The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,71
here. I saw you weren’t eating and thought perhaps you could not tell which dishes contained meat.”
“You’re right. I couldn’t figure out what was what,” I admitted. “How is it that you notice everything?”
“Magic.” Her smile widens, true amusement peeking through.
I like being able to make this serious girl smile.
In spite of myself, I laugh. “Fine, don’t tell me.”
Nimh gives a graceful little shrug. “Years of practice. I have spent a long, long time watching.” She steps toward me and sits, hesitating a moment before asking, “Would you mind assisting me with my robe? I would call another handservant, but then I would have to explain your presence here, and how you arrived via my own private passageway.” She nods toward the panel that the cat led me through.
“I … sure. What do I …” But I trail off as she turns, showing me the back of her robe, which gapes open down to the waist. Crimson ties dangle in a crisscrossed pattern, waiting to be drawn up and tied off.
Nimh reaches up, gathering her hair in her hands and pulling it forward over her shoulder. As she does, it sends a waft of some kind of spicy scent in my direction. Her skin is flawless, and for a long moment I can’t move. It’s as if my brain simply shuts itself down.
Beeeeeeep. No activity detected. Please restart.
“You should only have to draw the strings together and then tie them,” Nimh is saying from far away.
There are dimples in her lower back, just above where the fabric clings to her hips.
“North?”
I blink and glance up to find her looking over her shoulder at me. A flare of panic makes me wonder what I missed while staring at her—and then I see that her cheeks are dark and her large brown eyes are fixed on my face.
“I—forgive me, Nimh.” The words come tumbling out. “It isn’t every day a person is asked to help dress a goddess.”
Her smile flashes at me, but I can see her head duck and the curve of her cheek shift as her smile widens farther.
Carefully, keeping a tight rein on the irrational—and unhelpful—desire to let my fingers slip a little, I pull on the ends of those laces and then knot them in a neat bow just below the nape of her neck.
I’m about the let the laces fall when my eyes focus past them, to the skin of her shoulders, where the light catches against a scattering of goose bumps rising to follow the movement of my hand. Distracted, I draw my fingertips along the ties, just lightly enough to stay on this side of untying them again.
The little shiver of her skin follows my fingers all the way down. I hear her breath catch, then release, quaking. I can feel her warmth below my fingertips.
“How is it that you can live your life without touching anyone?” I find myself asking softly. “Never being touched?”
Skies, North! What are you saying? Good work with the incredibly personal questions. Truly, I have lost it.
Her fingers are still wound around her thick wealth of hair—they shift a little as I speak, as if stroking someone else’s hair, a comfort. “It is all I have ever known. All I will ever know.”
Her head turns, and I see her face in three-quarter profile. In this moment, hidden from the rest of the world by the carved screen at the other end of the chamber, she looks … lonely.
“Nimh, I—”
A chime by the ornate entrance makes us both jump, and Nimh is moving before I’ve even registered what I’ve heard. She slips away from me with startling quickness, taking a moment by the door to smooth down her hair and press a hand to her cheek.
I’ve seen Miri do that once or twice, slipping out of an alcove to be followed a second later by Saelis. I’ve caused it myself once or twice, and it always made my heart skip, seeing her test how flushed her face was, and knowing I caused it. Now, I’m awash in something else, a mishmash of emotions I can barely catalog.
Except for one that stands out among the others—longing.
She believes she’s a goddess and you’re not allowed to touch her. Seriously, North, you’ve got to stop.
She may have saved my life, but she didn’t exactly tell me what she was getting me into. This is trouble—I should get out while my skin, and my heart, are still intact.