by J. Naomi Ay
“Shouldn't Keko be doing that while you attend to the very busy business of being the Empress?” Tuman slapped the fish down on the counter next to me and found a sharp knife in the drawer.
Picking up my dough. I popped it into the pan, narrowing avoiding a river of fish blood.
“Why are you still fishing?” I replied. “Shouldn't you attend to the very busy business of being the High Priest of Karupatani?”
“I like doing this better,” he laughed.
“And I like doing this better.” I set the bread pan near the window to rise. Tuman filleted a nice length of the fish. Taking it from him, I wrapped it in paper and put it in the fridge for later. “Cut off the head and I’ll take it upstairs. Maybe Senya wants a snack.”
“How is he?” Tuman sliced off the head and offered it to me.
“Just kidding! No thanks. I don't know how he is. He's been hiding upstairs, burying himself in his work since I came back."
Tuman frowned and studied the fish head.
"I'd invite you for to stay for dinner," I said. "But..."
Tuman shrugged. "My wife is busy adding a fourth appendix to her book. Another night perhaps. "
After he left, I headed upstairs again. The office was quiet. Inside I found Senya alone staring blankly at his screen, his head hanging. "Hey. Another migraine?"
He nodded, so I started working on his neck and shoulders again. "You seem to be getting these a lot lately. Who would do this when I wasn't here?"
"No one.”
"So you suffered in silence?"
No response.
“You were walking pretty good today. It sounds like you got over your mild case of space sickness.”
“Ay yah.”
“And you had no problems riding today?”
"No."
I pressed my thumbs into the tight muscles at the base of his skull. "What did you want to talk about earlier? When you came to take me riding? Before you magically fixed that little girl's head?"
He abruptly turned to face me. I abruptly stopped massaging.
“You attempted to flee back to Mishnah this morning, did you not?” He sounded pissed.
“Why are you mad about that? You said that you didn't care whether or not I stayed. You told me yesterday I could go back to Mishnah if I wanted.”
His eyes flashed.
“So you do care,” I concluded. “Why don't you admit it? You do care if I stay or go. Either that or it's just a control issue. You've got to control everything, right? It would look really bad if the Great and Wondrous Wizard of Oz couldn't manage to keep his own wife in check. Is that it?”
"That's enough," he snapped and made a move to get up.
“Why can't you cure yourself?” I watched him struggle for a moment. His cane appeared from nowhere, and he stepped past me toward the door.
“I can't do that," he replied irritably.
"You can't just put your hands on your leg like you did that girl’s head and magically fix it?"
"No."
“Can I?”
He stopped.
“I want to,” I said. “I want to fix whatever is broken in you." I took a deep breath. “I won't leave you again, Senya. I promise. You can lock me in a tower with my Craigslist furniture and I'll stay there forever. I won't even try to escape. I'll just wait until you love me again even if that's never. What?"
"You are only saying this because you moved your mother into our house."
"What's wrong with my mother living with us? For heaven’s sake, we only have something like a million square feet. Ten thousand other people live there too! My mother is hardly taking up any space. She can stay in the tower with me. Well, actually you should probably build her another tower. Tower living is bad enough but tower living with my mother, yikes! What?"
"You're not living in a tower."
"Well, where am I living exactly? Fern told me, you got rid of my apartment!"
He leaned against the door and crossed his arms smugly. "I did at that."
"Where am I supposed to go then?"
"You have a new flat, but it's in the same location as your previous flat. I've done a bit of remodeling."
"What did you do?"
He shrugged. "I combined the flats."
"Yours and mine?"
He nodded.
"So we can live together again?"
"Mhm."
"Senya! Wait where are you going?" He was hobbling out the door and heading toward the stairs.
"I want to eat Tuman's fish."
"No, you don’t." I grabbed his arm and pulled him across the hall to the bedroom. "After that revelation, we are going in here."
"I'm hungry."
"I'm hungrier!" I climbed up on the bed. "And I want to play chess. You remember the rules, right? You be the king and I'll be the queen, and we'll just skip to the end and mate. What's the matter? Why are you just standing there? Senya?"
"I couldn't rescue you."
"I know," I said and put my arms around his neck. "I know you couldn't."
"No, you don’t know." He removed my arms and sat down on the bed. "I could but I didn't because that was not how it was supposed to be."
I choked on my saliva.
"I made it possible for you to sleep through it. That was the best I could do."
I fell off the bed. My heart raced in my chest and pounded in my ears. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was like my worst nightmare come true. "Are you expecting me to thank you for that? Did you pay them off too, so they would keep me?"
He looked away.
"You bastard! You bloody fucking bastard!" I whacked him across the cheek. "Forget everything I just said! I am leaving, and I'm never ever going to come back!"
"Katie!" he said, grabbing my arm before I bolted out the door. "Listen to me. I need to explain."
"No!" I cried. "There is nothing you can say that will ever make me forgive you for deliberately leaving me there." I ripped my hand away from him and ran to the door which slammed shut in front of my face. I pulled on the handle, but nothing happened. "Open the door!" I screamed, pounding on it. "Let me out of here!"
"No.”
"Then I'll go out the window," I declared and raced across the room.
Shoving the window open, once again I scrambled out to the roof. I was getting good at this, and it wasn’t raining this time. A minor detail was forgotten though. I had no make shift rope to ensnare the tree and the one I used the other day was long gone. I was totally stuck up there.
So, once again, I sat there, my back against the chimney, my butt aching from these hard stone tiles, furious beyond imagination. How could he have done that to me? How could he ever have loved me and done that to me?
Dusk fell and then the night and I was still on the roof, alone with the stars. I was nostalgic for them, for the days and nights that encompassed twenty years of sailing through the darkness. I had control over my life then or at least I thought I did. I wasn't just a pawn to be placed here and locked in there. That's how it really was, I realized. The king and queen are imprisoned. They are the real pawns. I was profoundly sad.
“Time has to happen in the way it has to happen,” he said.
I looked around. He was sitting on the other side of the chimney smoking a cigarette. I had no clue how long he had been there as I had never heard a sound. Maybe he had been sitting there as long as I had been sitting on this side. It didn’t matter though, and I was in no mood for his other-worldly excuses.
“When I was sixteen,” he continued, breathing out a cloud of smoke. “Pori, Karim and I took a bunch of girls up to the hot springs pool and divested them of their virginity.”
“Oh gosh! Thanks for sharing that. Why don't I just jump off the roof right now and call it a lifetime? It just doesn't seem to be getting any better.” Making sandwiches and living in a beach hut on Derius sounded like heaven right about now.
“Six months later,” he continued, ignoring my outburst.
“I really don't want to hear it,” I interrupted. "I don't care who or how many women you were with, where you were with them or how narcissistic you were when you were with them. Go do whatever you want. You and I are completely over and done with, Senya. We were over and done with ten years ago, but I guess I didn't realize it."
“Pori and Karim were dead having had their brains blown out by Akan's men and I was in Andorus recovering from four more bullet wounds and being raped by the guards. But you know about that."
That was not what I expected to hear
“If I could go back in time and give Pori and Karim a hundred more girls, I would. If I could go back in time and walk down that hill and give myself up before anyone was shot, I would.”
“So why didn't you?”
“I could have prevented everything. I could have killed Akan whilst he slept, fifteen years before you took my sword to him. I could have been here in Karupatani and simply willed Akan to die and he would have done so, but I did not."
"So why didn't you," I repeated.
"At the time, I thought it because I was selfish. I let Pedah be killed, and all of the boys of the Bear Clan because I did not want to return to Mishnah.”
“What do you mean?” I moved around the chimney to sit next to him even though I told myself, I still hated him.
“If Akan had died in his sleep, I would have been immediately recalled to Mishnah and from that moment on, I would have been locked inside the Palace as I am now. Instead, I went on to Andorus, the Child Moon, and eventually Rozari. Akan's life was my freedom. I traded their lives for my freedom.” He lit a fresh cigarette and took a long drag, his blank eyes flickering, his silver hair glowing in the night.
“You weren't exactly free on Andorus or the Child Moon.”
“I was on Rozari.”
I reflected on this for a long time watching the sky as it began to lighten and the birds of the forest around us started to sing their morning songs.
“If the boys were not killed, they would not be alive now. A few of them will go on to do great things, far more than they would have done in their previous form."
Lack of sleep or lack of food was making my head swim. The boys had all been reincarnated? What the heck was he talking about now?
“I could have prevented you from leaving. I could have rescued you in the beginning or years earlier, but if I had, neither Talas, Lumineria nor Rozari would belong to this empire. The Luminerians would have destroyed each other in a civil war. Billions of people would have been killed. Talas would today still be fighting off pirates and trying desperately to feed a starving population that could not trade enough to feed themselves. Rozari…well Rozari would not be what it is about to become.”
“Because I would have stopped you from taking them over?”
“In part. I would have had no incentive to punish the Alliance had they not held you hostage.”
“So it's my fault that you took them over, and it would have been my fault if you didn't. I'm to blame in either case.”
“It is the way it is supposed to be,” he replied. “I am His servant. I must do what I am here to do no matter how unhappy it makes me. You must bear this same burden. You are my partner in this. Together or apart we will travel the same road as we have in the lifetimes past and as we will in the future.”
“How do you know all this?”
He took a long drag on his cigarette. “It’s complicated.”
“Okay, smart ass,” I replied. “How are we going to get off of this roof?”
"Well, I am going to fly down," he said, standing up and stretching. "You may hold on to me if you like or you may wait until daylight when Tuman will come for you with a ladder."
“I don't care what Garinka thinks. You're not an angel.” I put my arms around his neck again though I kept my distance.
“How are you so certain?” Silver light surrounded us and somewhere in the mist, I saw great dark wings. I was floating and then a moment later my feet were on the ground. I let go of him even as he grabbed me. "I'm sorry, Katie. I'm sorry it had to be like this. Please forgive me."
"Why do you need me to forgive you when it's not your fault?" I pulled away. "It's all my fault, remember?"
"It's not your fault either. It is what it is."
"It is what it is," I agreed and walked away.
"Katie," he called after me. "I love you. I love you with all my heart. I am only here because of you."
"Sure Senya. You're forgiven, but you're still a bastard and a dickhead, and even though we have to travel down the same road, right now, I want to stay on the other side of the street."
I went into the house and slammed the door. Then I went upstairs and climbed into the big bed and spent the better part of the day making up for the night spent sitting on the roof.
Chapter 27
Sorkan
I found this game they were playing ever so annoying. The little lady kept climbing out the window, hiding on the rooftops and in trees, whilst my son did nothing but take out his foul temper on us.
In the meantime, Tuman's loud-mouthed wife was trumpeting to the hilltops this ridiculous notion that my son was not a mortal at all but a creature of Heavenly origins who had come down amongst us mortals for a reason unbeknownst to all of us. She, Garinka had proclaimed this in a book which had sold many copies and made her quite wealthy though none in Karupatani save me knew this.
Now, with the miraculous healing of the child whose head was bashed in by that wicked beast of a horse, people had come from far and wide, such that the streets of our village were so thick with bodies one could not pass from house to house without stepping upon a hand or foot.
"Let me through," I declared and along with my brother pushed our way past the throngs that lay prostate before my son's door. "Tell them to go home," I urged my brother. "Are you not the High Priest? Do you not have authority in this matter?"
"Who is to say?" my brother shrugged.
"Ay ow!" someone cried.
"Sorry, very sorry," my brother said and pushing forward, we finally mounted the porch from which Wertoka, the enormous younger son of the chief of a mountain village, I forgot which one, would let us inside.
Before this, my brother stood upon the porch with his arms raised to the heavens and declared, "Go home to your families and villages. Go home to your shops and your farms. There is naught to be done here."
"We must see the MaKennah," the people cried. "Please, he must touch my (insert wife, husband, son, daughter, mother, father, second cousin twice removed) and heal them from that which afflicts them."
"This is absurd," I commented to no one in particular, slamming the front door.
Keko, who was in the kitchen frying eggs as usual, nodded his head in agreement.
"This kind of nonsense never happened in your father's day, may he rest in peace," Keko said. He spat over his shoulder three times in the event that any evil spirits might have been listening to his blessing and thus decided to intercept it thereby interrupting my father’s heretofore restful slumber.
"I don't think our father, though a kind man indeed, would ever have been mistaken for an angel, fallen or otherwise." My brother surveyed the kitchen countertops. "What happened to the loaf of bread Katie made yesterday?"
Keko dumped his eggs onto a plate and pulled a heel of bread from the bread box. "This is all that is left." He put it on the plate. "The MaKennah liked it. Ach, I do not understand that woman. She is happy to feed him but locks her door and makes him sleep upon the sofa instead of giving him that which he really hungers for." He carried the plate upstairs.
"And when did a door lock ever stop my son?" I asked. "He is as complicit in this game as she is."
"They are both arguably insane," my brother agreed, finding a plate of cookies instead. "These are quite good. Did I ever tell you about the excellent tuna fish sandwiches Katie makes?"
"Often," I sighed. "Tell me this, brother." I sat down upon the sofa. "What are we
to do about all these worshippers? Our village cannot sustain this number of people for much longer, the noise is wrecking our nerves." Even now the chanting was forcing me to yell across the room.
"What the hell is going on out there?" my daughter demanded, coming down the stairs. "There are thousands of people outside!"
"Delicious cookies, Niece," my brother said and brushed a crumb from his lip.
"Thanks Tuman. It's an old family recipe. Can't you guys put a stop to whatever is going on out there?"
"I tried." My brother shrugged, taking another cookie.
"What do they want?"
"To be healed," I sighed. “Unlike the rest of us who are quite content to wallow in our misery and enjoy our aches and pains.”
She peeked out the window. "They all want to be healed?"
"Or blessed or just catch a glimpse of him.”
"Oh please," the lady scoffed. "We all see him plenty and do any of us look healed or blessed? Instead, we look sick and wretched."
"Speak for yourself," my brother said, joining my daughter at the window. "I am in fine form.”
"You are at that." My daughter patted my brother’s belly then turned toward the stairs as Senya's odd thumping gait announced his arrival. He didn’t look happy and stared pointedly at his wife whose hand was still upon my brother's midsection. She saw this and put her arm around my brother's waist clinging to his side. I sighed yet again and rolled my eyes. I was so tired of their games.
"Senya, please," I begged. "Go out there and tell them all to go away. We all agree you are wondrous and miraculous but surely you are not a living god and they blaspheme themselves to think thus."
"We don't all agree," the lady said, still clinging to Tuman as if she loved him best.
"You think he is a living god?" Tuman inquired.
"Hardly,” she scoffed. "I just don't agree that he is wondrous and miraculous."
My son frowned at her and then sat beside me on the sofa, propping his leg upon the coffee table. If it were my house, I would have immediately told him to put his foot down on the floor where it belonged.