“I don’t think he expected to die before you came back home and he could tell you everything in person. Your mother said he wrote a note in the diary that he wanted to give it to her when you both got there and he told you everything he had been keeping from both you and her.”
He listened to her cry and get more upset when she told him she couldn’t see how he would have explained any of this to her in person. She told him something he didn’t know and she made him swear not to tell her mother. She told him he whipped her with a stick after she made Frog because he was so angry with her about it. She told him he never whipped her again, but any time she did something like what she had learned she was meant to do, he always got angry with her. He never explained to her how she did it, but always yelled at her not to do it again and then would give her a hard lesson about learning to control herself.
“How could he possibly explain that to me in a way I could understand? While he was whipping me, it hurt, but it kept healing because we had eaten before I went into the gardens and kissed Frog. The more he hit me and it healed, he seemed to rage more. He hit me harder and faster until there were too many lashes on my back and I couldn’t heal them. There was nothing for me to eat to make it heal faster. He yelled at me to go outside with Frog and fix my mess and slammed his door. He wouldn’t come out for the rest of the day.
“I took Frog outside and I didn’t know what to do with him. Even though it heals, it still hurts me and it’s uncomfortable while it’s healing. I had to take him into the gardens with my dress open in the back because it hurt too much to have it on my skin. Frog didn’t know anything and was just as confused as I was. I thought I had hurt him and I tried to make him feel better, but he couldn’t understand what I was saying. Belisarus taught me to read and speak when I was a child, but he refused to help me teach Frog. I was probably nine or ten when this happened and there was still so much I didn’t know. Frog learned as I did.”
He opened his mouth to speak and she cut him off. She told him she didn’t want to hear about his diary again. She confessed that she didn’t think it had any of the answers she wanted and it most likely read like a historical document to be read after she died about what she was like growing up. She thought the only reason he wrote it was because after she died, her only history would be from when she first showed up on the mainland. If Belisarus kept the tribe’s history and that was how he found her flute, he probably only documented her growth for history, not to answer both her and Esylle’s questions.
He pulled her close and really, only Belisarus could make this better and he wasn’t here anymore. He asked her if she had even looked at the diary and read his note to Esylle on the first page of it. She tried to push him away and tell him she didn’t want to. She didn’t want to read about herself like one of the experiments in his own family’s journals knowing he wrote them as her grandfather.
“I read the note to her. I was there with the two of them during her lessons and he loved your mother. I could tell just being there. He’s not writing about you in that journal like an experiment. I think he felt guilty the entire time about what he did to both of you. I think he felt bad that Esylle had to miss so much of you growing up and the diary is little notes to her filling in the blanks. Just based on the note I read, he wrote about you fondly and the diary is meant for both of you. Not for everyone to read after you die.”
“I don’t want to know he could stay up after I went to bed writing about me like I was his granddaughter, then treat me the way he did when I was awake.”
“You know you aren’t going to feel better until you’ve either read it or your mother has and tells you the contents. You’re being stubborn, like your mother.”
“She told me my father was the stubborn one,” she said, wiping her nose.
“They were both stubborn as a mule and you got it from both of them so it’s worse.”
“I don’t know what I got from either of them. He took me away and wouldn’t tell me about them. If he had told her who I was, she probably would have let me leave and maybe we at least could have sent ravens and got to know each other that way. Then my father wouldn’t have had to die trying to look for me.”
“I’m not him, but I’m trying to be a father to you. Your mother is trying to get to know you again and wants you to know her. Several of the things you do when you’re angry or upset, you got from her, even though you didn’t grow up with her.” When she asked him what, he informed her she was scratching her nose, just like her mother did when she was confused. “Ask us questions. We have several days of walking ahead of us before you have to do anything big again. Stop refusing to talk about anything and just settle yourself that you’ll get those answers in the diary. Spend the rest of the journey getting to know us. Both of us would be happy to answer any questions about your father. I can answer anything about your mother and I know she just wants you talking again.”
“Why would you talk about him if you loved my mother and she married him?”
“I always thought nothing would come of my love of your mother and I just wanted to see her happy. He made her very happy and so did you until you disappeared. When you disappeared and he left to find you, I tried everything I could to get her smiling again, but I don’t think she was truly happy again until you showed back up and you told her the way you thought I was looking at her. I still don’t see how you saw that, but didn’t understand why those boys were fighting over you.”
“You say that journal won’t read like an experiment, but that’s almost how he raised me. He stopped telling me the stories I liked so much after I made Frog because he said I lived too much in my head and if I wasn’t concentrating on fairy tales, Frog wouldn’t have happened. I didn’t know I could change like the tribes until he asked me to. I don’t know how he changed his scent so I didn’t know he was Theran, but I didn’t start reacting to smells and being able to pick them out until I was very young and he tried to get me to change into a kitten. After that, the smells were overwhelming at first. He would bring in different things for me to smell and wrote down my reactions.
“I thought that was all I could do and I was too young to question how I could have fire and be Theran. I didn’t know everyone couldn’t do that then. After he went through all of these Theran things he wanted to teach me, he showed me how to change and fly. Once I had that mastered, he showed me how to change as Tark. We only had a small pond in the yard, so I had to become a minnow. I did the same thing my mother did the first time I changed and tried to hold my breath. I knew what she was doing and tried to help her the first time she changed because I did the same thing.”
“I don’t think you know how much it meant to your mother that you took time out of everything you had to do to take her on her first swim. I know she upsets you sometimes, but I don’t think you realize how much she missed you and spent the last nineteen years hoping you were loved.”
“I know this. And I wasn’t. If he loved me, he never acted like it. I don’t want her to know, so I haven’t been talking. I’d rather you not tell her anything I just told you. I know how she feels when she’s upset and I’ve been feeling it the past two days. I don’t want to make it worse.”
He sighed and pulled her back to him. She had finally stopped crying, but she was still upset. She wasn’t used to having a mother and maybe this was something else she didn’t understand. He asked her what she thought would upset Esylle more; her confiding in her mother how she grew up and why it upset her so she could try to make it better or if both of them came out of the woods with her talking again and both of them telling her they talked about something Lisana didn’t want her to know and didn’t think she could talk to her about.
He could see her thinking and she was scratching her nose again, so he tried to explain this to her. He told her Esylle would rather her let her in and tell her the hard things so she can learn how to make it better for her than the two of them keep secrets from her. He said he had known Esylle since
she was a baby and Lisana keeping secrets from her would upset her more, especially if it was a secret that had her refusing to talk for days.
He saw her open her mouth and he knew exactly what she was going to say. Sono told him she refused to talk about her night with Oris because they all knew more about her than she did and she should be allowed to have her own secrets. He tried to gently explain to her that even if the tribes knew the secrets Belisarus kept from her, her mother never knew. There was also nineteen years of her life that no one here knew about because she was on Idric. He tried to explain to her that her mother was desperate for that information and he thought the three boys she was going to marry would be interested in it as well.
“It wasn’t a happy nineteen years. I asked who she was for years, but he refused to tell me. When I was refusing to come, he could have at least prepared me for meeting her again. I was sure I wasn’t her daughter and I did so much to hurt her when I thought I wasn’t. When I finally found out I really was, I didn’t know how to act around her.”
He was still trying to make it better, so he tried to explain that Esylle didn’t hold how she acted before she knew who she was against her. He did have to ask why she was so convinced she was not Lisana when she and Esylle looked so much alike. She only looked at him sadly and told him she never thought about what she looked like until she got here and everyone started talking about it. She never looked in Belisarus’ shaving mirror at home. The only time she saw her reflection was in the water in the pond outside her house. She never thought about what the two of them looked like standing next to each other. She said she was sure she wasn’t because she thought he would have at least told her that when she was refusing to come.
He didn’t realize how long they had been sitting on the rock talking and they hadn’t started gathering food at all. She had been mostly picking at her food the past few days and finally telling him what was wrong must have finally caught up with her. He felt his stomach go into knots and he heard hers growl. He asked her if she thought she could go to Esylle and tell her what she told him while he gathered food. He was relieved when she stood to leave and only hoped Esylle didn’t get as upset as Lisana suspected she would. He started to search around for food as fast as he could now that he thought she might eat.
Esylle
They had been traveling for two days and had at least another three before she was back home and could sleep in her own bed. Whatever Leodos said to her when he went after her in the forest made her come out and tell Esylle and all three boys what was bothering her. She had been talking for the past two days when they stopped to eat and the more she told them about how Belisarus raised her, the more Esylle wanted to get home so that she could read his journal. She didn’t think he wrote about her like she was an experiment like she kept saying. Esylle thought her answers were in that journal.
Volaris, Terros, and Fluvis had now joined them now that she was talking again. Volaris and Sono both got extremely upset and couldn’t hide it from her when she told everyone that she was tethered during her first change as Farkhi and that was the only way he would let her fly growing up. She told all of them the first time she ever flew without being roped down was when she made herself small to fly into the palace the first time she saw Esylle and Leodos and she didn’t think Leodos would have been able to pierce her with his arrow if she had been used to flying freely as a hawk.
Esylle didn’t say anything and watching the arrow sail and strike her petrified her after she felt her call to her. She was almost glad it did hit her the way it did. Judging by how scared she was of everyone, if he hadn’t stopped her while she was running away, she might not have ever seen her again. She knew after seeing Lisana like that, Leodos wouldn’t have taken her to the pond again and would not have let her out of his site for the girl to be able to give her the message she needed to give. If the arrow had missed, Esylle wondered if she would have abandoned giving her the message she was supposed to give and just gone back to Idric because she was scared. She fought her when she was calling to her and she didn’t feel it. She thought she would have gone back home never knowing they were related. She also knew by the time she got back home, Belisarus would have died and not been able to tell her why she needed to come back. If that arrow hadn’t slowed her down long enough for Leodos to bring her under the castle, she might never have found her again.
Sono asked to take her flying after finding out she spent so much time tethered. She only looked at him sadly and said she knew what it was like now. She also looked at Neptis and thanked him for showing her the ocean. Oris looked at her, confused and asked her how she ran to calm herself at home if she couldn’t leave the yard. Both Terros and Oris got upset when she told them she had to run in circles as a rat or a house cat in the yard. The first time she was able to run free was when she came here. Oris asked to take her running because she was clearly still upset, even if she was talking to them.
She declined going running, as she did flying. Esylle took a chance and asked her why and she told her after everything, she just wanted to feel like a normal girl for the next few days. She thought she might have to become things like the serpent and the flaming bird when they got back to the palace to convince the humans there. She just wanted to pretend she was normal while they walked back. Esylle knew she should say something about how her gifts were a part of her, but she didn’t because she didn’t want her to stop talking.
After several more days of walking, they could finally see the palace from a hill. She told them all this was where she stood when she first laid eyes on it. She wanted to transform and fly there to make sure everyone wasn’t going into danger. Esylle thought she knew better by now. No one wanted her to and everyone who had been touched by the light healed like her now. Volaris also wanted to come and didn’t look like he was going to take no for an answer.
“I just want to fly over to see if there are riots. If there’s not, I’ll come back and you can come with me. They won’t notice one sparrow, but they will notice if it’s all of us.”
“I thought you understood you can’t risk yourself like this?” Volaris asked. “I’ve been flying longer than all of you here and know how to survey a scene without being noticed. Let me go.”
Lisana tried to argue that if they shot him out the air, she wouldn’t know and might not be able to get to him to heal him in time. Volaris rarely got angry with her, but he did now. He argued back with her that he had been trained for things like this since birth. She had spent this entire time asking them to trust her and now she needed to trust him. He argued she was not the only one with gifts. Lisana seemed surprised at his outburst, but agreed to let him fly ahead. She looked alert and walked away from them as soon as he flew off.
“You can come out from the brush. I can smell you in there and that you’re scared. We mean you no harm.”
A man a few years older than Lisana came out with his hands up. Esylle could see a woman and a small child hiding behind his back. She could see that the woman was with child. Both the woman and child couldn’t decide if they wanted to stay hidden behind the man or if they wanted to peer around him to look at Lisana.
“You’re the girl they told us was coming?” he asked slowly.
“Come sit,” she said gently. “What did they tell you about me? I was too young to remember being here before, but you know my mother and grandfather.”
“It sounded like lies to scare us into paying more taxes again. I spent thirty moons in the cells and my family went hungry when I couldn’t pay them before. They told us if we couldn’t accept the changes that were coming, we could go to Idric, so that’s where we’re heading.”
“Is that what it’s like for the other humans here? You can’t afford to eat and they throw you in cells when you can’t give them your coin? They weren’t telling you stories and there’s no new tax coming. My grandfather will take his place back on the throne, but this time, with a council made up of the tribe-kings. The humans will elect
who they want to represent them. If you don’t want to leave or become part of the tribes, stay and pick someone who better represents you for the council.”
“You look enough like Esylle to be the missing princess. How do I know that it wasn’t they who took you so long ago and trained you to tell us this when they finally revealed you again? How do I know they haven’t been planning this since you went missing?”
Lisana sighed and asked him if the humans mistrusted everyone. Esylle knew she was going to have to show him, she just hoped she didn’t frighten him further. She was relieved when she changed into a simple house cat. The cat leapt in the air and she changed into a butterfly. The man looked wary as she flew over to the little girl he had with him. He didn’t relax until the child started laughing as she landed on her nose and then played in her hair.
She finally changed back sitting in front of him. She said there was no water nearby that she could show him that she could also change as Tark, but he was already convinced. Esylle didn’t know what all the men that had come back from Idric did and did not tell everyone else and neither did her daughter. They must not have told everyone who took her and why because the man asked her if she had been in danger when she was taken away and if she had been taken because she was so special.
“I was taken because of who I am. I was never in danger while I was gone. I never knew, but the man who took me was really my grandfather and he thought he was protecting me. Since you are here now, you can tell me how everyone is reacting by the palace. The king of the Farkhi is flying over to see if there are riots. If you wish me to change you and your family, all of the tribe-kings are sitting with us and you can talk to each of them before you choose. If you just want to stay human and don’t want to go to Idric, I promise, things will get better here, not worse. I haven’t gotten your name yet. My name is Lisana, but I was raised with the name Soryn. I should get used to people calling me by my real name, so you can call me that.”
The Spirus Page 45
