Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  “Oh, yes. I can’t help thinking that it will help me to understand this curse and maybe shift it.”

  “I hope so. How’s your young man?”

  “Patient? He’s wonderful. He looks after me like nobody else ever has.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. And how’s the writing going?”

  Hope sighed. “I was supposed to finish the first article yesterday to hand in today, but the stupid curse laid me low and I couldn’t think straight. I’m going to have to submit it late.”

  “That’s not like you, Hope. You always got your assignments in on time. Does the editor know that?”

  “No, unfortunately, this is the first one for her. Can’t be helped, though, there’s a certain amount of complicated work to do, and I couldn’t have done it yesterday.”

  “Well, I’ll let you get on with it, then. I hope it comes out all right.”

  “Thank you, Sincerity.”

  Hope scribbled out an apologetic note for Honesty, tidied up her appearance as best she could and hurried round the corner to the post office. They would get it to its destination by noon. Honesty, as far as Hope knew, did not have a farspeaker yet. Then she distributed her books and notes in a semicircle around her and began to pull the final version of the article together.

  By lunchtime, she had a headache, which eased only slightly after she ate and became gradually worse as she worked on into the afternoon. She was struggling with the last diagram when her farspeaker began clicking.

  She cursed and accepted the call.

  “Mage Hope,” said a woman’s voice. The little farspeaker distorted it, and in her confused mental state she couldn’t place it.

  “Yes? Who is this?”

  “Honesty,” said the woman. She sounded annoyed.

  “Oh, Mage, I’m sorry…”

  “As well you should be. Did you know we’d already delayed publication to make room for your article, and turned down another very promising piece?”

  “Uh, no, I…”

  “My printer is tearing his hair out. When I give a deadline, it is the latest time by which I need the material, not the earliest.”

  “Mage, I’m truly sorry, but…”

  “I am not interested in excuses, Mage Hope. I am calling as a courtesy to inform you that your article will not appear in this shift-cycle’s publication. I have reverted to the piece I previously rejected, and my printer is setting it as we speak. Even so, he has already rearranged his work for me once, and the publication will be issued late. For the first time, I might add.”

  “But I’m nearly finished!”

  “Then you can submit it for next shift-cycle, assuming it is of the quality I require. Good day to you.”

  The sympathy between the devices dropped with a click, and Hope slumped, setting the farspeaker down. Her headache redoubled. After a short time, it grew bad enough that she brewed a strong willow tea and drank it, grimacing at the bitterness, then went back to bed and lay staring at the ceiling while her head throbbed, fear and anger and uncertainty chasing each other around inside it.

  Rosie was deep in the latest improvement to the calculating desk when Hope, looking worn, entered the lab on the following afternoon. She glanced up at the sound of the door.

  “Hope,” she said. “Did you get the article to Honesty?”

  “Yes,” said the mage, wincing, “late. Had another incident.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “My own fault. Tried to push too hard. How are you doing?”

  In the context, it was clear to Rosie that Hope was not asking about her health or the progress of her project, but she pretended not to understand. “I’m well. Busy on this calculating desk. I never knew practical inventing involved so much work after you invent something.”

  “Mm,” said Hope. “So you’re working long hours?”

  “Yes, we both are.”

  “Sleeping here at the lab?”

  “Yes. Sorry I haven’t been home for a few days. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yes, I do. So, when this project is sorted out, what’s going to happen? Are you going to want to be at the flat, or will you stay on here?”

  Rosie, to her annoyance, blushed, something that had been happening a lot less frequently since she decided to… to be a woman. “I haven’t thought,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “Really. I should, though, shouldn’t I? It just seems like such a step.”

  “Yes. Though not, one could argue, as much of a step as you’ve taken already.”

  Rosie reflected. She had given up her maiden status and had been more-or-less openly sharing a bed with her lover on a regular basis for several days now. Officially moving in with him did seem like a relatively minor step, when one looked at it like that.

  “That’s true,” she said. “I’ll have to talk to Dignified, of course, but I can’t imagine he would say no.”

  “Nor can I,” said Hope, with a wry smile.

  “Hope,” said Rosie, lowering her voice, “I feel so… so racy doing this!” A thrill ran through her just at the confession.

  “There’s no law against it.” It was in the Code of Willing, in fact, that no law might be made regarding the private activities of consenting adults, providing that no other law in the Code was broken. Rosie vaguely recalled from school that that one dated back to the elves.

  Public opinion was another matter, of course, and the teachings of the Asterist temple yet a third.

  “I know, but I was raised to think that only low women… associated with men before they were oathbound.”

  “And how is your… association?”

  Rosie blushed again. “Very satisfactory, thank you,” she said, with as much dignity as she could manage. “That book you gave me is… highly educational.”

  “How much of it have you read?”

  “All of it, now.”

  “So you’ve…” Hope touched her belly about a hand’s breadth below the navel, where a contraceptive amulet would be implanted.

  “Yes,” said Rosie. “The day after… Well, the day after our first night. I was careful until it took full effect, too. There’s plenty in those middle chapters, after all.” The middle chapters dealt with alternatives to intercourse.

  “And how does Dignified feel about it?”

  “He is… he doesn’t say much, as you know. But he seems… more than satisfied.”

  Hope regarded her with a level gaze. “You know, neither of you have much background for building an adult relationship. I don’t think he’d even spoken to a woman on a regular basis until I started working here, and your experience was mostly of unsatisfactory suitors chosen by your mother.”

  “What is your point?” asked Rosie, annoyed.

  “Are you reading the early chapters as well as the later ones? Working on the relationship, not just the… relations?”

  “We’re very busy with the project…”

  “Yes, and Dignified will always be busy with a project. You too, probably. I’m not your mother, I’m not even your sister, and I can’t tell you how to live your life, obviously. But I hope I am your friend, and as your friend, I suggest you put in as much work as you have to on communication and understanding each other. You do want to be with him long-term?”

  “Yes. We’re going to be oathbound, though we haven’t talked about when.”

  “Think about it, then, Rosie,” said the mage. “In a way, Patient and I are lucky, because we have to work on the hard things if we’re ever to get to the easy things. There are times I wish we didn’t have to, and one of them was yesterday, and look where that got me.”

  “But the hard things are so very hard,” said Rosie. “I mean, I understand him. We talk. We even talk about emotions, sometimes.”

  “You do talk about them?”

  “Yes. He’s told me all sorts of things about his childhood, and prison. Terribly sad things. I hold him and he cries,” she said, lowering her voice even further.<
br />
  “Well, that’s good.”

  “I suppose. It’s usually after, um, after we’ve been intimate. Or between, rather.”

  “Between?”

  “Yes, we usually do it again afterwards.” Her blush this time was smaller. She was getting used to talking frankly about such topics.

  “Well, that’s better than I was expecting. Good. Carry on doing that, then. You’re both good people with good intentions, and though that doesn’t carry any guarantees, it’s a lot better than not.” Hope stepped forward suddenly and hugged Rosie, who held her inky hands out awkwardly to avoid staining her friend’s shirt. She had been adjusting the printing mechanism.

  “Thank you, Hope,” she said, when they disengaged. “I’ll… think some more about that. It would really just be a change of thinking, not a change of actions, since I’m effectively living here already. I even had Bucket get us a larger bed, and a privacy rug to go under it, and I’ve moved all my clothes here. My work clothes, at least.”

  “Well,” said Hope, “if you want to move the rest of your clothes in, let me know.”

  “Of course.”

  19

  Mother's Story

  When Sincerity called to say that Hope’s mother would talk to her, her stomach dropped as if she’d just taken off in a skyboat. She couldn’t remember ever having a real conversation with her mother, and this would be a difficult one even for two people who had a good relationship.

  She walked to the lab, since that was where all the farviewers were. She wanted to see her mother’s face. Rosie and Dignified were oblivious, as usual, and Bucket helped her to drag a farviewer into his little room, waving away her protests.

  “No, if you need privacy, I’m happy to lend you my room, Mage,” he said.

  “Thanks, Bucket.”

  Thinking ahead to likely topics of conversation, Hope had cast a variation of her favourite blood-flow spell that would stop her from blushing. She set the code wheels to the number for the Merrybourne farviewer and initiated the sympathy with a trembling hand.

  Sincerity and her mother were already seated at the other end. Sincerity greeted her, and her mother murmured something that didn’t make it across the link. Even the latest farviewers lacked clarity in the picture and sound over such long distances.

  The three women sat looking alternately at each other and down at their laps. Sincerity finally cleared her throat.

  “I asked Verity to do this for you, Hope, because I think it’s important.”

  “Forced me,” muttered Mother, loudly enough to be audible to Hope. Sincerity ignored her. Hope kept her face still and watched her mother’s hands twisting in her lap.

  “Verity,” said Sincerity at last, “are you going to talk, or do I have to tell the story for you?”

  Hope had never seen her mother like this. In public, she was confident and competent, if cold, at her important job as the Countygold’s estate manager. In private, the coldness intensified and she became harsh, even spiteful. She was never nervous.

  She stopped the writhing of her fingers and gripped the arms of the chair. “I’ll tell it,” she said, and took a breath.

  “When I was a few years younger than you,” she said, addressing Hope without looking at her, “I already worked for the old Countygold like everyone else in our family. So did Vigorous.

  “He… He wanted me. Used to follow me round. Tried to see me with my shirt off when I was changing in the barn, stared at me when we all went swimming. Threatened any other boys who talked to me.”

  “Father?” said Hope, struggling to reconcile this picture with the meek, ineffectual, nervous man whose house she had grown up in.

  “Yes. My father was dead already, or I would have gone to him. I reported it to the estate manager, my boss. He suggested I button my shirts a bit higher and stop flirting.”

  “He didn’t do anything?”

  “No. So I went to the Countygold himself. He thought it was a big joke. Youthful high spirits, he said, only natural.”

  “This was the old Countygold,” said Sincerity. “Not this one.”

  “Yes, I said that,” said Mother, with more of her usual snappishness. “But he must have said something to Vigorous afterwards, because the weasel cornered me and threatened me, said if I got him in trouble with the Countygold again I’d regret it.”

  Hope’s eyes were so wide she thought they were going to fall off her head.

  “Well,” said Mother, “I didn’t believe him. My boss didn’t want to hear about it again, so I went back to the Countygold. Should have gone to his son, the current Countygold, looking back. He would have dealt with it quietly. But he wasn’t there much around that time, he was off round the islands a lot.

  “The Countygold told me not to be a tale-bearer and sent me off in tears.” Hope didn’t recall ever seeing her mother cry, but her eyes were moist as she told her story. She still hadn’t looked at Hope. “Again, though, he must have said something.”

  There was a long pause while Mother tried to get her emotions under control. Her lip quivered, and her eyes spilled over, and her hands twisted round each other like snakes. Finally she said, in a choked voice, “I can’t tell it. You tell it.”

  Sincerity looked at her carefully, and must have concluded that it was true, because she nodded and picked up the story.

  “Vigorous waited until she was coming back from one of the outlying farms,” she said. “Lay in wait for her in that little wood over by Oakdown.”

  Hope swallowed, and noticed that her throat had gone dry. “What did he do?”

  “He forced her, Hope. Forced himself on her.”

  The anti-blushing spell didn’t keep the blood from draining from Hope’s face in shock.

  Her father had raped her mother, and Hope was the result?

  Suddenly, her entire childhood made a horrible sense. The way her mother treated her father. The way she wouldn’t look at Hope or address her by name or say anything good about her… She glanced at Mother’s face and found it fixed in a look of rage.

  “She told me,” said Sincerity. “Too late, but she did tell me. I was not long out of the university, older than you but not by much. I made her tell her mother, who the Countygold relied on a good deal — she kept track of the harvests and the stores. The Countygold, before we knew she was pregnant, went and tore six strips off Vigorous. His family were going to pay harmgeld, it was all settled — quietly, not even the current Countygold knew, nor does he now — and then she missed her bleeding.”

  Mother had recovered some of her poise, though not a lot. She picked up the story.

  “Well, my mother wouldn’t hear of anything but that we had to oathbond. Wasn’t going to have a fatherless child in the family. I yelled and cried, but she wouldn’t yield, and the Countygold agreed with her.”

  “I remember the night before your ceremony,” said Sincerity. “The three of us were in your room, you, me and your mother, and I remember how you’d stopped crying, you’d stopped protesting, you were all ice. Your mother tried to give you the usual talk that mothers gave in those days, and you cut her off.”

  “I swore,” said Mother. “I bound myself with a geis that I would never let him touch me again, and that I would make him pay for what he had done to me. And when we were oathbound, and alone, before he could do or say anything I said to him, ‘You owe me.’ And by that time the Countygold had torn him up, and his father had, and he was ashamed enough of what he had done that he agreed. And I put a geis on him never to touch me, and it took.”

  Hope had the irrelevant thought that she now knew where her mindmagic talent came from, at least.

  “I broke him,” said her mother. “I broke him down into the mouse he is now.” Her tone held sharp satisfaction.

  “Mother,” said Hope very quietly, “that’s terrible.”

  “I told you,” said Sincerity.

  “I understand now,” said Hope, “why you treat him the way you do. And why you treat me t
he way you do. Look at me, Mother.”

  Her mother’s head came up, slowly, as if moved by a stiff crank.

  “I understand,” said Hope, “but I don’t think it’s right. I didn’t act towards you with malice, ever. I know every time you look at me you must be reminded of that terrible thing he did, but Mother, it wasn’t my fault. I’m sorry that what happened to you happened, and it was wrong, but must you still be angry at me twenty-five years later for something I didn’t do?”

  Her mother focussed on her face, something that had rarely happened in Hope’s memory. She gazed at her daughter for three long heartbeats before dropping her eyes.

  “Verity,” said Sincerity, after nobody had said anything for some time. “Are you going to answer your daughter?”

  Mother stayed silent.

  “She’s an adult woman now,” continued the mage. “She’s got a young man, they’re probably going to be oathbound, from what she tells me.”

  “Mistake,” muttered Mother.

  “Mother, there’s something I haven’t told you either,” said Hope. “I had a lover. When I was at the university.” Her mother’s head came up sharply. “His name was Faithful, but he wasn’t. I caught him with another woman.” She faced her mother squarely and looked into her eyes. “Mother, I cursed him. I put a geis on him so that he wouldn’t be able to perform unless he was with someone he’d always been faithful to. And it worked.”

  Her mother stared at her. “Good,” she said at last.

  “But,” said Hope. “What I did was against university regulations. They made me take the geis off.”

  “Too bad,” said Mother.

  “Yes. But worse than that… You know about splashback?” Her mother shook her head. “Splashback is when you put a spell on someone and part of it comes back to you. I… cursed myself, by accident.”

  “Cursed yourself how?”

  “I couldn’t feel anything sexual for a man,” said Hope frankly. They were well beyond polite circumlocutions. “So when I met Patient, and liked him, and wanted to be close to him, that was a problem.”