Chapter Text
You wake.
You smell damp wood and salt. His arms are around you, and you lay in his lap, head on his thighs. Reeds, thistles wave against your face, the faint trace of seawater gracing your cheeks.
"You were in the infirmary," he says. "I brought you out."
Tendrils of memory that taste of sweet tea, of bitter medicine. A grotesque keening sound, reverberates in your mind.
How did we get out here, you ask in your head. Your mouth is horribly swollen, the pain dull and persuasive. Tears well up in your eyes again, and Bell strokes your cheek. He's wearing his soldier clothes, the heavy trousers and dirty vest.
It's dark. Moonlight paints him silver, cheeks hollow and thin.
"They hurt you," Bell murmurs. You realize you are at the end of the path where you found him, and the smell of wood is one of the tied up boats. "I think because of me."
Yes, you say inside. Because of you. Because my heart wants to hold yours, to make you better, to make you smile. My tongue was to learn your language.
Outside, you shake your head. You can't swallow, and saliva is dripping down your chin. He wipes it away.
You will never sing. The songs have been cut out, the hymns. It's all gone, and you start to cry against Bell's stomach.
"You're lovely. The loveliest," he says softly, holding you closer. "Don't Christians believe in fate?"
Looking into his dark eyes, fate shines like the tips of starlit waves. Like the beauty of an angel rests in his chest.
As a child, you prayed for a friend. For an angel to appear with wings and to take your hand and play with you and keep you safe when they came to hurt you.
And now–
"How do we leave this fucking island?" Bell asks in English. You almost laugh at his curse word.
Boat, you try to say, gesturing weakly at the wooden vessel behind him, moored in the pebbles and sand. The sound you make is rough and painful.
Boat, fated to drown in the darkness.
Bell nods. He is weak, unsteady, but he hauls you into his arms, against his chest. You feel the undulating rise and fall of his chest as he staggers to the shore.
The boat is filled with a thin pool of rain, but otherwise it is sound, the two pairs of oars strewn under some net. Bell deposits you in the driest spot at the bow, and his breaths come ragged as he pushes it out.
Solovetsky glows faintly with tiny orange lamp lights. You think about arriving here, only a child, a boy with nothing and nobody. Inside, the hegumen with steely eyes will cut more tongues, will cut the pages of the Kyrgyz Bible to shreds. Then he will cast a star shaped medal into the sea.
Bell clasps your frozen hands in his as he climbs into the boat. "You don't belong here."
Where do I belong?
He looks out to sea, the boat rocking on the waves. His wrist are scabbed, and he smells like warm and rain.
"I will find somewhere," he says.
You sleep. He rows through the darkness,, a soldier who knows the stars. The sea is gentle with your bodies.
The stars are gentle with their light. Bell sings a quiet song, and he starts mumbling some incoherent nonsense, but then he seems better, when you reach in the darkness to find his fingers.
Hours, days. You watch Bell and sleep, and wakefulness and dreams become one. Bell kisses your forehead.
Love is eternal and kept for the Holy Spirit. How your heart beats for your soldier is quicker, flowing warm, honey in your veins. With your cut tongue you still want to sing for him, as the birds are singing, the sweet melody of a nightingale.
You will sing for him silence, and he will learn to speak it.
And the pebbles scrape the bottom of the boat, and you step onto new land, somewhere for you, somewhere for him.