“Gods. All four legs?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he live?”
“Mmhm. You’ve met.”
“Met?” The moment the word left his mouth, the pieces crashed together. “Wait. Are you talking about Belmiro?”
Fen nodded.
“Belmiro was your…”
More nodding.
Trueblood’s stomach caved in. “Oh, shit.”
“Mm.”
“Well, this isn’t excruciatingly awkward. At all.”
“No, it’s fine,” Fen said.
“Fine?”
“I mean, I and Bel… After I came back, we…”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“Well, he’d built a new life on two legs. And because of everything I’d been through, it was a life I had a hard time dealing with. Plus it was my father who put Bel into his shitty situation. How do you tiptoe around that?”
“What a fucking mess.”
“Yeah. Basically anything between us was impossible. Each was a reminder to the other of things best forgotten.”
“Khe l’khe,” Trueblood said, rubbing his face. “No wonder he ended up hooked so bad.”
“Hooked?”
“Great, now it’s my turn to blow Bel’s cover.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s in his line of business because he’s a fadara addict. He started using it to manage the pain in his legs and couldn’t stop.”
“Shut up,” the kheiron said.
“Telling you, Fen, for a long time, nothing in the Truviad made sense to me. Leave all that cryptic prophecy shit to a philosopher. I like clear directions. I like a purpose. When I found out about Belmiro’s addiction…” He snapped his fingers. “There it was. Purpose. I need to find that tree so Nye can start growing again so I can bring a little back to Bel and turn that shitty situation around.”
“Right,” Fen said, nodding.
“So, like I said, you blew it out in the open but it did some good. It got my head out of my ass and helped me discover I don’t like gelang that comes at a price.”
“Kepten Trueblood,” Fen said, “neither do I.”
Trueblood pulled Fen’s ringos off his finger and held it out to him. “Here.”
“What?”
“Take it. It’s yours.”
Fen looked hard at it. “Why?”
“Because you were a slave once and—”
Fen drew back, eyes narrowed. “You don’t know shit about that.”
“You’re right, I don’t. Only that you were taken away and sold. That’s all the information I need to give this back to you. You’re not my slave, you’re not my servant, you’re not my subordinate. I want you here, because everything in the world points to I and you being the last chance. But it’s no good if you have no choice in the matter. You come on this quest because you want to. Because you’re willing, the way it was chiseled in stone. Come because you have something to offer. Because you care about it. Or else take this, fly back to your home and keep doing the work you did best, which was saving other boys from slavery. I won’t think less of you. But me wearing this is stupid symbolism. I don’t need to think I have some kind of power over you. It insults both of us. Here. Take it. You’re free. You always were.”
Fen took the ringos and slid it on the empty thumb of his fivehand. He stood up and leaned on the rail of the nest again. Trueblood expected flashes of lightning at most, Fen’s wings to immediately unfurl at least.
Neither happened.
Fen just looked out at the world. His face was a stone, although his shoulders trembled a little.
“You all right?” Trueblood said.
“Mm.”
Gods, I really am an idiot. “I’m going down now.”
Fen didn’t answer or move.
Trueblood climbed down the mighty mast alone. Taking his time and resting often, the way his father taught him. Staying on the rigging the whole time and finishing the job.
He walked along the deck, not strutting. Feeling small and foolish and fraudulent. Missing his father badly.
He felt the kheiron before he saw him. A wind that wasn’t of the earth ruffled his hair. Silvery, cool and sweet. Then something dropped over his head and face. He yanked at it, saw it was Fen’s shirt.
He looked up.
Fen arced across the skies, wings spread, circling the ship, spiraling up into the night.
“Khe l’khe,” Trueblood whispered. He raced forward, thundering up the steps of the forecastle and out to the bow of the ship. Eyes locked on the rise and fall of Fen’s wingspan. Awed by the strength it must’ve taken to control them, all the while holding his human body tight and pointed and compact, streamlining himself into the perfect shape for flight.
Impossible flight, he thought. Scholars hated kheirons because they made no scientific sense. Everything about their bodies was wrong. Their wings defied math, broke the laws of nature and laughed in the face of anatomical physics.
It’s magic, Trueblood thought. The world needs magic, impossible things that have no price. And it needs those things to be free.
He wrapped one of the rigging lines around his wrist, put a foot on the bow of the Kaleuche and leaned far out, following the kheiron’s flight. Watching him turn into an inky shadow and grow smaller and smaller against the night sky. The kepten raised an arm, waving Fen’s shirt like a victory flag.
You’re free, he thought. Free to leave, free to stay. Free to fly.
Fly home, kheiron.
More than a few crew members were horrified. None would say it to Trueblood’s face, but it was obvious they thought it was a foolish move. All that long next day, eyes searched the skies, looking for the kheiron. When not inspecting the horizon, every sailor studied the Ĝemelos nervously, wondering if Raj knew which way Fen went and if Lejo knew what the right thing to do was.
Sundown and Fen didn’t return.
“It’s no good if he’s here under duress,” Trueblood said to his crew’s pinched faces. “There’s nothing worse than a sailor who doesn’t want to be at sea. If he’s gone, there’s nothing for it. He’s not the one to be here anyway.”
“Do you believe that?” Abrakam said privately.
“No. Yes. I don’t know. Knowing what I know about him, it felt like the right thing to do.”
“That’s what matters.”
“Lejo hasn’t cornered the market on moral compasses, you know.”
“Aye, lad, I know.”
Night fell over the Cay. The egg of the moon rolled bright and beautiful across the sky. The ship quieted and cabin doors shut one by one. Holding Fen’s discarded shirt, Trueblood walked the decks alone, bow to stern, port to starboard, looking between the sky’s diamonds for a winged shadow.
“I’m reminded of when you first went to sea, Troubled,” Abrakam said. “You’d pace the Cay like this. Holding a piece of your mother’s skirt.”
Trueblood said nothing as he rubbed the material between his fingers, the same way he would rub beaded red-and-gold leaves on an embroidered tree.
Sensing Trueblood wanted to be alone, the centaur went away. Trueblood sat with his back against the foremast, arms around his knees. The lark flew down and perched on his shoulder, her serious little face studying the stars. It grew colder, and she puffed herself out into a ball. When Trueblood put his hand over her, she didn’t shy away. She let him slip her in his coat pocket.
He stayed there, looking up at the sky until he was chilled to his bones. When Lejo appeared in front of him and held out a hand, he took it without protest and let himself be led to bed. He draped his coat on the back of a chair, careful not to disturb the sleeping lark. Then he lay down between the twins until his blood warmed again.
“Do you know where he is?” he whispe
red once to Raj. “Can you find him?”
“Shh.” Raj’s hand dropped heavy on the crown of Trueblood’s head. “He’s finding himself.”
“Don’t worry,” Lejo murmured, drawing tighter against Trueblood’s back. “We’re still together.”
Trueblood knew the sound of his friends’ slumber. He waited for that distinctive double cadence of breath, then slipped out and into the other bed. He spread Fen’s shirt across his pillow and lay his head on it, breathing in the last bits of Fen’s skin. His hand crept beneath the pillow and closed around the folded remnant of green velvet.
Come back, he thought. I can’t find you among the stars and skies. Come back here, where I can look for you.
Come back because you want to.
Come back because you’re free.
Fen reached land at daybreak but didn’t know exactly where he was.
He settled by a stream in a glade of birch trees and withdrew his wings. He drank deeply then sat down to rest.
He was free.
He flexed his ringed fingers and thought about what he could do.
Get his bearings somehow, and fly back to Valtourel. Hide somewhere until he could figure out how to get his moonstone back.
He could steal it.
Or, he could simply ask Naria for it, and if she refused, then steal it.
Maybe Belmiro could get it for me.
He was cold, even in the sunshine. He didn’t tolerate heat and cold well when he was in humos.
He was hungry, too.
And I’m tired.
The thought pressed on him, simple and sudden.
I am really tired of doing this.
He found a mossy spot by the stream where flat rocks had soaked up the sun’s warmth. Wrapped in his wings, he slept the day away.
When he woke, he was still cold, hungry and tired.
And lonely.
Solos was sliding behind the trees. The Kaleuche would be thinking about dinner now.
Were they thinking about him?
Was Trueblood searching the skies, watching for Fen’s return?
Do you miss me?
He lay watching the sky darken to lavender, then indigo. Lunos rose, stately as a woman ascending a staircase, a tiny sliver shaved from her perfect circle. She was starting to wane and turn her face away. Showing her most vulnerable self.
Fen stared at the play of moonlight on the water, his eyes blurring and focusing. The silvery shadows turned into wings. Wings attached to a pure white horse’s body. A human female torso rising from its withers.
Salutos, Tehvani… She spoke his khenom, his soul name. Almost perfectly. Slightly off to his ear, because it belonged to no one but him.
“Salu, sister,” Fen said.
Have I ever told you I adore when you call me sister?
“It hasn’t come up. Then again, this is the first time we’ve met.”
You know, your humor is quite like your father’s.
“Knowing that doesn’t make me feel better.”
How do you feel right now?
“Lost,” he said. “Twenty years since I was found, and I still feel lost.”
Ele-Kheir shifted into humos. Clothed in a gown of moonbeams, she sank down on the moss beside him. Come here, she said, gathering his head onto her lap. He turned his face against her stomach and let her hold him. Her hand was soft in his hair and her wings were warm on top of his.
Little brother, you’re one of the bravest souls I know.
“My soul is tired of being brave.”
He waited for a reproachful sigh. Platitudes. A harangue about duty and destiny.
She went on holding him, her hand stroking his head. Someone’s here to see you, she said, soft as a feather floating on water.
“Who?”
Sit up. Look. Just beyond those trees.
Night had fallen like a black blanket and it took a moment for Fen’s eyes to pick out a darker shadow in the grove and identify its outline. A horse stood among the trees.
Fen got to his feet, peering at the silhouette. Inky-black but transparent at the same time. Here, but not here. He walked closer, blinking under furrowed eyebrows. The horse stepped out as well, and now Fen saw it was a mare. And she wasn’t black, but a deep purple.
Mother?
The mare tossed her head and a swathe of the night sky dimmed behind the colossal wings that spread from her back. Between that magnificent span, her eyes shone deep gold.
“Mother,” Fen whispered. He walked toward the pegaso, arms outstretched, wanting to fling them around her neck so he could bury his face in her coat.
“Mami,” he cried.
He passed straight through her. She was only shadow, no substance.
Hold still, Zoria said.
Fen sank on his knees, wanting nothing more than to remain standing and shift into equos. Show his mother his best side. His purest, most unapologetic self.
Hold still, my one.
He looked up into the gold eyes as Zoria’s head came closer, then moved over his shoulder. Her wings circled him as one of her ebony hooves rolled on its edge.
A shimmering moment of pure love held his heart in gentle hands.
Valentos, I’m here. I’m always here.
Her love embraced him again, then she was gone.
She sees you, ele-Kheir said. You may think no one misses you but believe me, Tehvan, she does.
“I believe you.”
Your father loves you.
Fen looked back. “Now you’re asking a little too much.”
I suppose I am.
He got up and walked toward his ancestral aunt. “He did love me once. I remember it. But something happened. Something changed him. Was it me? Was it what happened to me, or something I did? Or didn’t do?”
The kheirone stood motionless in the moonlight, eyes closed.
“If you know, please tell me,” Fen said.
Some things aren’t for the waking world, Tehvan il-Kheir.
“Some things nobody should have to suffer.”
Fair point, little brother. I’ll tell you. But you can’t remember I told.
She raised her hands.
And she broke Fen’s legs.
At least, that’s what it felt like. All at once, Fen was on his back, writhing and screaming at the jagged edges of bone punching out of his bloody skin. The stream and the moss and the trees vanished. The night vanished. It was day and he was in the sky, hundreds of feet in the air at the top of a Nye tree. Sprawled broken on an old harvest platform and the caracaros were adding their wails to his.
Above him, ele-Kheir hovered. Between her hands pulsed a nebulous cloud of pale blue light.
Do you know what this is?
“Please,” Fen cried. “Stop. I’m sorry. I won’t ask anymore, just make it stop.”
Look here, Tehvan. Look at what I hold.
“Please. Don’t do this to me again. I can’t. I can’t do it again. Please.”
This, Tehvan. Do you see?
“Yes,” he screamed, weeping, fingernails dragging in the rough planks of the platform.
This is your father’s soul. This is the price he paid. This is what happened and what changed him. Not you or anything you did. Your only crime was being the thing he loved most in the world.
“Please…”
This is your father’s soul. He gave it to me. For you. Everything for you. His love, his compassion, his ego, his memory, his reputation. All of it. This for that.
Her arms reared back and she flung the light at Fen. It crackled from the soles of his feet to his waist, bone sinking beneath skin and skin mending together, leaving Fen standing by a stream in the moonlight. His expression dazed. As if he’d fallen asleep standing up and was waking from a complicated dream.
“I’m sorry,” he said slowly, shaking his head. “What was I just saying?”
That you’ve suffered greatly.
“Yes.”
You play a profound part in everything coming to pass right now, Tehvan. Still you are but one part. Things happen for a reason. The reason doesn’t always make itself known and if it does, it’s not always a reason you feel was worthwhile.
They sat down on the moss and he put his head in her lap once more. Her hand fell soft on his head and her feathers lay warm on top of his. Things are happening in the world right now. And the world needs you.
“I hate that reason,” he said. “I have so much hate in my heart and I can’t let go of it.”
You’re worthy of love, little brother.
“I try to believe that,” he said. “But part of me is always just so fucking scared. Part of me is still a foalboy wondering if anyone is coming to find me. If anyone will rescue me out of my own body. If anyone will ever understand what they did…” His voice cracked open and he fought to finish. “And if someone does come, does find me and rescue me, will they even want me? Because part of me is Alon, too. Part of me believes nobody’s going to want me, not ever. The Alon in me wants to slide off my own back and fall away and…die.”
My mother felt the same way, ele-Kheir said.
“Your mother?”
I and my twin were children of rape.
Fen rolled in her lap and looked up at her. The thread of the Truviad unwound in his mind, retelling how Khe pursued the pegaso who lived at the top of Nydirsil.
He gave chase and forced himself upon her, ele-Kheir said. Siring twins, male and female. The first kheirons.
“But that’s all it says,” Fen said.
All?
“The Truviad just glosses over the rape part of it. The pegaso, your mother, isn’t even mentioned again. Ever again. Did she even have a name?” He sat up. “She doesn’t. She’s never named in any of the stories.”
Ele-kheir touched his face. She didn’t think anyone would want to know it.
“She thought nobody wanted her.”
The Voyages of Trueblood Cay Page 28
