Free The Ballad of Aramei by J. A. Redmerski Page A

his inquiry.
    Aramei bows her head and says, “I do, Milord, but….” She looks up toward the top of the hill expecting to see Filipa come running toward her any moment now, but she can’t decide if that’s what she wants or not. Only one man has ever showed interest in her. Aramei is very beautiful, but her father had always been somewhat of a bully towards potential suitors when it came to his daughters. This man, Viktor, somehow gives Aramei the feeling he might not be as hard to scare away.
    Viktor waits patiently for her to continue, his face beaming and somewhat dark.
    “…I shouldn’t be seen with you, Milord.”
    “Why not?” he asks, stepping up closer to her. She takes two steps back to retain the distance. “Is it the woman?”
    Aramei looks up again, finally meeting his eyes. “The woman?” she says.
    “Yes, the one who pulled you out of my sights just yesterday?”
    Aramei smiles bashfully, twisting a lock of hair between her fingers. “Filipa is no woman. She is my sister.”
    Viktor coughs a small laugh and Aramei can’t help but join him, realizing too late what she had said.
    “Well, I just mean that—”
    “She is a man?” Viktor teases her with a very serious face, but Aramei can easily detect the smile behind his fine green eyes.
     
     
    ~~~
     
     
    In the following days, Aramei snuck out to meet Viktor and they walked in the forests together, swam in the lake hidden between the North and South Hills an hour away from the village and once he even took her on a hunt. Viktor was an expert bowman. The two shared a meal over an open fire in the late afternoon before Aramei had to slip away from his company and head back home. Filipa and their father had their suspicions—Filipa more unforgiving of Aramei’s lies, but their father knew nothing about this stranger and Filipa felt it best not to tell him anything. Days became weeks and Aramei grew closer to Viktor, but he mistook Aramei’s affections and her willingness to be out with him as something more than what it was.
    Aramei had lived a sheltered life, having experienced little outside of her village and village life was quaint and uneventful most of the time. Aramei found a sort of freedom in Viktor, but she was slow to develop a real attraction that went beyond the one she had for him when he first approached her as she washed the laundry in the pond that day.
    And Aramei had no experience with men. She had never been with a man in any sense and had no idea that all this time with Viktor she was setting up her own demise.
     
     
    ~~~
     
     
     
    Present Day – In the cabin
     
     
    I wake up lying next to Aramei in the center of the bed; Eva is  sitting next to us, swabbing a cold, wet cloth across my forehead.
    Lifting up slowly, I brace my weight against the mattress with my palms and try to pull my head together.
    “Did I pass out?” My head is throbbing, my vision slightly blurred. I reach up and massage my temples with my fingertips, bridging the palm of my hand across my face.
    “Not exactly,” Eva says, dabbing my cheeks with the cloth once more. “You went under.”
    I open my eyes and look right at her. “Under what?”
    “You were in Aramei’s mind,” Eva says softly so as not to wake Aramei, “living what she lived and knowing what she knows.”
    I lift farther away from Aramei and decide to get off the bed altogether. “How is that possible?” I say, pacing across the floor barefooted. Eva must’ve taken off my shoes. I stop and turn to face her, my gaze penetrating hers from the foot of the bed. “That felt completely real to me…it wasn’t a dream, it was real , like I was right there watching her.”
    Eva nods once, smiling faintly.
    “You have been connected to Aramei in this way since the day you were bonded to Isaac,” she says, standing from the bed, too. She walks over to the table next to the balcony and places the wet cloth in a bowl of water. “Those who have been bonded by blood are