by Guy Estes
― Leo Tolstoy
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky
CHAPTER 19
“I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.” – Charles Dickens
Ivarr sat in the middle of his shop and wept. For a year and a half his daughter had been gone. No trace of her had ever been found, no hint as to what her final fate was, but that was probably a good thing. The tragedy had left him and his wife unable to make their way, and they had been relying upon Riona for a year. In that time Ilian's hopelessly neurotic sister had taken over every aspect of their lives, reinforcing their misery. Ivarr had become so crippled that he could not even straighten his fingers. Everything else worked fine, but his hands may as well have been chopped off.
What a fine man I am, he thought. I cannot take care of my wife, I cannot work. Damn it all, I cannot even feed myself! Nor could I find my daughter. That single error has spawned such woe.
Ivarr could not halt these thoughts. He could never stop punishing himself, so here he sat in his shop, dusty with disuse. He looked all around him, his uselessness evident in every aspect, branded by what he had once been, Ivarr Kurrin, Master Blacksmith, Gifted of the Dwarves, and the tears came. He had been battling them since Aleena had been taken, stubbornly refusing to surrender the last lingering trace of his manhood, but it was a fool's battle. They eventually wore him down. He had finally been completely and utterly defeated.
Riona appointed herself their caretaker, and under her care their lives became even worse. Ivarr had tried to go to Aleena’s room and found the door barred. His hands were too weak and twisted to move the heavy wooden beam.
“Riona,” he had called. “Riona!”
Riona approached him with Ilian trailing her.
“Yes, Ivarr, what is it?”
“What is the meaning of this,” Ivarr demanded, gesturing at the locked door.
“It is for your own good. You and Ilian do nothing but sulk in Aleena’s room and wallow in self-pity. I’ve forbidden Ilian to go in there and I must forbid you, too.”
“What,” Ivarr roared. “Forbid me? In my own house? Who in the seven hells do you think you are?”
“I am the only one capable of running this household, Ivarr. I am the only reason you have food on the table.”
“That does not give you the right to come in here and install yourself as her ladyship in the house I built with my own hands!”
Riona laughed. “But could you do such a thing now? I think not. You cannot even provide a living for your wife.”
“Unlock this door.”
“No. You need nothing in there. Now, go outside and wait for your supper. No more talk of Aleena or you’ll have no supper.”
Ivarr turned to the locked door and tried to lift the bar, but it was bolted into place. Riona laughed at him.
“Out, you crippled fool,” she scolded. “You’d best forget Aleena and remember who keeps order in this house.”
Ivarr, crippled, and Ilian, blinded, had no option but to comply. It had been weeks since Riona had banished them from their daughter’s room.
The tears stopped coming. Ivarr no longer really cared if they came forever or never again. He did not care about anything. Having nothing better to do, he got up and went outside, hoping he would get lucky and lightening would strike him. His back was turned to the house as he closed the shop door, and when he turned around he was mildly surprised to find a woman standing there. For a moment, he wondered if perhaps she was a fairy queen, but his possessive melancholy quickly squashed that idea. Still, he could not help noticing her beauty. She stood nearly as tall as he, with a slim figure that was outstanding for its balance. Every component of her was in perfect proportion, nothing being too scant or too generous, slim where she should be slim and curved where she should be curved. She was perfect. She was smiling at him, displaying teeth that were white and even. Then he noticed the two most obvious features of her, the two that should have arrested his attention first but, oddly, engaged it last. Her hair was the color of honey and curled gently down back. And dominating her face were two large eyes of purest blue-grey, like storm clouds.
"Well?” she said. “Do you not have a warmer greeting for your long lost daughter?”
After a few moments of silence, Aleena’s smile fell. She had never seen her father so stunned, or so frightened.
“This,” he whispered, hesitant, “this is a dream.”
She shook her head.
“No, Father. It isn’t. I truly am home.”
He slowly approached her, as if afraid that any sudden movement would make her disappear. He reached out, still hesitant with disbelief, touched her hair and brushed her cheek. She smiled again and reached for him. Then she was being crushed in Ivarr’s bear hug, his beard tickling her ear, and his laugh, high pitched like that of a village idiot, rang out, punctuated by roars of unbridled joy. Aleena laughed and cried out too, both of them shedding tears.
“Ivarr?” Ilian queried as she came out onto the front porch, Aleena’s doll in one hand. She was worried that he’d taken the final plunge into madness. “What in the world is going on?”
“Mother,” Aleena exclaimed as she disengaged herself from her father. Then she noticed something odd. Why didn’t her mother look at her? Why did she just stand there and stare off into space?
“Mother?” Aleena saw Ilian cock her head, trying to catch the voice.
“Ivarr, am I hearing what I think I am?” Ilian’s tone was guarded. She did not wish to allow her hopes to soar and then be dashed by some cruel trick of sound.
“Indeed you are, my love! Aleena has come home!”
“Mother, why do you not look at me? What are you doing with my old doll?”
Ilian was silent for several long moments as she absorbed the fact that this was not some cruel dream. The tears came as she frantically held out her arms. Aleena looked back at Ivarr and noticed, for the first time, that he held his hands stiffly, his fingers unbending claws.
“Father! Your hands! What –“
“Let us go inside, and we will explain all.”
“What the bloody hell has happened?” Aleena exclaimed as he led her up the steps to the porch. Ilian immediately embraced her with a strength she never would have guessed her slender mother possessed. “Mother, why do you stare like that? What is going on?”
They took her into the house, but that only caused greater agitation. This was not the house she remembered. The layout was the same, but where were all the old furnishings? What demented mind had redecorated her home? They sat down in the kitchen and explained all.
When they finished their tale, Ilian should have been glad for her blindness. She could not see the dark forces that gleamed in her daughter’s eyes. Aleena took a deep breath through her nose, her chin resting on her thumbs and her fingers steepled before her face. It calmed her enough to keep her voice level and steady.
“Where is Riona now?”
“At the market.”
“I do not believe the unmitigated gall of that woman.”
“I do,” said Ivarr. “She even drove your mother to hatred.”
Aleena looked at her father.
“Now that I cannot imagine.”
“Your mother has clung to that doll ever since you’ve gone. It was the closest thing she had to you, so she kept it with her constantly. One day, months ago, Riona tried to take it from her.” Ivarr sighed. “I’ve never seen your mother so angry, so full of hate. She hasn’t spoken to Riona since.”
Aleena tried to wrap her mind around the idea of someone pushing Ilian, so patient, so understanding, so considerate, to such a level of anger.
“Now we are trapped in our dependency on her,” Ilian sa
id. “I ordered her out, but she refused to go, and neither of us can make her.”
“I can,” Aleena said.
“Aleena,” Ilian began, hesitant to tell her this, yet knowing she must, “there is something else I must tell you.”
“What is it?” Aleena did not like the somber tone in her mother’s voice.
“Remember me saying that we had no idea where she was getting the money to do what she was doing?”
“Yes.”
“That was not entirely true, for I do have an idea.” She paused, sighing. “I think she has been getting it by selling your belongings.”
“What!” This from Ivarr and Aleena both.
“I’m sorry, Ivarr, but you were already so grieved that I could not bear to deliver this blow. And I’m not even certain of it. It’s just an idea that crossed my mind.”
Aleena shot up from the table and stormed to her room and saw the huge wooden beam barring it. Frustration caused the Strength of the dragon to surge for a moment, and Aleena ripped the beam away, yanking the brackets right out of the wall, a sight that stopped Ivarr dead in his tracks.
Throwing open the door, she confronted the naked truth. Her weapons rack was empty, its brackets dusty. Her bed and dresser were still there, along with a few items of clothing, but everything else was gone. Riona had felt free to help herself to Aleena’s personal property and sell them off, like so many cheap souvenirs, without a second thought. Ivarr had been so immersed in grief he hadn’t even noticed Aleena’s things missing. Aleena made her pronouncement.
“The hag is mine.”
* * *
Riona was in a foul mood. Not one thing had gone right this day. She had almost run out of things to sell. Soon her source of income would dry up. Only a few small trinkets were left, though Riona had quickly discovered that anything even vaguely connected to Aleena sold like water at a salted herring booth. That had become a constant sore spot with Riona. All the little wench had done was to initiate a barroom brawl and suddenly she was treated like royalty.
It was just as well that her resource was drying up. She would probably have to move on before too long. Jac and Rachel kept coming around to see Ivarr and Ilian, to say nothing of that meddlesome sorcerer and that arrogant headmistress. It was getting more and more difficult to put them off. Madigan was particularly troubling. He was a slippery one, his gaze always giving the tiniest hint he knew more than he let on. She’d assured him she’d tell Ivarr and Ilian about Aleena. That, of course, had been a complete lie. She’d had no intention of doing any such thing. Even if Madigan’s vision had been accurate, there were at least a thousand ways for Aleena to die on her journey home, and the last thing she wanted was for Ivarr and Ilian to think they no longer needed her. It always fell to her to straighten out family crises, and if they thought they could straighten this one out without her guiding hand, well, by gods, they’d better think again! She didn’t dare let them hope. One speck of hope and they’d think they could just toss her aside.
Still, she was almost out of things to sell, and while most of the Kurrins’ associates had stopped coming around, Madigan, Rita, Jac and Rachel had become more persistent. She’d kept them at bay by telling them Ivarr and Ilian knew of Aleena’s return, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to maintain that fiction forever. Sooner or later one of them would slip past her and speak with Ilian or Ivarr and the game would be up. The time to move on might almost be upon her.
That had been the first thought to confront Riona on this day. So distracted had she been by it that she'd burnt breakfast. Then she'd gone about the daily chores and had gotten her foot stepped on by the horse, her dress spattered with mud by the pigs, nipped by the mule, and the cow had proven to be overly sensitive to cold hands. Ilian had always offered to help, but Riona would not hear of it. She had a hard enough time winning the honor she deserved. That would become impossible if word ever got out that she made a blind woman work.
She had tried to wash her dress, but the bucket at the well had a hole in it, and she had been forced to walk all the way to the river to get water. Then she had gone to market, only to find that for some inexplicable reason, the market place was a seething consumer feeding frenzy. She spent two hours among the jostling throng, getting bumped and elbowed, while having her toes smashed. Riona did not have a great storehouse of patience to begin with, so she was now ready to strangle the next idiot who got in her way. Thankfully, she returned home.
"Rough day at the trading block, I take it?"
Riona stopped short at the woman's voice. She had been looking down, bowed with her purchases. She set them down and looked to the front porch. A woman, tall and radiant, stood there. She was familiar, yet Riona was certain they'd never met. Then she saw all of her things, from clothes and jewelry to wall hangings and furniture, sitting out in the yard in an untidy pile. A horse and wagon waited nearby.
"What is going on here?" she demanded, her imperious bearing recovering its balance.
"That, my dear, dear Aunt Riona, is what you are going to tell me."
Riona's washed-out eyes widened, and she had to stop herself from making a sign for protection from the dead, for the only one of her nieces who could look like this was supposed to have made her journey to the Otherworld long ago.
"Aleena?"
"The very same. Where are my possessions, Riona?"
"Your what?" Stalling for time was the only thing she could think to do.
"My possessions. All those things that used to be in my room, but aren't any more? Where are they? I want them back."
Has Ilian been dabbling in necromancy without my knowledge, Riona wondered, but then she scolded herself for such foolish thinking. This was not some vengeful revenant returned from the grave but a flesh and blood girl.
"I do not think I care for your tone, young lady."
"Riona, never in my life have I given a damn about what you care for. I am generous enough to allow you to retain your belongings, which is more than can be said of you. I have spent the past year traversing the Southern Badlands, battling every peril it could throw at me, all to come home, and this is the reception you have prepared for me? My parents virtual prisoners in their home and my possessions sold off? And now you have the colossal nerve to stand there and wonder why I'm throwing you out? Gather your things and be gone. You are no longer welcomed here."
"I think that is for your father to decide, you presumptuous little wench. How dare you speak to me this way!"
"The same way you dare to take advantage of my parents' grief to make this place your own. The same way you help yourself to my belongings and sell them off. Who told you my life was up for auction? I was abducted, Riona, not slain. You knew damn well there was a chance of me returning."
"I had no such thought."
"Pity. Perhaps if you had, this ugly little scene need never have occurred."
"And we decided a long time ago, Riona," Ivarr announced as he and Ilian came out onto the porch to stand with Aleena, who had picked up a torch and was lighting it.
"Ivarr, my dear brother-in-law," Riona preened. "Surely you would not throw an old lady out into the street."
"Of course I wouldn't. Fortunately, you are no lady. You are nothing more than a parasitic crone, and I have no problem whatsoever with throwing you out on your worthless backside."
"Ilian, are you going to let him speak to me like that? Are you just going to stand there and let them treat me like this?”
“Yes.”
“We are sisters, for Donya's sake!"
"That we are. It is indeed unfortunate you recognize that only when it suits your purposes, for it is only under such conditions that you treat me as one. Instead of letting us mourn, you tried to erase Aleena’s existence. Instead of simply letting us be a family, you must invade our lives."
"Is that all you have to say? This is how you express gratitude? I came here to help you."
"Riona, I am a grown
woman, and Ivarr is a grown man. He would’ve been my eyes and I would’ve been his hands, and our guilds paid us pensions. If we needed help we would’ve asked. Your 'help' has made this house more yours than it has ours, and you betrayed the memory of our lost daughter. You took my home, you dared tell us we had no right to grieve and you almost took away the remaining vestiges of Aleena. And now all you can do is stand there and be angry at us. Your 'help' has done nothing but send us to greater depths of sorrow, and you act as if you had no idea of it. You heard Aleena. You are no longer welcomed here.”
"Not that you ever were," Aleena reminded her. Her torch was lit.
“Never come back, Riona,” Ilian commanded. “I never want to speak to you again.”
"And what are you planning to do now, Aleena?” Riona demanded as she turned her attention from her sister’s hate. “Are you going to slaughter me as you did those poor men in that brothel where you worked?"
"What makes you think you are worth the effort?"
Riona had no response for this. She was expecting Aleena to either fly into a rage or collapse into a sobbing heap of remorse. Aleena went on.
"Riona, my blades have tasted the blood of slave traders, of murderers and predators, of marauding tribes of bandits, even that of subhuman beasts, but never would I subject them to the taint of your foul blood. Now, if you wish to leave with your possessions, you must do so before I set them afire."
Riona did as she was told. She never said a word until she was preparing to leave. Then she walked up to Aleena and said, "You are a very sick girl, Aleena Kurrin, to throw out an old woman. I hope you are satisfied."
"Perfectly, my dear aunt. Perfectly.”
Riona shook her head. “You cold-hearted little bitch.”
Aleena laughed, partly at the feeble attempt at insult and partly at the fact that she was a full foot taller than Riona. At that contemptuous dismissal, Riona left.
* * *
"Aleena," Ivarr asked, "where did you get those weapons? I know the slave traders wouldn't let you near them."