In the silence that followed, Garland, who had been poised to stand and flee, felt himself grow slowly heavier in his chair. A young man swathed in an apron brought roasted potatoes, onions, and pork, and a small pumpkin with a spoon in it so they could scrape the flesh out of the skin. When he was gone, Karis said, “My mother was a Juras woman and my father a Sainnite. But no one doubts that I’m Shaftali, so why should I call you something else? We are no different from each other, really.”
J’han said, easily, “In fact, anatomically the three of us are identical. Leeba, lizards don’t eat bread and butter. It makes them sick.”
Leeba said, “Medric is a Sainnite, isn’t he? Karis, when will Medric come? I want to show him my lizard.”
“Ask the ravens,” Karis said.
Leeba looked sullen. “The ravens won’t talk to me any more!”
J’han was gazing at Karis, though, with an expression that Garland could not interpret. He seemed a gentle man, and perhaps he knew how to help Karis. To have him in their household might be a great relief. And it would be easier to cook for four.
Garland cut himself a bite of the roast, which was overcooked, and ate a potato, which was bland, and restrained himself from grumbling about people who call themselves cooks. But Karis, her mouth full, said seriously, “You could have cooked this meal ten times better.”
“Roasted potatoes should have rosemary. I’ll make some tomorrow, and you’ll see.”
“I’ll build you a bed tomorrow,” she answered after a while. “I’ve got enough nails, now.”
J’han said to Leeba, “Tell me about our new house.”
Chapter Sixteen
With a half dozen nails pressed between her lips, Karis looked quite menacing, but her hands covered Garland’s so gently, he could scarcely feel the scratching of her rough palms as she used his hands like intelligent tools to bend and shape the supple twig, and then hold it in position while she tacked it in place. She had carried in the twigs through the morning’s downpour, from the brush pile she had formed while clearing the road. Now Karis had constructed three chairs out of the twigs, one child-sized, and had nearly finished a fourth. She had yet to break or split a single twig. Leeba had made a chair, too, imitating Karis with substantial help from J’han. The stuffed rabbit now sat beside Leeba on its own chair. “Rabbit is planning,” Leeba said.
“Planning what?” asked J’han, who was methodically unloading his pack onto the kitchen table. Garland had sanded and oiled the table that morning, and now felt as if he could roll out his pastry on it without shame. When J’han had politely asked permission before putting his pack on the table, it had pleased Garland immoderately.
“Planning important things,” Leeba said.
J’han nodded gravely. “Well, tell your rabbit that great things happen through the accumulation of small acts.”
“Rabbit knowsthat.”
“Sometimes I forget how smart your rabbit is.”
Garland took note of what had emerged from J’han’s pack. It was a series of miniature chests that interlocked on top of each other. J’han had the usual traveling gear as well: rain cloak, match tin, candle lantern. But Garland, who had met plenty of travelers in his five years, had never met one who carried furniture on his back. “What are those?” he asked J’han, as Karis took control of his hands again. “They look heavy.”
“You’d be surprised how light they are. Karis made them of wood sliced thin as veneer. But the contents are awfully heavy. This one is an apothecary’s shop. This one a medicine chest. And this one a surgeon’s cabinet.”
Garland said, “I thought you were a peddler.”
“That’s because I’m trying to look like one. But—see here?” He pulled back his hair to show Garland his earlobe. Across the dimming kitchen, Garland could see nothing unusual, but J’han explained, “A scar. From the earring. I trained at Kisha University.”
The university was gone now, long since burned to the ground by Sainnites. Karis spit out her nails to say, “You’d have three earrings now, if history had been different.”
Garland knew enough to know it was a compliment. It also was the kindest thing Karis had said to anyone since Garland met her. He felt obliged to stammer out an apology for the Sainnite destruction of the university, but J’han hushed him. “We’re more interested in how to flesh out a new future on the bones of the past,” he said. “There it is,” he added, and took one last box out of his pack.
“What’s that?” Leeba leapt up. “A present?”
“Not a present for you. It’s a book for Karis, from Medric.”
With her mouth in a thin line, Karis finished tacking down the twig, and told Garland to take a rest. He went to the hearth to stir his pot and add more wood to the fire, then rather hesitantly asked J’han if he would pull the tooth that ached so it kept him awake at night.
“Of course,” said J’han. “Or maybe I could repair it.”
“Can I watch?” asked Leeba.
But Garland felt Karis’s hand on his shoulder, and turned, and she quietly said, “Hold still,” and cupped his jaw in her coarse, gentle hand. Just like that, Garland’s tooth stopped hurting.
“You’re taking my business,” J’han complained mildly.
Karis turned away from Garland. “What did Medric say?”
Garland tentatively rubbed his jaw, then surreptitiously stuck a finger into his mouth to probe his sore tooth. It gave him not a twinge.
“To read the book,” J’han said.
Karis made a sound, halfway between a snort and a sigh. “Let’s finish that chair.”
But Leeba protested, “I want to know what’s in the box! Show me!”
“It’s Karis’s present.”
“Can I look at it, Karis?”
“I don’t care.” Karis knelt again beside the chair.
Garland went back to help her, still probing his tooth with his tongue, and thinking rather dazedly that he had yet to discover one thing that Karis could not do.
Assaulted now by Leeba’s shrill impatience, J’han cut the box’s bindings, and then spelled out for Leeba the letters written on the cover. “It says, ‘Be Very Careful.’ But I haven’t been at all careful, I’m afraid.” He opened the box, and Leeba said in disgust, “It’s a box of ashes!”
“Oh, dear. Karis, I’m afraid even you can’t fix this. Bring it to her, Leeba.”
Being very careful, Leeba brought the open box to Karis, who took it from her, glanced at the bits of burned paper that filled it to the rim, and dropped it on the floor without ever taking the nails from her mouth. Leeba, apparently impervious to Karis’s ill temper, got down on her knees, crying in excitement, “Look, it’s not all ashes!” She began blowing enthusiastically into the box. The frail remains of the printed pages floated upward on her breath, then, as they landed on the floor, disintegrated into dust. Leeba’s puffing uncovered the solid remains of the book. With the bound edge still intact, and the other edges burned into a curve, it looked like a half moon. On the charred, curling edges of the leather cover, the title, stamped into the leather and once burnished with gold, was faintly visible. Once, the book had been quite large, for even in its drastically reduced state it was big enough, and must have been a heavy weight on J’han’s back.
“Can I open it?” Leeba asked, already reaching for the cover.
Karis, bending a twig, did not even glance at her. J’han said, “Be very careful.”
“I am.”
As Leeba opened the book and turned the pages, Garland glimpsed a densely printed page, and a carefully rendered etching of a pig with all the cuts of meat marked. It was reassuringly commonplace. Leeba turned the pages: more pigs, cows, sheep, oxen, horses. The fragile paper shattered as Leeba turned the pages.
Karis bent, trimmed, and began to secure the twig that finished the chair. Soon, they all could sit down, though it appeared they would have nothing to sleep on for another night, not even Leeba’s lizard, who had been promised
a lizard-sized bed.
“The other book isn’t burned at all,” said Leeba. “The baby book.”
“What?” J’han came over to look. “Well. How about that!”
Garland, his hands still holding the last twig, looked over and saw that a hole had been carved out inside the massive volume. Tucked inside it lay a book so small that, despite the big book’s burning, its own edges remained unscathed. Its red cover shone brightly, unfaded, as though it had never seen the light.
“Can I take it out?” Leeba plucked the child out of its womb. “I can’t open it! Daddy, you try.”
J’han took it from her. “Maybe its pages are pasted shut. Why would someone go through so much trouble … ?”
“Karis!” Leeba said. “Fix it!”
Karis spat out her nails into the nail bag, and set her hammer on the floor. “We’re done,” she said to Garland. “Did Medric tell you the little book was there?” she asked J’han.
“No.”
“He’s a sneaky little rat of a man,” she said.
Leeba giggled.
Karis held out her hand for the baby book.
Silence descended. Even Leeba, who was quiet only when she slept, stared at Karis, open-mouthed, as Karis pressed the book between her palms. Her hands were so big, and the book so small, that only its red edges could be seen. The fire uttered a sudden pop, and spit embers across the stone hearth. Karis opened her palms as though they were the book’s covers, and the book opened with them: sweetly, obediently, its pages rustling like starched sheets being unfolded.
“Oh!” sighed Leeba.
The way I am with cooking,thought Garland, Karis is with the whole world.
He glanced at J’han, who sat down in one of the chairs.
Karis said in a low voice, “Earth magic had sealed this book.” She bent her head over the handwritten page, seemed to read a few words, and then, abruptly, slapped the book shut. Her face looked rather pale.
Leeba came out of her fascinated paralysis. “What is it? I want to see!”
“I think it is a letter.”
“A letter in a book?” Leeba paused, her lively mind apparently stalled for a moment by the challenge of deciding which of many questions to ask. “Who wrote it?”
“Harald G’deon.”
“Of course,” said J’han. “Who else?” He wiped his eyes on his sleeve.
“Who’s that?” asked Leeba.
“He was an important man, who created me and then abandoned me. Just like my father did, actually. I never knew him.”
Leeba crawled into her own father’s embrace. She had not let him out of her sight for a moment since his abrupt appearance the other day. Secure now, she asked, “Is the letter written to you?”
“I’m the only one who could have opened it.” Karis looked down at her closed palms. “But he must have written it before he got sick—before he sent Dinal to find me in Lalali.”
Garland had been slow to understand. Hearing the names of the last leaders of Shaftal spoken casually as part of a fragmented account of Karis’s history, he thought at first that the discussion was a joke, and then that Karis and J’han were both just a little mad.
Then he remembered the fanatics he had served dinner to last winter, and their leader, Willis, who believed in a story and a vision of a lost G’deon.
Karis had put the little book inside her vest and was packing up her tools. In the book was a letter written to her by the last G’deon of Shaftal, long before his wife Dinal set out to find Karis in Lalali and Harald G’deon lay hands on Karis and vested her with the power of Shaftal.
Karis glanced at Garland, and seemed to find the expression on his face too strange to endure. She took up one of the chairs and carried it with her into the adjoining parlor, which did not even have a fire in its fireplace yet. She returned for a candle and left again, and shut the parlor door. J’han said to Leeba, “Leave Karis alone.”
“I know.” Leeba settled herself more snugly into his shoulder. “Are you going to pull Garland’s tooth now?”
“Karis fixed it already.”
Leeba sighed with exasperation. “She’s always fixingthings!”
“She’s the Lost G’deon?” Garland said. His voice came out of his throat harsh and strange, as though he had swallowed a glass of spirits too fast.
J’han said gently, “Doesn’t she seem lost to you?”
Garland sat down. The twig chair uttered a squeak as though it were surprised.
“She doesn’t seem like a G’deon to you,” said J’han.
Leeba was neither talking nor wiggling, which meant she was about to fall asleep. She gazed at Garland curiously, though, as if she wanted to know what he thought.
Garland said, “She’s always fixing things.”
Leeba grinned at him.
Garland added, “The Sainnites thought the G’deon was a war leader. A man of fearsome power.”
J’han said, “Medric, our seer, has concluded that every G’deon has been well and truly terrified of his or her own power. I don’t guess that’s the kind of fearsome power you mean, though.”
“I never thought of it that way.” Garland swallowed, feeling the room, the world, shift around him like a house rebuilding itself into a completely different shape. “What can she do?”
“It’s hard to know, until she actually does it. I’ve seen her do some amazing things. She puts things together, basically—but she could just as easily be taking them apart. And she knows it.”
“But she doesn’t?”
“Fortunately,” J’han said, kissing his sleepy daughter’s head, “Karis is disinclined to destruction.”
It’s a strange and unpleasant sensation to know my life is almost over. For forty of my sixty years, I have been thinking as a farmer does, not just of the next crop, but five, ten growing seasons into the future, always asking myself, If I do this now, what will be the result then? But now, when I think that way, my thinking collapses. I will not be there to repair any errors I might make now. And it makes me afraid to think at all, afraid to take any action at all. Can I tell you this, a secret I try to keep even from Dinal (though, really, it is hopeless)? Can I write to you as though you were my friend? Or are you so angry with me that to tell you my secrets will only seem an insult, a presumption, like a drunk in a tavern who whispers to you exactly how he pleasures his lover?
Despite herself, Karis uttered a laugh.
Well, really, what choice have you? You can close this book and walk away, but you will eventually read it. No… I am guessing.I have no way to know you. I assume you will be like all earth bloods, but how can I be certain? Perhaps your disastrous childhood in Lalali (you see, I do know something about you) will leave you bent, lightning-struck, irreparable. Perhaps it is a bitter, foolish, short-sighted woman who reads these words. Perhaps I have vested the power of Shaftal in a broken container.
Here Karis did shut the book sharply, and stared into the cold fireplace, breathing hard. Faint voices murmured in the kitchen. Rain sighed, and then pounded on tightly latched shutters. The repaired roof held. Karis opened the book again.
But I do not think so. You see, I am afraid, and yet I am not. It is too late for me to save you. You will have to save yourself. But I know, or I believe, that it’s better that way. By the day you read this book, you will be healed. You will no longer rage at me for doing to you what I am going to do. And you will have found a companion, a fire blood, who in turn will find this book for you, wherever Dinal hides it, just as she would find it for me, had it been hidden for me by a G’deon of the past. Some things, I believe, will not change. And so I believe in you, as Rakel G’deon believed in me, when he threw that great weight of power into me. Like stones, it was. And then I awoke from my faint to find him dead. Though everything and everyone may seem to fail you, Shaftal will not, and you will be made strong.
So. I will write to you, to a G’deon whose name I cannot know, whose present pain and power suddenly evidenced i
tself to me mere days ago. I write to you on the day that the healers informed me that the strange weakness I feel from time to time is a herald of my death. I will live a half year, they say, maybe a bit longer, since we G’deons can be so tenacious. (Really, we are famous for it. But perhaps, in your time, such things will have been forgotten.) I write to you, for you and I will never speak because, in order to protect you, I must leave you in that midden heap where you were born. I write to you and I am not certain why. Because I pity you? Because my many, many guilts have grown impossible to live with any longer? No, I don’t think so. I think it’s that I love you, though you don’t even exist yet, though you are just an idea. I love you, and from your distant difficult future, I can almost feel you looking backwards to comfort me. “Harold” you say to me,“I am Shaftal! All will be well! ”And that’s the truth that rises up in me that I want to say back to you. All will be well. I am an old man facing his death, writing a letter to a stranger. I have no reason to lie to you. I tell you what I know even as I doubt it: All will be well.
Karis raised her eyes from the book and wiped her face carefully. When the tears did not stop, she lay back her head and sat quietly, simply waiting. Tears fell as though from someone else’s eyes. She kept wiping them, as though she feared that they would fall onto the book and blur the ink. In time, they stopped.
Dinal has just come in. She was away, tending to Paladin business, and I had not sent for her, because I have never had to send for her before. She said, “What are you thinking, to write in the dark? Your eyes will fall out of your head” I had not even noticed that the sun had set. She lit a lamp for me, andI saw by its light that she knew. No doubt she has already talked to the healers. I never have to tell her anything important. Always, she already knows. I say things to her anyway, because it lifts the weight.“I am dying” I said to her. “I’m writing a letter”
She said, “Well, it must be an important letter.”
And then we held onto each other for a while. The wood feeds the fire. The fire transforms the wood. That is our love. But you know this, don’t you?
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