Seeking Eden Read online

  The small fire burned low, and there’d be no more fuel allowed until Shabbat ended the next evening. The lanterns had been dimmed to next to nothing. The social hall was nearly empty. They were the last two in the leisure room. Even the teeners had given up their silly flirtations and gone to bed.

  “Tired?” Elanna asked when she caught Tobin yawning.

  He grinned at her. “Yeah. And my legs hurt from all that climbing.”

  She’d taken him to the rooftop gardens today. If he’d been anyone else, particularly someone she wanted an appointment with, she’d have offered to rub his legs. But she couldn’t offer him that. He’d think she was trying to seduce him.

  “The climb down wasn’t so bad, was it?” She leaned back into the softness of the sofa cushions. She wasn’t tired at all. Being around Tobin made her skin feel like it was crawling with ants.

  They’d spent nearly every waking moment together for the past four days. She’d never spent so much time with one man in her life. She’d thought he would bore her. He didn’t. Or worse, irritate her and make her angry. He didn’t do that, either. Tobin had a gentle sense of humor she wasn’t used to with the men she’d known. He made her laugh. And he listened to her.

  “It wasn’t so bad,” he agreed. He yawned again, stretched.

  “Can you find your way back to your room?” she asked finally. “It’s easy to get lost when the lights are dimmed. If you don’t know where you’re going, I mean.”

  He stretched again, reaching his long arms up behind his head until his shirt pulled up and exposed the tautness of his stomach. Elanna looked away as though she’d never seen a male torso before, and cursed herself silently for being ridiculous.

  “Maybe you can walk me there,” Tobin said, but made no move to get off the sofa.

  They’d commandeered one of the more comfortable ones from the teeners, who grumbled but got up when Elanna ordered them to. Orna had been one of the grumblers. At eleven, she was one of the youngest in the group. Soon they’d know if she was going to be a hopemother like Elanna. Though Orna hadn’t been hers for ten years, Elanna found herself squeezing the girl’s hand as she went by.

  She thought of that touch now, sad because Orna had twisted away from it. Politely, but firmly. Elanna knew that was part of growing up, part of changing from child to teener and then adult. It didn’t stop the sting.

  Now she watched Tobin relax against the cushions not so recently vacated by her first-born daughter. What would a child of his be like? Dark haired and dark eyed? She’d likely never know.

  “When are you going to leave?” she asked.

  The question seemed to surprise him, but he recovered quickly. “You mean with the gatherers?”

  “Sure,” Elanna said. She realized something quickly, something he thought she didn’t catch. He was thinking of leaving, all right, and not with the gatherers.

  Tobin shifted in his seat, stretching out his impossibly long legs as though looking for a way to answer her. “I don’t know when they’re going to be ready. Soon, I guess. They must have some work to do on the trucks. I hear they’re going to take them as far as the edge of the city, then they’ll go forward on bikes after that.”

  “I guess so.” Elanna watched the firelight, golden and red, reflected in his eyes. Why couldn’t she forget the revulsion she’d seen there before?

  She’d never been afraid before, to ask a man to her bed. If she’d had to do the asking at all. Until Tobin, she’d never been rejected.

  “Thanks for taking me up there today. Tobin looked around the room, empty now. “I feel like…I mean, do you want to…”

  “What?” She sounded too eager, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Go for a walk.”

  “Now? Outside? It’s dark.”

  “Oh, sorry. Is it because it’s your Shabbat? I know you can’t light the lights but I thought that’s why it would be good to take a walk instead of you know, just sitting here in the dark.”

  She shook her head, confused. “No. It’s not that. But you don’t want to take a walk now. Not at night. It’s dangerous.”

  “I thought there wasn’t any crime here. The Bridgers and the Savages stay far away.”

  “Not from them,” Elanna said. “From the trolls and gobblings.”

  Tobin stared at her for a long, silent moment. “The what?”

  “Trolls. Gobblings. They hunt at night. They eat people.”

  Tobin shook his head. “You’re kidding, right? I mean, is this a joke? It has to be. Right?”

  “Why would it be a joke?” She studied him, not understanding. “Surely you’ve seen them.”

  “We didn’t have them where I came from.”

  She shivered. “You’re lucky.”

  Tobin gave her an odd look. “Yeah. I guess so. What do they look like? These…trolls. And gobblings.”

  “I’ve never seen one. And I don’t want to,” she added hastily. “When one’s spotted, we all have to go inside. They bar the doors. For our protection. We haven’t had any attacks in years. But they’re still out there.”

  “How do you know?”

  “The Gatherers find signs of them,” she said.

  “And you trust them? You trust the Beit Din.” He said the second not like a question.

  Elanna gave him another curious look. “Of course. We have to. The Tribe couldn’t survive very well if we didn’t trust the Beit Din.”

  “I didn’t have a council to help me,” Tobin said after a pause. “And I turned out all right.”

  “It’s what we know, Tobin.”

  “Is that why none of you leave your territory? Why you all stay here?”

  “Where would we go?” She said this as though the idea of running away had never crossed her mind.

  “Anywhere you wanted?” Tobin gave a small laugh. “Where nobody told you who you had to love.”

  At this, she frowned. “You’re talking about this. Us. About what Reb Ephraim said I have to do.”

  He wouldn’t look at her.

  Elanna was tired of biting her tongue and holding her temper. She’d spent years doing it with the Tribe, but Tobin wasn’t from the Tribe. She owed him nothing. “What are afraid of? Do you think I’m going to try to force you into bed with me? Is that it?”

  “Yes, maybe,” he said. “Yes.”

  He rubbed his hands up and down along his thighs. The motion annoyed her; she grabbed his hands until he stopped. She forced him to look at her.

  “What’s the matter with you, Tobin? I thought…I thought you wanted to be my friend.”

  “I do.” He didn’t pull his hands away from hers.

  “Then what?” Elanna asked, dismayed to hear the sound of tears in her voice. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want this to matter. She didn’t know why it did.

  “I don’t know much about women,” Tobin began.

  “Obviously,” Elanna said, but not as bitterly as she might have a few moments before.

  That earned a hint of a smile. It made her bite her lip, that smile. In the firelight, with the light gleaming red in his dark hair, Tobin’s smile made a flame curl in her belly.

  “Elanna,” Tobin said.

  She waited for him to say more, but he seemed to be at a loss for words. The fire crackled and popped, growing dimmer. Soon they’d be sitting in the dark.

  “Elanna,” he tried again. “I used to dream about a woman like you.”

  “You did?” She was confused, didn’t quite know what to say.

  “It’s why I left Eastport, and came here,” he continued softly. He still hadn’t let go of her hands. “The peddler said I’d find people here. And I did. I met you. I just…I just didn’t know that people…”

  “Yes?”

  She had no idea what he was trying to tell her. For all the time they’d spent together, he was a complete mystery. They didn’t have the same frames of reference; he didn’t understand life in the Tribe and she didn’t understand how he’d lived before co