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“I need you to tell me what you want from me,” Salvador signs to Mechiah every morning in the language he’d learned in prison. It’s safe, because Mechiah doesn’t know how to sign.
Mechiah doesn’t seem to recognize that a question is being asked at all, and that suits Salvador just fine.
He spends his days doing chores around the house and garden that he can see need doing, without getting in the way.
He needs to do something to make himself useful, because otherwise he spends his time wondering why Mechiah chose to buy him. Otherwise, he ends up caught in wishful thinking, on the idea that Michiah has done this out of compassion for no reason other than to keep him safe.
Mechiah’s heart is soft enough for that, but he is not so wealthy that a bagful of gold is easy to come by, either. He must have known he was overpaying for Salvador, and the idea that he did so as a kindness is ridiculous.
Salvador tries to remember that the world does not revolve around himself and his own needs, and surely Mechiah has his reasons.
But Salvador’s heart seems to have missed the reasoning entirely, and has settled on Mechiah, who is familiar and kind, a refuge Salvador had thought was no longer in the cards for him. It will not be talked out of its devotion.
*
When Mechiah wants to communicate with him, he writes simple notes with his finger in one of the many sandboxes he has placed throughout his house, the way they were taught in school. It feels like a lifetime ago. None of Salvador’s previous owners had known how to sign either, but nor had they known he could read, so communication had been done by trial and error, with errors usually resulting in punishment. His first owner hadn’t known how to read and write, and Salvador’s attempt to communicate in writing had been taken as an insult that had resulted in a whipping and three days without food.
Perhaps others in Salvador’s situation would find humiliation in being the property of a man who used to be his peer. Salvador knows he would have been, ten or twenty years ago.
He’s too tired for that, now.
He’s too broken to be angry at the injustice at the disparities of where life has taken them, through no fault or merit of their own. Mechiah’s fate was decided by the commendation his father received from the king, and Salvador’s was decided when his father was executed as a traitor, and his children made into slaves. Salvador has not heard hide nor hair of his brothers and sisters in the last twenty years, and he isn’t sure whether he even hopes they are still alive. Most of his previous owners have been fates worse than death.
Mechiah owes his fortune to the same king who took everything from Salvador. It seems that their relationship would be a volatile one, defined by their conflicting loyalties.
And yet in the months since he has been brought to Mechiah’s home, they have not once spoken of the king. Instead, Mechiah has given him a bedroom, ensured he always has access to all the food he wants, and given him access to his personal library, a windowless room at the center of the house lined with wooden shelves filled with scrolls about any subject one could imagine, which Salvador visits at least once a day.
Salvador wonders what Mechiah would do if he did nothing but sit in the library reading all day.
He tries this once, in his second month in Mechiah’s home. He expects an eye-opening reality check when Mechiah reveals his discontent with Salvador for refusing to make himself useful.
But Mechiah does no such thing. It is Salvador who feels nearly sick with terror—not so much of punishment as of the prospect of having his one refuge torn away from him.
He does not read at all that day, too caught up in fear, and at the end of the day, when Mechiah steps into the room with a frown on his face, the sense of impending doom is too much to bear and Salvador begins to tremble.
“Have you eaten?” Mechiah writes in the sandbox at the center of the table.
Salvador can only shake his head.
Mechiah nods and reaches out to him, palm upturned and a question in his eyes.
Salvador is too wrecked to do anything but place his hand in Mechiah’s.
He does not expect to be led to the kitchen, where Mechiah’s ladles him a bowl of soup that is still bubbling on the hearth.
Salvador feeds himself, and then Mechiah leads him to his bedroom by the hand, taking his leave at the doorway.
It is only as he is left alone at the door to his bedroom that Salvador realizes for the first time that not only has he been granted his own room, but that Mechiah has never once stepped foot in it since the day he showed Salvador to it.
The next day, Salvador returns to his routine of finding chores to do.
Anything else is bad for his heart.
*
Salvador has bad days.
On a bad day, he wakes up and feels the world closing in around him, when he can hardly breathe for feeling trapped and caught and tricked into a life he doesn’t want.
He can’t remember what it was like to live without such days. In the first few months at Mechiah’s home, these days are so infrequent that he almost thinks he could forget about them.
But for some reason as he settles in, as he grows used to the idea that Mechiah really does want a slave to simply share his space and do whatever odd chores around the house seem to need doing in his own time, the days grow more frequent than they ever were before.
There is a part of him, he knows, that has latched onto Mechiah—that hopes that Mechiah will hold him the way they held each other as boys, and make the darkness recede.
The rest of him knows better. The rest of him is practiced at hiding his mental state from his owner.
One day he is having a bad episode during his evening in the library. He does not realize he’s fallen asleep on the library floor until he wakes to the feeling of being gathered into warm, solid arms.
“Stop it,” Salvador signs—a sign so basic that even Mechiah must understand it.
Mechiah’s lips move, but Salvador cannot make out what he is saying. It is only after Mechiah sets Salvador down—not on his bed, but on the couch in one of the receiving rooms, which has no sandbox to write in—that Mechiah lifts his hands and carefully tries to sign something.
“You not do anything,” he seems to be saying, but his eyes are so gentled and troubled that it doesn’t feel like an accusation.
Salvador realizes, heart in his throat, that Mechiah has somehow learned to understand some signing. He wonders if it’s the continued exposure to it in the form of Salvador, speaking a language he’d thought Mechiah would never understand, or if he has found someone else who has been teaching him.
It must be the latter, because Salvador does not know how Mechiah could have figured it out on his own. It is staggering, because this means that Mechiah must have learned it for Salvador. That he has wanted to know the things that Salvador has been saying to him, thinking he would never understand. That he has been trying to learn to speak to Salvador in the language that Salvador uses most.
And then it strikes him that this must be an answer to the question phrased as a demand that Salvador has been signing every morning in lieu of a greeting.
He scrambles to his feet, because he needs to understand what Mechiah is trying to say.
Mechiah presses him back down with a hand on his shoulder.
“Sandbox,” Salvador signs as he lets himself be laid back down on the couch.
Mechiah nods, and signs, “Stay,” before he goes into the next room, returning moments later with the sandbox, in which he is already writing—not with his finger, but with a thin metal rod that can trace far more letters within the box than a fat human finger.
“I want you to know you don’t have to do anything,” the box says when Mechiah turns it to Salvador. When Salvador frowns up at him, Mechiah wipes the sand flat and writes again.
“I just want you to feel safe. If I can be your friend, I would like that too.”
Salvador stares from the box to Mechiah’s eyes, bright with hope and sincerity.
What can he do but nod?
*
It’s strange to know that he could do nothing if he chose. That he could spend all day in bed, or all day in the library, and Mechiah would not scold him for it.
It is so strange, in fact, that Salvador doesn’t quite believe it until he tries this several more times, and Mechiah truly does not appear to mind.
Some chores he sees Mechiah doing himself.
Other chores—such as looking after the plants in the garden, or dusting the shelves—do not get done at all, but it seems to be details that Mechiah does not care for.
Salvador decides that he does care about the garden, so he applies himself to doing nothing but garden work for a week.
Mechiah’s attitude does not change. He still smiles whenever Salvador enters a room. He still brings food to him when Salvador goes an entire day without eating. He does not comment on the work that is or is not getting done around the house.
At last, Salvador begins to believe that Mechiah truly does not care one way or the other about what he does day to day.
For the first time in twenty years, he is choosing what he wants to do day to day.
*
Salvador still does chores most days, because he has more bad days when he is idle than when he is not.
Mechiah never tells him he ought to do anything, but nor does he tell him he ought not to do anything.
Salvador has been at Mechiah’s for a year before he decides to try his luck and rearranges the carefully organized library into a system sorted purely by the color and type of wood used for the scroll handles.
Mechiah is visibly annoyed, but he does not say anything about it to Salvador. He does not even glare.
“You could at least be annoyed at me,” Salvador says to him, because he is still feeling daring.
“Why would I, when I don’t feel annoyed at you?” Mechiah signs back, nearly fluent now.
Salvador shrugs and he looks to the ground.
Mechiah comes close and drops a gentle kiss to his head.
He does this from time to time now.
Salvador finds comfort in the gesture.
He also is terrified that Mechiah will stop when he realizes the way he is encouraging Salvador to get the wrong idea.
*
There are a few romantic legends in the scrolls of Mechiah’s library, and Salvador likes to pretend he does not care for them, but the truth is that he’s read them all.
In some legends, the pair in love know they are in love at first sight. In others, there are dramatic confessions of undying love.
Salvador wonders what people do who don’t know from the start, but also don’t possess the audacity to confess their love to the only person they have left in the world.
He supposes that like him, they must live in silent agony that they do not want to escape.
It wouldn’t make for a good story, he supposes.
But he gets to see Mechiah every day, and that has to be enough.
*
Mechiah comes home with another slave out of the blue, and Salvador wonders for a terrible moment if Mechiah has changed his mind about the way he wants to live.
But the moment of horrified panic is forgotten when he recognizes the other slave: his youngest sister, Beandra, whom he has not seen in twenty years but he still knows to the bottom of his soul. He dives toward her, wrapping his arms around her.
When he pulls away, her mouth is moving in words he cannot make out.
Mechiah says something, and she pulls away so she can use her hands.
“I’m so happy you’re well,” she says, her fingers clumsy and unpracticed.
And Salvador turns to stare at Mechiah. Mechiah, who has learned the language that Salvador speaks best, and taught it to Salvador’s long-lost sister, whom he has sought out and brought home.
Surely, Salvador thinks, he is not wrong to hope that he is not the only one more attached than is perhaps appropriate.
*
The presence of Beandra changes their daily routines. She catches on immediately to the freedom that she will live as Mechiah’s property, and takes over the house.
She is wilder and more erratic than she was as a child, and Salvador finds that he understands. She was only five when they were taken away. She never got to be a child the way the rest of them did.
Salvador might have feared for his place, might have been jealous of this sister who would be a better match for Mechiah than he, for her ability to give him heirs. But he does not have that chance, because Mechiah allows her free reign of the house with the exceptions of Mechiah’s own room and the library.
The library where Mechiah can be found most of the time, now—to which Salvador is still permitted full access.
If he wanted, he could spend his days surrounded by Mechiah and the written word in a house lit up by his sister’s presence just beyond the door.
Surely, he thinks as he gazes at Mechiah, memorizing the lines of his face when he is engrossed in a scroll, he is not being foolish to hope.
*
Beandra learns to sign from Mechiah, and proves to be a quick learner.
It is she who takes him to task when she realizes that he and Mechiah are not the lovers she has apparently assumed they were.
“You loved each other when you were children, everybody knew it,” she says. This is not true, and at the age of five, Salvador doubts that anyone would have said so to her even if there had been such gossip. “And anyway, he clearly loves you now, and you’re just as mad about him. What are you waiting for?”
Salvador isn’t sure.
A sign from the universe, perhaps.
*
No sign from the universe makes itself known, but Salvador finds himself progressively growing more discontent with the status quo. He finds himself growing increasingly certain that were he to take a step forward, Mechiah would not turn him away.
And yet in the end, it comes down to the way that Mechiah’s dark hair falls in waves over his eyes one morning, and the way the light from the doorway casts shadows upon Mechiah’s bronze skin.
Salvador is crossing the room without any conscious thought, brushing the hair out of Mechiah’s eyes, and laying a kiss upon his brow.
He pulls away as soon as he realizes, eyes wide as he searches for a reaction in Mechiah’s.
Mechiah’s eyes reflect his surprise, but there is also a softness there—something happy and welcoming.
“May I?” Salvador signs.
“Please,” Mechiah signs back.
Salvador places his hands on Mechiah’s shoulders and tilts his head, leaning in slowly so that Mechiah has ample time to pull away.
Instead, Mechiah’s hands settle on his hips, simply holding on.
Salvador’s lips meet Mechiah’s, warm and sure and firm.
Mechiah’s arms wrap around his back and pull him in as he presses close.
Salvador knows to the bottom of his heart that this is where he belongs—this is his home.