “You can just go off and do whatever. I won’t have you as my husband!”

“What?” Orick asked, shocked at the anger in her voice.

“If you’re marrying me only because He says so, then I won’t have you. When you’re hungry and I haven’t got dinner fixed, I don’t want you getting mad at Him. And if someday you do get mad at Him, I don’t want you taking it out on me. If you want me, then take me because you want me.”

Orick did not speak for a moment, simply gazed into Tallea’s eyes. In that moment he forgot she was in heat. He forgot to feel that he was inspired to make this decision. For one brief time that seemed both infinitesimal and eternal, there was only Tallea crouched on the floor of the hold before him, the woman who had given her life for him fighting the giant Derrits in the tunnels of Indallian; Tallea who had given away her dreams so that she could join him when the Lords of Tremonthin gave her back her life in the body of a bear. She’d given her life for Orick, given all her dreams for him. Certainly Tallea deserved only the best, and Orick wished he could give her all she deserved.

“Every breath I breathe from this day forward,” Orick said, “I will draw for you. Every dream I dream, I will dream for you. Now I know why God so seldom gets involved in matchmaking: because there’s only one she-bear like you.”

“Good,” Tallea said. “That’s the way it should be. Now will you say it in public?”

Orick agreed, and together they woke the others on the ship, and as captain of the ship, it was Maggie who married them, and all of it was recorded by the ship’s Al.

So Orick and Tallea took their vows that night flying amid the stars, in the quiet of the ship’s lounge, and Orick would always remember how Tallea’s eyes outshone the stars.

No woodland chapel could have been more beautiful, more reverent, or sacred.

A few days after the wedding, once the travelers had landed on Cuzzim and made their way through the world gates to Fale, when Tallea and Maggie were alone feeding the babe while the men were off introducing Hera and Athena to civilization, Tallea asked Maggie about her part in the wedding.

“You had my Scriptures for those three days,” Tallea accused. “And now those verses on marriage are permanently stained.”

Maggie didn’t deny it. “It doesn’t take much for a Lord of Technicians to figure out how to train a Bible to open to certain pages. Simply crack the spine and add a line of liquid at the base of each page, so the paper thickens. If you want to highlight some verses, a little acid will bleach the paper enough so that some words stand out more than others. I did nothing wrong.”

“But Orick thinks it’s a miracle!” Tallea said, her heart sore. She loved being married to Orick, but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that she’d done something sneaky.

Maggie merely shrugged. “Orick wanted God to tell him to get married. He could have figured it out earlier, if he trusted the Tome completely, but he wanted to see it in the Bible. All I did was show him the verses in the Bible where God already commanded him to get married.”

“What if he finds out that we tricked him?” Tallea asked.

“Did I?” Maggie asked. “God is the one who made you go into heat. Orick believes that God is the one who put those words in the Bible in the first place, and I won’t argue the point.”

So it was that Tallea accepted Maggie’s maneuver, and the next day, Maggie, Gallen, their son, Tallea, and Orick took their leave of Hera, Athena, and Maggie’s Uncle Thomas, none of them ever to meet again.

In that last meeting, more than a few tears were shed, and Hera surprised everyone by making a present to Orick. “There is something more you deserve,” she said, producing a small crystal vial from behind her back.

“What’s this?” Orick asked.

Hera undid the stopper. “A children’s toy: we called it the Wind of Dreams. A scent to make you feel like a hero, a conqueror. Zeus and Herm used to make bets with one another for the right to take a whiff of it.”

Hera undid the stopper, and the sweet scent of gardenias filled the air, but it was more than that, more than all the flowers in the world. It was a feeling that filled the air, a sensation that made Orick feel he could stride across the clouds, a feeling that he owned the universe, and the universe felt unbounded gratitude to be in his possession. A feeling that the day had been long, but the labors all well worth it. A feeling of love and acceptance.

It was a sensation heroic … an emotion a god would feel, resting in heaven.

“You deserve this, Orick,” Hera said, “for all you’ve been through.”

Orick looked at it in surprise. “I’m not sure anyone deserves that.”

“But take it anyway,” Hera asked. “To remember me by”

Gallen smiled broadly at Orick. “Take it, Orick,” he said. “I swear: first Everynne, then Tallea, now Athena. I don’t see why a hairy brute like you should appeal to women.”

“Och, it’s only because you’re half-blind. Anyone ought to be able to see my charm.” He gently licked Hera’s cheek, kissing her goodbye.

When Maggie said goodbye to her Uncle Thomas, the last thing in the world she would have expected was a tearful farewell. He’d never been much of an uncle; had never offered a strong arm to lean on when she needed it.