by May, K. C.
She slipped her hand into his, and they both waved with their free hands. Micah then put her hand over her belly, as if it was already swollen with child, and the onlookers cheered louder.
They came down the steps and greeted the townsfolk one by one. Boden shook so many hands and kissed so many cheeks, he wasn’t sure he could name any of them by the time it was over.
Micah was surrounded by her relatives, who congratulated her on her upcoming life as a mother.
Boden saw his father, the town’s drill master, standing alone. There was pride in his stance, sorrow in the downward curve of his mouth, fear in his eyes, and determination in the way he gripped Boden’s papers in one fist. Boden took his time greeting people and accepting their congratulations on his marriage and wishes for a healthy son, dallying so as to delay the inevitable exchange with his father. Following the drill master’s instruction every day was tolerable, even enjoyable at times. Conversing with his father wasn’t. Today, it was unlikely he’d be able to avoid it.
His mother, Anika, made her way over and hugged him tightly, crying and smiling at the same time. “I’m so happy for you and Micah, but I can’t help worrying for you.”
He smiled dimly. “I’ll be fine, Mama. Don’t tell Loel, but I’m the best fighter in Kaild.”
“Your father trained you well,” she said, glancing at Gunnar.
Boden stiffened, his smile dropping. “He makes a better drill master than Elazer did,” he conceded, “but he trained the other boys equally well. If you must worry about someone, worry about Welliam. One day, Marja’s going to box his ears so hard, he’ll lose his hearing. I’ll be fine.” Boden took a steadying breath when he saw Gunnar approach.
“Keep one eye open at night,” Anika said, straightening the collar of his shirt. She picked a speck of lint from his shoulder. “And don’t volunteer for anything. That’s a sure way to get yourself k—” Her eyes welled again, and she pressed her lips together.
“Mama,” he said gently, “don’t worry about me. I’m ready for this.”
Gunnar put one arm around Boden’s neck and pulled him into a fierce embrace. They were of a height, though Gunnar was the more muscular of the two from his fifteen years in the Legion. “You keep your eyes up, you hear?” he whispered into Boden’s ear.
Boden nodded and pulled back. To his surprise, Gunnar’s normally hardened eyes were rimmed with red. “I’m ready, sir. I’ve had the best drill master in all Serocia.” He didn’t know why he’d felt compelled to compliment his father, a man he’d only known for three years, almost four if he counted the nine months Gunnar was home after his first tour of duty.
Gunnar gripped Boden’s shoulder and nodded, then handed him the crumpled papers in his hand. “Present these to the recruitment chief in Jolver. They’ll assign you to your unit.”
Boden smoothed the papers and looked them over, hoping to find out what unit he was in. “Will I be in a unit with any other men from Kaild?”
“They’ll place you based on need. You’ll find out once you’ve reached Jolver.”
Footsteps ran up behind him, and he turned to find Jora with dark circles under her eyes and a worried line between her brows. She was smiling, though it was a forced smile that didn’t reach her eyes, the one she used when she didn’t want her true feelings to show. It was a smile he’d practiced himself on many occasions.
“Micah says you’re leaving her with child,” Jora said breathlessly. “Congratulations.” She rose up on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. “I hope it’s a son.”
Boden nodded his thanks. Chances were good it would be a boy. Thanks to the special properties of the Son Maker tree’s fruit, two boys were born in Serocia for every girl, and he’d done his part to increase the odds by eating it throughout his wedding night.
“I pray it’s a daughter,” Gunnar said under his breath.
Jora’s wide eyes turned to Gunnar. Boden rounded on his father, fists clenched. “Why would you want my first child to be a girl?”
“Because if you father all your sons after you return, you’ll have eighteen years to love and guide them instead of only eight.”
“Don’t you mean instead of three?” Boden spat.
Gunnar frowned, looking more sad than angry. “You won’t realize until after you get back how precious those years are.”
“So precious that you reenlisted for another five years.” Gunnar had left a week after Boden’s tenth birthday, after having been home only nine months. Boden’s young mind had assumed it was his fault, that he’d driven his father away, that Gunnar couldn’t stand to be near him. Only in the last three years did Gunnar make any attempt to know him, but by then, the wound was too deep. A father’s apathy was an infection of the heart for which there was no cure.
Gunnar nodded. “Sometimes we make sacrifices to better the lives of others.”
Boden didn’t know what to make of that. Gunnar’s so-called sacrifice hadn’t bettered anyone’s life, least of all Boden’s.
After a moment of awkward silence, Jora pressed the leather bag she’d been making into his arms. “Finally finished it. I hope you like it.”
He loved the bag, not because it was well-crafted and beautiful, but because Jora had made it especially for him. The care and attention she put into cutting each piece and sewing each stitch were done with him in mind. Maybe she didn’t love him the way he loved her, but she loved him all the same, and he would wear that into battle as he would his armor. “Thank you, my friend. It’s a most excellent gift.” He hugged her tightly, then leaned back so as to lift her off her feet, making her squeal. He laughed and set her down, and she thumped him playfully on the chest.
His father watched the exchange with a perplexed expression. Boden had never confided his feelings for Jora to anyone, though the two had been close friends for over a dozen years. Everyone in Kaild knew it, which was why everyone had expected Jora to submit for his Antenuptial.
Everyone except Gunnar. He was too self-absorbed, too busy establishing his tough-man image and building his beloved family to notice anyone or anything that didn’t directly impact him, as evidenced by his four wives and nine children, only eight of which truly mattered.
“It’s time,” someone said, touching his sleeve.
People gathered around, clapping and laughing, and encouraged him with shouts of, “Here we go!” and “Skin him!”
Boden followed the barber to her seat, which had a few step stools positioned around it so she could work on him from above. He sat still with his eyes pinched tightly shut as she first cut his long hair close to his scalp and then shaved what remained. It left his scalp tingling and his head feeling light, like a soap bubble that might float away. It seemed everyone wanted to feel his smooth head, especially the younger boys who would be facing the same treatment in ten or twelve years’ time. Boden squatted patiently and let them gather around to rub his head and giggle at the funny texture of his bald scalp while girls gathered the long, discarded locks and used them to make play mustaches or horses’ tails on their butts.
One by one, his friends and family members presented him with gifts, many of which he would leave behind with Micah: blankets and sleeping gowns and slippers for his feet, dice and balls for kicking and tiles for playing Winds and Dragons, and a comb crafted of bone, which made everyone laugh. He carefully packed into his new knapsack the clothes sewn to the Legion’s specifications, a new dagger Tearna had made him, and a sheath for it by Shiri, the young leatherworking apprentice who’d worn the yellow ribbon at his Antenuptial, and knitted socks to keep his feet warm in the coming winter. The papermaker, his mother’s second cousin, gave him a bound journal with a cloth-wrapped cover and a lead pen—a stick of graphite wrapped in string.
The horse breeder presented him with a gorgeous brown steed with a black mane named Fidget. The saddle was made by Nuri’s expert hands and the bridle by her other apprentice, Palti. The master blacksmith, a severe woman he’d feared since he was a boy, g
ave him a sword, as she had every other departing soldier for the last thirty years. She could no longer stand straight, her eyes were clouded, and her hands were gnarled and spotted with age, but her workmanship never suffered. The senior leatherworking apprentice, the one poised to take over the shop when Nuri retired, had made his cuirass. It was stiff and sturdy, perhaps not strong enough to withstand the hard thrust of a sharp blade, but it was better than nothing and would serve him well until the Legion provided him a steel breastplate.
From the five councilwomen who led Kaild, he received twenty shells to pay for food and lodging should he need it on the way to Jolver. Though the currency was now made of cloth and inked by the king’s press, it retained the name from earlier times when Serocia used intricately carved seashells for trade.
Though he didn’t want to say goodbye to his neighbors and friends and family, he was eager to get started on his journey.
His father hugged him tightly, and he returned the embrace with only one loose arm. “Everyone around you will eat the godfruit every morning,” Gunnar whispered into his ear. “It’s a mistake. Don’t eat it.”
Boden stiffened. His father had never spoken of the godfruit or the Tree of the Fallen God, which were at the center of the century-old conflict, though only the men who’d returned from the war knew why. No one ever spoke of them, and on the few occasions Boden had asked, he’d received only a stern glare or a warning to drop the matter.
“Do you hear me, son? No matter what the other warriors say, no matter what your commander says. Do not eat the godfruit.”
Boden was unsure he could disobey a commander who ordered him to eat it. “Why? What does it do?”
Gunnar pulled back and held him at arm’s length, both hands gripping Boden’s upper arms. The two men locked gazes. “It will infect your soul with a foul sickness. Rely on your training, not some magical fruit. You’ve worked hard, trained hard. You’re ready. I haven’t been the father you wanted, and I—I regret that, but I’ve been the drill master you needed. Trust me. Trust yourself.”
He cares. Boden felt like a boy again, the one who’d wished every night for his papa to return safely from war. His eyes watered and threatened to spill over, but then Gunnar let him go and turned away. Boden breathed in deeply, tamped down the boy he used to be, tamped down the years of disappointment and hurt Gunnar had saddled him with, and became another version of his father.
He hugged Jora again, tempted to confess that the flute was indeed a promissory, but he didn’t. In all likelihood, she would marry before he returned, and his admission would only serve to create an awkward distance between them.
“If you have a message for your wife or parents,” she told him, “write it in your new journal at sunset every Suns Day. I’ll look over your shoulder in the Mindstream and pass along your words.”
He cocked his head and regarded her quizzically. If she could look into his past through the Mindstream whenever she wanted, what difference would it make when he wrote the message?
As if reading his mind, she said, “I don’t want to invade your privacy by reading everything you write, only what you write at sunset on Suns Day. That’s how I’ll know I should read it.”
He smiled, nodding. “I understand now.” She wouldn’t be able to communicate anything back to him, such as how his wife fared or whether his first child was a boy or girl, but if he heard that enemy forces had gotten past the Serocian fleet and were sailing north from the Strait of Lost Souls, he could at least warn the people of Kaild.
“Don’t forget me,” she said with a shy smile.
Boden smiled back. Never. He could never forget her.
He hugged his three step-mothers and kissed their cheeks, and he hugged each of his siblings and half-siblings, telling them to behave themselves. He embraced the tearful Anika, assured her he would be particularly vigilant and careful, and then his wife of one day, Micah. He’d thought that parting ways with Jora would be hardest, but he found leaving Micah more heartwrenching. Her belly would swell, her screams would carry from one end of Kaild to the other and silence the most raucous of children, and a new infant would take his first breath all while Boden was gone. A child, a son, who wouldn’t meet his father for nine years to come. He kissed her lips, her cheek, her neck, and breathed in her scent one last time, whispering into her ear a promise that he would return alive.
He felt heavy and slow as he climbed into the saddle. Worry glistened in the eyes of his people, and pride too, as he heeled his new mount and, with one last wave, started off to begin his new life as a warrior of Serocia.
Chapter 4
Jora sat with Briana and Tearna for the midday meal. Though her two friends chattered on about a dream Briana had and what it meant, Jora’s thoughts bounced between Boden and his journey and the dolphin she’d met the day before. She hadn’t been to the sea with her flute since then, but if she managed to get caught up on her work by the end of the day, she planned to return that evening. The next morning at the latest.
Briana nudged her with an elbow, and when Jora looked up, Danner was looking down at her, concern wrinkling his brow. He was about Gunnar’s age, maybe a little older, one of the men fortunate enough to have returned from war, though the left side of his head was disfigured from a terrible burn, the ear on that side all but gone. As one of the returned soldiers, he served as a guard, watching for approaching enemy fighters, though he wasn’t currently wearing armor or weapons. If she recalled correctly, Danner usually manned a post at night and slept during the day.
“I hate to disturb you, but would you mind checking on my son?” he asked. “I had a disturbing dream about him, and I need to know if he’s all right.” He turned his head to hear her better from his right ear.
“I don’t mind at all,” she responded with a forced smile, though his request reminded her of the hurtful words she’d overheard Oram say in the days leading up to his own Antenuptial. It wasn’t Danner’s fault; he was simply a loving father. Of course he would want to know how his son fared. He’d openly cried the day his boy had left the village to report to his new commander six months earlier. Danner had never been unkind to her. Any peace of mind she could give him was worth a little inconvenience.
Jora closed her eyes, shut out the laughter and hum of conversation around her, and opened the Mindstream, the space between worlds. Though she could Mindstream with her eyes open, the overlapping images were sometimes difficult to separate. Shadows and whispers converged on her, terrifying shapes of impossible beings and foreign words whose menacing sounds had followed her out of the Mindstream and into her nightmares in her childhood. Yet, in all these years, not once had they ever harmed her. Eventually, she’d learned to ignore them and focus on the hundreds of threads as thin and delicate as the silk of a spider’s web that stretched from the center of her torso to that of nearly every other person in Kaild—everyone with whom she’d spoken or shared a glance or a smile. Every interaction with every person was part of a huge mystical tapestry that told the story of human experience. The touch of her intent like a gentle finger strumming a lullaby on a pipa was all she needed to find the one that led to Oram.
She found him sitting among dozens of other men, listening to a lecture. “He’s sitting in a building, listening to someone pacing and talking. A commander, I’m guessing.”
“Has he been injured?” Danner asked.
He wore no bandages, and he had no visible bruises or tears in his uniform. “He looks fine.” She looked around at the soldiers who sat quietly, listening to the commander’s lecture about duty and honor, about inevitable loss and hardship, all for the good of Serocia. Two figures in green, floor-length, hooded robes stood behind the commander with hands clasped before them, bald heads bowed. The commander droned on about the war and their enemies’ lack of virtue, their lack of humanity, insisting that a good Serocian soldier would kill an enemy on sight without sympathy.
Then, one of the robed figures, a man, lifted his head
and looked directly at her.
Jora yanked herself back, so shocked was she by the scrutiny. How can he see me? I’m not there.
And yet, he stared directly at her as if he was aware of her presence as a Mindstreamer. She watched in a mixture of horror and disbelief as the robed man tapped the sleeve of his companion, a woman, and motioned with his eyes toward Jora’s mind vision. Now both of the robed figures were looking right at her.
“No,” she whispered.
“What’s wrong?” Tearna asked.
“They see me. That’s not possible.”
“Who sees you?”
She wasn’t quite sure. Some kind of wizards.
The robed male moved toward the commander, who paused mid-sentence to watch, a perplexed look on his face. Which one of you is acquainted with someone with the Talent for Witnessing? he asked the soldiers as he scanned their faces.
Were these Truth Sayers? Jora’s heart hammered in her chest. Oram had no allegiance to her. In fact, it was clear she made him more than a little uncomfortable.
He glanced around furtively and licked his lips, but he said nothing.
Thank you, she thought. She wasn’t sure what would happen if the Sayers found out about her, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know, either.
A man in the previous row tentatively raised his hand. I am, sir.
Where does this person reside? the robed man asked.
He’s serving his duty to Serocia, sir. Gilon, my cousin. He’s a good man.
Jora looked on in horror and fascination. They could see that she was watching, but they couldn’t tell who she was or that she was a woman.
“Jora, what do you see?” Tearna asked.
“Lie her down,” Briana said. “She’s trembling.”