by TylerRose.
“When did she pass?” Shestna asked.
“About five minutes ago,” Tyler replied.
She left the chair to pick up a pile of papers on the dresser, giving them to Radames. Shestna followed her out of the room and into their own. Without a word, he lay on the bed with her in the dark to be near if she wanted him. She was tightly wound in her grief. Profoundly sad but unable to cry.
“What can I do?” he asked a good hour later.
“Nothing. There’s nothing to do. The others will take care of what needs doing.”
“I could see you are her favorite.”
“She was the first person who accepted me at my word and never told me I had to be something different. I could tell her absolutely anything and she believed me. I never did lie to her. If I needed to lie, I just kept my mouth shut and said nothing. Still, she knew what I would not or could not say and did not damn me for that either.”
Finally the tears came forth. He held her close until her grief was spent in this first round. She fell asleep only to wake up and cry again.
When she woke in the morning, she was cried out.
“What is all that noise?” Shestna asked, hearing a great deal more chatter and clatter than before.
“Look outside the window,” she told him on her way to the toilet.
He went to the front window to see the fields filled with wagons, trailer and campers. To the side window and there were dozens more. Hundreds of wagons had arrived and more were coming down the road. Clear drives were left to let them reach the center and back sections of the fields. Campsites were in the process of being set up.
Tapping on the door called Shestna to it, Radames on the other side with a message that the Coroner had already come and gone and two men from the funeral home were dressing the deceased.
“She’ll be moved to the front porch when they are finished and the people will begin to pay their respects.”
“I didn’t bring anything to wear for this,” Tyler said, too numb to remember she could conjure up anything she wanted to wear.
Radames looked over his shoulder and came into the room, shutting the door for privacy.
“I am the executor of her estate. Normally we would sell everything. Mother made a specific will. You get everything. This house, the land, everything on it and in it. She knew the family wouldn’t understand, so I’m not announcing the existence of the will.”
“No, she knew that I don’t hold the superstitions about death that the travelers do,” Tyler agreed. “She wanted to give me a reason to stay. Having my own home, her home, would do that. But you know I cannot stay.”
“I do know. What do you want me to do?” Radames asked.
“You can let Heath live here to take care of the house and the land for me while he raises his family. Use the land for gatherings as we have been. He can pass the caretaking down to his own family. I want him to give Zarabeth her usual room when you make her divorce Pali. I’ll make my own will just in case. I have a man in California who is my Power of Attorney. He can take care of paying the taxes and whatnot. I’ll give you his number later.”
“I’ll let you know when they have moved her. You can look through her clothes to find something suitable.”
Half an hour and she was going through the closet, Zarabeth pulling out things from the other end and unusually quiet. They were the two favorites. If Tyler was there for a gathering, she was the favorite granddaughter. If she wasn’t, then Zarabeth was favorite.
“Here you go. This is the one I had in mind,” Zara said, pulling out a white dress.
It was light and lacy but modest, perfect for the heat and a funeral. She found the parasol in the back corner of the closet, getting it out while Tyler undressed. She helped lace up the back.
“I’m sorry for all the mean things I said to you, Tyler. I was jealous. I want to say that now, since I didn’t have a chance to make any amends with Gramma before she died.”
“You are forgiven. Why did you marry Pali? He didn’t take you away from the family. He hits you and yesterday wasn’t the first time. Why be with him?”
“Because his mother kept shoving us together every chance she got.”
“Divorce him. After the funeral and everyone goes away, tell your father and put it in motion. You’re better off without him.”
“But. I’m pregnant, Tyler.”
“I know you are.” She turned around and took Zara’s hands to force eye contact. “I know you’ve not told him yet. You only told Gramma. Zara, if you don’t leave him now, he will kill your first child. It’s a girl and he wants a boy. She will be dead within three months and you will be dead within two years when your second is a girl. Leave him. Now. The family will drive him far enough away that he won’t be able to do anything to either of you.”
Zarabeth was struck silent. All she could do was nod.
“Stay with me until I leave. He’ll keep away and it will just look like we’re grieving our grandmother together,” Tyler said.
Zarabeth threw her arms around her cousin and they did grieve together for a few minutes.
“You pick an outfit too. We’ll go down together.”
They went out the back and around the house, bypassing the long line to go up the steps together. Zarabeth said her I love you and goodbye. Tyler shocked everyone by bending over to kiss her grandmother’s forehead.
“Do you want her to haunt you forever?” Donka exclaimed from the bottom of the steps.
Tyler turned around to look down at her. “I would be honored if my grandmother was with me for the rest of my life.”
She walked down and away into one of the fields to greet the people left behind in the camps while the first wave of mourners paid their respects. Zarabeth walked with her and they traded off holding the parasol they shared. Shestna followed closely. Barely anyone paid him much notice. At noon they returned to the back yard.
The alligator had been dug up and was being opened. The immediate family lined up to begin their feasting. Tyler took very little. Shestna found it an interesting delicacy.
A long and somber day it was. Zarabeth stayed at her side until bedtime. Shestna said nothing when she climbed into the far side of the bed with Tyler in the middle.
The next morning, the two cousins walked at the front of the slow procession that went up the drive. The horse-drawn wagon following, they turned left onto the main road and walked to the road that accessed the indigo processing barn. The family cemetery was on the other side of the access road, Addie’s grave having been dug during the night.
Eight men, sons and grandsons, pulled the silver casket off the end of the wagon. Shining silver and painted with hundreds of flowers like a shawl. Inside were many hundreds of small items the mourners had given her. Decks of tarot cards, coins, crucifixes, woven bracelets, scarves filled the empty space. The men already stationed on the straps operated the winches to lower the casket as the alligator had been put into the pit the previous night.
The howling that had followed the wagon increased, the family moaning and wailing out its grief in the way that the Romany did.
Tyler, Zarabeth and Shestna left them to it, walking back to the house along the stream. There would be one more day and night, the mourning turning to a celebration for the living, and the campers and wagons would leave the next day, as Tyler explained to Shestna.
“Then we go home?” he asked.
“I want to see Jerome again. I have to try again.”
“I don’t think that wise, Femina. His view was clear enough.”
“Yes, but he’ll have had a couple days to think about it. A couple days for Touch to speak her mind on the matter. I have to try again,” she repeated.
Chapter Nine
Same hot sun, same open slat gate, but a rain had fallen not long before they arrived. This time they arrived inside the gate. The vehicle sounded different on its approach, with the tires traveling over a wet surface. Jerome was alone this time, just as unhappy to
see her as he had been previously. Not in an angry sort of way, more annoyed at the return.
“What do you want this time?” he asked in his last step toward them.
“Same thing as before,” she said, holding her ground. “This time without the threats and attempted assaults. I’m sure Touch has had her say by now.”
“You been communicating with her?”
“You know I haven’t. She’d have told you,” Tyler said. “I’ve been dealing with the death of my grandmother. The funeral was yesterday. I thought I’d come see if you were more open to discussion.”
“I’m sorry for your loss. No, I’m not open to discussion. We’re staying here.”
“If Touch wants to leave and you are saying no, then you are in the wrong, Jerome. You cannot keep her against her will,” Shestna put in.
“You know nothing about it, cat-man. Mind your business.”
“I am. Tyler is my business. You touched her the other day and it sparked the entity inside her that will eventually become a world-creating goddess. She needs you, needs the energy you possess.”
“She can’t have it,” Jerome said, opening the gate. “You need to go the fuck away and never come back.”
His foot to Tyler’s ass, he kicked her through the gate and to her face on the wet ground. Shestna caught the leg while it was up and knocked Jerome off-balance. He grabbed Jerome’s wrist and pulled the energy from him just as he did many times from the Emperor’s Crystal in his younger years.
White hot energy shunted through every cell of his body and he used it to throw Jerome towards the vehicle.
“You are still alive because I know how to stop when the energy has run out. You did not stop. You took Adamantine’s chi as well and reduced him to dust. You know nothing about this power you possessed. It doesn’t belong to you. It belongs to Tyler.”
He walked out the gate, pulled Tyler into an arm, and shot a beam of the energy downward out of his other hand. They sailed up through the sky, she with a death grip around his waist and shoulder. They landed a safe distance away, higher up on the mountain and out of reach of any weapon Jerome may have had. Shestna got out his own telephone.
“Send down the shuttle.”
Tyler stared up at him from where he’d guide-dropped her on the ground.
“What did you do?”
“I took the crystal power from him.”
“You had no right to do that!” she exclaimed.
“I had every right if he wasn’t going to cooperate. But now I cannot be teleported. My brother brings a shuttle.”
“Your brother? That means he had to have started off the day we arrived.”
“He was already at the station with the Ambassador, standing in for Father at some meeting. I called while you were showering. They’ve been in orbit waiting for me to signal if things went like this.”
She stood up, brushed off the debris. “This is what you do as Apogee? You steal the crystal power from someone who obviously was supposed to have it? I didn’t have to have him right this minute. I could have waited a year for him to change his mind.”
“I’m tired of waiting,” he said, looking up as the small craft came down to land in the clearing. “Come on.”
“You should have let me handle it, Sta. I don’t need a ship,” she said, and teleported back to her room in Gramma Addie’s house.
Pissed as pissed could be, she packed her belongings and teleported back to Voran.
“Mistress, your orders?” asked the Neverseen on the job.
“Tell Chi I’m back. Unpack my suitcase. If Shestna shows up, tell him to go fuck himself,” she said in a growl like he’d not heard from any of his employers before.
She undressed and got into her bathing tub to wash the mud off.
“Mistress?”
“What?” she replied, eyes closed as she poured a pitcher of water through her hair to rinse out the shampoo.
“Prince Pisod is here.”
“Of course he is. Tell him I said to tell Shestna to go fuck himself.”
“He is waiting for you in the rear yard, Mistress.”
“Was it really necessary, Brother?” Dorn asked as he lifted off. “To take the power from the Earth man?”
“I felt it was. I am no longer telepathic, but I am also no longer sick.”
“It’s healed you of the leukemia?”
“It has. Father should be immensely pleased. When are we leaving for home?”
“Soon as we get back to the ship, as it happens. He cannot wait to see you.”
Shestna made no further reply, instead calling Pisod to stand guard over Tyler until he arrived.
“She’s very angry. Where she goes, you go.”
“Adding this to the list of favors you owe me,” Pisod said.
“Fine. You can have your pick of any position you want in my court when Father changes the will and I inherit the throne.”
Pisod made no reply, knowing his brother probably spoke true. He ended the call and returned his attention to the woman under him.
“Sorry about that.”
“It’s your money, lionman. Spend it how you want.”
“Unfortunately, I have to keep it brief. So enjoy the bonus and extra time,” he said.
He finished himself off with the Deek’Traiian whore and redressed in his uniform. He teleported to Tyler’s front door.
“The Mistress has just returned and is furiously angry with Prince Shestna,” the Neverseen said, letting him in.
“I know. Tell her I’m here. I’ll be in the rear yard,” Pisod said, walking through to the door on the opposite end of the room.
He didn’t have to wait long. She came out with hair still damp and temper as hot as ever.
“Did your brother tell you the bonehead move he pulled?” she demanded, angry and indignant.
“He did. I agree. It was a bonehead move,” Pisod replied. “He should have had Dorn come down and do it, Dorn having more experience with the crystal energy.”
“It shouldn’t have been done at all!” she all but shouted. “He had no right to do that to Jerome.”
Pisod’s head cocked slightly as he analyzed her words. “You’re still tied to him, aren’t you? Jerome. Like you were tied to the man Nails. Otherwise, why would you even care? I would have thought your end of the connection was to the energy itself, not the man who held it.”
“Well then you know fuck-all about humans,” she spat.
“Do you want to spar? Do you need a fight?” he asked rather than point out that she wasn’t human.
“I don’t want to have to bathe again. I’ve had two already today and I’ve only been up five hours.”
“How about an Orani routine?”
Orani -- The yoga-like stretching form exercises he’d begun to teach her while on K’Tran. Usually done with a partner for maximum benefits.
“It might help you to calm down. It can be strenuous enough to work out your angers,” he continued. “You’re already dressed for it.”
In her stretch pants and a t-shirt, but she balked at the idea.
“Let’s just do one form. It won’t take long. If you’d still rather be pissed off, I’ll let you be,” he suggested.
She agreed. He chose a strenuous form that needed more focus and expended a great deal of energy. Skin on skin stretches, muscle on muscle strength rather like balancers in an acrobatics display. She couldn’t stay angry because she needed to pay attention to what she was doing. Her mind couldn’t be in two places or she would cause Pisod to be hurt.
When the half hour session was finished, they sat on the ground to rest a moment. She was still angry, but no longer volatile. She could listen to him now and not react violently when she didn’t like what he said.
“Shestna did what he felt needed doing for your best benefit,” he began. “I think you know that. That crystal power wasn’t intended to protect a planet or fuel a single man for his own benefit. Its sole purpose is to power you, Tyler. To move you a
long on your path to whatever it is that you’re going to be. Even the Emperor’s crystal exists for you, if you ever need it.”
“I don’t think your father would like that very much,” she said quietly, pulling out a weed and smacking it against the ground to dislodge the soil around its roots.
She pulled another weed and another. Pisod sat back against the bench and let her go on a single-minded journey through the yard. Pulling weeds and throwing them onto the walking path was better than a hundred mile walk. He was content to let her go until sundown if she needed to.
Half an hour into her mission, a Neverseen appeared just inside the edge of the courtyard. She looked with worry to the Mistress and with question to Pisod. He waved her forward to receive whatever message she brought.
“Prince Pisod, the Emperor is here.”
“I knew he was coming. Escort him through.”
She vanished to obey. He rose from the cement pad to meet his father at the covered walkway, explaining Tyler’s current state. Encito said nothing, gesturing that his escorts and son should remain where they were. He crossed the lawn and lowered to his knees opposite her in the flower bed and began to pull weeds.
A moment to register another person was there and she did a double take with her hand paused over her next victim.
“Encito?”
He looked up to her and smiled, infinitely pleased that she would so casually use his first name. “I understand your mother’s mother has died. We extend our greatest compassions and condolences for your loss. We know it is much too soon after the loss of your mother and so many other things you hold dear. Let us pull weeds for a while and then we will talk.”
“You know what Sta did, don’t you? That’s why you’re really here.”
“Of course I know. I had to give approval for Dorn to fly down and pick the two of you up and in order to give that approval, I would have to know the entire story. I knew he might have to protect you and how he would most likely do it. What angers you so?”
“It wasn’t necessary,” she said, lips tight. “It wasn’t fair to Jerome either. Humans may not like what they are presented with; but if you give them time for the idea to settle in, time to think about it and come to terms with it, they very often come around in their own time. Jerome wasn’t given that time.”