The Portal 00 - Legacy of the Witch

I did make a fool out of myself at
the end.”
    “You were intent on your form. You didn’t see that stone.”
    “Did it seem…good?” he asked. “My form, I mean.”
    I met his eyes, touched that my opinion was of any interest to
him. “To me it did. I couldn’t look away.”
    He smiled wider and came closer. “I’m Harmon, son of Brock. My
father’s one of the most skilled swordsmen in the king’s guard. He’s been
training me to join him in the ranks.”
    “You’ll be a soldier, too, then?”
    “I hope to be, yes.” He looked me up and down. “And you…you’re
a servant girl, yes?”
    I nodded. “Amarrah. I’ve been a kitchen slave since I can
remember, but today was my last day. Tonight I get to move into the harem
quarters, to be slave girl to the slave girls.” I smiled when I said it, and he
did, too, getting the joke.
    “Bet they’ll clean you up some. I’ve never seen a dirty slave
in the harem quarters.”
    “You’ve been inside?” I asked.
    “No. I meant…no.” He moved closer to me, then, bending, dipped
his hand into the sacred river. Rising, he wiped my face with his wet
fingertips. He did this a few times, then stood back. “You’re going to fit in
there,” he said. “I see beauty under all that dirt.”
    I felt the blood rush straight to my cheeks. He had returned my
compliments with one of his own, though he could not have known how deeply it
had touched me.
    Then someone called my name. The fat cook, who’d warned me
earlier that she had orders to get me cleaned up and dressed appropriately for
my move into the harem quarters.
    “I have to go.”
    “If the old bat beats you again,” he said with a sharp eye on
my bruises, “kick her in the shins and run away. You should not have to take
that. At least not anymore.”
    “If she does, it will be the last time. The ladies of the harem
are kind. I’ll be grateful to them forever for taking me away from the
kitchens.” The cook called again, and I turned. “I’d better go.”
    “I’ll see you again, Amarrah,” he said.
    “I don’t know how.” The harem quarters were off-limits to most.
“But I hope so. Goodbye, Harmon, son of Brock.”
    “Goodbye, Amarrah, slave girl to the slave girls.”
    I met his eyes one last time and felt like a bolt of lightning
shot from his to mine, jolting my heart into a stronger beat. One so startling
that I woke up.
    I was alone in my bedroom. My gidaty’s photo, a picture of her in her younger and happier days,
stood framed on my nightstand. I looked into her eyes, and she seemed to stare
intently back at me.
    “All right, Tata. All right, I’ll do it.”
    Maybe I had lost my mind. Or maybe not. But I was going ahead
with my plan, and nothing would stop me. I had promised my grandmother, after
all.
    * * *
    Akron was a lot bigger than Cortland, but otherwise not
so different. The U.S. had a very homogenized quality to it. One place wasn’t a
lot different from the next, not like my homeland, where miles might as well
have been light-years.
    I bought a city map from a gas station as soon as I was close,
then stopped at a telephone booth to look up the number for the library. I
needed to know who Glenda Montgomery’s fiancé was, and I figured my best bet was
to go through the engagement announcements in the local newspapers. The
library’s microfiche would have what I needed.
    It took hours, but I found it. An engagement announcement
featuring that doe-eyed blonde with the empty head and her gorgeous hero soldier
in full uniform. The clip was more than a year old, which was why it took me so
long to find it.
    “Mrs. Dulcet Montgomery is pleased to announce the engagement
of her daughter, Glenda, to Staff Sergeant Harrison Brockson. The wedding will
take place after Sergeant Brockson finishes his upcoming tour of duty in
Kuwait.”
    The man had obviously finished his tour and come home safely.
Their wedding could be any day now. In fact, it could have happened already for
all I knew. Those TV shows were probably recorded long before they aired.
    I stared at the man in the photo and frowned as an odd little
itch formed in the back of my brain. As if I knew him from somewhere but just
couldn’t quite remember. He was handsome, and when I stared at his eyes, my
heart beat a little faster. Dark eyes. Familiar.
    I removed the microfilm from the machine, and dutifully
returned it to its container and put it away. Then I asked for a phone directory
from the reference