The Nightingale

Chapter Thirty-Two

"Tell me about this place." Natasha let her fingers rest on another spot on the worn map before her, faded colors of tan and brown outlining the breadth of a world she could have never even imagined. Her two fingers all but covered the entire rugged shape of the island, situated at the top left corner of the map, a place that seemed close enough to her home that perhaps she would have visited if she had known of the world that existed beyond her village, if she had had the chance to explore instead of being kept prisoner in her small corner of the map. She pulled her eyes from the spot on the map where her fingers were still resting to look up at John as he leaned over her shoulder, his shape casting a shadow across the lines of the map.

She had woken up that morning, the last before they reached their final destination of Acalia, and crossed the space of John's quarters until she reached his desk. Alone in his room still, she situated herself in the chair behind his desk, letting her eyes draw slowly over the shapes and lines that made little sense to her, finding understanding only in the name Acalia and the thick line drawn around the vast territory it encompassed. She was leaning over the map, legs crossed underneath her trying to work how where her village existed amongst all of the markings, when the door to John's quarters opened and he walked in, coming to stand behind her without a word.

As if he had known what she was searching for, he had reached over her shoulder to point to a spot at the left of Acalia's borders, along the water at the southern base, to an unmarked piece of land. As he pulled his finger away, Natasha let her eyes linger on the spot where he had pointed, imaging her small village existing in that one pinpoint on the expansive map before her.

"There's not even a marking for it," she had whispered, reaching up slowly to rest her finger on the place. It was inside the thick border of Acalia, but outside of the smaller encompassed other territories within the kingdom, without even the slightest of hints that an entire village had existed there for centuries.

"It's not supposed to exist, remember?" Natasha had pulled her finger away, leaning back into John's chair as her eyes swept across the map once more. "Before your people escaped there, it was nothing. After you got there, the Lords continued to let everyone believe it was nothing." His words, his reference to her home as nothing, made her heart ache, as it had once been something, been everything, to her. Now, because of her, it was nothing once more.

"How many of these places have you visited?" She asked, wanting to change the subject, watching as he moved John fingers across the map, letting them rest momentarily across the coastline of Acalia, and on to other kingdoms she had never heard of before, names of places that sounded like another language as they left his lips. When he pulled his hand back, she kept her eyes on the last place he had pointed to, the island at the corner of the map, and looked up at him as he craned his neck to see where she was pointing to.

"Tell me about this place."

"Miserable place to visit." Natasha frowned as she looked away from John's face to the small island on the map, pulling her fingers back so she could study the shape, wondering what could possibly make the small territory such an awful place.

"It snows more often than it doesn't, so unless you like the god awful stuff-"

"What's snow?" Natasha looked back at John, watching as his expression morphed from one of faint irritation, to bewilderment, then finally amusement.

"You're not serious?" His words were laced with laugher he was trying to hold back, his eyes shining with the most honest expression of happiness that she had seen from him in the weeks that they had known each other. It was at her expense, however, and Natasha felt her cheeks flush slightly with embarrassment as he clearly enjoyed her lack of knowledge of the world around her.