by kubasik
Whatever the reason, he said it. You both gripped my hands tighter, though whether from excitement or fear I couldn't tell. Torran said, "Momma?" and Samael asked, "Daddy?"
and in that moment, hearing those two words spoken together by our children for the first time, I became as confused as the two of you.
J’role knelt down in front of us. He did not touch either of you, but held his arms out wide, poised for a hug.
"Why are you doing this?" I whispered, too tired to raise my voice.
He looked at you two boys, a smile on his face. I wish I could say it was a smile of joy.
A pleasant smile. But he might just as easily have been looking at prizes. Trophies of an accomplishment from his lost youth. His smile, like so much about him, was not for you, but about himself reflected in you.
Yes, you were there and so there is no need to tell you what you already know. But perhaps as children you were unable to grasp all the subtleties. I also know that you have forgotten much of the events I describe.
And I do it to turn you against him.
"I've been gone from them long enough, Releana." Your father looked from one of you to the other, back and forth. I saw him wanting to say your names, but hesitating again and again. Then I realized he could not tell you apart. He did not know which of you was Samael, and which Torran
"Are you really our daddy?" Torran asked, lowering his voice, trying to sound as cagey and strong as an adult.
With no more than a croak, J'role answered, "I am."
"You're the clown who comes to our village," said Samael, suddenly laughing. "How can you be our daddy?"
"I ..."
"Clowns can be daddies," countered Torran.
"Not this clown."
"Why not?"
"He's never said he was our daddy before."
"That doesn't mean he wasn't."
"Momma, why would a clown not say he was our daddy if he was?"
The question daunted my imagination — one usually well versed in impromptu answers to the Very Large Questions children ask adults all the time. More than that, I saw no reason to try to answer. J’role had started it with his pronouncement. I decided to let him try playing parent for a while. "Ask the clown," I told you.
You hesitated for a moments then Torran asked, "If you're Daddy, why didn't you tell us?"
"Well ..."
J'role looked to me for support. A deep, buried part of me wanted to come to his aid. I ignored it.
"Well, I am your father, I am your daddy. I've been ... You know how you get busy with something?" You stared at him, uncertain.
"Releana!" a voice called. I turned and saw Wia running up. She came straight over to me and saw my wounds. "Oh, Passions. Oh, Releana. I'm so sorry. Are you all right?"
I nodded.
Then she saw J'role staring at her. She sensed immediately that she must have interrupted something. "What should we do?" she asked me.
"Let's go home," I said.
"All right."
With Wia at my side, I walked the two of you forward and past J'role.
"Is that Daddy, Mommy?" asked Torran, and Samael asked, "What about Daddy?"
As I continued to move on, I said, "Daddy and I have had problems."
"You mean you don't love each other," said Torran, never one to mince words when he had a clue as to what was happening.
J'role, standing where we had left him, shouted, "We still love each other!" He looked down at the ground, his fists clenched. He didn't follow us.
"I really don't know," I said softly.
"But he's Daddy," said Samael.
"Daddy and I have a great many things to work out."
"But ..." and with that, you, Samael, began to cry.
"Quiet," Torran said harshly.
"It's all right," I said, and tried to kneel down beside you. Instead, I collapsed and ended up sitting on the ground. I scooped you both up in my arms and hugged you tight. But I felt your attention being sent past me, to the man at my back.
Samael said softly, "I want my daddy."
I tell you, I was furious. That a man who had not been in your life at all should command so much attention. I wanted to lift you both up and shake you violently until I was the one who had the power of life and death over you. Not this impostor parent who had arrived on a whim and could not even explain his absence.
I reined it all in, however. "I want Daddy, too," I said, though I do not think I meant it.
Maybe I did. I wish now I knew. "But not now. Maybe someday."
"Soon?"
"Someday."
Wia helped me up. We walked on. J'role did not come after us or speak another word.
And neither did either of you for a long, long time.
17
We traveled on foot, and then by the good graces of a caravan driver, by cart. I became very ill. A questor of Garlen tended my wounds and my illness. The Passion did not manifest herself to me during this time, and I thought I had seen the last of her.
Finally we reached our village. We found of course, burnt and ruined buildings. Weeds and vines grew up and down posts and stone walls that had been the village tavern, a barn, a home. Unburied skeletons, their flesh picked off months earlier by scavengers, lay half buried in dirt churned up by rain storms in the intervening months. Weeds and wildflowers wormed their way over our fields. Nothing else remained.
"Where is everybody?" one of you asked.
Gone, of course. Enslaved, or escaped. It had never occurred to me that our home would simply not be there.
"I'm so sorry," I said out loud.
Torran said, "It's all right, Momma. You couldn't a' stopped it."
"She's just sad, Torran," Wia said. "She's full of sorrow. That's what she means."
We moved on, and eventually found residence in a village far to the west, near Death's Sea. I became the village magician, the previous magician having disappeared while looking for elemental fire along Death's Sea.
I took comfort in only one thing. J'role had no idea where we were.
We became members of the community, and the two of you made new friends. So did I, including an ever stronger friendship with Wia.
Compared to the roughness of the troll clan and their life, the gentler, talkative village we called home seemed a blessing. The focus was no longer on punching and boasting and raiding, but making sure we all got along well enough to protect each other against threats from the outside world.
Your nightmares came, and I comforted you as best I could. Until now I had always believed children were particularly resilient to the horrors of life. I thought that because their personalities were not yet fully formed, the simple comfort of a home could cure all painful experiences. But such was not the case. How many times would I rush into your room and find you both weeping uncontrollably in your sleep.
The horrors of childhood help shape a personality. They become part of who the person is. It isn't something that can be shucked off, because there isn't anything solid enough there yet to do the shucking.
So I held the two of you in my arms, trying my best to give you enough love to balance the terrors of being torn away from your home, captured and enslaved by strangers, witnessing horrible deaths, and viewing the scattered bones of the people who had once been our neighbors. I really don't know if my hugs and talks helped, but it was all I could do.
Months passed.
18
After the attack on Vivane, the Therans retreated to Sky Point. Their ground forces had been scattered between Vivane and Sky Point, the fleet had been divided up and weakened by Stoneclaw attacks. All in all, they were much weaker. The slave trade dwindled, and many people expected the Therans to soon leave the area.
That was not to happen. Not at all.
One day, on your eighth birthday, the Therans returned.
The village children had gathered for your party in the tavern courtyard. You two boys, along with the other young children of the village, ran about
wildly, playing games involving a great deal of screaming. The rest of the girls watched your violent antics or else gathered in small groups and discussed which of you was nicer.
Then the cries of surprise and fingers pointed toward the air. Not one but three air castles flew toward us, escorted by a dozen smaller airships. I had just estimated their location as over the village of Branthan when the castles began pouring down a storm of fireballs.
Just dropping them down onto the village.
Huge pillars of smoke immediately began to rise. I couldn't guess why such a small village would be the target of a major assault, but then I saw that the ships were still moving — moving toward us. The attack on Branthan was merely a passing thought.
"Let's get to shelter!" I shouted. Few of the other villagers had ever had actual encounters with the Therans, and so did not understand what the presence of the airships and their fire cannons meant. They didn't move in response to my warning, but instead looked from me to the flying castles and stone vessels.
I jumped up onto a barrel and turned to face them. "Listen to me. They've come back.
The Therans. They've brought back more ships. This might be only a small part of the fleet! There might be more ships all over the land. But the key is that these ships are coming to hurt us!"
One woman said, "But we haven't ..."
"It doesn't matter. They're out to ruin us. They're probably looking to revenge the attack on Vivane. They need to weaken us, destroy — "
"But what ..."
"NOT NOW!" I felt embarrassed by my outburst and my position at center stage. The stares of the gathered villagers bored into me, increasing my discomfort. Each one seemed to silently ask, Who is this woman? Who is she to be so loud and order us around, when she only arrived in our community but a few months ago? Who does she think she is?
But my time spent among the trolls had given me training in such matters. I might lose face in the long run, with the community, with my standing as being nice, but there were times to give up nice, and I'd learned how to do it on Twilight Peaks. With all eyes still on me, I said, "Let's retreat into the jungle. If they don't try to hurt us, fine. But we can't count on that."
Some of the others nodded, and began gathering up their children. The village elder sent some of the village's fast runners off to the farms with the warning. The rest of us did what we could. We carried the sick and elderly. While the ships got closer and closer, I had to drag some people screaming from their fields, for they could not appreciate the threat that was upon us.
Finally, safe within the darkness of the jungle, we saw the Therans' terrible justice.
Fireballs rained down from the sky, crashing into homes and barns and the village tavern.
The balls crashed through the roofs of the buildings, then we saw the glare of hot red explosions through the windows. They dropped the fireballs into our rice paddies, ruining the crops and sending huge clouds of steam rising into the air. Among our fruit trees, the flames leaped from branch to branch, as if the flames grew on them naturally. As if we subsisted on fire and violence.
Around me people began to weep. Some tried to rush forward to protect their homes, but others held them back, tackling them and pinning them to the jungle floor.
I noticed that the fireballs were coming closer and closer. Soon they were smashing into the jungle canopy hundreds of yards ahead of us. "MOVE!" I screamed. "MOVE
BACK!"
The terror of the moment gripped everyone, and with hearts beating incredibly fast and breaths of air sucked down our throats with tiny squeaks of fear, we fanned out. The crackle of the jungle flames rushed up behind us. The heat, trapped under the jungle canopy, rushed through the jungle and pressed against my back. I ran with the two of you, clutching your small hands, but you fell down repeatedly. "Please," I begged, as if that could move your small legs any faster. But protecting you was all I could think about. I had to move on. On. On.
Soon we became separated from the others. I could no longer hear their cries of panic as anything more than faint echoes through the dark jungle. Our loud, clumsy rout through the forest had frightened the jungle animals away, and we collapsed to the ground, exhausted. I wept and I could not stop myself. Samael, you curled up in my lap, and joined my crying. Torran, you stood in front of me, four feet tall, hands on your hips, ready to defend me from any danger that might present itself.
Ahead I saw the fire's glow, though it did not seem to be getting closer. We waited for a long time, then finally made our way back. Darkness had fallen. The bones of our homes, charred wood, glinted silver and black in the moonlight. The cries of people I could not see drifted on the warm wind.
You both remained silent, holding my hands, as I turned around and around and around, looking blindly at the ruined village. "What could possess people to do such things?" was all I could think again and again, for truly the attack against a peaceful village so confounded my mind I could not comprehend it. It seemed as if the Horrors had returned from their strange plane of torture and pain. But the Therans were not Horrors, supernatural monsters. They were people of my own world.
19
When your father found us three weeks later I thought that somehow the Universe had decided to wind in upon itself, with me as its center, squeezing me from my past. I wanted not freedom from all responsibility, as I had thought while with the trolls. I simply wanted freedom from those things that weighed on me in an evil way. J'role, the Therans, even Krattack, involved me in plots and plans that seemed contrary to my nature. It was not that I could not do them, they just seemed alien.
I had always viewed the world as a place where one sought bonds based on trust and intimacy. Where the goal of life is not conquest, but safety. Although I had adventured for some years before settling down to raise you two, those adventures, to my mind, had been about bringing greater order to the world. With fewer monsters running about, people would be helped. And I had wanted to help. I'd also wanted to keep up with J'role.
I believed that if he wanted to adventure and throw himself into one mortal danger after another, then I should do it, too, if only to make our marriage stronger. Over the last several months I'd come to suspect that my desires for adventuring were different than J'role's, though I wasn't exactly sure what made me think this was so. But confirmation came with his arrival in our village. The smile he wore told me everything.
The Stone Rainbow landed in the village square, garnering such attention that your father stood on the bow much longer than he probably meant to, looking much like a statue, hands on hips.
The crew consisted of trolls and several other former slaves. They had long ago lost their original homes, and the ship had become their safe haven in a harsh world. I saw them moving about on the ship — striking the sail, cleaning the fire cannon — and had to smile. It was obvious that in just a few brief months they'd all become accomplished sailors. They were a solid crew now, and I was proud for them.
When J'role had enough of his preening, he jumped down from the bow onto the ground, landing with a roll and coming up with arms spread wide. The maneuver elicited applause, and he bowed.
I stood at a distance, glad you boys had gone off to work in the fields of one of our friends. While J'role was basking in the adulation of the crowd, I formulated my defenses.
Just because he'd found me again did not mean I had to let him back into my life. Enough was enough.
When he'd finished shaking hands, he walked directly toward me. I hadn't even realized he'd spotted me at the edge of the square. But then, he had an uncanny sense for knowing my whereabouts.
He smiled — oh, how he smiled. There was nothing disturbing in it, exactly, and when he said, "I'm so glad to see you," I could almost believe his smile was one of happiness to see me.
But that it was not. The true joy was behind his eyes, buried deep in some part of him. I hesitate to name it, for it seems presumptuous of me. But it seemed to be the man part of him. There are the
elements that bind us all together as name givers, and then there are the elements that separate us. Sex is one of those.
He smiled and said, "War is raging across Barsaive. You're in great danger. They're looking for you. You and the boys." And I can help you.
It was in his eyes, burning into my flesh as harshly as his smile. And I can help you.
I realized something, and the realization made me dizzy. I actually took a step back. It seemed suddenly to me that men liked wars. But not because of the usual theories often bandied about concerning their lust for war — that it lets them test their courage, or that it is an insanity that seizes them and they have to work it out of their blood through violence.