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  As a formality of the relationship Bre believes us to have, I tell Willa to step outside the tent for a moment. She wraps a blanket around her middle and obliges. Once she is out of sight I lie on the bed and lift my skirt up to one side, just enough to expose the left region of my abdomen.

  He touches my skin, then jerks his hand back. “You’re on fire, Liu. I can’t assess you like this. Have your guest fetch some cool water.”

  “I will not send her off in the middle of the night. This is not…urgent.” But even as I say it, I’m getting hotter. Weaker. I can’t feel Willa’s presence anymore, but she shouldn’t have gone beyond the distance our heart-stones will allow. “Go and tell her to…come back…inside…”

  “She can’t help you—”

  “Please!” My back arches and I scream. Pain seizes me like a full-body marking iron.

  “Liu, I won’t leave you like this.” Bre’s voice is fraught with distress, but my thoughts are elsewhere, with Willa.

  What happened to her? Surely she must feel this agony. She wouldn’t travel so far without me unless something is wrong. “Just find…Willa…”

  Bre disappears for only a few moments before he returns. He says she is not by the tent, and he will not go out any farther. I wail for her. I cannot control it, and I have not the strength to get up and search for her on my own. My heart-stone is dying without her near. I didn’t want it to happen this way but I must tell Bre the whole truth now, make him understand. It is difficult to form words through the pain, but somehow I do. He doesn’t give any hint that he believes me until I show him the bonding mark.

  Breathe… “It is the same…as hers.”

  “But how—”

  “Go…find her.” Breathe…

  He relents, but when he opens the tent flap again to leave, he freezes.

  “Bre?”

  “You have been misguided, Liu’bimec.”

  I know that voice, even through the filter of my groans. Vod’ya. But I’m not afraid of her apparent disappointment in me. My only concern is for Willa. “What have you…done to her?”

  “She is being taken back to her own clan where she belongs, and they will punish her as they see fit. Your ‘foreigner’ has the exact description of a Lajed’el runaway. She has not listened to her heart-stone. But don’t worry, she is gone now. She cannot influence you any longer. You are safe.”

  Back to her clan? No. It is on the north side of the island. Neither one of us will survive her journey. They must already have her beyond the Umet’nik border. They’re torturing us. I’m the opposite of safe, I want to say, but what comes out is indecipherable. My breath becomes ragged.

  “Poor dear,” Vod’ya says. “I’ve been watching you since your marking ceremony. Your heart-stone is clearly malfunctioning. But once we have removed it, all will be well. You will still have a place in our clan. We will not punish you for something you could not control.”

  “Remove her heart-stone?” Bre shrieks in tandem with my own shock and horror at the thought of such a procedure. “That would kill them both! You cannot separate—”

  “Are you implying the Lajed’el woman is her life-match? They are of different clans and the same sex. The idea is preposterous. Liu’bimec has a severe case of heart-stone sickness, nothing more. You are her full-blooded kin. You can feel the truth for yourself. Assess her.”

  Bre stammers in frustration. He will not expose me, so I do it for him. I pull up my skirt and show my bonding mark to all who are there—Bre, Vod’ya, and all the guards she brought with her. They let out a collective gasp.

  “You have bonded and not seen the priest!” Vod’ya barks. “Who has done this to you? Where is he! Do not protect him, Liu’bimec. He has led you astray by keeping this secret. If you reveal his name now you will not share his fate.”

  Her face is a blur of sagging wrinkles. I can’t focus, but somehow manage to say, “Willa’mew…is my…life…”

  I awake with a jolt of energy, rope-fastened to a cold stone slab. Trees surround me. A brisk wind forces yellowed leaves to fall like rain. Normally I would have savored every moment of such a beautiful seasonal display, but this one has been soured by the overwhelming urge to escape. To run.

  Visibly, I am alone, but sense Willa is near. They must have brought her back when she collapsed with me. They cannot deny we are matched; our bonding marks are identical. And although I’m still weak as a newborn I can feel myself getting stronger now that she’s closer. They will let us be together. They must. Anything less would be inhumane.

  I lift my head as much as I can in this immobile position and see a red circle painted over my lower left abdomen, over my heart-stone. A burn rises in my throat, choking me. I turn my head to the side and gulp for air.

  The wind carries voices to me. They speak of heart-stone deformities and claim we are a tragic mismatch. If they remove our heart-stones simultaneously the organs will die together, but the remainder of our bodies will survive. They admit this is all conjecture. They say we are the first of our kind…but that can’t be true. We grew up the same as any other girls on this island. The archives are wrong, or perhaps some are missing. Or have been stolen. Hidden.

  How many others before us have been banished for something completely natural to their being? How many heart-stones have lived and died in unnecessary solitude?

  Then they say we should be able to live long, healthy lives apart from each other. But I don’t want to live if I can’t be with Willa. We’ve done nothing wrong. I trusted my heart-stone and it led me to her. She is my life-match, and I will not let them harm her.

  She still has a ship secluded from the main docks. We can leave this island and never come back. I should have left with Willa when she first suggested it. Perhaps that is what her heart-stone was telling her to do, and I didn’t listen. This is my fault. I should have trusted her. Instead I thought of myself, not us.

  More energy sparks my heart-stone. A group of men lay Willa on the stone slab beside mine and tie her down. She is naked and limp, but breathing. With each passing moment my strength increases, and I sense the same is happening to her. But even together, we are not strong enough to fight Vod’ya’s guards. We are not warriors. There must be some other way to get us out of here.

  Willa turns her head and looks at me, eyes glistening in the moonlight. Just like the night I first saw her. “I’m not sorry you found me,” she whispers. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have more time together.”

  I choke back a sob. “Do not speak as if our heart-stones are already dead.”

  She studies my face and time freezes around us. It is only she and I, suspended, staring, grieving what might be our final moments as a life-match. I hear Vod’ya speaking to the physicians of the Drav’nik clan. They are eager to see our supposedly deformed organs and compare them to healthy ones of the deceased.

  We are not an experiment! Why can’t we just live as our heart-stones desire?

  I keep my focus on Willa. Heat flares from my left hip and spreads throughout my entire body. Its intensity builds with fierce speed. I scream my throat raw and smoke stings my nostrils, but my eyes remains locked on Willa’s. Steam rises from her. Anguish transforms the lines of her face. She cries out as the ropes holding her down erupt into flames. Chaos ensues around us.

  They think we are defective. We are not.

  They think we are a mismatch. We are not.

  They think we are weak. We are not.

  As soon as I’m free I jump from the stone slab. My midsection is covered in blisters. Someone lunges for me and then staggers away, screaming. The others are smarter. They stand back and watch us in amazement—or fear—as I grab Willa and we run, hand in hand, faster than I’ve ever run before.

  “Where are we going?” she shouts.

  “To your ship. We must get out of—wait, no!” I stop and she trips, skids to a halt. “Mother,” I say. “I can’t leave her like this.” But her hut is too far. There is no way we can go to her, say our goodbyes, and travel back to the south shore without anyone seeing us. Already Vod’ya is bellowing orders for our arrest in the distance. They’ll catch us if we don’t keep moving, and for certain, they would rather we die than allow us to escape again.

  I shake my head in defeat and Willa pulls me into another sprint. “Keep moving!”

  At the edge of the forest we cut through a field of C’vet flowers. Their sweet perfume is intoxicating. I slow and release Willa’s hand, then begin gathering as many blossoms as I can as we continue pressing forward. She copies my action. We both have an armload of soft ivory petals and dark green stems when we reach the end of the field, and we do not stop running until the heavy scent of salt greets us at the shore.

  Willa dumps her bouquet on the sand and readies the ship for departure. She tosses me a new shift from the boat deck and I shimmy it over my head.

  I have lived more than twenty years on this island, raised by the hands of a true artist. It is in my blood. It is in my heart-stone. I will not leave here without creating one final masterpiece, a message to Mother that I’m alive and well, even though she will never see me again. And I cannot help but think how much I look like her in the painting I gave her, standing on the shore with a bundle of C’vet flowers, looking out at the sea, wind blowing my hair.

  The C’vet flower is a symbol of freedom. That is why I used its design for my marking iron. What it symbolized for me then is not so different from what it symbolizes for me now—the freedom to live the life I have chosen.

  I line the shore with silky blossoms larger than my hand, just close enough that the waves lap at them. Eventually they will be pulled out to sea, marking my journey toward the horizon. The water is my canvas and the flowers are my paint. The waves act as brushes, guiding ev
erything into place.

  Willa calls to me that everything is ready. We must hurry. But before I join her, I find a stick and etch a message in the sand:

  I am not afraid. I’ve made the right choice. The heart-stone doesn’t lie.

  Acknowledgments

  This little book would not have been possible without the following people:

  Readers of LGBTQ fiction. Without you my stories would be collecting dust on a shelf inside my head for all eternity.

  Everyone at the Writer’s Digest forums who read early drafts of this piece (many years ago) and helped me pinpoint what was beautiful and what was begging for the delete button. Thanks, especially, to Kelly Said for never letting me give up on this every time I swore I was giving up on it.

  Liz Silver and J. Lannan, for believing this story deserved to be told and for helping me tell it in the best way possible.

  And a very special thank you to my family, for shaping the person I needed to be to write this story. No regrets.

  About the Author

  Lydia Sharp is a novelist and short fiction author who still believes in fairy tales. She lives in Ohio but often visits other worlds through the magic of books. Fortunately these other worlds have Wi-Fi, so Lydia can be reached at any time via email, Twitter, or Facebook. For contact details and a complete list of Lydia’s writing credits, visit lydiasharp.blogspot.com.

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Mismatched

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

 

 

  Lydia Sharp, Mismatched

 

 

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