The Silenced Tale

makes up the lost space between us. This time, I do not back up. Instead, I let her have her way. Her delightful, delightful way.
Soon we are dressed in naught but our bathrobes and cuddled into one another on the sofa before the electric fireplace, our wine glasses and the bottle both waiting on the coffee table. We doze until Pip jerks in my arms and nuzzles her nose deeper into my naked chest.
“Umf?” I ask softly, running my palms down the texture of her back. Pip says nothing, but cringes and wriggles again. I’ve never known her to be jittery in bed—normally, she flops into her preferred position, on her back with one hand over her head, and stays there until morning.
My wife is a deep sleeper. If Alis cries, it’s generally I who hears the crackle from the baby monitor first. I wouldn’t say I’m an especially light sleeper myself, but the noise of an Overrealm city at night is more than I’m used to. I’m not entirely comfortable with trying to sleep in a soundscape that doesn’t resemble a wide, dark countryside dotted with moonflowers and barrow lights, the tinkling bell-laughter of fairies, and the plaintive songs of lonely Kiss-Me Frogs at twilight.
I don’t think I sleep as deeply as I used to, at any rate.
Perhaps Pip’s uncomfortable. The sofa is narrow, and I suppose using me as a mattress isn’t ideal. I don’t think I’ve grown any sharper—rather the opposite. The delicious foods and lack of sparring partners in the Overrealm has served to make me doughier, certainly, but Pip says much more comfortable for a cuddle, too. Perhaps she pulled a muscle during her workout. Perhaps her back hurts.
Still, the curiosity pulls at me, and I run my palms down her scars a second time. Pip huffs and tenses up, eyes screwing shut and fingers clenching in the fabric of my robe. How intriguing. She is waking now, making little noises that I remember from her time at Turn Hall, when she fought the return to wakefulness and pain.
Seeking to soothe, I run an appreciative, comforting hand along the exposed skin at her shoulder, and snuggle forward to kiss my favorite little leaf on her nape. Pip sighs in her sleep, uncoiling, and wedges herself on her side against the back of the sofa. This serves to turn her back away, protecting it, and I wonder if she even knows she has done so. She pulls my arm around her waist, clutching my hand like Alis clutches her stuffed lion, Library. I resist the urge to prod at her scars again. If she is genuinely hurt, she will tell me. Otherwise, I will not torment her for my own interest.
Our legs tangled together, ankles knocking, I watch as she drifts toward wakefulness.
“Mmmm. That was a nice appetizer,” Pip says, grinning up at me cheekily.
“And for the main course, you will tell me what had you so upset today?” I ask, sitting us both up.
Pip heaves a sigh, flopping back so her head is in my lap, her legs akimbo on the sofa, theatrically petulant. She looks up at me through the fringe sticking to her forehead with residual dampness, and I cannot help the chuckle that such a sight presents.
“You sure know how to spoil a mood, bao bei,” she complains. But then she goes still. “Elgar called me.”
“Oh?” I ask, wondering what it is my Writer could have said that was important enough he had to call my wife as soon as he got home. Or, for that matter, that hadn’t occurred to him while he was here. He’d only left this morning. I haven’t even washed the sheets in the spare room yet.
“What about?” I ask. “Something to distress you, obviously. No, not distress. It wasn’t that urgent. Concern, then?”
“It’s not anything really hinky,” she says, stretching and getting more comfortable on my thighs. Any discomfort in her back seems to have vanished, or at least, she now finds it ignorable. “Just . . . well, his old typewriter has vanished.”
I frown, throwing my mind back to where Pip said the typewriter was located. Yes, a museum. Or, it appears, not the museum. “Ah, so it was not a totem, but the actual machine? Interesting.”
“Yeah,” Pip says. “And he called me because he didn’t want to worry you. But I promised I’d tell you about it anyway. And that we would look into it, if there was anything worth looking into.”
My wife’s instinct may be correct, and I tell her as much.
Pip sits up, nodding as she pours us both more wine. Then she turns to face me, curling her bare feet under my thigh, tapping one fingernail against the bowl of her glass. She is clearly trying to figure out how to phrase something, and I am patient until she has found the words she seeks. Meanwhile, I watch as she flexes her shoulders and wriggles in her seat, readjusting the lay of the robe against her back. Hmmm, perhaps not so ignorable as I thought.
The scars could not be hurting her—they are long ago healed and Pip is religious in her regime of stretching the skin gently, treating it with creams and oils to keep them supple. It is less vanity and more a desire to ensure that they do not pain or cripple her later in life. So perhaps it is something muscular, something gained from her increased hours at the gym these last few weeks.
I decide that, later tonight, I will give her a massage with some of her skin oil. That ought to take care of both potential reasons for her discomfort. And it will very likely lead to other things that will help her take her mind off it.
Finally, Pip finds her words. “Elgar thought that . . . maybe totems were disappearing again,” she confesses. “I told him it was all done, but now I can’t stop . . . I mean, it’s stuck in my