Under Theresa, Martin used his index finger to write I’ve lived with or near you for five years, but only in the past tenday have I known what I feel for you. What you feel for me. Odd how we haven’t come together until now! I think of you always. I miss you when I am not near, even just a few minutes away. It’s not just physical wanting, though there is that, and it is almighty powerful, but a kinship, a matching like two molecules meeting in just the right way, and that is strange, because that is how I have often thought of God. I hope you don’t think this is all too intense; but perhaps it is through you, our love, that I really feel God. Don’t be afraid. I haven’t lost it. But can you tell me why we have not felt this before, have not known it until now? So fast!
The glowing message beneath Theresa shimmered slightly: the wand querying whether he wished to continue or quit and send. He lifted his finger again and wrote more:
I’ve told William, and he approves, or at least he does not tell me he objects. I know that you do not detract from our friendship, though I feel less free with him now, but he knows or intuits what there is between us, you and me, and that makes him wiser than I. He is a noble spirit. I realize your reluctance to break up a dyad that seems so stable, but you cannot take away from us what is most important. William and I are brothers, as I never had a brother. You cannot break that, and you cannot replace it.
I send you this, because I miss you even when I am on duty, and there is a short time here before I report to the mom.
I feel so naive but my love for you is more intense than any positive emotion I have felt until now, and I want you to know that.
He read the message through several times and winced at its awkwardness, its revelation. Even among the children Martin was reluctant to open himself so. He felt like a boy again though at twenty-two he was one of the oldest on the Dawn Treader. Theresa was three years younger; William, a year younger.
“Send,” he said, and the message and Theresa’s name vanished, leaving William hanging alone. The name flickered. “I’m thinking,” Martin told the wand. Could he really remain involved with William, when he focused so much attention on Theresa?
Irony here. Throughout the voyage he had tried to keep above the play of emotions, to maintain his dignity, finally joining in a dyad with William because he could not resist the pressure to make some tie, and William seemed safest, and they did match.
Because of his aloofness, Martin had gained both respect and isolation; he had been voted sixth Pan of the Watch, an important position, and then (it seemed inevitable now, understanding the venery associated with position and power) the Wendys had courted him, and he had dallied; that was expected. William did not object, in fact fantasized of what he would do when he became Pan.
Martin had lost his shield; and flirting with Theresa—initially innocent sex—had plunged him deep into what he had avoided for so long. It had to happen.
Still in him lingered fear of loving and losing, not just through separation, but through death. All of them had known the same losses—Earth itself, great Mother of all they knew and were; then separation from family and friends on the Ark.
They were more than children sent on a time-bent crusade; they were avenging angels, soldiers trained but not yet tested, given access to incredible power they did not completely understand. Eventually they would use that power if they were to fulfill their mission, and some of them would not survive.
As for William, he had nothing to say that he could not say better in person. “Fade,” he instructed. The name vanished. He raised his arms and crooked a finger and a thin ladder of green light crossed the periphery. He pointed his finger and the light flowed, broke up, and reformed, spanning one wheel of the schoolroom and intersecting the star sphere.
Martin poked his hands and feet into the plane and pushed himself ahead, drifted lazily around the sphere, viewing the stars from many angles. Folded his arms and drew up his long, thin legs to wait for