Silent Flyght – Chapter 9

Marcelo was right. It is a beautiful day. Too beautiful to spend indoors, even if the arboretum is a luxurious place.

I take my time drifting down the hill to the rows of grapevines. The back of the estate has a stone patio with a built-in bonfire pit and a manicured lawn, both of which are impeccably cared for. A few people sit on lounge couches, drinking wine and soaking in the late day sun, their laughter bright and happy.

Walking past them, I act like I own the place, skirt through the fence’s gate, and head into the vineyard proper. Now is the perfect time to take in the surroundings and try to learn from them. I scuff my shoe in the dirt and crouch down to pick some up in my hands. The soil is dry and rocky, nothing like the rich, dark earth I’m used to working with. Grass clings to the ground under each of the grapevines tied to their trellis. Hmmm, the grapevines are secured vertically, not horizontally. Interesting.

I reach out and lay my fingers on a bundle of grapes.

Wait.

I inhale sharply and bounce back from the vines. I’ve seen that before.

The world spins around me, but there’s nothing to hang onto, so I fall to my knees, slowly enough to save myself but not too fast to ruin my pants.

In my prescient dreams, I saw my hand over a bunch of round objects on a tree. It wasn’t a tree; it was a vine. Grapes. They were grapes.

What else did I see?

The grapes. A handsome man picked me up and swung me around, and I was happy. His face. It was Mat.

What else, Vivian?

I’m so deep in my memories of the prescient dreams that I don’t notice someone running up to me. I open my eyes when a hand shakes my shoulder.

“Are you all right?” Mat asks, concern stretching over his eyes. I take longer to process his signs than usual because the world is still spinning.

“I’m… I’m fine. Just tired, I guess.”

With his help, I get back to my feet and brush the dirt off my pants. He squeezes my hands before letting go to clutch my shoulders.

“I came out here to look at the vines, and I had a wave of dizziness. Sorry. Must have had too much champagne.” I try to ease his worry with a small smile, but he doesn’t relax until he lets my shoulders go, and I stand on my own.

I suck in a deep breath through my nose and let it out through my mouth. I can be steady. It’s a wave of déjà vu; nothing more.

“So, um,” I say, trying to gather up my thoughts under his dark gaze, “I noticed you tie the vines up vertically. In my head, I always thought they were tied horizontally, but I know very little about cultivating wine grapes.”

Mat stares at me for a long time, and then I realize I hadn’t been signing.

“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head and signing. “I forgot to sign. I’m a little out of it.”

“No,” he replies. “That’s not why I’m…” His hands falter. “Yes, we tie them vertically here. On Old Earth, in Italy, they were tied horizontally for many ages. Then studies in the early 21st century showed that tying them vertically worked best.”

“You research back to Old Earth ways, too? I mean, besides the heirloom plants. What do you have access to?” I lean in, hungry for this information. If he has access to old databases or diaries or anything, I’d be interested in reading them or hearing about what he’s read. I’m always looking for a leg up.

“The Aravena ancestors kept everything brought from Earth in the family vaults,” he signs and gestures for us to walk on. “We have more information than we know what to do with. I’ve studied the grape cultivation records since I was a kid. Now, I have young apprentices who study other aspects of the business, too, like vintage blending or vermouth recipes or making grappa.”

“Do you do all of that here?” My mouth waters with the potential of this business.

“Yes, we do. We only just expanded into more than wine. See this over here?”

We break through a row of grapevines and come to an access path that crests over a hill. Laid out before me is a vast part of the land, though the vines appear to be much younger.

“This is our newest variety, grown from seeds that came from Earth.”

I raise my eyebrows at him, and he laughs, his shoulders shaking.

“Not a joke. You won’t believe what we had to go through to get this to work. And this land?” He clicks his tongue. “It was in rough shape. It hadn’t been used in twenty years before I got to it.”

“Wow. You rehabilitated this land?”

He angles his head at the rows in the distance. “Come. Let me show you.”

We walk through the rows of vines while he tells me the story of his last twenty years of work. He worked hard to make this land viable. To condition the soil, he planted other crops to build up the minerals and nutrients, and cultivated the land even through floods and droughts. The very first vines were planted here ten years ago.

“When I turned twenty, I made this land my own personal project, and I’ve been working at it ever since.”

That means he’s forty years old. Not too old. Not too young either. I must seem like a child to him.

I concentrate on the ground in front of us as I imagine how he was already in his teens when I was a baby. God, that’s awkward. A lot more uncomfortable than I thought it would be.

Mat touches my arm, and I raise my eyes to meet his.

“What’s the matter?” He brushes his own cheeks with his fingers.

My face heats even more. “I just realized how wide our age gap is.” I look away from him, directing my attention to the house. “So, your family has been here for many generations?”

Mat gestures for us to head to the house and begins a slow amble through the vines. “Well, the family who owned this vineyard went all the way back to the colonization ships. They came from an area of South America called Chile, and they worked on a winery there. They saved up for the entire trip across the stars for this place.”

“Your parents and grandparents, and so on?” I ask, walking beside him.

I look over at him, and his eyes are narrowed. Without being able to read the tone of his voice, I’m left with facial and body expressions, and he’s skeptical of me.

“I thought you knew all this already,” he signs, and my face loses its heat. I hate when I get caught having not done something I should have done.

“Uh no. I…” I chuckle and kick a stone down the path. “I did something kinda silly, and I asked Marcelo and Gus to keep you a secret. I thought, maybe, if we got to know each other on our own, that it might be better than knowing everything ahead of time. You know, actually date instead of just being set up.”

He huffs a quick breath, and his expression is puzzled amusement. “Vivian, you know nothing about me?”

I want to tell him to shorten my name to Vivi or Viv since it would be faster and easier, but he’s too amused to break the spell.

“Yeah, sorry. That was probably a mistake on my part.”

“No,” he says, holding out his hands to stop my apologies. “No. It’s… well, not many people I come in contact with know so little about me. Sometimes it feels like there are no mysteries. I like the fact that you were willing to leave this to…” He thinks for a moment, his hands suspended in air. “Fate.”

“If you believe in fate,” I point out.

“I do. Absolutely.” His hand movements are sharp and crisp, then he taps his chest. “Fate or chance. They’ve both impacted my life, on many levels.”

Fate brought us together on the Lee home ship. Or was it an accident? My prescient dreams keep coming true, telling me maybe everything is already set in stone. No matter what I do, I’m on a path that can’t be changed.

I shiver and look away from Mat. I love the idea of a fated mate; I don’t like the idea that I have no control over my future.

How do we proceed from here? If it was meant to be, why bother with everything in between? I feel like fate has sucked the fun right out of the romance. I mean, I’m pretty damned cynical. Still, even I believe in love and racing hearts and nervous butterflies and consuming thoughts and everything else. I don’t want to lose all of that.

“I’m not sure I believe in fate.” My hands fumble over the words. “But yet, it’s hard for me to dismiss everything that’s happened to me as not part of some grand plan.”

His lips pinch into a squat X. “You don’t need to look at it like that.” He stops and bends down to pick up a rock and toss it into the distance. “The threads of the universe weave together in mysterious ways.”

I swallow through the lump in my throat. I don’t like this. I don’t enjoy knowing I have no control over my life. Everyone suspects they don’t have control over love, life, injury, or death, but I doubt many people have seen the future like I have. I’ve never thought about these concepts before, and now is not the time to reimagine my whole strategy because of this.

Mat is interested in me, and I’m not sure why. Something else is going on here besides mutual attraction. He needs something from me, I think.

“So, have the threads of the universe brought us together?” I dip my head into his eye line. “I’m not sure how you could believe that when you have so many eligible women right here on your own planet.”

I gesture to the house and the women who wait there for him to return.

He thinks about his answer for a few moments. “I think, maybe, we should talk about this on another night, but it’s my desire not to ‘poison the well,’ you know?”

Ah, yes. He doesn’t want to bed someone here in case the relationship bombs, then he’d have to deal with the fallout every single day for the rest of his life. This is a concept I understand. Most of the big landholders on Ossun don’t date each other because that would lead to ruin should the relationship sour.

“I do know. Maybe it is to our advantage to only date outside of our social circles.”

His smile shows how pleased he is that I ‘get it.’ I’m a lot younger than him, but I’ve had my feet held over a fire lately. What I’ve been through will make you grow up right quick.

But, still, I’m young, and I want my relationships to be special. The whole reason I wanted a single pairing relationship to begin with was because I never thought my relationships could be special with more than one person. Fate, or whatever this is, is determined to prove me wrong, every minute of every day.

“I think we should give it a shot, don’t you?” His expression is earnest, and my heart thaws a bit.

I step back and assess this man before me, the one who believes the universe can bring people together. Mat is interesting, unique, and handsome, and I could see myself caring for him genuinely.

What if this is all wrong, though? What if my prescient dreams were warnings?

God, I’m so full of questions at all times. It’s so frustrating. There need to be more answers and fewer questions.

I don’t know. I don’t even know him, much less how I should proceed in this situation.

“I… I think, yes. I asked Marcelo to find me —”

He cuts me off. “Someone to support you in the repurchase of your farm, no?”

“Um, yes? But there’s more.”

He spreads his hands out. “There always is. Let’s have dinner and talk of our future, shall we? Come back here tomorrow evening, and we’ll discuss things.”

This is not what I expected, my sudden ambivalence even though everything is right and feels right. It’s almost as if it’s all too perfect. Too planned. I’m suspicious of things that go too well, like the meeting with Gus’s mom over him joining my network.

Nothing should be this easy.

“Sure. I’ll be here.” I shrug. “Why not?”

I follow him back to the house, more confused about my life than ever.