In Other Lands

by Sarah Rees Brennan

Luke had been really vulnerable, for the first time, and he had not trusted Elliot not to hurt him.

Elliot would really like to meet Golden one day, though he flattered himself he’d had a hand in changing her as well.

Maybe it wasn’t true.

“I have often worried that . . . being a woman, I can be oblivious to other people’s feelings, and I am less able to talk about and deal with emotional situations. I have sometimes thought that if I were a man, or—or perhaps a human woman, I would have been able to treat you with more tact and sensitivity when we were younger. Or that I might have observed the trouble between you and Luke sooner, and known how to mend it. If I were different, perhaps everything would have been better between us three.”

“I can only speak for myself,” said Elliot, and took her arm as she held it out, in courtly fashion. “But I have always felt that it was a privilege to be your friend, and I have never wanted you to change in any way at all.” “How strange,” said Serene, and he was caught off guard by her rare smile. “I always thought exactly the same thing about you.”

He had done something wrong, and said he was sorry and meant it, and been forgiven. It was as simple as that, and Elliot could not believe it.

Elliot could not help but think of how often he had struck out wildly to defend himself, when just saying what he felt would have worked. Except it would not have worked, not on his father, or his mother, or on Jase or Adara. It only worked when someone cared how you felt.

“If anybody’s going to cry,” Serene offered after a pause, “I don’t have a handkerchief.”

“Elliot Jerome Schafer!” Serene sounded scandalized. “You cannot play fast and loose with a man’s affections. Are you some sort of rogue?” Elliot thought being a rogue sounded very dashing, but clearly Serene did not.

Luke Sunborn! Elliot saw what all the fuss was about now.

“You cannot dally with a man and then abandon him without a word. A man’s heart is like a flower: beautiful but delicate, easily crushed by a careless hand.”

“Elliot must have put Wavechaser off by screeching at him,” was the way Serene put it, since she was the cruel one of the friends group, but she was right.

Elliot was certain everything was going to work out, once again, for Luke Sunborn. For a change, Elliot found, he did not mind at all.

Elliot faithfully went to Trigon practise, even though Serene had stopped going. She insisted that she had to pen long letters to her elven betrothed, even though Elliot had told her that her behavior was disgraceful and she should put swordsisters before misters. It was humiliating. People were going to think Elliot had a real interest in sport.

What was new was that they were both trying not to hurt each other, and trusting that neither of them wanted to hurt the other.

I wouldn’t know how to say it. And I’ve . . . in the past, I’ve been known to be . . . my interactions with Luke and my whole personality is . . .” “Abrasive,” Myra suggested. “Deliberately off-putting but also accidentally off-putting.” “Thanks, Myra,” said Elliot. “You get me.”

“I’m a problem solver,” said Elliot. “I want to solve a problem.”

Serene gulped and offered: “I like a man with spirit?”

Elliot had wanted magic to be real, he thought, as he had thought a thousand times. Maybe just a little less real than this.

On both sides of the wall were strangers and weird sights, terrible until you loved them.

Our lands were always otherlands, to someone else.

“Picture this: the should-be tender morning after the night before, and I turn to you and say, ‘Congratulations on being athletic and well-meaning, Luke!’”

“He came specially to say good-bye to you,” Golden said, more politely, but his tone also questioned Elliot’s intelligence. “I do not know if you are not interested, or protecting yourself, but you cannot guard yourself against the whole world. You only succeed in placing a barrier between yourself and the world.” He hesitated. “I know that from personal experience.”

Elliot lingered a little longer, out of panic, and addressed Serene. “I’ll give Luke your love, shall I?” “He knows he always has my love,” said Serene. “So should you, by now. Go tell him something he does not know.”

Not what he thought someone else wanted to hear, or what he thought would protect himself. Just the truth, and trusting that someone else would care to hear it.