“Are ya okay, sir?”
Brenol raised his face from the icy stone to stare at the woman standing several strides outside the lot. She was sturdy and young, with a gentle face and concerned brow. Auburn hair peeked out from her scarf-wrapped head, and her eyes were round and velvety brown.
“Oh my.”
She maneuvered her steps through the markers, careful to avoid stepping on the plots beneath, and knelt before Brenol. She surveyed him with a grim expression. “We’re gonna need to get ya home.”
She held his chin securely with gloved hand and forced his gaze to meet hers. Oddly, he did not utter a protest but stared back blankly. Finally, he realized the kind eyes waited for his response, and he flicked his head in a fractional nod. It was enough.
As quick as a breath, the woman was behind him, scooping under his arms with the insides of her elbows and using a squat to thrust them both erect. He was a sodden heap, but she swept under his arm and stoutly supported him with her wiry strength.
“Where’re we goin’?” she huffed as she directed him out of the graveyard. “Ya gotta name?”
“Bren.” His voice was a frail wisp of sound, but with the loosening of his speech, his mind returned. Reality lurched before his shock-dazed eyes, and he found a sudden clarity in the lengthening shadows. He must have been there for hours. He attempted to shake his legs, but his limbs were like icicles.
“Easy there. Not so quick,” she said softly, keeping her arm snugly around his waist.
“I…I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“Yea, best to get home to some warm supper. Where ya live?” She peered at him with a curious, sideways glance. “I feel like I’ve seen ya before.”
“West. Across the valley. I…I can walk.”
“Across?” Her brow furrowed and lips mouthed his name silently. “You’re Bren?”
“I am Bren,” he answered hollowly.
An expression of pity, mixed with sudden comprehension, filled the woman’s face. “Ya found her then?” she asked, glancing briefly back to the graveyard. “Ma told me about the juile who’d come by. Askin’ ‘bout C’lette…an’ the woman with the fever.”
Brenol felt as empty as a broken ewer. He had no more emotion to spill. He nodded slowly.
“I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “May she rise to greater heights in the next.”
Brenol did not respond.
“So, you’re across the valley.” She scrunched her nose in consideration. “That’s a two hour go in this snow… I could take ya home with me, but mine’s a bit of a climb. What do ya think?”
“West. I’m going west.”
“All right. If ya want a heel, you’ll get a heel,” she intoned and set a pace.
They moved slowly at first, with awkward holds and trips and bumps, but after the first matrole they fell into a rhythm. By the third he could walk on his own, and by the fourth Arman met them. The juile took in the pair with evident relief.
“Are you well?”
Bren nodded silently but accepted the juile’s arm.
“I am Arman. Thank you for assisting my friend.” He peered at the woman, feeling a tingle of familiarity.
The woman dipped her head in acknowledgment. Her cheeks were rosy from the movement and cold. “In good accord. I’m Jona.”
Arman smiled, but the gesture remained tight at the edges. “Please finish the route with us. I have a hot meal ready,” he encouraged, but she was shaking her head before he had even finished.
“Na, na. I’ve got my own to look after. But I’m glad to see ya both’ll be fine.”
“Where do you live?” Arman asked, glancing around the valley of white, still pondering her face.
“Hills just above the tree line.” Jona pointed back in the direction from which they had come. “I run the place with my ma. After my da’s accident.”
Arman nodded, finally understanding.
“Who’s your dad?” Brenol asked. He had known the people in this area once. Cared for them. It had been a different lifetime. Jona met his eyes with surprise; Brenol had not uttered a word the entire trek.
“Bel.”
Brenol retreated back from the sharp pain in his chest. Bel had been a friend. He had known them well. Brenol could not question further. He could not know what had befallen Bel. He already carried too much grief.
Instead, he inhaled with deliberate slowness. “Thank you, Jona. I’m in your debt.”
She laughed, although the mirth was subdued. “Not a freg.”
Jona then waved and arced around to follow the steady line of prints back through the valley. She moved speedily now that she was alone, and her movements were sure and unfaltering. Twilight did not seem to slow her bounding steps.
The two watched her for the space of twenty strides before Arman gripped Brenol and hastily set them moving. Brenol’s entire body ached, and he longed for sleep, but he forced himself on.
“I thought you had gone north,” Arman said softly.
Brenol blinked, surprised. “You did? What made you come back?”
“Fear that I was wrong,” the juile replied.
“But you’re never wrong.” Brenol said bitterly, feeling his own blunders with the keenness of a bare sole meeting broken glass.
Arman’s brow tightened.
“What is it?” Brenol asked.
The juile shook his head and steadied his arm under the man’s.
After a time, twilight dissipated, and the rich black of night deepened. Stars and Veri emerged, and the snow itself helped to illumine their path as it reflected the faint lights. Their breaths clouded in short puffs, and all was intensely quiet, save their footfalls through the crunching snow and ice.
Finally, Brenol spoke. “I want to move her. I want to move them. I don’t want to leave them in that cemetery.”
The juile’s eyes welled but did not spill. “I would find great bounty in helping you.”
They trod further, and Brenol again spoke. “Ar?”
“Mmm?”
“But wh—” The man paused, sucked in air until composed, and continued. “What about the Genesifin? And the Lady of Purpose?”
Arman’s face hardened in the darkness. “I don’t yet doubt in the Genesifin. But I think we’ve both been wrong about the Lady. You thought her Colette, and I, at one time, Pearl… I cannot see Pearl being evil, but I also cannot guess her purposes with the sword. That frawnite has done nothing but make the rift between us and the Tindel grow. And I can find no traces of her wherever I search.”
Brenol’s face clouded with grief, and the last—yes, he had still clung to one—piece of hope for his soumme snapped like a twig beneath a heel. He swallowed, straightened as if finding control, then doubled over and vomited forcefully upon the snow. He wiped his chin but found his stomach again attempting to disgorge its contents. He could not imagine that anything remained, but his racking frame seemed to disagree. He sank down in a slumped tangle, feeling his clothes soak up the putrid mess.
When his heaving ceased, the juile knelt down and hefted the grown man to a stand. Brenol wobbled a bit but held. His troubled jade eyes finally met Arman’s.
“Why’d Chaul despise us so much?” asked Brenol. “Why’d he want to destroy us?”
The question froze Arman mid-movement. He straightened and stared at his friend. “Why do you ask?”
The man looked across the valley, back in the direction of the cemetery. “How do we know it will never happen again? Did Col—” he paused, swallowed, and began again. “Did they all die for nothing?”
“There is meaning,” Arman said softly. “Even in the presence of suffering.”
“I don’t feel meaning. I don’t feel bounty,” Brenol said bitterly. “I’m tired of burying everyone I love.”
“Me too, friend,” Arman replied.
“All because of those cursed portals.”
In an instant, the juile was whipped back in his memory to the edge of the terrisdan, with grief
tugging his gut, and the fire hardly kissing out enough heat to ward off the cold from the forbidding blue in the horizon. The harsh words of the Tindellan clansman echoed in his ears: Portal-lover.
He called me a portal-lover.
The juile heard his beads clicking under his own fingers before even realizing he was moving them: Is that the answer? After all this time?
He shook his head, dumbfounded. It is so simple I didn’t see it, he thought.
He let the beads fall from his fingertips and swept a hand around Brenol and led him the final steps to the house. His mind remained transfixed on Brenol’s words: All because of those cursed portals.
Yes, the portals are the key, Arman thought. They must be destroyed.
Perhaps then, the Tindel will remember mercy. Perhaps.
~
Mari sat giggling upon the floor. Her laughter rang through the corridor as the handful of young Tindel played about her.
“Look, Mari! Look here!” shouted one as she produced and shook a set of smooth metallic spoons secured together on a ring. It clanked loudly, and the babe’s mouth opened wide into a gap-toothed smile. Her pasture-green eyes danced happily as the others sought her glance.
Colette sighed, thankful for their attentions. Mari was growing with the haste of a zinnia, and a break, even for the span of an exhalation, was readily appreciated.
She settled herself upon her pallet and observed as her feet begin to twist and fidget as though independent of her body. Colette offered them a wry smile; her body and mind alike were plagued. The question continually breezed into her ear, as if whispered from Massada and carried across the perideta to haunt her: How long? How long?
The Tindel followed their own calendar marking the perideta sun, but an obvious alignment—at least to a clansman—traced the Massadan seasons, for any Tindellan could rattle off the time of the green. Colette’s understanding, however, was obscured by the dim bethaida passages, and no clansman had proved eager to become her tutor. Regardless, she knew that the time since her arrival was no mere handful of days. Septspan, moons, seasons. The minutes and hours extended on into a monotonous oblivion not dissimilar to the perideta blue. She wondered if her mind would unravel in the blur of time as so many others’ had in the desert above.
Colette’s lips curled up slightly as the children roared in laughter. The commotion did not bother her. She spent too much time in silence and solitude. Septspan, moons, seasons, yet still she had not won the hearts of the Tindel—at least the adults. Their youth had been hers from the moment Mari had opened her vibrant eyes upon them. Whether it was the novelty of the rich color in her hair and face, the lunitata glow, or simply that she was an outsider, children flocked to the infant as if she were a summer’s day.
If only the rest would follow… I’ve tried and tried. And failed and failed.
Surely Pearl hadn’t intended for me to rot here for so long…
Her heart lurched as she thought back to Brenol. Mari had grown so much. She could sit on her own, laugh and smile, point, and scoot with arms and a curved leg to get around. And her father had never even seen her. He did not know she was alive. He potentially did not even know where they were, for she had not written any note or given hint of her departure when Pearl had collected her. It left her chest hard, a continual sensation of never having enough air.
There was no opportunity to send seals. The Tindel were the only ones who crossed the perideta, and they refused time and again to carry letters to her soumme. She had asked, even begged, but to no avail. Her pleas were useless.
Every day, Colette had laid herself down in the darkness of her quilts, agonizing over Brenol but knowing she must complete this task. Yet every day she was reminded of its very futility. If only she could release that last breath of a dream, she could walk away from this failure, but hope held like a burr snagged up in her heel.
If only Bren knew. Oh, I hope he knows I’m well. Surely Bel and Pearl told him…
She attempted to not let her mind stray to what he might do if he thought her dead. It was a path that only tied her gut and paled her already whitening face.
He must know. He must.
But still, she could never be certain, and the Tindel were no closer to assisting Massada than they were on the day she had lifed Mari on the open perideta. While over the days and moons the clans had grown to accept her presence, they dawdled—and often fought with outright refusal—over saving the creatures of the green whom they had never met, never seen. She saw that an appeal would lead only to greater frustration. This was a hard people.
And proud, she lamented.
The Tindel were free with basic information about how they lived, but when pressed to replicate or demonstrate their designs, they met her inquiries with stony stares and retreating faces.
What am I missing?
When do I just turn away?
Why am I the villain to them?
Colette brooded and promised herself she would leave, but it was a lie. If Pearl—and the Tindel—were correct, the icing would only worsen. There likely was little green left upon the world she associated with meadows and trees. No plant life, no fish, no shelter. If not now, then soon. There was only one hope, and that was the unification of all peoples.
But every step had been met with bitter resistance. She frowned as her mind sank back to an exchange that had occurred about a moon after the original council. She had thought individual petition would prove to be the answer.
How wrong had she been.
“Please, we cannot wait longer,” she begged Irin.
The eyes that met hers were faded in color but remarkably hard. “You know nothing, dark one.”
She ignored the insult with a dismissing shake of her head. Irin narrowed his eyes as though taking it as further affront.
“Could you allow some to come live out here with the clans? You could see that Massadans are no differen—”
The glare from the clansman tapered her words to a close. He peered at her with such controlled venom that she almost cowered back. Every instinct for preservation commanded her to run.
He sneered at the evident fear he elicited. “No different?” he asked. He puckered his lips deliberately and spit across her face.
Colette’s hand reached up in surprise, and she peered down on the moistened fingers. She gaped as she groped up to wipe the remaining warm mess from her scored features.
“You yourself don’t even believe that,” he said and spat next upon her shoes.
Irin pivoted to leave but hesitated and bore in upon her with an awful closeness. “Just know, dark one, that your manipulations and lies prove how right we are. And your curse of a child? She is the spawn of filth.”
Colette was drawn back to the present by Mari’s soft babble. The girl’s green eyes had wandered from the play circle and rested upon her, as though she knew the silent contemplations of her mother. Her eyes were so full of life and color, as if youth and age somehow met within her little frame, and wisdom peered out in a pensive silence.
It’s like she knows what I must do. Colette let her arms drop from her face. Would that you could tell me, little one. For I’m so lost and alone here…
Companionship remained lacking, although she glimpsed it at times during her shifts in the gardens. She worked almost daily there, toting along Mari and setting her hands to whatever task they assigned her. Then there were Harta and Gere. They would each speak to her of Tindellan ways in their own manner, and she would breathe in the relief of conversation—breaking up a string of lonely days—yet without fail, a strange line of unfamiliarity would seep between them, and the consolation would rip away to leave her in crushing solitude. It did not matter, though—she could not help but return for more: a scrap to a ravenous mouth is still food, even if it tastes of early tainting.
Colette stood abruptly, brushing aside her musings, and all the youthful eyes before her raised expectantly.
“I’m going to the gardens. Would you
like to keep playing, or should I bring Mari with me?”
The group vehemently claimed the child, and Colette smiled at their kindness. It would be a relief to talk to Gere alone anyway.
“I’ll return shortly,” she said, and watched the small pale heads bob in understanding.
She dipped out of the room and strode through the winding corridors. It had taken her moons to master the passageways, but she now floated through without much thought. Occasionally, the map in her mind twisted around, yet she usually managed to hide the instance under her graceful steps, with no Tindel ever the wiser. To exhibit weakness to this people was foolish. They merely grew haughtier.
Colette slid her slender form behind the thick portiere and crept through the darkness until the tapestries opened up into eerie blue light. The garden air was warm and thick. She brushed a straying dark lock back from her face as she swept the room with her eyes. It was enormous, and her voice could only carry so far in the mugginess. Regardless, she called his name. It sounded like a mouse squeak in the middle of a jungle.
A dozen small, pale heads popped out from the blue crops. She did not recognize them. This was the afternoon shift, and every face was that of a child.
A particularly impish girl rose. Her thin muscles hugged her tiny bones, yet her vivacious eyes counteracted the sickly countenance.
Colette peered at the child. “Hello,” she said cautiously.
“Hello, Colette,” the girl replied.
Colette was unsurprised. All knew her; she was the only person with dark hair or tanned skin who walked the bethaida. She hesitated, but then asked anyway, “What’s your name?”
The girl did not respond, save to stare at the lunitata blankly.
Colette silently remonstrated herself—you know the Tindellan ways—and then asked simply, “Do you know where Gere is?”
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