He appeared very tired but happy to be relieved of the dirty and heavy accoutrements of the day. As Carly dropped the sword belt onto the bed lounge at the bottom of the stairs, Wing sighed, rolled his shoulders, and then reached out for Carly as if he wanted to wrap himself up in her like a fresh towel after a hot bath.
She smiled as he drew her in. He smelled like leather, ink, and horse hair. As he exhaled, his weight coming so easily against her, Carly caressed his back, moving her fingers the knobs of his spine like the strings of an instrument. His chest swelled against hers as he breathed, and she smiled, walking her fingers back down his back to begin again.
“You keep doing that and I might fall dead right here,” Wing muttered into her shoulder.
Carly raised her head. “Don’t do that. You’re too big for me to move.”
Wing sniffed and drew himself up. “Maybe I’ll make us some tea.”
“Brevec for me, please.”
Wing nodded.
As Carly turned her eyes back to the fire, she listened to Wing moving around ever so quietly in the kitchen, knowing he was trying not to wake any of the men.
When he returned, Carly could smell the brevec on the chilly cabin air. She took the hot cup from his hand and stood, moving over to the large back window, the cold night reaching up through the pane.
Wing stood next to her, looking out over the tents between the house and the barn, the corral filled with the cold dark shadows of horses, and then, flanking the barn on either side to the south, the rest of the shelters and tents of the Granj.
Taking a sip of the hot brevec, Carly rested her head against his arm, and asked, “How do you do it?”
Wing looked over his shoulder at her, raising an eyebrow. “Do what?”
“SiQQiy said you were out with the men. That you healed many of them from wounds that otherwise would have taken turns or seasons to fully heal. That you helped the Ka’ull, too.”
“Ah,” Wing said. “Are you upset?”
“That you helped the Ka’ull you mean?”
Wing nodded.
“A little.” Carly fidgeted. “A part of me wants to go out right now and chop their heads off.” She blew out a breath. “But of course you helped. I don’t like it but it was probably the right thing.” Wing was quiet, switching his mug to the other hand. “But that really wasn’t why I brought it up. I asked because, well, I never really asked you how you healed Hagen’s arm. I guess, it’s the same thing?”
“Explaining it is harder than doing it.”
“Can you try?”
“It’s an understanding,” Wing said, speaking slowly, as if choosing his words. “A connection. More so, I think, it’s an agreement. I let go of myself and in that space I know what is needed to heal them. In that place, I also know if they’ve chosen not to be healed.”
“Not to be healed?”
“If they want to go.”
“Ah.” Carly gave herself a moment to let that sit. “Did that happen tonight?”
Wing nodded.
“And you can feel that? You know if they don’t want to be healed?”
“E’te,” Wing replied, looking out the window.
“But who would choose to die?”
Wing glanced over at her. “We all do. As much as we choose the time and circumstance of our birth, we also choose our death.”
“You think that Granj soldier wanted to die?”
“Wanted to? Consciously? I don’t know. Maybe. The pain was unbearable.”
“I didn’t mean that,” Carly replied, feeling frustrated. “I just…I’m sorry, but I just can’t believe that. I’ve seen so much death. I watched all our people die. They didn’t choose that, Wing. No one would.” Even as the words came out of her mouth, she couldn’t believe she’d said them. Not to Wing. And not in a tone that was so clearly accusatory. The change in Wing’s face was like a small dagger in her belly. Fighting her first inclination to apologize, Carly steeled herself in the anger she was feeling; Wing had not been at the Castle that night, he had not watched their people slaughtered before his eyes.
Carefully, Wing turned to face her. She didn’t want to, but made herself look at him anyway. His eyes were bright glistening wells of emerald, so alive and yet so pained that Carly couldn’t help but feel her anger soften ever so slightly.
It was then she realized that she had just confronted Wing with the same question the children had that night after they’d brought them down out of the caves. Jhock had asked why their people had been allowed to be slaughtered, what they’d done wrong. Lily had challenged Wing as well, wanting an answer as to how something like that could have been allowed to happen to a people who believed in Eosha and in the idea of Merehr. She had heard Wing answer them and had thought she’d understood it; obviously, she hadn’t. Or, if she had, it had not penetrated the private horror and grief she still felt from that night when their world had been ripped apart.
“Carly,” Wing said, not touching her but standing close. “I am so sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.” He closed his eyes briefly, as if enduring a fresh shock of pain.
“So…why did you?” Carly asked.
Wing started to say, “My perspective is…” but then he lost the words and fell silent.
Seeing his struggle, Carly remembered that she had asked him to explain, even though he’d clearly been reluctant to do so — as he usually was. And then she remembered something else: that he had never, in all their lives, said anything that he knew would hurt her.
Carly forced herself to reach out and touch him. The feel of him under her hand helped to ease the sore pounding of her heart. “I’m not getting it, am I?” she said softly.
Wing opened his eyes again. “I just don’t know how to explain it,” he said. He touched her face ever so lightly with his fingertips. “It’s my fault.”
Carly turned her face into his hand. “No, I asked. It’s not your fault that I got frustrated.” She forced herself to tip a small, apologetic smile at him. “Or angry.”
Wing looked back her, his face intent; hopeful, perhaps.
“I know,” Carly said, “I’ve always known, that to be who you are, to do what you are able to do, seems to require a different kind of…attention. So, what is your perspective? Is that something you can explain?”
The look on Wing’s face told her that she’d backed him into a corner. She’d asked the question already and been offended by his answer. How could he possibly feel safe answering now?
Wing drew a breath and she felt his body quiver under her hand.
I’ve ruined it, she thought. There’s no way he’s going to say anything now…
So, when he began to speak again, quietly, Carly almost gave a start.
“Plants need sunlight and water to live,” Wing said, “but we can’t actually see sunlight enter a leaf, and we can’t see water moving up through its roots. These things are real and happening but we can’t actually see it happen. There are senses of the earth and senses of the spirit. I’m just using more…senses, I guess.”
Wing had opened his eyes and Carly looked back at him. She could see in his face that he was intent, hunting her, begging her to understand.
“There’s so much more going on all around us all the time than we are usually aware of. A whole universe of sensation and movement and connection and knowing…” He stopped again. This time he raised his eyes and drew a long breath. “I wasn’t,” he began again, expression hopeful but guarded, “saying that our people consciously chose to die that night, like that. But I can feel it, Carly, when I’m with someone who is hurt, or dying, I can see — not with my eyes, but with my mind — and from that place I can see the light of a thing, I can hear its song, I can see the patterns that make it…live. It’s the same with people as it is with plants or with the earth. There is a pattern, an energy, that connects us all; to each other, to every living thing. Within this energy is always a thread of purpose. Each seed has a purpose to become a plant. Each person
also has a purpose to be what they were born to be. The plant is experiencing being a plant. We experience being human. But all of these experiences have a beginning and an end. And that, too, is part of just one expression.”
Carly listened, trying to keep her mind open. She could feel the tension in her body, the resistance in her mind to what he was saying. On a certain level, she got it. Still, she did not know how to reconcile this deeper point of view with that night in the castle. It was as if the Ka’ull, alone, had decided that night for all of them. That, even on the level of spirit, there was no way their people would ever have chosen such a thing.
When she raised her face, Wing was watching her. “Souls travel through many worlds and many lives together. The one who is the murderer in one life may be the victim in the next. It’s heart breaking, and it’s hell, and I’m not saying it’s easy. But I am saying that the end of one particular form is never the end of a life…”
“And you think our people and the Ka’ull…Sech’nya, Wing, I can’t even say it…”
“Had an agreement?”
Carly almost choked on the words. She nodded.
“Of course,” Wing said.
His voice was sure but it was also tender and touched with an unmistakable grief that even Carly’s anger couldn’t cause her to totally disregard.
“What you’re saying seems just…really crazy.” Carly sighed and lowered her head. “Sech’nya, Wing. I’m sorry. I am trying.”
As the moments passed between them, Carly found that saying the words had helped her stop shaking inside and she felt a calm slowly moving down her limbs.
Needing to reassure him as well as herself that they were all right, she stood on her toes and kissed him softly on the cheek.
“Well,” she said. “As kids, we were taught that we chose not only the time of our birth but the place as well, even our parents and siblings. So, I guess I shouldn’t find it so strange that we’d also choose our deaths.”
“Still,” Wing said, “it’s hard. It seems like if we really chose our deaths it would be something easy and painless, like dying in our sleep after a long and perfect life.”
Carly laughed unhappily. “I guess so.” She drew a breath. “But there’s no such thing; a perfect life or an always perfect death.”
Beside her in the dark she saw Wing shake his head slowly.
“Maybe it’s just not something we want to own. Death is too big. Too scary. Too incomprehensible. So, we put it in someone else’s hands.” Carly shrugged. “I don’t know. But I do know I asked and you tried to be honest with me. I’m sorry for being terrible.”
Wing closed his eyes and, reaching out, drew her close again, touching his nose to the top of her head, inhaling deeply. “With the Cant, weren’t there moments when you just acted, you weren’t thinking about the moves, they just came naturally, perfectly, always at the right time?”
“All the time,” she said.
“Well, helping with the wounded is like that. It just happens. It’s all rather spontaneous.”
Carly couldn’t help herself, she laughed, and then caught herself, slapping a hand over her mouth.
“What?” Wing whispered.
“They’re not the same thing at all!” Carly exclaimed as loudly as she could while keeping her voice low. “You do realize it’s not possible, what you do.”
Wing’s brow furrowed.
“Well, I mean, obviously it’s possible, I saw you do it with Hagen.” Carly looked at him. “It’s just, maybe you shouldn’t talk about it as something as simple as sword practice. Never mind,” she said. Taking his face, she kissed the corner of his mouth. “And though it still doesn’t really explain how you do what you do, at least I understand the part about the sword. And the plants.” She offered him a wink.
“I probably should have started out with that,” Wing said, and his eyes narrowed a little with a smile. “Still, Carly, I am sorry. I’m not trying to be inscrutable. And I don’t, in any way, mean to malign what happened that night. If I’d had the power — as myself, as Wing — to stop it, I would have.”
“I know,” Carly replied. “Our people blamed you for not letting them in, for not talking to them, and then when I ask and you answer me I get angry…and defensive.”
Wing’s expression softened and when he looked into her eyes she fell into the deep green wells of his gaze. The feeling was exquisite and unnerving and she could not remember ever feeling so naked nor so loved. “I,” she started to say, wondering if she should mention it at all, “I overhear the children now and then, when you’re not around they call you Wing Merehr.”
Concern clouded Wing’s features. “There’s been so much going on since we brought them down from the caves that I’ve probably let the most important things slip.”
“Most important things — ?”
Wing shook his head. “Never mind.” He placed his hands on either side of her face, caressing her jaw with his thumbs. “Maybe we should take advantage of Netalf’s offer and get some sleep.”
“Couldn’t agree more.”
Setting their mugs of brevec atop the mantel, they moved to a couple empty bedrolls closest to the fire and stretched out. Carly drew a blanket over her shoulder and as she curled up into Wing’s arms all thoughts of philosophy and death and the mystical faded away. There was only him, the heat of his breath in her hair, the smell of his body, and the feel of his hands on her back.
With Carly asleep in his arms, Wing tried, but could not find sleep himself. After a couple endless hours of trying, he tenderly untangled himself from Carly and, tucking the blanket in around her, stepped quietly across the room, tip toeing around sleeping men, to the Mesko wood table. Taking up his ledger, the lantern, and the jar of ink he climbed the stairs and slipped into the alcove across from his parents’ old room where SiQQiy and Nien were sleeping tonight.
Inside the small, cozy space, he lit the lantern, set aside the ink jar, and opened the ledger, his long legs serving as his table. Dipping the feather pen, he set tip to Mesko paper.
The most important things. That is what I said to Carly tonight. But I’ve forgotten them, I think. With everything that’s been happening, so many pressing matters since returning to Rieeve, I have forgotten that which is most important. I can say I will tend to it once all this is over. But what will be left when all this is over? Will it matter? My mind is tired. My body aches. I get through each day, one day at a time, as everyone is doing, hoping that I will have done so rightly. One moment I am sure; the next I doubt. To be released of my mind would be the greatest freedom.
Re-inking the brush, Wing continued to write.
This is a journal, but I think it might also be a letter. So…Nien, I’ll leave this to you. Editing is not possible — one more thing there is no time for — still, hopefully you will be able to makes sense of it and why I considered what I write here to be some of those, “most important things”…
Wing wrote for some time, his thighs a rather difficult surface for the ledger, and one he hoped would not make his words illegible once they dried. With exhaustion creeping in on him and the ink jar running low, Wing finally drew himself up, stretching his back and glancing out the tiny alcove window. It was very dark and very still outside the small window.
Good, he thought, I might still be able to get some sleep.
Placing the lid back on the ink jar, he left the pages open to dry and went back down the stairs. Carly shifted a little as he slipped in beside her, accepting his company without waking, and Wing smiled, enjoying the small sounds she made as he as he eased his arms around her and shut his eyes.
It seemed to Wing that he had only just fallen to sleep when he felt a soft hand on his face. He opened his eyes and saw Carly leaning on an elbow, looking down at him. He also saw that the first pale rays of morning were making their way in through the large back window of the house.
“Wing?” she asked.
He blinked up at her.
“What�
��s wrong?” she asked. She was whispering but her voice was urgent. “Are you all right? You’re shaking.”
Wing furrowed his brow. Am I? he wondered, replying quietly, “I’m fine. Maybe a little cold.”
Shaking her head, Carly curled up next to him again, gathering him in close.
He held her in what he knew would be little precious time before SiQQiy’s men began waking and moving about.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Carly asked again.
“E’te.”
“You were shaking hard enough to come out of your skin and you tell me you’re fine?”
“I’m fine,” he said, trying to encourage her.
“Uh huh,” she muttered.
Wing wrapped his arms more tightly around her, tucking her into his body.
There had been a moment during their talk before bed that he’d felt a stab of fear that he might lose her, either to the words he’d said or to the words he didn’t know how to say. He was intensely grateful to know he had not.
Hoping he could explain better in writing than in words, he’d written what he could, upstairs, in the ledger. Maybe it would make more sense there. Still, even in writing, it had been difficult to explain the shift he experienced, the way he could slip into the life stream beneath the surface of things. How death — even the most horrible kind — was still only a passing of flesh. That, ultimately, it was the soul that decided the path of things. It was the soul that created, held, and dissolved form in moments that were little more than an intake and an exhale of eternal breath. Those things which felt so profound, impactful, or traumatic in the world were, for the soul, mere flickerings, points of experience in a vast, infinite canvas of life.
And then the front door slammed open.
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