VI) Garrick and Seraphina: The Hand Beside Hers

The first thing Seraphina remembered giving Garrick Grey was a stone.

It was an excellent stone. Flat enough to serve as a table in the house they were building beneath a bench, large enough to prevent Ignatius from declaring that it belonged in his pocket. Garrick had accepted it seriously and immediately placed a smaller stone beside it.

“A chair,” he explained.

“Two chairs,” she told him.

He found another.

For years afterward, that was how their friendship worked. One of them began something. The other made room inside it.

There were forts beneath tables, arguments about whether wooden horses could climb stairs, and afternoons when the gates between their cities seemed to exist chiefly so that four children could continue yesterday’s game. Garrick was usually willing to investigate a noise. Seraphina was usually certain that she knew what had made it. Carol asked questions they had overlooked, and Ignatius insisted that somebody ought to bring provisions.

They grew out of the forts.

They did not grow out of knowing where to find one another.

When Seraphina was twelve, a tutor told her that a person with her gifts should take care not to waste an afternoon. She arrived in Greykeep in a temper and found Garrick beside the river, attempting to skim stones.

“What are you doing?”

“Skipping stones. Badly.”

She watched a stone disappear without a single bounce.

“I can see that.”

He offered her the next one.

She almost said she had work. Instead she took it, threw it, and watched it sink more quickly than his.

Garrick looked delighted.

“You’re worse.”

“I’m learning.”

They spent an hour being worse together. By the time the evening bell called them back, her anger had loosened enough that she could explain it.

Garrick listened, then inspected the last stone in his palm.

“Did you want to do something else today?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t think we wasted it.”

She remembered that longer than she remembered the tutor’s name.

It was friendship then. They were children, and neither had to know what the years might make of them. There was comfort in being unimportant to one another in all the ways that other people thought important. He could be beaten at a game. She could be cross without anyone asking whether the First Flame was troubled.

Then, when she was eighteen, Garrick returned from several weeks of traveling with a trade party and stepped through the Concordia gate carrying a parcel beneath one arm.

Seraphina had come to collect a book from Carol.

She forgot the book.

He was dusty, tired, and wearing an unfamiliar dark coat. There was a small cut above his jaw, almost healed. None of those things should have made a difference. She had seen him dusty before. She had seen him asleep in a chair with an open mouth and a cushion sliding off his lap.

Yet when he saw her, stopped, and smiled, she felt suddenly uncertain what to do with her hands.

“You’re back,” she said.

“That was the plan.”

An entirely ordinary answer.

She was annoyed to discover how much she had wanted to hear it.

He held out the parcel. “For you.”

Inside was a book about coastal gardens. He had marked one page with a receipt from an inn.

“You said you wanted to see flowers that grew close enough to the sea to be salted by it. There’s a garden near the place we stayed.”

She looked at the page, then up at him.

She had said that months earlier, while everyone was discussing something else.

“You remembered.”

“You sounded as though you meant it.”

Garrick later maintained that this was the moment he realized he was in trouble. Seraphina stood looking at him for so long that he checked whether the parcel had contained something besides a book.

“Did I choose badly?”

“No.”

“You look—”

“Would you like to have supper with me?”

“We’re all having supper.”

“Somewhere else.”

He stopped.

There it was. A small space opening between the things they already knew how to say.

“With just you?”

Seraphina wished she had rehearsed this. She wished, immediately afterward, that she had not wished it; people who rehearsed questions usually sounded as though they expected particular answers.

“Yes.”

Garrick’s smile changed.

“I’d like that.”

Their first supper was terrible.

The food was good. The room was comfortable. The trouble was that both had apparently decided to leave the person the other knew at home.

Garrick asked about her work with formal attention. Seraphina answered in sentences suitable for an annual report. He described the coastal trade in enough detail to make a merchant weep with gratitude. She nodded until her neck began to ache.

At last the server brought a dish of little roasted onions.

Garrick reached for one. It slipped beneath his fork, shot across the table, and landed in her wine.

They stared at the cup.

“A traditional offering,” he said faintly.

Seraphina began laughing.

Once she began, she could not stop. Garrick put down his fork and covered his face. That made it worse.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“You’ve been talking about harbor tariffs for twenty minutes.”

“You told me about the acquisition of bandages.”

“I thought you were interested.”

“I am interested. I’ve simply never heard you call them medical textiles before.”

She leaned back, wiping her eyes.

There he was.

Garrick watched her laugh, and the awkwardness finally left his shoulders.

“Can we begin again?”

“Without the onion.”

“I can promise to try.”

They stayed until the lamps were lowered. Outside, the street had cooled. Seraphina carried the coastal book beneath her arm because she had brought it without admitting to herself why.

At the gatehouse, Garrick glanced toward the lit arch.

“Would you like to do this again?”

“Yes.”

“You could think about it.”

“I did. During the tariffs.”

He laughed.

She kissed his cheek before courage could become another subject requiring discussion.

Then she went through the gate, leaving Garrick in Greykeep with one hand raised halfway toward his face.

Carol found him there.

“Well?”

“I think it went well.”

His sister looked at his expression.

“You think?”

Their second outing involved no table.

They took food down to the river and discovered that both remained poor at skimming stones. Garrick claimed the river had become more demanding. Seraphina insisted that he had chosen inferior equipment.

They sat with their backs against a willow, passing bread and cheese between them. She asked about the cut above his jaw.

“Low beam,” he admitted.

“I had imagined bandits.”

“The beam was extremely hostile.”

She touched the almost vanished mark with one finger.

Garrick grew still.

Her hand remained there a moment longer than the injury required.

“Sera.”

She liked how quietly he said it.

“Yes?”

“May I kiss you?”

She moved closer.

“Yes.”

Afterward, the river continued exactly as before, which struck her as an extraordinary lack of interest on its part.

Garrick rested his forehead against hers.

“I have wanted to do that since you opened the book.”

“You could have said.”

“You looked capable of throwing it at me if I misunderstood.”

“It’s a good book.”

“That was my concern.”

She kissed him again before he could find another sensible reason to wait.

The family learned without an announcement.

Io saw them arrive from the garden holding hands and continued pouring tea, though she poured slightly too much. Evelyn began including Seraphina when she asked who would be home for supper. Uriah asked Garrick whether he was happy, listened to the answer, and clasped his shoulder.

Lexander looked at Garrick across a table for long enough that Thor eventually said, “Stop that. You like him.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“Your face is making a speech.”

Seraphina took her father’s hand beneath the table.

He looked at her, and whatever he saw allowed him to breathe more easily.

“Will you both be here for breakfast?” he asked.

She smiled.

“We can be.”

Being in love did not make Garrick and Seraphina easier people in every respect.

They discovered that during the winter of her nineteenth year.

She had promised to meet him after a long day with the healers. He had planned a walk through the lantern market, found a place serving the peppered stew she liked, and arrived carrying a pair of gloves she had left behind the previous week.

An hour passed.

Then another.

When Seraphina finally came downstairs, she found him sitting on a bench beside the receiving-room door.

“I’m sorry. There was a woman with an infected wound, and then a child—”

“You could have sent word.”

She heard the hurt and answered the accusation she expected instead.

“I couldn’t simply leave.”

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“People needed help.”

Garrick put the gloves down between them.

“I know.”

The quietness of it stopped her more effectively than anger would have.

He looked tired. She had been looking for displeasure and missed the rest.

“I’m not asking you to choose a walk over someone who needs healing. I’m asking whether you can remember that I’m here.”

She sat down.

Beyond the closed door, someone moved a cart. A cup rattled against its saucer. The ordinary work of the place continued while she tried to set down the defense she had brought into the conversation.

“I should have sent a message.”

“Yes.”

“I keep thinking I can finish one more thing.”

“I know that too.”

She looked at her hands.

“And I knew you’d wait.”

He said nothing.

The confession hurt more than the apology.

“That wasn’t fair,” she added.

Garrick moved nearer, leaving the gloves between them until she reached for his hand.

“I want to be someone you can rely on. I also want you to tell me when your evening has changed.”

“I will.”

She did not ask him to make her feel better about having disappointed him. Instead she asked whether the stew shop would still be open.

It was closed.

They found bread, cold meat, and an innkeeper willing to supply mustard while he cleaned his kitchen. Garrick ate with evident hunger. Seraphina leaned against him afterward and listened to the day he had not been able to tell her about.

A week later, she sent word before the evening bell.

He left soup with the attendants, went home, and saw her the following morning.

Their lives made room around that small improvement.

There were other lessons. Garrick learned that her silence sometimes meant exhaustion and sometimes meant she wanted him to ask another question. She learned that he could be troubled without needing her to discover the trouble for him. They occasionally got both matters wrong.

They apologized.

They went dancing badly, then less badly. They walked in unfamiliar districts and found favorite shops. Garrick brought her books. Seraphina brought him a little carved boat that reminded her of the games he and Ignatius had played, and he kept it beside his bed with entirely adult seriousness.

Once, while looking for a place to sit at a crowded festival, he found a low wall beneath a tree and brushed the dust from it.

“Two chairs would be better,” she said.

He turned toward her.

“You remember that?”

“I gave you an excellent table.”

“You did.”

He took her hand and kissed its palm.

For the rest of the evening, she could feel the place his lips had touched.

He first asked about marriage without a ring.

They were walking home through Greykeep after rain. Seraphina had taken off her shoes because one had begun rubbing her heel, and Garrick carried them by their straps. Water shone on the path beneath the pear tree.

“Do you ever think about living together?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He nearly dropped a shoe.

“You could have made that easier.”

“I said yes.”

“I had several sentences prepared.”

She laughed, then looked at him more carefully.

“What were they?”

He stopped beside the tree.

There were lights in the windows behind him. Somewhere inside, Helena was correcting someone’s estimate of how much bread remained. Seraphina could hear her mother laughing with Evelyn.

“I want mornings,” Garrick said. “The ones where nothing has been arranged for us to enjoy. I want to know where you keep losing your hairpins. I want to have an argument about whose turn it is to close the window and then still want you beside me when I fall asleep.”

Seraphina’s smile softened.

“I’m not very good at closing windows.”

“I have noticed.”

“And I sometimes bring work home.”

“So do I.”

He looked down at their joined hands.

“I want to marry you, Sera. But before I ask in a way that involves jewelry and everybody crying, I want to know whether that’s a life you want.”

She stepped close enough that her bare toes touched his boots.

“It is.”

He let out a breath.

“With me?”

“You are holding my shoes. It would be rude to choose someone else at this point.”

“I am attempting to be serious.”

She placed her hands against his chest.

“With you, Garrick.”

He kissed her beneath the pear tree while the rain shook itself from the branches overhead.

The proper proposal came a month later, beside the river.

He gave her a ring in a small wooden box made by his grandfather. Inside the lid, Garrick had placed two tiny flat stones.

She saw those before she saw the ring.

“You kept them?”

“No. Those are at the bottom of a river, or under a bench, or inside one of Ignatius’s innumerable boxes. I found these yesterday.”

She laughed through tears that had arrived without consulting her.

He knelt.

She was grateful, later, that he had asked the important question already. It allowed this one to be joyful without needing to be surprising.

“Seraphina. Will you marry me?”

“Yes.”

The ring fitted.

Their first kiss as an engaged couple ended when a duck made a determined attempt to steal their bread.

Garrick rescued the loaf. Seraphina rescued the ring box. Neither considered the interruption an omen, although Loki later offered several interpretations of ducks in ancient marriage rites and was told to stop inventing scholarship.

They chose her twenty-first birthday for the wedding.

“One celebration,” Seraphina said.

“You realize Mother will consider that an argument for two cakes,” Garrick replied.

“I’m counting on it.”

The months of preparation taught them that a wedding could attract the administrative weight of a small invasion. They refused a procession of official gifts during the vows. They accepted flowers, music, and an alarming quantity of advice. They chose Greykeep, where there was room for both households and where their friendship had acquired so much of its history.

On the night before the wedding, Seraphina sat with Io while her mother held a final length of fabric across her knees.

They spoke about power, and restraint, and the difficult kindness of allowing another person to remain entirely themselves. When Lexander appeared in the doorway, Seraphina held out her hand.

She had something she wanted them to understand.

“I always knew you would both be here,” she told them.

Her father bent to kiss her forehead. His lips remained there a little longer than usual.

Only later did she understand how much those simple words had given him.

Across the castle, Garrick was failing to sleep.

Uriah found him sitting on the edge of the bed with the ring laid on the table beside him.

“Regrets?” his father asked.

“None.”

“Then what is it?”

Garrick rubbed his palms over his knees.

“I want to do it well.”

Uriah sat beside him.

“The ceremony?”

“All of it.”

For a while, his father was quiet.

“You won’t manage every day as well as you hope.”

Garrick looked at him.

“That’s the advice?”

“Part of it. Tell the truth when you get something wrong. Don’t make her prove she loves you before you listen. And let yourself enjoy the days that are good.”

He put an arm around his son’s shoulders.

“Tomorrow will be one of those.”

It was.

Garrick remembered the morning in pieces: Carol straightening his collar and then straightening it again because her hands needed occupation; his mother embracing him with enough force to make him forget the collar; sunlight across polished stone; the smell of flowers warming in the courtyard.

He remembered looking up when Seraphina arrived.

The sight of her silenced every sentence he had prepared for himself about remaining composed.

She saw him staring and smiled.

There was the girl who had brought him a stone. The young woman who had laughed when an onion landed in her wine. The person who had listened when he told her she had hurt him, and who had trusted him enough to tell him when he did the same.

She reached him.

“Hello,” she whispered.

He laughed under his breath.

“Hello.”

The officiant waited with admirable patience.

Garrick offered his hand.

Seraphina took it.

They had written their promises themselves. Hers began steadily, faltered when she looked into his face, and steadied again when he brushed his thumb against her fingers.

“I will tell you what I hope for,” she said, “and make room to hear what you hope for. I will not assume that knowing you yesterday excuses me from knowing you tomorrow. I will share the work of our home, and its happiness, and the days when happiness takes more patience to find.”

Garrick swallowed.

“I will remember that you are choosing this life with me,” he answered. “I will listen when you speak, and ask when I don’t understand. I will celebrate what brings you joy, including the things I cannot share. And when I have made a fool of myself, I will try to admit it before your entire family has to tell me.”

Laughter moved through the guests.

Thor made an audible sound of approval, followed by a less easily explained sniff.

Seraphina’s eyes shone.

They exchanged rings.

When Garrick kissed her, she caught the front of his coat and drew him nearer, forgetting for one happy moment that anyone else was there.

The cheering reminded them.

Afterward came food, embraces, and so many people saying their names that Garrick began to wonder whether he had ever heard his own spoken correctly before that day. Helena inspected the tables. Loki claimed to have predicted everything. Thor denied crying with considerable force.

Thora observed the denial and looked thoughtful.

During the first dance, Seraphina stepped on Garrick’s foot.

“A traditional offering,” she whispered.

He laughed so suddenly that they lost the rhythm.

They found it again together.

Later, she went to her father. Garrick watched them embrace and turned away to give them the little privacy a crowded celebration allowed. Evelyn found him beside a table and took his hand.

“Happy?”

He looked toward his wife.

The word still astonished him.

“Yes.”

By evening, they had managed to escape to the garden for a few minutes. Music drifted through the open doors. Seraphina sat beside Garrick beneath the pear tree and rested her head against his shoulder.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

She lifted her hand, turning the ring toward the light.

“You have made next year difficult.”

“I thought a book.”

“A book would be lovely.”

He took her hand and kissed the place beneath the ring.

For a while they sat without speaking. There would be a home to arrange, journeys to make, and years they could not imagine accurately no matter how carefully they planned. Tonight, someone inside was calling for the bride and groom. They would have to return soon.

Seraphina looked at the space beside them on the bench.

“We did find two chairs in the end.”

Garrick smiled.

“An excellent table would improve matters.”

“Tomorrow.”

He stood and held out his hand.

She rose with him, and they went back into their wedding.