by Keira Drake
“We’ll be back, you know. Me and Aki.”
“Please,” I say, “it’s probably best that I just focus on recuperating. There’s no need to—”
“We’ll be back,” he says, and winks at me. “See you, Vaela.”
Keiji, true to his word, and to my private consternation, arrives with Aki at roughly the same time the following day.
“Come outside, Vaela,” he says. “Winter is melting away—you need some sunshine.”
“No, thank you,” I say. “I’m really not inclined to—” Here, he crosses the room and swings the drapes open wide. I squint in the glare, my eyes unaccustomed to the light. “Could you close those please?”
“Can’t sit in the dark all day,” he says.
I am beyond irritated. I feel as though he is intruding on my grief, stepping over it as though it does not exist. I climb out of the bed and pull the curtains closed, then turn on my heel. “Keiji, I would prefer to spend my time here alone. I don’t wish to hurt your feelings, but I must ask you to leave.”
He sits in the wooden chair, unfazed. “Talk to me for just a minute, Vaela. Then, if you want me to go, I will.”
I stare at him for a moment, fuming, but sit stiffly at the foot of the bed. “What is it?”
“I lost my parents, too. And three brothers.”
I turn my head and close my eyes. “I can’t talk about this.”
“You don’t have to talk,” he says. “Just listen. You’re not alone. It will get better.”
“It will never get better.”
“It will.”
My shoulders tremble. Who is he—who is anyone—to speak of my suffering? Who can know the particulars of my grief, the searing agony of it? I glare at him, my eyes like daggers. But then…I see his pain. So small he is, bright like a flame, and yet his hurt mirrors my own. And I realize that I have stupidly ignored the fact that Keiji, too, has lost his family. At ten years old, he has been through far worse than I. He has never known peace, only danger, and loss.
He understands. As much as anyone ever could.
I chew on the inside of my lip. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He holds out his hands. “Me either.”
“You will talk, and I will listen.”
“I will come every day to see you,” he says.
I sigh. “You will stay only briefly?”
“An hour at most.”
“All right, then,” I say. “If you must.”
I must be, at best, a dismal and taciturn companion, but Keiji does not seem to mind. He comes day after day, never staying too long, never at a loss for words. He talks and talks and talks, while Aki lies at his feet, furry eyebrows arching up and down from left to right—listening. The dog listens to him. And so do I.
He speaks at length of his desire to become an itzatsune like his brother, describing for me the arduous training that is required. He tells me of the Annic Days, a period of some fifty years—long ago—in which the Topi and Aven’ei each withdrew from conflict, only to resume when a freakish drought in the south pushed the Aven’ei into Topi territory. He complains about his schoolwork, he tells me of adventuring with friends into the Southern Vale, he brings me new bits of glass for my “collection.” And I, in my black sorrow, unable to tolerate even a sunbeam from the window, see a light within Keiji, and can abide it. My father had the very same light: an effortless brilliance that could draw others to his side, dampen an argument between friends, and calm those who were beyond reason. Keiji and my father, they would have been kindred spirits.
Weeks pass, and though Keiji and Aki visit every afternoon, Noro—to my surprise and disappointment—does not come at all. I feel this keenly at first—another hurt added to the injuries of my heart. I cannot think why he would stay away, having acted such a friend in the days before my convalescence. I ask Keiji about it, but he skirts the subject, saying only that Noro has been repeatedly deployed to the mountains. I accept this, but as I delve further into my own dark imaginings, I remember Noro’s comforting presence on the journey to Hayato and I wonder: why does he not come when he is home?
In the beginning, in those first long days, I thought I would never wish to leave the healing room. I was certain that I would be content to spend the rest of my days curled up with my heartache, blanketed in my memories. But as the weeks slipped by, I realized that I could not, as Keiji had noted early on, spend all my time in the dark. Not forever. Even the most terrible agony must be diminished by time, and today—my forty-second day at Eno’s—today, the grip of my grief was finally lessened.
I awoke with a peculiar sense of alteration—something akin to the fresh, salted breeze that blows in from the sea after a storm has passed. Eno opened the door to collect my chamber pot and was startled to see me standing by the window, my face turned toward the sun.
“I should like to go outside today,” I said.
She took me by the arm, her wrinkled face marked with a brilliant smile, and led me into the enclosed yard behind the house.
Now, I stand in the garden, blinking in the dazzling light of day. There’s a vegetable patch here, and flowers blooming in triumph amidst the melting snow, and a beautifully hewn bench cut from sandy-colored stone.
I sit on the bench and run my palm over its smooth surface, feeling the faint warmth it has stolen from the sun. It is spring now on the Continent, and while the temperature could not be described as warm, it is far more tolerable than it was just a month ago. The fresh, cool air caresses my face, and I feel a sense of normalcy returning to me with each breath. This is what people do. They go out of doors, and they sit in the sunshine, and they breathe. I can do this.
Eno hovers near the door for a few minutes, then returns to the house, leaving me alone in the yard.
It is quiet. I hear footsteps occasionally as someone passes by on the road beyond the fence, the chirping of birds concealed in the trees, and the distant sound of laughter, perhaps coming from one of the nearby houses. These are the sounds of life. For the first time since the heli-plane went down, I am ready to hear them.
It is a good day. I spend one more night in the healing room, and in the morning, I am ready to leave. Keiji comes to collect me, to take me to my new home, which the council has arranged for me.
At the front door, Eno embraces me, happy tears in her dark eyes. I hold her tightly for a moment, thinking how strange it will be to fall asleep in a house empty of her comforting presence. I thank her for all she has done, but the words seem to fall short; she afforded me true solace, allowing me to stay long after my leg was tended so that my heart might have a chance to be restored as well. I tell her that she is a true healer, and I bid her goodbye.
It is time to begin my life anew.
CHAPTER 14
“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” KEIJI ASKS EXPECTANTLY as we stop before the small cottage.
I turn to my left to look at the houses on the other side of the road. “Why does this place look so familiar?”
Keiji laughs. “That house there, across the way…that’s where Noro and I live. You remember it?”
“Yes,” I say slowly, my mind piecing together the memory of my first night in the village. “It looks different in the daytime—and with so little snow about.”
“Noro fixed things with the council so that you would be nearby,” Keiji says. “On account of you not knowing anyone.”
“Did he?” I say, perplexed by this news. “I wouldn’t have thought…anyway.” I turn back to my own house, a stone building with a sloping black-shingled roof and a porch to the left of the front door. A high fence surrounds the property, separating it from the houses on either side. Two windows look out from the front, the glass having recently been scrubbed clean. But what truly draws my attention is another detail: someone has put a pot bearing a dilapidated white flower next to the door. I know without asking that it was Keiji, and my heart warms.
“The house is lovely,” I say. “I particularly like the flowerpot
there—do you see it?”
He hides a smile and rushes up to the door. “Come on and look at the inside. Wait here, Aki.”
The dog, Keiji’s perpetual shadow, lies down on the porch and blinks lazily. I’m quite used to him now, having seen him so many times at Eno’s, and am far less intimidated by his size than I was when first I saw him. I give him a pat as I step up onto the porch, then pass through the door into my new home.
Much like in Noro’s house, the entry opens into a small, cozy sitting room. There is a low sofa (also like Noro’s, although this one has green fabric instead of blue), an upholstered chair, and a bookshelf, all arranged around a fireplace on the far wall. I cross to the bookshelf to peruse its contents; titles such as Shinashi Sea-ships and Vessels, The Hero of Tezana Bay, and, most intriguing of all, The Nations Beyond the Sea immediately catch my eye.
“That’s from Noro,” Keiji says, pointing to an enormous, breathtakingly beautiful fan above the fireplace. It must be three feet across, with lovely white trees painted across its lower half, all trimmed in gold. “He said you’re probably used to fine things.”
Another puzzling kindness, considering Noro’s conspicuous absence during my time at Eno’s. “Keiji,” I say, on the point of asking him again if he knows why Noro did not come to see me, but I think better of it, and simply say, “I shall be sure to thank him when I see him next.”
To my left, a doorless frame opens to a small kitchen and dining area, complete with a wooden table and four chairs. To the right, a narrow hallway leads to two doors: the first reveals a washroom with a basin, tub, and chamber pot—a thing not used in the Spire for absolute ages—and the second a bedchamber with a double bed, a nightstand, and a second fireplace. A handmade quilt, sewn with perfectly shaped squares in various greens and yellows, covers the bed. I run my hand across it, admiring the softness of the fabrics.
“Do you like it?” Keiji says from the doorway. “It’s been in our family a long time. I’m not even sure who made it… my grandmother, maybe, or her mother.”
“It’s beautiful. Surely you ought to keep it, if it’s an heirloom?”
He grins. “It’s yours. And you’ll be plenty warm when winter comes around again.”
I will be home in the Spire by winter. I feel tired suddenly, though it isn’t even noon. “I’m so grateful for all you and Noro have done. Keiji…would you mind if I had some time to settle in?”
“Of course.” He heads down the hallway, humming to himself. At the front door, he turns back and says, “Come by soon, if you want to see Noro—like I told you, they’ve been sending him out a good deal since you arrived. But he’s home for a few days at least.”
“I will. Thank you for seeing me settled. You can bring Aki in next time, if you like. I don’t mind.”
He gives me a wave and bounds across the road, the dog trotting along close at his heels.
Alone in the house, I feel misplaced, as though I’ve sneaked into a stranger’s home and suddenly decided to live there. I turn and head back down the hall to the bedroom, curl up atop the soft green quilt, and close my eyes. As I drift into a hazy slumber, my thoughts are of Noro.
In my mind, I see his features emerging from shadow as he stood by the fire at the Topi camp. I see the tightness of his jaw as he stared at the council table, offering to convey me to Ivanel. I see his eyes, dark and veiled, as he bid me farewell on the steps at Eno’s, his fingers wrapped around my own.
I felt his absence during my stay in the healing room; I feel it now. I wonder at his distance, when I was so clearly in his thoughts. And then these contemplations wisp into nothingness, and I sleep without dreaming.
The following day, around noon, I decide that it is time to pay Noro a visit.
I head to the bedroom and open the top drawer of the dresser. Inside is a small looking-glass, framed in silver with a long, slender handle. It’s not a true mirror—more like a plate of steel that has been finely polished—but it’s the only reflective surface in the cottage, and it’s better than nothing. I scrutinize my reflection; I look the same as ever, I suppose—thinner, paler perhaps than I was in the Spire, but not entirely different.
I fix my hair into a loose plait, grasp the looking-glass again, and smile experimentally. A shadow of my former self appears—a girl who looks very like the person I once was. Am I yet the same? Or am I someone different now, someone forever changed by tragedy and circumstance?
I tuck the mirror back into the drawer, wondering abstractedly if Noro will recognize me. When I saw him last, I was bedraggled, bleeding, and sick with fever. I wore a mishmash of torn and bloodied clothes, with twigs and pine needles in my matted hair. At least now I am somewhat presentable, dressed in the Aven’ei garments I found in the wardrobe.
Outside, I find the narrow road between the houses to be thick and muddy with the melting snow. I pick my way across, coming to Noro’s cottage with reasonably dry shoes. I knock at the door and wait, my heart pounding, my hands restless at my sides.
Half a minute passes before he answers. When he opens the door, he does not seem surprised to see me; he merely rests his palm against the top of the frame and says, after a moment, “You look well, girl.”
The sight of him, familiar and new all at once, plays havoc with my nerves. He is taller than I remember, looking very lean and elegant in a fitted gray shirt and a pair of black trousers. His hair falls loosely from the center to one side, not spiked upward as it was when I saw him last.
“Yes,” I say. “Eno let me stay far longer than my wounds required.”
“She knows her business.”
“She does.”
There is an awkward pause. Noro straightens his shoulders and takes a step back. “You would like some tea?”
“Please,” I say, and follow him inside. The house is exactly as it was on my first night in Hayato: tidy, comfortable, quiet.
In the kitchen, Noro puts on a kettle and leans against the table. After a moment, he says, “How do you like your new home? Does it suffice?”
“It’s far more than I would ever have asked of your people.”
“We have no shortage of empty dwellings,” he says. “The winter was long, and the fighting regular.”
I had not considered why the house might be vacant. I swallow, feeling uncomfortable. “I…I am told you made all the arrangements for me?”
His gaze shifts over to the window. “I did.”
I stare across at him, my lips trembling. “I am so grateful for all you have done—truly, I am. But…why didn’t you come to see me, Noro?”
His mouth opens and closes, then he frowns. “I thought it best you were left alone.”
“Keiji called on me every day.”
“I know. I sent him.”
“I thought as much. But you just said—”
“I know what I said. I meant to say I thought it best if you were apart from me.”
“But why?”
He sighs, glances down at the kettle, and folds his arms across his chest. “I would have been no comfort to you.”
“I don’t think you know how wrong you are about that.”
His eyes meet mine for a fraction of a second, then he turns to take two small cups from a shelf above the stove. “Keiji has a way with others. It was right to send him.”
“Keiji is a very special boy, I will agree with you. But I thought you and I were…were friends, of a sort.”
He shakes his head, his face in profile. “You cling to our acquaintance because I freed you from the Topi. It’s not good for you.”
“I value our acquaintance, Noro. I do not cling to it. You were with me quite nearly from the beginning of all this, and despite everything—despite the Topi, the cold, the terrible fear and grief, the fever—you somehow made me feel safe. Don’t you realize what that means to me?”
The kettle whistles and he turns to add the tea. “I am not your protector, girl.”
I flinch, stung by his words. “That isn’t wha
t I meant at all.”
He strides across the kitchen and sets the kettle and the two cups on the table, his lips pressed tightly together. Then he drops into the chair opposite, pours tea for each of us, and takes up his drink without a word.
I want to explain myself, to clarify what he has misunderstood. But I do not wish to argue, or to press his mood. He has made himself clear enough, in any case. I murmur my thanks and lift the cup to my lips; the tea is bitter, tasting of mint and broadleaf, very different from the sweet brew he made on the last morning of our journey. We drink in silence, neither of us looking at the other, and after a minute or two, I consider a change of subject.
“Keiji has told me a bit of the itzatsune,” I say. He looks up in surprise, the hard edges of his expression dissolving at once. The corner of his mouth twitches ever so slightly. “What?” I say. “Did I pronounce it correctly?”
“Close enough. What did he tell you?”
I set down my teacup, relieved that the tension between us seems to have lifted. “Well, he told me there are very few who hold the title. He said the itzatsune rarely marry, which is fine with him, because girls are—I quote him here—‘always trying to kiss him,’ and he doesn’t have time for that sort of thing. And he insists that he shall be far more skilled than even you when he finally achieves the rank.”
Noro leans back, smirking. “Did he now?”
“Yes, he did. He’s quite sure of himself.”
Noro smiles, and the effect is like a light upon his face. “Keiji. I wish he had another ambition. He burns far too brightly to spend his life in the shadows.”
“He wants to be like you, Noro.”
He nods. “I know.”
I tap my fingers on the table, then rise. “Well…thank you for the tea. For everything, really. I’m very grateful.”
“It’s nothing.”
He follows me through the kitchen and opens the door, and I step out onto the stone path.
“I hope to see you again soon,” I say.
“Wait.” I look around to see him in the doorway, one hand on the top of the frame like before, his head tilted toward the ground. “I’m sorry that I did not call on you at Eno’s. I thought I was doing what was best.” He looks up at me. “It seems I was mistaken.”