Wing & Nien

by Shytei Corellian

  Wing slowed and stopped.

  All their young eyes looking up and focused on him, the first young boy started to say, “Merehr, I’ve heard you can answer any question…” but he was interrupted as another boy called out, “I’ve heard you can’t be killed!”

  Her bright eyes gazing up at Wing in awe, the one who had introduced herself as Lily, said softly, “Is it true? Will you live forever?”

  Wing felt the ground beneath him make a sudden, sickening spin.

  One of the boys elbowed Lily and growled: “Of course it’s true, and that’s why it doesn’t matter whether the Ka’ull come here or not, huh?” He looked back up at Wing. “Because as long as you’re here, there’s nothing they can do.”

  “Is it true,” Lily asked, “that we’re safe?”

  The girl was a beautiful little blonde with fair skin and blue eyes sprung wide with curiosity. Wing felt his mouth start to move, but could not imagine what he might say. He stopped abruptly. Looking down at her, it was as if her eyes were merely small blue pools seen from a great height.

  “We’ll be safe,” Wing said, but the words were bitter on his tongue. A lie. They were something he felt compelled to say to just a little girl.

  She smiled broadly up at him, as the boy behind her said, “Told you so!”

  But the little girl, Lily, only had eyes for Wing. The hope and faith in her expression broke Wing’s heart and suddenly his feet were moving. He stepped around Lily and through the rest of the befuddled children, moving away. In the silence behind him, Wing knew the children’s eyes were following him, but something had shifted inside of him, disconnecting him from the world. The strike of his boot heels against the cobblestone seemed unreal as he continued to walk. He found himself upon Carly’s doorstep with surprise and tried to collect himself before knocking, but the weight of consciousness was so heavy he almost turned away, thinking better of trying to have a polite dinner with Carly’s family after what had happened. Unfortunately, before he could a call came from inside the house: “Wing? Come on in!”

  With a sigh, he drew a breath and stepped inside. Carly’s mother, Vay, was in the kitchen and he paused, taking a moment to lean against the doorjamb.

  He felt as he had once after Nien had accidentally swung a log into the back of his head during a construction project: the same sinking feeling in his body of extreme exhaustion.

  Vay appeared in the doorway from the kitchen into the living area.

  “You did come in. You were so quiet, I wondered. How are you?”

  Wing pushed himself away from the support of the wall and moved over to her, kissing her on the cheek. “Good.” He raised his head and took a deep breath. “It smells wonderful.”

  “You,” she scoffed, brushing him away sheepishly. “Make yourself comfortable, we’re almost ready.”

  Wing did so, sitting down in the living area just as Carly walked in.

  “Been here long?” she asked, tossing her long coat across the back of the padded wooden couch.

  “Not long,” Wing replied, standing again.

  Carly pulled off her boots. “What’s wrong?” she asked. Wing looked down into her eyes. Carly’s brow furrowed. “Were you in the Village today?”

  Wing shook his head, no.

  “Well?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Do you want to talk?”

  Yes, Wing thought.

  Rising to her toes, Carly brushed her lips against his face and whispered into his ear, “It’s good to see you.”

  Wing leaned in to kiss her but the creaking of the front door opening again negated it. He turned to see Carly’s father, Hoath, enter.

  “Why, Son-Cawutt, it’s good to see you. How have you been?”

  “Well, Father-Vanut,” Wing replied.

  Wing saw Hoath’s eyes shift to Wing’s hand where it rested on the low curve of Carly’s back.

  “Better friends than lovers,” he warned. “She’s a fighter and no cook. You’ll starve to death.”

  “That’s fine — I rarely have a mind to eat,” Wing said.

  Hoath raised his nose into the air and sniffed. “Really?”

  “Well, not tonight, of course.”

  Hoath chuckled and walked past them, moving into the kitchen.

  Carly laughed and poked Wing in the ribs. “Parried that just in time.” Wing was unable to enjoy the joke. Concerned, Carly asked, “Do you want to skip dinner? We can take a walk, or…”

  “No, let’s eat. You must be starving after being with the Cant all day, and Vay went through the work of preparing.”

  “I think we’ll only have one or two more training sessions before the Ime break.” Stepping closer, Carly placed one of her legs between Wing’s and pressed her body against him. “I guess what’s bothering you isn’t something you can tell me quickly, is it?”

  “No,” he said.

  Standing on her tiptoes, she kissed his face.

  Wing appreciated not being pressed and gratefully ran his hand up the curve of her spine. Carly shivered as he lowered his head and brushing his nose against her neck, breathed deeply. He could feel tension that he’d not even been aware of begin to release from his shoulders —

  “Carly! Call your brother and sister, we’re ready to eat.”

  Carly sagged in his arms. They shared a sigh.

  “Can we just disappear?” Carly whispered.

  Wing looked back her, thinking, Oh, how I wish we could...

  Carly yelled for her little sister and brother and they all emerged into the meal room at once.

  “When is the Cant going to take its Ime break?” Hoath asked, spearing a cut of meat.

  “In a turn,” Carly replied. “I’ve taken over for Nien till then.”

  Wing tensed.

  “Taken over for Nien?” Hoath asked.

  Wing felt Carly shift uncomfortably next to him as she replied, “Well, the truth is, he’s not here.”

  As expected, Hoath’s expression was one of utter confusion.

  “Not here?”

  “He, uh, left.”

  “Left? Where?”

  There was a strange silence beginning to filter through the table’s occupants.

  “Well, it’s not common knowledge yet, but he, uh, well…he went to Quieness.”

  Complete silence.

  Wing felt himself slipping out of his body again. Carly’s mother, Vay, had dropped her spoon. Carly’s siblings were gaping at Carly. Hoath, however, just nodded.

  “I’d heard something about that. I thought it was a joke.” He looked at Wing. “So, it’s true?”

  It took concentrated effort for Wing to raise his face and say, “Yes.”

  “How do you feel about it?”

  Shocked by the question, it took Wing a beat to reply: “It’s not something I would do.”

  Hoath noted the hesitation. “So, you don’t agree?”

  It was a loaded question — asked, Wing knew — not to himself but to Merehr.

  “I...” Wing paused. “He needed to go.”

  Wing felt everyone at the table tense, wondering if Hoath were going to push Wing into the answer Hoath was really digging for.

  He did.

  “So, you don’t agree?”

  Wing studied his plate for a time. “It was not my choice, nor,” he added, “should it have been.”

  Hoath took another bite of food and Wing realized that the whole conversation had been planned somehow, as if Hoath were baiting him. Beside him, he felt Carly staring a profound hole into the middle of her father’s forehead.

  Hoath, however, didn’t flinch. “It’s a bold step,” he said, chewing his food thoughtfully. “So, will you be replacing him, then?”

  “Replacing him?” Wing asked, his voice taking on an airy presence, as if stripped of its weight and depth.

  “In the Cant.”

  As insulting as Hoath’s presumption was to Carly who had just said she’d taken over Cant training in Nien’s absence, W
ing could still not believe Hoath’s temerity.

  “If joining the Cant has not previously been in your plans, might now be the opportune time?” Hoath pressed.

  Wing glanced at Carly, but her eyes were still fixed doggedly on her father.

  “There is much to do before Ime,” Wing said slowly. “Both in the fields and here in the Village — ”

  “So, even if my daughter would have to serve as protector to you and your children, and your brother an educator for them, at least you could put a roof over their heads?”

  Wing trembled involuntarily. Beside him, Carly said, “Father.” There was shock and pain in her tone, but also finality.

  At the opposite end of the table Vay had stopped eating.

  Keir, Carly’s younger brother, tapped his utensil against the side of his plate before muttering, “All the people are saying it, Carly.”

  “Merehr,” Hoath said to Wing. “The title is already yours. Everyone’s just waiting for you to accept it and join the Cant. They’d even give you Grek Occoju’s position on the Council.” Hoath nodded at the gape-mouthed looks from the family. “I’ve heard that Grek’s said it himself — that he’d step aside for you, Wing.”

  Wing’s eyes had come to rest steadfastly on his plate as Carly’s baby sister asked quietly, “Are you Merehr?”

  An even stickier silence crept into the room. The food had long been forgotten. The trap had been laid and the damage done. Wing had no idea how he was supposed to respond — to any of it. As the tension continued to build Carly suddenly pushed herself away from the table and stood. “If you’ll excuse us,” she said to her family, casting them a collective look of disgust.

  She touched Wing on the shoulder and he stood. As Carly took his hand, Wing thanked Vay for the invitation to dinner, nodded to Hoath, and followed Carly out the door.

  Carly walked in silence at Wing’s side down a Village row leading out of town and toward the grassy plains that separated the Village from the solitary Cawutt home at the far end.

  Wing was withdrawn and appeared physically weakened as Carly released his hand and slipped her arm around his waist.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said.

  Wing continued to walk, remaining silent until they’d gotten out of the Village, passing through the outer section of the Cantfields. At the edge of them he stopped and turned to face her.

  “You need to get back,” he said. “You need to eat, and” — he took one of her hands in his and rubbed briefly at a small patch of dried mud on her palm — “get cleaned up.”

  Carly smiled half-heartedly. She wanted to say something to make it all better. She wanted to say sorry a hundred, a thousand times.

  “From now on, we’ll eat out at your place,” she said.

  She could tell Wing was trying to find something to say, but understood his silence — there was nothing to say. Even if her father had planned the conversation there was nothing that could be done about it now.

  “I’ll see you in a few days,” she said. Briefly, she searched his face. But there were no evidences, no hints as to what he might be thinking or feeling and the distance between them was growing by the moment.

  Wing kissed her, and in the only communication he could offer, squeezed her hand before turning and continuing off across the fields.

  Carly watched him go until his figure became only a small speck amongst the tall grasses.

  If there were no food in their stomachs or roofs over their heads, Carly thought, how much would it matter whether Wing wielded a sword? Whether he sat on the Council?

  As Wing disappeared from her sight, Carly turned back and looked at the Village.

  She didn’t like being plagued by thoughts of politics and prophecies. Both, in her mind, just got in the way of getting on with the business of life. But Wing was inexorably pulled into the heart of both and she was inexorably drawn into his.

  Slapping some mud from her pants, she started back toward her house wishing that she and Wing could just be alone, build a house of some sort out at his end of the valley and pretend that the only thing they had to worry about was the weather, the fields, and the Cant’s training schedule.

  Where Carly’s sight had lost him, Wing walked on. Since leaving her he’d had only one clear thought: I can’t feel my feet.

  He’d crossed nearly half the valley when another thought took its place: Those children. They already believe that I’m the Leader of Legend. There’s no stopping it anymore. Their faces…

  He took a breath, but his vocal cords seized upon the air and there came a slight, desperate utterance. He locked out the sound.

  Nien.

  His brother’s name threatened the thin hold he had on his throat.

  “You were right,” Wing said to his absent brother. “It’s all falling apart. And I can’t do anything about it. I already knew it was, but hearing it from you that day…Yosha. And then you leave.”

  Wing kept walking, eyes and attention firmly fixed on the ground directly before his feet.

  “But then,” Wing said quietly, “I didn’t give you any reason to stay. I never told you that, as long as there was the two of us, I believed we could figure all this out.”

  A terrible feeling said then what Wing had feared all along: Nien may not come back.

  Hearing the words in his head sucked the strength from his limbs.

  My silence, Wing thought. The closing of the school. There’s nothing for him to come back to — other than the Cant.

  And if it turned out the Cant wasn’t enough, Wing wouldn’t blame him. Rieeve didn’t deserve Nien anyway. He was too curious, too eager, his passion too big. His voracious appetite for knowledge could not have been contained indefinitely by Rieeve’s lack of it, and suddenly Wing felt guilty for wishing Nien home. Nien was in a place that could give him what he wanted, what he needed. A thing Rieeve could never offer him. No wonder he had left.

  The words hung in Wing’s mind like an omen.

  What if the only solution is for me to leave?

  It was the choice Rhegal had made.

  Because, Wing realized, he was forced to. Because there is no answer. There is no other way. There isn’t a way to stop it. Just like the children I ran into arriving in the Village today, minds have been made up and nothing I can do will change them.

  Wing knew then what Rhegal had grasped so long ago…

  The only option was to leave Rieeve.

  A great sadness flooded Wing’s heart. Leave his home? The fields? His family?

  But if he did not leave he would continue to be a burden to his family who felt they had to protect him. He would also have to bear the disappointment of the people who were growing more resentful and desperate with every passing revolution in which he did not accept the role of Merehr.

  Rhegal had not been able to change it, just as Wing had not been able to. Wing’s words had not been able to change their minds. Neither had his silence.

  There was only one action he could take that would end it — to accept it, to step up as Merehr, or to leave Rieeve forever.

  But claiming the title of Merehr, Wing knew, would only be a temporary solution and could, potentially, make matters so much worse in the end for Merehr, told by Eosha, was someone who could call down the power of the upper worlds, of spirits and the great ancestors.

  And I am not that man, Wing thought. It would be a lie, one that, once discovered, could bring about horrific consequences.

  It was a lie he might be able to live with in order to give his family and people some sense of peace…

  But that was no longer an option either for the Ka’ull had struck. There was a darkness and it was real and it might be coming.

  What then, when the people believed he could do those things spoken of in the Ancient Writings, and they were faced with the enemy? When they believed that he could call armies down from the skies? Alter the world with only his command?

  The thought wrought sheer terror in his heart.

>   He could not do it. Just as Rhegal had known he could not. In the end Rhegal had accepted the impossibility of it and left.

  It’s time I accept it, too, Wing thought.

  Wing stopped walking and stood, a lone figure in a vast stretch of fields.

  So, there it is, he thought. The choice that’s been in front of me all along. If any of this is ever going to work out, if the people will not look to Lant for direction as long as I’m here, then there really is only one solution: I will have to do as Rhegal did —

  I will have to leave Rieeve.

  Chapter 25

  On the Roof

  “S on, you look a little tired,” Joash said as he crossed the top of the roof with the balanced skill of a man accustomed to working at heights. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  With the harvest done and the fields at rest, Joash and Wing had been working long hours on the lengthy construction project that was the Vanc home, often in terrible weather, attempting to get it completed at last. Today, however, was a gorgeous Ime day, shockingly bright over the snow-covered valley, their silver-blue sun slipping toward the horizon, the cold air providing a refreshing bite upon their sweat-kissed skin. They were coming to the end of what they could do in the little daylight left, but Joash had noticed that Wing had been uncharacteristically lethargic all day.

  “I’m fine. Let’s keep going so you can get Mother-Leeal Vanc off your back.” Wing’s face lightened mischievously as he mimicked Mother-Leeal’s irritating high-pitched tone: “I’ve got the finest furniture in the Village, and it won’t do to have it in a roofless house.”

  “Watch your mouth,” Joash cautioned, for Councilman Brauth Vanc’s wife had a habit of hanging around the construction site.

  Wing grinned at his father and headed up the roof. The last of the biggest timbers to be used for the roof were bundled together just above them, held to a completed part of the roof by a length of carefully secured line.

  Joash watched Wing. He was dragging. Perhaps he’d just had a bad night. Still, Wing hadn’t been the same since Nien left, and whether it was that one thing or everything all together, Joash was more worried for his son than usual.