by Lisa Maxwell
Chapter 20
Is woke to heavy pain, like a thick blanket pressing her down. There was no place in her it didn't reach. She opened her eyes. She was inside her tent. She should get up . . . but she was unable to find the energy. She didn't notice Petre until he spoke.
"Hello."
She didn't even try to use her voice. She couldn't respond to him. He had not been here when she arrived yesterday. Word must have reached him that she was back so he had come in from scout duty. He looked dirty and tired like he had come straight to her tent.
He began to talk. He told her things she should have wanted to know. A special regrouping had been called. A full council would meet. All the people would hear John's story.
When she turned her head away, he fell silent. After a while he said, "I just want you to know I'm so sorry. Ellie told me what you’ve been through. I . . .I’m so sorry." She could hear the sincerity in his voice. John had been his best friend.
"Thank you." She had to try twice to get sound into the words. Because it was polite. Because it wasn't Petre's fault. He'd always been good to her. He just didn't know, didn't understand anything of what she’d been through.
She heard him get up. "I'll go now."
She heard the tent flap lifting and she wanted to just let him go but she owed him better than that.
“Petre.” He paused and Is brought up the words John would want her to say. “He loved you.”
He didn’t answer. After a moment he went out.
Is lay awhile relieved of his presence, left with the aloneness that had become the only presence she could tolerate. Yet she knew she was not done. People would have questions. She would answer everything she could. Then she would leave. She would go back to the Mirror. She had no doubt she would find it. She wouldn't take Lark. It didn't matter how she got herself killed. The people could have Lark, maybe they'd give him back to the Alliance. That might save a lot of lives. She’d take one of Ondre’s horses to get to the Mirror. He'd understand, and a canny old brood mare would be able to find her way back to the people once Is was dead.
She got up and went out. It was a bright sunny day. People were stacking hay. For a moment it was as though nothing had changed for them. They had not understood the enormity of what John had given them. Their lives were no different. For a moment Is was furious with all of them. Then as suddenly as it had come, the emotion was gone, swallowed by the colorless void in which she now lived.
Ellie came over and tried to get her to eat some breakfast, but Is could not swallow anything, so Ellie began to talk.
“I know you are devastated. You had a very special relationship with John even before you experienced the link with him in the Mirror. I suspect there’s no way any of us can fully understand how that felt. I just want you to know we are all with you, Is. As incomplete as that must feel to you now we love you and want to help you.”
Is tried to nod. She knew she would not be able to force her voice past the constriction in her throat. There were no words anyway.
“Many of us loved John too.” Ellie’s hand rested on Is’s arm trying to impart comfort, but Is could feel nothing.
“When everyone can be recalled we are going to have a ceremony for him even if we don’t have his body. We’ll do it in the Hluit fashion which means that any person who wants to participate can speak or sing or play music. Some people will write their own poetry or music. Some will fast. Some will dance. Many will cry, but also laugh. There may be chanting. If you want anything we will include it.”
Ellie deserved a response so Is nodded. She would not be here when they had their ceremony.
“But in the meantime each person will mourn in their own private way,” Ellie continued. “I just want you to know that if there is anything any of us can do, we are here with you.”
Is could not even look at Ellie. This was what people did, then, when they were faced with so much pain. They made words. They came together in a group. They found comfort that Is knew she would not find.
Other people were gathering around. Is could not stand their sympathy. They could not understand her aloneness or her need to be alone. She felt almost panicked by their presence. She had to finish what she had come here to do and she had to leave.
“You can’t stay here,” she said rather abruptly. “The Alliance will find you.” She told them about the dying berserker. “Troopers are probably already on their way.”
She could feel people recoil a bit at her tone of voice. They had expected to offer sympathy and give her time to mourn before they talked about what faced them all. They were not prepared for this. Petre came to her rescue.
“Yes, troopers are on the way,” he said in a matter of fact way. “I ran into them on my way back here. They want Lark and they want you.”
Someone drew in her breath audibly and someone else reprimanded Petre softly for being so direct.
“No,” Petre said to them. “She is ready to know.”
People murmured in what sounded like disagreement, so Is spoke.
“I want to know. What has happened while I was gone?”
“Troopers picked up Petre when he was on scout,” Ondre said, saving Petre from having to hide how bad that had been. “They made it plain that they want you and the stallion back. That’s not new. But they’ve stepped up their threats against us. We’re supposed to turn you over to them and they’re going to bring Lark’s berserker to find him.”
“Then I’d better take him to them.” Is heard the emotionless quality of her voice. It made her wonder if she could really do that - turn herself and Lark over to the Alliance. Could there be such a void of all emotion in her that even going back to the Alliance would not matter? Or could she pretend to be going back, but go to the Mirror instead? Once she was dead, Lark’s berserker would find him easily enough. Would the Alliance accept that? Or would they kill Ondre’s people anyway?
"It's hard to believe the Alliance would go to this much trouble over one war horse." someone said.
“He’s not just a war horse,” Is said. “He took me to Amil’s cabin.”
Ondre spoke to her gently, "If the Alliance created Lark, surely they made more like him, or they can. You've handled war horses most of your life, is Lark really different from the others?"
Is tried to focus and think. The bond she had with Lark was deeper than with any horse before but it wasn't, in essence, different. Lark had been easier to train than most, but again, not essentially different. He was smart, willing and cooperative, but she could say that about a lot of horses. He was certainly the gentlest stallion she'd ever handled.
“It just seems strange that they have to have him back if they can make more like him,” Ondre said.
“Maybe they can’t,” Petre hazarded. “Maybe it’s not just the chip in his brain. Maybe there are so many variables and Lark’s the only one where all of them worked.”
“Or maybe they just don’t want us to have him,” someone else guessed.
"But John and his mare went to Amil’s too," a woman objected. “Maybe they’re the ones who took Is and Lark there.”
"But that wasn't the only time something of that nature happened to Is,” Petre reminded them. “Remember, she told us of a time before she met John, when she saw the Blueskins and started a landslide running away, but they never heard her. They never came to investigate. And the time she saw the government riders talking to Blueskins, and rode by them right out in the open because they couldn't see her."
There had been another time too. Although Is had not realized it then. The time she had run away from John. Lark had stumbled, but instead of falling they were suddenly standing in a meadow. She remembered how she had noticed that the grass was spring green. No one had found her there all day. But when she slept, the Blueskins had come, and she remembered how she had noticed as they walked out of the valley that the grass s
wished with the dry sound of late summer. She had not thought much about it then, but she had noticed. She came out of her own thoughts in time to hear Ondre speak.
"I'm afraid the Alliance may know a good deal more than John supposed. How else could they have created a horse like Lark? His ability to move through time is similar to the Mirror's ability to throw images back in time, and perhaps forward, for all we know."
"Yes," a woman whose name Is had forgotten, said. "The disorienting effects of the herd fogs also seem related. And whether the Alliance has learned from the Mirror how to manipulate these things, or whether the Alliance taught that to the Mirror, it doesn't matter. They both know now."
"So it might not be enough to just shut the Mirror off," Petre said, and Is was left whirling. She had not even tried to put any of this together. But the other people seemed unsurprised. They must have talked all night. They were way ahead of her.
"No, even if we knew how to do that," Ondre confirmed, “it would not stop the Alliance. They can build another Mirror and they can probably create another horse like Lark.”
“So even if the Alliance doesn’t know that the Mirror has succeeded in creating life after death with the Dark Bodies, they have still learned a lot about manipulating time.”
“But is that going to be a threat to us?” someone asked hypothetically. “A horse that can travel through time, a computer that can make dead people into ghosts, what has that to do with whether the Alliance will let us continue to exist or not?”
“It may not be directly related,” Ellie said, “but we know they have no regard for our rights, or even our lives. They consider us to be one of their experiments and whenever they decide to terminate our experiment they will do so even if that means killing all of us.”
“We have always known that.” “That has not changed,” people murmured.
“So we’re pretty much where we’ve always been – at their mercy.”
“But there could be something in all of this that would give us an edge, some significant leverage we could use to ensure our future freedom.”
“What if we could make ourselves an integral part of whether their experiment succeeds or fails. Or what if we could gain the control of the Mirror they have lost? We could bargain with that.”
“Or they might just wipe us out that much faster.”
“We have to make them need us.”
“But how?”
“If Lark truly is the only horse they have who can travel through time, we have to make sure they don’t get him back?”
“But they will come for him with his berserker and we can’t control him then, even Is can’t.”
“But what if Lark wasn’t here? What if he was somewhere where the Alliance couldn’t get at him?”
“You mean Amil’s cabin?”
“Yes. Maybe Is could try to take him back there. They could both be safe from the Alliance. And there might be other things to be learned from the research Amil stole. Even possibly some way to get the leverage we need to ensure our own survival.”
Is sensed how much they wanted her help, but not one person would ask her outright. She was free to do, or not do, what she chose. She did not want choices. She did not want life.
“Even if Lark’s gone, the Alliance may take it out on you anyway,” Is said.
“We are not completely defenseless against the Alliance,” Ondre said. “We have always known the day could come that they would come for us either to destroy us or take us back. We have contingency plans in place, which is part of the reason we all train in martial art and survival on the land. We know guerilla warfare, we have places to hide.”
“But people will die and your whole way of life will be ruined,” Is objected. “You can’t seriously want to risk that?”
“Our way of life has always been at risk. Unless we can find a way to force the Alliance to recognize us as a sovereign people and make them negotiate a treaty with us - and find some way in which they can be forced to keep that treaty – our way of life will always be at risk.”
Is had never thought about the Hluit having a chance against the Alliance. Her own problems had centered around Lark. But now turning him over to the Alliance seemed like a bad idea. Whatever use they intended for Lark, Is doubted it would be good for anyone except a few high officials. If she left him with the Hluit it sounded as though they would not turn him over to the Alliance either, but his berserker would come for him and the people would either have to kill him or let him go. Is didn't doubt that the Alliance wanted him back badly enough to kill all the Hluit if they had to.
Questions crowded her mind. If she took Lark to Amil’s would he still go berserk? Maybe that was not built into him. Maybe he had never been intended to face the Mirror. Could he be trained to get control of his time-traveling ability? What triggered it? Could she train him to use it on some signal she gave him? Could that somehow help the Hluit? Or was it something only his specially developed berserker could control? Could Lark's ability somehow help the Hluit? She came back to that.
She had no answers, but more and more Amil's cabin seemed like the place to find them. Is walked away from the others to think. She had not wanted options. She wanted to go back to the Mirror and get herself killed. She did not want to be a hologram, or a Dark Body. She wanted to be plain and simply dead.
Then she wouldn't have to worry about there being some remnant of John left somewhere. She wouldn't have to worry about what happened to Lark, or to John's people.
She knew that was a wrong and selfish way to think. It was the antithesis of what John had felt and done. She was letting him down, and letting her parents down again, even worse than she'd ever let them down in the government school. She was letting Ondre and Ellie down, along with all the Hluit, and Lark too. But going on with this pain, looking for answers, trying to help the Hluit when they seemed so doomed was too much to ask. She tried to make herself want to do the right thing. But all she wanted was death.
By the time Is faced that decision it was too late in the day to set out for the Mirror, besides she did not want anyone to try to talk her out of it so she decided she would pretend to go to her tent to rest and then slip away at the first light of morning. Then the people would have to decide what to do with Lark and the Alliance. Maybe someone else could get him to go to Amil’s. But she knew in her heart that that was not so. There was a connection between her and Lark that was a necessary part of the mix.
Walking among John's family was like treason. Accepting more hospitality from them was impossible.
She went inside her tent, but she did not sleep. After dark she came back out to sit under the sky. She couldn’t see much but she could feel the land all around her. She was not afraid of her decision to die, and yet she could not stay inside the tent alone with herself, cut off from the land this night. Her thoughts drifted idly – the bad times she had endured, the good times that had been snatched away from her – but she did not feel sorry for herself. At least she had had those good times. She had met the Hluit. She had had that fantastic link with John. She had had wonderful horses. But now there was too much pain and she was too small to hold it all.
The moon rose over the mountains, almost full. It was light enough to go now. It would get dark again before dawn, she’d have to stop then for a while, but by then she’d be miles away. No one would go after her, except maybe Petre. But by his people’s moral code he could not stop her, he could only argue with her and make her feel worse, but she would not change her mind. If she went now he might never catch up to her.
It was as though thinking of him caused him to materialize at her side. She had not heard him come up before he was already sitting beside her. Now she had to think of what to say to get rid of him without arousing suspicion. He spoke first.
"Is, don't let yourself down."
She didn't allow herself to know what he meant. "Oh, I'm not going to let an
yone down," she lied to him.
"Oh," he said. "You are not about to ride out of here. You are not going to go get yourself killed."
They weren't even questions. He had stated her plans exactly and he had no right to know them.
"It's none of your business."
"No, of course not. A person I care more about than anyone in the world is about to make a huge mistake. Of course it's none of my business."
All the lies Is had been planning disappeared. "Petre, don't. I'm not John. I can't do this. I'm not like your people. I'm an Alliance thing. I'm broken. I'm dirty. I just want out."
"Then why does it bother you?"
"It doesn't."
"Don't lie, Is. This might be the last conversation we ever have."
"Okay," she agreed to the rule. "I can't do what your people want. I can't go back to Amil's. I don't have the strength. I don't love enough to do it for love. It was all John's love before. All of it. Now that he's gone, it's gone. I don't have any of my own. No love. No strength. No courage." He'd asked for honesty, and damn him, she'd give it to him.
"So, I ask again, why does it bother you so much?"
"Because I know I should feel these things, and I don't."
"But you will again. You need to give yourself time."
"Sure, and watch your people get slaughtered."
"They won't get slaughtered."
"Good, then I don't have to worry about it."
"No, you don't have to worry about it when you're dead. You don't have to give us anything, Is. You're probably the only one who can ride Lark back to Amil's place. But you have chosen not to owe us anything."
"That's right," she said. "I am choosing my own freedom. I am being responsible only for myself. I do not choose to be responsible for your people." She spouted Hluit philosophy back at him. Let him answer that one.
But Petre didn't argue with her. He said, "It is not for our people that you have to do this. You have to do it for yourself. You owe yourself, not us."
That made no sense. "I owe myself what?" she asked angrily, and heard how her voice sounded like a petulant child's.
"You owe yourself the chance to prove to yourself that you are a good person. You can give from love. You are not 'an Alliance thing.' You're tougher than that, Is. You aren't going to let those Alliance bastards beat you in the end, are you?"
“They are going to kill your people, Petre. Slaughter them!” she nearly shouted. “They can’t really want me to go to Amil’s. It would be better for them if I were dead and the Alliance got Lark back.
“They do want it, Is. They want you to be safe. They want to do whatever it takes to break free of the Alliance. You should understand that.”
“The Alliance will kill them, Petre,” she said savagely. “You know it will.
“One day the Alliance will kill or enslave us anyway, Is.”
“But I can’t stand for that to be because of me.”
“But because of you there is also a chance to change that.”
“I don’t believe that Petre. All I can see is people dying.
“You know every last one of us is a martial artist. We know this land. You heard Ondre.”
“But there are old people and little children . . .”
“Who won’t grow up as you did, Is, in Alliance schools where they tried to control you completely, withholding education, using bribes and brainwashing and sexual harassment. Is, when you had the chance, you risked death to get out of their enslavement. You should understand how my people feel. Because of you John didn’t die from the poison. Because of you he got to deliver his message.”
“What good is that!” she practically screamed at him. “He’s dead now. And what possible good can what he learned be to your people now?”
“I don’t know that yet, Is. But we know something the Alliance didn’t want us to know. We know something the Alliance doesn’t even know about its own experiment.”
“They’ll still kill you, maybe even quicker because of what they don’t want you to know,” she snapped.
“Not if we play our hand right. Knowledge is power. We have some, but we need more. We need to know more about Lark and we need to keep him out of Alliance hands. Whether you’re here or not, we’re not going to give him back to the Alliance.”
“They’ll bring his berserker. You won’t be able to control him.”
“That’s why you should take him to Amil’s.”
“You think I know how to take him there, but I don’t.”
“But you could try.”
“Even if I got him there, we don’t know if that will work.”
“That’s true, we don’t,” he said honestly, “but it’s our best chance.” He could see how much she didn’t want to try, she didn’t believe it would work. She was broken and defeated – her heart torn out of her – all her toughness and courage and the healing she had begun to feel, crushed.
It broke his heart to see her this way. He sought for some way to put that toughness back in her, and he knew she would hate him for it. Her strong ethics and her unshakable sense of fair play had gotten her into trouble in the Alliance, but it had also seen her through many tough times. He had to reawaken that in her. He struck at the one thing she still cared about.
“You go ahead and quit.” He made his voice angry. “If the Alliance gets Lark back you won’t have to know how they use him, whether they let the Mirror kill him, or have some worse plan for him. I’ll take Lark, I’ll try to get to Amil’s. ”
“Lark won’t do it for you.”
“Probably not.”
“They’ll catch you and kill you, or Lark will.”
He met her angry eyes with his own determination. Let her see he would do it anyway. She turned away first.
“That’s not fair.”
“Many things in your life have not been fair, but they were always things that were being done to you. They were not your fault. This time it’s you who is not being fair. You might be able to do something that may save us, but you won’t try.”
“I can’t, Petre. I can’t!
“John wouldn’t want you to kill yourself.”
“I’ve done what John wanted.”
“But he wouldn’t want you to die.”
“Then he should have stayed alive,” she returned angrily.
Petre understood the betrayal she felt. John had given himself to his people above her. Petre remembered the loneliness, and yes betrayal, he had felt when John had left his best friend and his brother to live in the Alliance for so many years. He understood, of course, how important that was, but there was no reasoning with his heart. It hurt. This must be many times worse for Is, and she did not feel the support of friends and community that Petre had had. He wanted to tell her, I love you. I’ll support you. But with all the pain in her heart he knew that wouldn’t be enough for her.
He heard her ragged breath, caught the sob, quickly choked off at the end of it.
His heart melted. All the toughness went out of him. He could not cause her pain this way.
“Is . . .” his own voice caught.
“Petre, don’t . . .” her voice faltered, high and thin at the breaking point.
He didn’t know what she meant that he should not do. Not hurt her? Not force her to do this?
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, apologizing to her, apologizing to his people for failing to convince her. “I can’t hurt you like this.” He stood to leave and the pain in his heart caused him to stagger. He had failed her. He had lost her. He had failed John who would not want her to die like this. He turned blindly into the night.
“Petre?” His name from her lips froze him to the spot. He was afraid to turn, afraid to hope.
“I can’t . . . alone. Will you go with me?”
“Yes,” he managed instead of the wild exclamation of hope in his heart. “I will go with you, always.” Too muc
h had shown in his voice, he knew it the moment he’d said it.
“No, Petre don’t misunderstand. I gave something to John - maybe more than one person should give to another - now it’s gone. There’s nothing left inside me without John. I can’t love you. I can’t give you anything. There is nothing left inside me to give.
"I know," He swallowed hard. "I have something to give you."
"No. I can't accept it."
"You can't accept it because you don't understand what it is. You can't accept it because you don't understand that you can't reject it. It is already given. You have no control of that. You never did."
His words brought her up short. You don't understand what it is. She closed her eyes against the sudden reawakening of emotions she didn’t want to feel. He was right, she did not understand how his people could care anything about her except how she affected their own survival. She did not understand how he could love her when she did not love him and never would. She did not understand what he was offering her.
"I can't . . . ." The other decision was so much easier. So much safer. You're tougher than that, Is. "I can't promise anything."
"I know. Just try to get us to Amil's."
The other option, death, would always be there. If this didn't work, if she tried, and couldn't ... it was a coward's way to think, but she needed to know there was a way to get out of this pain. To continue in this suffering for the sake of other people, to allow herself to be loved, to risk caring - all were terrifying to her. She couldn't take more pain. She couldn't love again. She didn't owe anyone anything. But there was a place in her heart that knew none of that was the issue. The issue was what was right. Running away, when she was in the best position to help was wrong.
"It can't be worth it to you," to keep loving me, she added in her mind.
"Let me decide what's of what worth to me.”
It was his decision. If people would be responsible for their selves and let others be responsible for their selves . . . He was in charge of himself. She had no more right to forbid than to allow.
“Thank you." His voice was almost a whisper, inappropriate words because there were none appropriate.
She heard him walk away.
He was waiting for her when she came out of her tent in the morning. He came up out of the mist leading John's mare, saddled and packed, ready to go. Is's heart wanted to stop. No, this would cause too much pain. She should never have agreed to this.
Celeste came forward and sniffed her hand. The mare’s delicate ears pricked, her deep intelligent eyes looked into Is's. She raised her head and touched Is's check daintily with her soft nose.
Is let go of the breath she had been holding.
The moment passed and Is began to pack up her things into Lark’s saddlebags. People came in one’s and two’s drifting out of the mist. Some of them carried small packages they handed to Petre or put in the saddlebags.
They spoke to Is saying simply, “Good luck,” or “Thank you.” They acknowledged Petre with a touch or a hug that said the same thing. And then they drifted on. There were no clinging goodbyes, no fanfare, just simple honesty.
Is met Petre’s eyes. This was the right choice.
The End of Book One
About the author
Lisa Maxwell lives in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina with her horses, a dog, several cats and her life partner, Dan Palmer. She teaches riding and holds a second level black belt in aikido.
Other Books by Lisa Maxwell
The Horse Who Walked Through Time
Seven Sisters
Truthseeker