Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125117 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 626(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
His current situation, though? Called for a complete reread. He needed to be utterly immersed in the world of Zagørjič. He wanted to sink into the world of Clarion and her hawk companion, Sør, and discover the ability to speak to animals and trees along with her. He wanted to fall in love with the handsome tree spirit, Aerlich, experience the divinity of their romance, and weep bitter tears when he was corrupted by the need to avenge his brother’s murder.
Truman had first read the series in eighth grade. He’d encountered it in his friend John’s older sister’s room one night when he was sleeping over but couldn’t sleep. She found him on her floor, halfway through book one in the series, when she got home. At first he’d frozen, because she wasn’t known for her sweet temper. But when she saw the way he gripped the book tight, like he was afraid she’d take it from him, she’d sat down next to him and they’d talked about it for hours. She’d let him borrow the whole series—with the threat of certain death should anything happen to them—and he’d been a die-hard fan ever since.
He’d known that Agatha Tark lived and wrote in Maine, but picking up book one, The Heart Freezes, after his trek through the winter snow, he felt a new kinship with Clarion when she stands atop Mount Moriah in the gusting snow and wraps an injured Sør in her own cloak. How freezing she must have been! How much she loved the hawk!
Yes, Truman congratulated himself on his newfound empathy and snuggled deeper into the covers to read.
Three hours later, cheese and wine distant memories and chocolate well on its way, when Truman slid to the floor, he just grabbed the duvet and pulled it off the bed onto himself, book sliding with it and landing on his forehead.
He closed his eyes as his head spun.
“What. The hell. Did I do,” he mumbled. He was referring, most immediately, to the wine. But the question hung in the air, more all-encompassing than he’d intended.
“How did this happen?” was the obvious follow-up. How had he dated a man for almost a year and never realized that he had a whole life Truman knew nothing about? Not only that, but Truman was the lesser, secret element in an otherwise full life. How had he not noticed he was a mere dalliance? A side character. A subplot in the life of a man who had taken up nearly all his spare thoughts.
Guy had been stern, charismatic, busy. Truman had known from the beginning that he worked a lot. That he had an active social life. That he belonged to multiple organizations. It had all seemed normal.
Did it really, though? What about all the times you said things to your friends and they looked at you strangely and you realized that things about your relationship were weird? When Guy’s parents came to town but you couldn’t meet them? When he drove to visit his brother but didn’t invite you? When he took you to brunch for your birthday but was busy on his? Come to mention it, the number of brunches you went to instead of dinners…
“Fuck me.”
Truman pulled the duvet over his head. It smelled of lavender, which made him homesick for Horse. He fumbled out his phone to look at a picture of his dog and nearly dropped it on his face, so he dragged himself to a sitting position and scrolled lovingly through the many, many pictures.
Then he let his body do what it wanted, which was to slide back down to the floor, nudging the bed to the right as he slid. He lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. It had an unusual pattern of plaster—almost a sunburst, which reminded him of the healing hut where Clarion finds herself imprisoned in book five of the series.
Turning onto his side, he saw a mark on the wood floor just under the bed. At first glance, it looked like a wedge patching a hole in the board. But when he nudged the bed aside more, he could see what it really was: a ship inlaid in the wood floor.
“No. No way. You’re just drunk. And sad. And jet-lagged. You’re drunk-lagged. That’s not… No.”
But a few minutes later, he still couldn’t stop thinking about it. The flashlight on his phone illuminated a wooden sailing ship, set flush with the floor, its prow pointing into the room, its mast jutting proudly.
It was a ship just like the one Clarion touches every night before bed in book six, after Aerlich has turned dark and she has to drag herself to bed without him. She runs her fingers over the ship and imagines that it’s taking her heartbreak away—pulling it far out to sea and releasing it for seabirds and fish to pull to pieces.