He didn’t know where these had come from—he’d seen his mam working on his wedding stole before, and it had been barely half-done last time he’d seen her pull it out. The embroidery was all wrong, with [symbols and colors for continued strength and prosperity, renewed strength and intelligence, hard work, etc) instead of [symbols for agreement, coming together, promises, good faith, etc.]. The stitches were less rigid and tapestry-perfect, and the fabric hung a little oddly, with parts of it more rigid but others slightly thinner and the little stitched animals slightly sadder and more raggedy, like it had been touched often, but never worn.
It smelled like twenty years of the inside of a cedar chest.
(it’s not his, you know it’s not, you saw it back when the window broke and let the storm in ten years ago, when all that water soaked into the chest and into the clothes and he told mam to just throw it all out, and you saw it, folded up like an old shirt and stitching like nothing you’d seen anyone in village ever wear, nothing that Gran would ever let out of her house, that looked like it didn’t mean anything at all to anyone)
Granmother Essa had shown up with it barely an hour after his uncle had finished reading out the final testament.
(it didn’t smell like rot, it smelled like cedar, there wasn’t any sickness on him, his mother and aunts had held him the bathwater that nobody’d had time to heat and they’d scrubbed every inch of him, gotten rid of everything, it all smelled of cedar, not funeral incense, so where was the smell coming from, why was it still inside his nose and on his tongue and in his throat and behind his eyes why could he still smell it)
Tristan’s eyes weren’t working properly anymore, looking far away and close up at the same time, seeing two, what felt like three, four, different versions of things all sitting next to each other and overlapping and all meaning absolutely nothing. A little voice three feet back, one to the left, and a few hands up but still just inside his own head figured that they must be over the anvil by now. Eyes like hands on the back of his neck pressed down on him, like they wanted him to kneel down and put his head out for a hammer strike instead of reach out his hand.
His arm jerked forward without his permission. Someone—his mam? Uncle [John]? Someone from the other side of the anvil?—must have grabbed it, and now they were pushing it up against something that felt like ice, heat, and nettles all at once. A hand.
Her hand.
She must be beautiful. He still couldn’t see, was seeing too much, and he hadn’t been able to for the last twelve hours, not since his uncle had read out [something official included by a governing official that required the deal to be honored or his wealth and property forfeit]. But objectively, she and her family would be here to, on the other side of the anvil and, also objectively, she would be beautiful.
Was her stole finished? Had she known this was coming, or had she been pulled away from the evening chores and kept up all night preparing for the unthinkable.
(Of course she knew, that’s why she never came back)
Through all the overlapping shapes that filled his vision, a color, still slightly grayed out in the predawn light, wound itself around their hands and wrists. He could barely feel it, barely feel anything, but he knew he was shaking. Could they see it? Could she feel it?
Was he imagining them tying the sash extra tight, to keep him from pulling away?
Noise came from his left, and the bit of him that was still aware, three feet back, one to the left, and a few hands up, punched through the fog, screaming pay attention! you’re being handfasted, you need to make sure you say your lines, you can’t mess this up!
(you know what he’ll say if you mess up) that doesn’t matter, he’s not here anymore (he’s not here, he’s dead, my dad’s dead, he’s been dead less than a day the only reason we waited to was bring the anvil out here we finished putting him in the ground an hour ago I’m standing on his grave is that why the ground feels uneven is that why I feel like I’m going to fall am I going to fall in am I going to be dead too) come on, focus, everyone needs to you focus, all your uncles are behind you, they lose everything the family loses everything if you don’t (they don’t trust you) her family is shamed if you don’t (they’ve never trusted you) this is important (important, I’m getting married, I’m seventeen and I’m getting married, I haven’t seen or talked to her since I was six, not since her family found out we were playing in the woods, not since her dad threatened to drag me behind a cart, not since I realized she was part of the family that treated me like a liar and a cheat and a thief and everything terrible that a grown man could be and that I could barely pronounce, I was six, she was six, we were just six, I insulted her, chased her off, now she’s stuck with me, I got in so much trouble dad was so angry but now I’m not sure at which part what is going on why is this happening)
A hand jostled his shoulder, and his eyes and brain finally started working togetherjust enough that he could look to his left, to the body attached to the hand, and see old Granmother Essa raise one of her salt-and-pepper eyebrows at him.
Tristan swallowed.
(He swallowed again.)
[handfasting/marriage/contract/oath language here] “I, Tristan, take Isabol to be my wife, and bi—and am thereto bound before earth and heaven.”
He could feel his heartbeat inside his tongue, could barely breathe around it. Now that his eyes had started working again, he could see all the faces of her family members standing behind her in malicious detail. They’d ringed the anvil, fencing him in with their bodies and their eyes that showed a vicious satisfaction. She had almost as many uncles as he had, and they’d all decided to put on the same face that morning. Eyebrows and mouth flat across and parallel to each other, heavy shadows over their eyes, all accessorized with arms folded flat across their chests. He couldn’t get a read on a single one of them. [insert some observation that everyone has some kind of hand-fasting mark or bracelet or something, and that his mother/deceased father were the only ones who had proper metal wedding rings.]
What did they all want from him?
“I, Isabol, take Tristan to be my husband, and am thereto bound before earth and heaven.”
Tristan jumped back to looking at Isabol just as Granmother Essa said, “You may now seal your binding.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the color of the sash around their hands more clearly. [color for retribution, satisfaction, promises, covenants, consequences.]
He knew what came next, but he couldn’t make his muscles move.
After a few seconds of him just standing there, knowing that every one of her uncles—and her father, oh, skies above, her father—was watching and just waiting for this to be over so they could stare at him with those eyes that said “you’ve made a mistake. you’ve been raised for this one thing, not that anyone ever told you what it was, not like you knowing ever mattered one way or another, but you’ve messed up and we are disappointed, and that is all that we will ever be,” he realized that Isabol was much closer than she had been. He probably wouldn’t have been able to stick a finger between their noses.
But she didn’t move any closer.
She just looked up at him, and she smiled with the tiniest corner of her mouth—one of those smiles that makes your eyelid start to curve upward just a bit.
Tristan let himself count down from three, because no one outside of his head would ever know, and then they were kissing.
It didn’t feel like anything in particular, but that was probably because his face was just as numb as his hand and then rest of him was tied up in the kind of knots that you don’t comb out as much as cut out. He could tell it was slightly off center, because her nose was side-to-side with his instead of ramming right into it, and the left side of his face seem a little more pressure-free than the right side.
It didn’t last long, but Isabol didn’t pull away when he thought she would. She leaned in closer, off to one side, and whispered in a voice that was just for him, “I’m scared too, but I think we’re going to be okay. It’s nice to see you again, Tristan.”
His throat unlocked for just a moment. “I found one. Over the ford we could never cross, I found one. I’ve been keeping it safe”
A little huff of air touched his lips, and her eyelids curved a little more. “And is it good for picnics?”
“The best. I leveled the ground inside, and the roots let the sunlight through. It has dozens of little gardens of [flowers and grasses, ideally symbolic].”
“Is it big?” This time, her voice is isn’t even sound, so quiet it has to be a thought carried on her breath for him to catch.
Tristan thought of the [tree that grows large enough for hollows] he’d found years ago, after the hurt but no so far that he’d given it up his plan to earn her forgiveness. How he’d spent weeks, months, years worth of stolen moments making sure it was perfect, everything she’d ever dreamed of and described to him. How he’d started going there just to be alone when it was clear that any attempt to get near her and apologize would be met with very large uncles with very large hands and the chance of one more broken bone.
“It might a little tight,” he said, voice tightening up and curling back down his throat like a [regional animal or plant] seeking shelter, “but I think there’s room for two kids and no last names.”
“Show me.” He wasn’t sure if he felt the tremor in her voice, her breath, or her eyes locked on his. He could finally feel his hands well enough to answer her squeeze with one of his own. “As soon as we can get away. No last names.”
And then she was back in her original position, and there was clapping and stomping and yelling from all sides, like every other wedding he’d ever been too, but flavored with a bit more aggressive satisfaction. However, this time, instead of staying with the crowd and doing his best to cheer along, he started walking side by side with Isabol, right hands still bound together and left hands coming up to squeeze a little tighter, toward the small house on the far edge of the village that had sat empty since the last ceremony in the village, and that the aunts and young cousins had cleaned out over the course of the night. It didn’t look like anyone had decorated it, though, the house or the path up to it.
Tristan only looked back once. He was finally getting enough air, and they’d both been matching each other in step and breath once they’d gotten out of arms length of the outermost ring of relatives. He glanced back, and felt himself start to untie for the first time since he’d realized his father was fading in a permanent sort of way when he saw that no one was coming with them. No more eyes, no hands, no one to stop him from putting his own clothes back on and being done with whatever had happened twenty years ago. He wasn’t in charge of his family, and with all his uncles and his grandmother and everyone who still considered him the son of a cheat and a liar and everything terrible that a grown man could be and that he’d finally learned to pronounce if not understand, he wouldn’t be for a very long time. He and Isabol had been a business transaction, and it was done with now. If anyone expected anything of them, it wasn’t any business of theirs.
“If we walk around the back, we can lock the door so no one will know and then take a shortcut past the river to the tree,” he said. “I left some blankets there the other day, and some apples. Unless you’d…rather go in first? Get some different food, rest or—or something?”
Isabol looked him in the eyes again. Away from everyone, there was more iron and stone in her gaze, along with the kind of fire you trust to keep you safe. “Show me our tree, Tristan-with-no-last-name.”
