Some of Our Promises Were Binding Up Here Where Our Dreams Take Form

June 483 I.C., Odin

Martin spent very little time at home his freshman year of high school. Though he had always had a fair amount of liberty to go where he wanted, he had not ever felt the desire to exercise it until he had gotten to high school and realized how little he wanted to be in his house. Although Martin was not part of any extracurriculars, he stayed at school long hours anyways, usually sitting in the library and getting his homework done. He would wait until Sieg was done with practice for whatever sport he was participating in that season, and until the school emptied out and the janitors began to get anxious to lock the doors. Usually, he’d walk Sieg home, lingering at his front gate until he sighed or smiled and said that he had to get his homework done. After that, Martin would go where he pleased, sometimes just wandering, until he grew hungry enough that he had no choice but to go home.

Rather paradoxically, the end of the school year, with its massive increase in freedom, had disrupted this schedule quite severely. Without school to go to, Martin hated the endless feeling of needing to fill his days. It didn’t help that Sieg had a job: bussing tables at a local pub. He was busy most of the time, or at least in unpredictable enough hours that Martin couldn’t form a fixed schedule around his presences and absences. 

It was a peculiarly lonely feeling. Sieg was the first real friend Martin had ever had— or at least the first friend of his caliber. They could talk endlessly, about any subject under the sun, or just enjoy a thousand private hours in each other’s company. During the time they spent together, Martin didn’t notice his happiness, but he missed it as soon as he left Sieg at his gate. Being with him gave a sense of contentment— one that discomfited Martin in some ways. It was difficult for him to relax, even in Sieg’s calming presence.

Summer had only just begun a few weeks before, but already the twelve weeks seemed to stretch on endlessly, a river of time. Martin read a lot, spent too much time on his computer, and walked down by the river.

Today, he made his way to the library. He had, over the past couple years, undertaken a serious course of self study on various subjects. The subject that fascinated him the most was history, though it was more of a history of stories than a history of facts. 

After he had come out of his coma of grief after Christopher died, Martin had nurtured the seed of anger that had been planted in his chest. There was the anger at the war that had killed him, of course, but as his grief became easier to bear, the anger broadened. Almost more than the war, he hated the way the lies that justified it. He found himself going back through everything he had ever been taught, and looking at it with as glaring of an eye as he could muster. He trawled backwards in time, trying to understand if the root of evil was a new invention particular to his time, or how long it had been a part of the human race. His answers, so far, had been inconclusive— but the more he read, the more he wanted to read.

He found himself speaking with like-minded people online, and made friends that way. He used a pseudonym and pretended to be older than he really was, but everyone did the former, and he suspected that plenty did the latter as well. He hadn’t understood how it would feel to join into a broad conversation, one that felt like it had been going on for thousands of years. The other members of his online circles tended to be radical, and Martin enjoyed the talk. He often reported what was said to Sieg, who listened, though only contributed the occasional soft word. It was clear that Sieg agreed with him, but he wasn’t seized by the same passion to participate in the shaping of the discussion— he was content, or happy, to let Martin dictate the scope of their political thought.

The library closed early in the summer, so Martin tried to make the best use of his time. In the morning, he did his reading. Today, almost at random, he had chosen several ancient plays, which he thought he could get through in one sitting if he focused. Perhaps later that night, he would try to find a recording of them played out. But he sat in one of the chairs in the far back of the stacks, and worked through them. At lunch, he ate whatever snacks he had jammed in his pockets when he left his house in the morning— he rarely paid attention to what he was grabbing. Then after lunch, in the remaining time before the library closed, he tried to catch up on his online discussions (he decided that looking at some of them on public computers was better for him than keeping them all on his home internet, though he sometimes wondered if he was being paranoid). And on the way out the door of the library, he would grab the copy of the daily paper— technically theft, but no one cared enough to stop him.

He sat on the grass outside and read it, flipping through one page of news after another. Most of it didn’t interest him, but for weeks a main subject of online conversation had been the trial of a fleet defector. He was fully expected to get the death penalty, though his trial had been interesting in that he had staunchly refused to plead either guilt or innocence, and had instead remained completely silent for the duration of the trial. Martin, along with the rest of his online circle, admired him.

Martin skimmed the paper for the report on the trial, and found it, though also next to it a deeply grim article. Ten young men had been arrested outside the courthouse, and Martin could only suspect they were there in conjunction with the trial, though the article gave no indication of that. It was unclear if they had been trying to rescue the defector, or simply show up to support him. It didn’t matter— they were in custody now, and it was unclear from the article if they would ever be released.

Martin looked at the article for a long time, then pulled it from the larger bundle of the paper, folded it, and put it in his bag. The rest, he tossed into the bin, and he walked slowly through town, headed for Sieg.

Martin slid into the booth at the pub where Sieg worked. The other staff were somewhat familiar with him coming by, and it was a dead hour, four in the afternoon on a Thursday, so the dinner rush wouldn’t start for another hour at least. The restaurant was dark and quiet, and Sieg was sweeping out the area behind the bar— cheerful and industrious. His shift was almost over, which was why Martin was here. Often, Sieg would take a seat at one of the tables himself, and have some of the lunch food that was leftover as an early dinner, and then he and Martin would be able to spend the evening together. But Sieg hadn’t yet noticed him come in, and was whistling along to the warbling music on the speakers. Martin draped himself across the table, head on his folded arms, and watched him.

It took some time for Sieg to turn around and notice him, but when he did, his smile widened enough to brighten the room. He gave Martin a wave, then finished his tasks before he came over to sit down. Martin didn’t straighten up, but he did tilt his head so that he could smile up at him.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said.

“Why not? Isn’t your shift ending?”

“It is,” Kircheis said. “I just figured you would be out walking all day or something. It’s cooler today than it was yesterday.”

“There’s only so many places I can walk. I was at the library,” Martin said. “And I wanted to come see you, and you told me yesterday that you were done around four today.” This made Sieg smile some more, which felt like a reward in some undefinable way.

“What were you reading?”

“Some plays.”

“Ones we can go to the city to see?”

“Not likely,” Martin said. “And I was reading the newspaper.”

“Learn anything?”

Martin lifted his head off the table finally, then pulled the folded stolen newspaper pages out of his bag. He spread the relevant one out on the table, and pointed to the relevant headline and small black and white photo that accompanied it: “Rioters Arrested Outside Ministry of Justice.”

Sieg read the article very carefully before he commented on it. Martin watched his eyes flick back and forth, moving back up to the top of the article to study the picture. The figures in it were so small that their faces couldn’t be made out.

“Doesn’t say what they were doing,” Sieg said.

“Of course it doesn’t. But there were only ten of them— that’s not a riot.”

“Do you know what they were doing?”

“They were there for the court case that morning,” Martin said. “I think, anyway.”

“Whose case?”

“The deserter. Wasserman.”

“Oh,” Sieg said. “I remember you told me about that.”

Martin slumped back in the booth, sliding down so that his back was curled against the stiff pleather seat, and his chin was barely above the level of the table. “There’s tons of deserters, I bet,” Martin said. “I think they just have to pick one to make a real example of every once in a while. It’s too bad for them that they managed to pick one who would be able to make even average people sympathize with him.”

“And what happens to the rest?”

“Quietly shot, I guess,” Martin said. “If they let people know how many there really are, there’d only be more.”

“Yeah.” Sieg looked down at the paper. “Do you know any of these people?”

“How would I?”

“I don’t know.”

“You think I’m a lot more adventurous than I am,” Martin said. “I just read things online.”

“Somebody has to be the one putting things online.”

“True.” Martin paused. “I hope I don’t know them. I might.”

“What’s going to happen to them?”

“They’re in the newspaper, so they’ll get made examples of too. Sympathy isn’t something that can be tolerated, I guess.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know why you’re apologizing.”

“Do you want to go?” Sieg asked. “It’s nice out.”

Martin got the hint. He folded the paper back up and shoved it into his bag. Sieg yelled out to the manager behind the bar that he was headed out.

“You’re not having something to eat?” the manager asked. “I had Frank save you a plate.”

“I promised my mom I’d be back for dinner.”

“Oh, we couldn’t disappoint the venerable Frau Kircheis,” the manager said. “Have a nice night, Siegfried.”

“Thank you, sir.”

They headed outside together. It was extraordinarily bright out, and Martin squinted into the sun. “It’s early for dinner.”

“I don’t have to be home yet. Just by six.”

“Alright, that’s good.”

“You’re welcome to come to dinner, by the way.”

“Why?”

“Do I need a reason to invite you?” Sieg asked.

Martin glanced over at him, then fell silent. They walked together for a while, out of the busier streets and down towards the river. It wasn’t in the direction of Sieg’s house, but they had a little bit of time to kill. 

“How many deserters do you think there are every year?” Martin asked as they walked along the river. The sidewalk was crumbling in places, and there was no handrail as it sloped down towards the turbid water. A few swans struggled to keep their place where the rapids met the shallows, poking their heads into and out of the water, then shaking themselves back up towards the calmer areas.

“I don’t know,” Kircheis asked. “We wouldn’t ever hear a number. I don’t even know if I can make an educated guess.”

“Yeah.”

“They probably report anybody who makes it away as having been killed in action.”

“Most of them probably don’t make it, though,” Martin said.

“Probably not.”

Martin kicked some pebbles down the dirt slope, watching them roll and plop into the river. Fish, thinking they were food, poked their gaping mouths above the surface of the water. “I can’t imagine what that would feel like,” Martin said. “Trying to run, and knowing you won’t make it.”

“ Do they know that they won’t make it? You think they would do it even if they didn’t have hope at all?”

“Yes, of course,” Martin said. “I would.”

Sieg turned to look at him. “I hope you don’t have to.”

“Well, everyone hopes they don’t have to,” Martin said. “But I don’t know— I don’t think we have a choice.”

“No— I know what you mean. You do what you have to do.” Sieg looked across the river, away from Martin, though they were walking so close together that their arms brushed. “I just would want myself, or you, to feel like there’s hope, if it came down to something like that.”

“Is there?”

“Some people get away.” Martin knew when Sieg said this, he was thinking of Reinhard von Musel, who had vanished to the other side of the galaxy years ago. He was the only data point either of them had, but his situation was much different than that of a military deserter.

“I’m not just talking about escaping the fleet,” Martin said. “I mean everything.”

“So do I.”

“I didn’t know you were such an optimist.”

“I don’t think I am. Maybe I want to be, or wish I was.” He smiled, not looking at Martin, but it was a rare expression of his— usually his face was either carefully neutral, or with his wide, crinkling smile. He was always genuine, but Martin rarely saw him look so bittersweet.

“In what way?”

“I don’t know. I understand doing things just because they’re the only things you can do, but I would also want to think that a better world is possible.”

“Maybe it is,” Martin said. “But I don’t know for who.”

“Us?”

Martin laughed. “And what would that look like?”

“I don’t know,” Sieg said. “You tell me.”

“Why?”

“You have a better imagination than I do.”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“Come on, Martin.”

“Why?”

“I just want to hear you talk about it.”

If it had been anyone else, Martin would have accused them of making fun of him. But this was Sieg, who had never been anything less than completely earnest with him. That was probably why Martin liked him so much. He thought about it, kicking rocks down into the water as they strolled along the riverside. It hadn’t rained in a while, so dust collected in slight indents in the path, and Martin’s feet stirred it up when he shuffled his way through them.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think there have been good societies before— ones without war, people getting dragged off to secret courts and shot, or made examples of and shot in public.”

“Yeah.” The answer didn’t seem to satisfy Sieg.

“Someday, I think the Goldenbaum dynasty will fall,” Martin said. “A world without kings— a world where there aren’t people on the frontier under the thumb of little lords…”

“That would be nice.”

“You don’t sound enthusiastic.”

“I didn’t really mean about that,” Sieg said. “I can already imagine that.”

“Your imagination is fine, then.”

“I meant just what you would want your life to be like.”

Sieg hadn’t meant the question to be a difficult one, but Martin found it hard to contemplate. It was another place where he was asked to imagine the perfect pressing up against the mundane— only he could imagine the perfect very clearly, and he didn’t like the discomfort of trying to superimpose it on his daily life. That always made it feel less real, less possible for people like him. 

“I don’t know,” Martin said. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

“It matters.”

“Why? I don’t think I’ll get to live it.”

“We could try to.” Sieg seemed very sad. “I would try to.”

Martin stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’d just want it to be like this,” he said after a moment. “Walking along the river. Just without ever having to worry about it ending. Without always having to leave when it gets dark.”

It wasn’t a good answer, but it made Sieg smile, though there was something behind his eyes that Martin couldn’t interpret. “Let’s keep walking then.”

“You have to go home for dinner, you said.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Alright,” Martin said. They kept walking.

“Tell me about the plays you were reading?” Sieg asked as they went.

“I was working my way through the Oresteia ,” Martin said. “I really enjoyed it. They’re tragedies, but you know what’s interesting?”

“What?”

“The notes at the front of the book said that these plays would all be performed in one day, a long saga where one happened right after the other. But at the end of the three tragedies, there would be a comedy— still written by the tragedian, but meant to be happy. The one that’s supposed to go with these is lost, though.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.”

“I guess that’s the way things go. It wasn’t important enough to keep getting written down with the rest, so it got lost.”

“You should write one yourself,” Sieg said.

Martin laughed. “I don’t think I’d be good at it. I’ve never written anything more than an essay.”

“It doesn’t hurt to try.”

“The comedy doesn’t fix the tragedy of the other plays,” Martin said. “It doesn’t change anything.”

“I didn’t think it did.”

“Then why would you want to see it?”

“I don’t know. Isn’t it nice to have it anyway?”

“You must really think I need cheering up today. I don’t know why. You want me to imagine all kinds of happy endings.” He hadn’t meant it to be rude, but maybe it came out that way. Maybe Sieg was right, anyway. The news about Wasserman’s trial and the arrested protesters had certainly put him in a dire mood, at least when it came to politics, and Sieg was picking that up. But even still, Martin didn’t want to ruin the comfortable rapport he had with Sieg and wreck their evening.

Sieg hadn’t said anything, and was just looking at the river as they stood along the edge of the path.

“Come on, let’s just keep walking,” Martin said. He pulled on Sieg’s elbow, which did make him smile again. Their shoulders bumped into each other every few steps while walking, but neither of them made any move to step further away. Sieg, the steadier one, was the one closer to the dangerous edge.

They walked along the river until the path turned towards the street and the area along the river became train tracks. Sieg shoved aside some branches and helped Martin clamber over the fence in the most ungainly fashion, and then they walked along the train tracks. They could always find something to talk about, even if it was just Sieg calling his attention to some flowering weed growing up through the gravel next to the rails, or the song of some distant bird. Their shadows stretched out longer and longer behind them as they walked into the sunset. It was getting very late— past dinner time by several hours.

“We should get back,” Martin said. “You’ll definitely get in trouble if you stay out all night.”

“You won’t?”

“My mother doesn’t care. I’m sure she hasn’t really even noticed I’m gone.”

Sieg nodded, but Martin had to pull on his arm to get him to turn back towards town. It would be a long walk still— they had walked pretty far together, despite the train tracks making a wide curve all around town.

As they approached the Kircheis house, Sieg asked, “Are you hungry?”

“You think your parents will give me dinner, after you stayed out late enough to miss the meal with me?” Martin asked.

“Of course they will.”

“Alright. If you say so.” 

They approached the Kircheis house. It seemed like all the lights were on, and all the windows were thrown open in the summer heat. Behind the house, the eerie glow of the lights inside the greenhouse illuminated the lower branches of some of the trees. They couldn’t hear any voices from inside, but Sieg’s parents were definitely home. He trotted up the steps and held open the door for Martin.

Martin followed Sieg through the house, through the dining room into the kitchen. His mother was standing over the sink, her arms wet to her elbows in soapy water. Compared to her son, she was diminutive.

“I wondered where you went,” she said. “You know, I was frantic when you didn’t come home. I called the pub, I called the parents of every friend of yours I knew. No one knew where you were.”

“I was on a walk,” Sieg said. “I’m sorry. I lost track of time.”

“You could have called.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Sieg,” she said. She finally turned around and noticed that Martin was standing behind Sieg, his hands in his pockets. Her expression, which had been stormy, flattened out into one that looked eerily like Sieg’s practiced neutrality. This was so much worse than anger, Martin thought. “And this is who you were with?”

“Is there any dinner left?” Sieg asked. “Can Martin have some?”

“In the fridge,” his mother said coldly. She rinsed off her hands, then stalked out of the room.

Martin didn’t know what to say to that, or if he should say anything at all. Silently, Sieg got out the leftovers, some baked chicken and salad. He filled a plate for Martin, though Martin didn’t feel very hungry at all, even though they had walked for hours, and he hadn’t eaten anything since a granola bar and apple at lunch. They sat down at the dining room table across from each other. Neither of them spoke, so they could hear with crystal clarity the sounds of Sieg’s mother going upstairs and her muffled voice as she reported, “Your son is back home.”

“So is yours,” Sieg’s father said. His voice was just as placid as Sieg’s usually was, not a trace of anger in it. “And you didn’t need to worry. He’s a perfectly capable young man.”

His mother’s response was inaudible, but the tone carried just as well through the too-hard closing of a door.

“I’m sorry,” Martin whispered. “We should have gone back earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it. I wanted to stay out with you.”

“Why?”

Sieg just smiled.

“I don’t really understand why you’re doing this either,” Martin said, still whispering. “What is all this about, Sieg?”

Sieg just shook his head, and they quietly ate their dinner. Martin finished quickly, and Sieg abandoned his when Martin got up to leave, not wanting to be in the house with Sieg’s parents any longer than he had to be— it felt like he was only making things worse with his presence. Sieg followed him out the door, but when they reached the front garden, Sieg beckoned him around the side of the house, and let him into the greenhouse. Martin, rather confused, followed.

The greenhouse was lit against the darkness, but it was impossible to see through the glass in either direction, since the windows were completely fogged up with steam. Sieg’s father grew tropical plants of all different varieties, and so they needed the water and heat, even in the middle of summer. Stepping inside was like stepping into a different world than Odin: the air was wet and tasted alive, and there was the sound of a rippling water fixture hidden somewhere behind the plants. It might have been just an ugly hydroponics system, but it sounded like a fountain. The plants were a riot of colors, every shade of the rainbow seemed to be represented there, if one pushed past the thick leaves that draped themselves over the narrow path through the raised beds.

“You’re acting very strange, Sieg,” Martin said. He sat down on the bench at the back of the greenhouse— concrete, but with the green beginnings of moss creeping up the lower edges of the legs. Sieg took the toolbox that was on the other side of the bench off and set it on the pebbled path floor, and sat down next to Martin.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said.

“We’ve been talking all afternoon. We talk every day.”

“I know.” Sieg fell silent, and Martin let him have his time to collect his thoughts, there in the quiet greenhouse with nothing but the sound of the water rippling somewhere. “You said you thought I wanted to cheer you up, by imagining a happy future.”

“I didn’t mean for that to come out so wrong,” Martin said.

“No, it’s alright.” Sieg smiled down at his feet. “I wanted to hear you talk about it. It was for me— not really for you. Sorry.”

“Did something happen?”

“No. I’ve just been thinking.”

“Don’t you always?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then.”

“Martin—”

“Alright,” he said. “Sorry.”

Sieg was quiet again for a second. “I liked what you said, about being able to walk together forever.”

Martin flushed, all the way up to his ears, though he couldn’t have exactly explained why. Luckily, the heat of the greenhouse was already making him sweat. “Well, it’s not possible, is it? The sun’s always going to have to go down.”

“Yeah.”

He had said something wrong again, he knew he had. “But I liked walking with you until then,” Martin said.

“I know. I did too.”

Martin smiled, though he looked away, his eyes fixed on a bright red flower, the size of his hand, which dangled from a nearby vine plant coming down from the ceiling. “Well— I know that. But I’m glad. I don’t really understand why, though.”

This made Siegfried stop whatever his train of thought had been. “What don’t you understand?”

“Oh— you know.”

Sieg looked at him very strangely. “I admire you, you know.”

“I don’t understand that either.”

“You understand the world, though. Better than I do.”

“That’s not true.”

“It is. And you know what you want to do with yourself in the world. I admire that about you.”

Martin looked over at him, but it was Sieg’s turn to look away, at the foggy glass and the invisible night outside. It was like this year round in here, Martin realized. He wondered if Sieg had a sense of that endless summer in the greenhouse, or if this had simply been a private place for them to have this conversation, whatever it was.

“It’s hard to think about the future,” Sieg said.

“I’m sorry for being grim about it earlier.”

“You’re right, though. That’s what makes it hard.”

“I don’t know. I could be wrong. You hope I’m wrong.”

Sieg smiled, that strange, bittersweet expression again. “Maybe.”

“What is this about, Sieg?” Martin asked.

Sieg looked at Martin directly, meeting his eyes in a way that almost made Martin want to flinch. He didn’t, though. He stayed very still. Sieg reached forward and put his hand on Martin’s, on his knee.

Martin suddenly understood what was happening, and what Sieg had been struggling to say. The understanding would have relaxed him, if it had not made his heart pound so strangely. But even if he couldn’t get his facial expression to be anything coherent, as he met Sieg’s eyes, he at least managed to curl his hand around Sieg’s and grip it tight.

Sieg smiled so brilliantly that it made Martin’s stomach flip.

“Can I keep walking with you then?” Sieg asked.

“Until the sun goes down?” Martin asked.

“Until then, and…”

“Yes— please—”

And Sieg leaned closer and closer to him on the bench, and Martin’s other hand tangled in his blood-red hair, and then they were kissing each other at last, there in the quiet, endless summer.