A man turned toward him as Nylan finally came near to the crowd, and the boy sucked in his breath, all at once overwhelmed by the psychic noise the crowd was making. The man called the attention of several of the strangers to Nylan, and they moved toward him, all talking and thinking so loudly he could barely stand it. He couldn’t understand anything they said and their thoughts and emotions made no sense to him, either.
I won’t cry. I won’t! But the people were coming closer, their minds growing louder as they did.
“This was a mistake,” he whispered, dizziness roaring in his head. All the faces and minds were a babble to him, noisy and terrifying and too much to take. As the strangers reached him, Nylan, drowning in the chaos of the minds surrounding him, lost his fragile hold on his new reality and blacked out.
# # #
CHAPTER FOUR
Nylan blinked as a hand came too close to his face.
“So, you are awake,” a man’s voice commented, his accent harsh. Whatever he was speaking, it was not quite the same language Nylan knew, but the man stood close enough that he was able to make out the man’s meaning if not his exact words.
He’d been awake for some time, but he’d been trying to figure out what was going on before revealing this fact to his...
Captors? Rescuers? Where am I now? And how did I get here?
Biting his lip, Nylan tried to sit up and found his left arm weighing him down, heavily bandaged and in a sling. His movement awoke all of his injuries at once, and his arm throbbed from shoulder to fingertips.
Opaque, white curtains tented him in with two strangers. They wore long, white coats which seemed to blend in with the curtains. One of the men wore round, wire-rimmed spectacles and the other had a fastidiously-trimmed handlebar mustache a few shades redder than his slicked-back hair.
Nylan’s shattered memory balked at both of these things, his first reaction being that they looked old-fashioned. Even their clothes were entirely unfamiliar, plainer and stiffer than the rich fabrics, colors, and needlework to which he was accustomed.
“You shouldn’t move, child,” Spectacles was saying, a hand exerting gentle pressure on his right shoulder to keep him from continuing his struggle to sit up. “You’ve been through the wars, by the look of you.”
“Yes.” Mustache’s frown deepened, making his mustache stick out even more prominently. “Be a good boy, and stay in bed.”
They stood on either side of him, twin towers surrounding his narrow cot. He’d been dressed in a plain white shift and tucked beneath crisp sheets and a thin blanket, also white. All unfamiliar.
“Do you have a name, child?” Mustache asked.
“What a question, Morley! Of course he has a name!”
So, Mustache is named Morley. I wonder what Spectacles’ name is.
Morley leaned in closer, his frowning face quite close to Nylan’s. “Your name,” he said loudly, as if he thought the boy might be deaf.
My name, Nylan thought. Of course. They want to know my name. But at that moment, he realized this was one of the many things he’d forgotten. Biting down even harder on his lip, he shook his head.
“Hmm. This is a pretty mystery,” Morley muttered.
“He’ll have to be reported in the Sentinel,” Spectacles said. “And JhaPel will have to be contacted if no one claims him.”
“He’s absolutely lovely,” Morley said to himself. “And he has a look about him...I don’t know. Doesn’t seem the sort to be abandoned. Surely, someone will come for him.”
Spectacles shot a sidelong glance at the boy and ushered his associate outside the curtain. Nylan could no longer make out even the occasional words he thought he understood, and he gave up as the men walked away, still talking.
Nylan lay motionless on his bed, his good hand hugging the least-painful part of his hurt arm as if he had to physically hold himself together or lose his grip on the last thread of sanity.
He had no idea what his name was, though he knew he did have a name. He had no idea how he’d arrived here in this place, though he remembered falling through the night and landing on the hard, wet ground somewhere beyond these white curtains. He had no idea what this place was. He had no idea who he was. Tears brimmed in his eyes, and he bit his lip harder to try to keep them at bay, tasting blood. For some reason he also couldn’t remember, crying was not a good reaction to the situation. He needed to be strong and brave.
A slim, angular woman wearing a long white dress and a dark blue apron swept in through the curtains and smiled at him. Her light brown hair was pinned back but a few soft curls escaped to frame her pleasant, pretty face.
“The healers said you were awake.” She sat down on the edge of his cot and gently pressed the back of her hand to his forehead. “Awake and alert, that is. At last,” she added, still smiling. “I was beginning to worry your fever would last the year.”
The moment she touched him, her thoughts and emotions became as clear to him as his own, and he flinched away from her as if she’d burned him.
“I’m sorry.” She drew back at once. She smiled at him, and he relaxed. Nothing she’d been thinking or feeling had been anything to fear.
They don’t know what I am. The thought ran through his brain quickly, and he flinched again. He didn’t want to remember that of all things. He couldn’t ask her about it, either, because what if it were true? What if they kill people like me here? ...Why do I know that? He’d just have to be very careful and try to figure out the truth without revealing his secret.
The woman’s smile grew worried around the edges, and he pulled himself out of the spiral of fear and returned hers with a tentative smile of his own. Should I know her? he wondered. But that couldn’t be. If she knew him, she’d know his name, and the healers wouldn’t have had to ask him for it.
“Who are you?” Nylan rasped. The sound of his own voice startled him. It sounded odd to him, the accent unlike the other voices he’d heard.
The woman frowned, seeming to be concentrating. After a moment she smiled and made a small gesture indicating her failure to understand him. “You must be thirsty. I’ll be right back.”
She swept out of sight and returned a few moments later carrying a glass of water. She set the glass down and gently slipped an arm under Nylan’s shoulders, helping him to sit up at last. She rearranged his pillows so he was more propped up than sitting, but once she was satisfied he wouldn’t tip over, she handed him the glass. Nylan reached out for it reflexively, and she smiled at him again.
“Here you are, sir. The finest in the house.”
He drank down half the glass and tried to speak again. “Who are you?”
The concentrating look returned, and this time she seemed to guess what he wanted even if he wasn’t sure she’d really understood him. “My name is Nanna Whiltierna. Most call me Nanna Tierna.” She stopped, realizing, he guessed, that she was saying too much in light of their language difficulties. She pointed at herself and said, “Nanna Tierna,” enunciating carefully. Then she pointed to him.
Nylan pointed at her, repeating her name. She nodded, smiling a beautiful smile and pointed at him again. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“I’ve been calling you Michael practically this entire moon. Do you like that?” She stopped, shaking her head and giving a small laugh. “Michael,” she repeated, adding a broad gesture that seemed to say, “What do you think of that?”
He brushed a long, black lock of hair out of his eyes, unconsciously echoing her earlier frown of concentration. He pointed at himself and said, “Michael?”
“It would just be until you remembered,” she agreed, nodding. All of her movements broadened as she tried to make him understand her. “Michael’s a good name.”
He echoed her nod, accepting this new identity. He had to have a name—even though he couldn’t remember much of anything, he at least knew that—and he liked the way “Michael” sounded when she said it.
That question settled, she began to
talk to him as if he could understand her. He had the impression she’d been talking to him this way the entire time he’d been in her care. As she talked, she managed to remake his bed with him still in it, give him a general inspection, and change some of his bandages.
He took stock of his injuries while she worked, noting that the sling cradling his arm was sturdy and clean. This was a good place, he guessed, and he felt lucky to have been brought here.
He couldn’t tell if his arm was broken and made a hesitant attempt to wiggle his fingers. He gave that up quickly when hot pain shot up his arm, but he couldn’t stifle a small gasp.
“Oh, dear, Michael. Are you all right?” He nodded, clenching his teeth together behind closed lips to keep the pain hidden.
“I’m afraid it’s broken and very badly, too.” Her hand brushed his shoulder inadvertently, allowing him to know exactly what she meant. “But you’re healing fast! Everyone’s amazed. You’re so strong for such a little thing.”
She went back to her bustling, still talking. From all that she said, he thought he understood that he’d been found badly injured, had been very ill for quite some time, and no one had come to claim him.
Injured and ill. This seemed to still be true, but he couldn’t remember how it might have happened. He remembered vague snatches of things which might as easily have been dreams or nightmares rather than what happened to bring him here.
He seemed to have no trouble remembering how the world worked and even finding things to be unlike what he expected them to be, but he remembered nothing about how he fit into the world, nothing about his own life except for random absolutes including that he hated red soup and didn’t like honey because it was sticky.
While he knew this was very odd, he found he was not much interested in discovering his lost memories. Something made him think it might be better to not remember, to start over from here, to not look too closely at what might have brought him to this place and this state.
He realized later that he had simply chosen not to try to remember. As the days passed and no one came to claim him or explain what had happened, the newly-named Michael decided he didn’t want to know how he’d ended up so out of place and so badly hurt. Nanna Tierna was kind and patient, and she made an effort to remain a consistent presence in his life for the next several days. He allowed that to be enough.
He remembered drawing, and after a day of having nothing to do but watch nannas and healers come and go, he acted out drawing for Nanna Tierna, hoping she might be able to find him some paper.
She seemed surprised by this development, but the next time she visited on her rounds, she brought him a small stack of odds and ends of blank-on-one-side paper and a few, well-sharpened pencils. At once, their ability to communicate opened up considerably.
When next he visited his patient, Spectacles couldn’t stop exclaiming over his small patient’s artwork. He held one of Michael’s drawings out as if examining a chart.
“This is amazing! Are you certain our little lad, here, drew it himself?”
“Of course he did, Healer,” Tierna declared. She gave Michael a wink.
“I’d be interested to know just what else the boy can do.” He handed the picture back and disappeared beyond the curtains once more.
Tierna stared after him for a moment, a thoughtful expression on her face, then she, too, vanished.
This time, when she returned, she had a stack of books with her. Michael, delighted, reached out for them eagerly.
“You can read?” She almost dropped the books in surprise.
“Yes, Nanna,” Michael said. “I remember reading.”
It took him a bit of work to adjust to the dialect—the one he spoke when he was found and the one everyone else spoke were both close enough to each other and different enough from each other to thoroughly confuse him. Spectacles—whose name, Michael finally learned, was Tineson—took a special interest in helping him sort through these difficulties, however, and with the healer’s help and Nanna Tierna’s, Michael was soon reading easily, his ability to speak the language growing with every story he finished.
By the time Michael was well enough to leave the hospital and be sent on to somewhere more permanent, he and Nanna Tierna were fast friends. She saw to it that he was accepted at the JhaPel Orphanage which was run by her Order. She often stayed at JhaPel herself when on leave from the hospital and attended Holy Prayers at the temple there, so they would still be able to see each other.
Though it frightened him to be leaving the only place and people he could remember, Tierna’s friendship and encouragement made him determined not to disappoint her by showing his fear.
Michael dressed carefully in his second-hand clothes on the morning he was to go to JhaPel, put his papers and pencils into the sturdy pack Tierna had given him, and followed her out of the hospital and into a world he didn’t know.
# # #
CHAPTER FIVE
Michael stood alone in the center of a small, wood-paneled room, biting his lip and clutching his pack. Nanna Tierna had left the room with Abbess Ethene, an older lady whose room this apparently was.
He was too nervous to sit down in one of the two prettily needlepoint-cushioned chairs which sat on his side of the older lady’s desk, but he was also too nervous to do anything but stand where he’d been left. He nearly jumped out of his skin when something brushed against his ankles, but when he looked down, he discovered only a very small, long-haired gray cat. It purred at him and rubbed again, and he knelt to pet it.
Her, he thought, knowing, as he always knew such things, that this was indeed a she-cat. She blinked wisely at him and then miaowed, ordering him to continue petting her.
In one of the books he’d read at the hospital, there had been a cat named Cyra. “Should I call you Cyra? Would you like that?” Her purr grew louder, and he laughed, scratching at her ears with enthusiasm.
Nanna Tierna was right—this place won’t be bad. I’ve already made a friend.
Cyra had just wandered away, and Michael had climbed back to his feet when the women returned.
Abbess Ethene seemed very surprised to find him still standing. “You may sit, my dear.” Her voice was soft and clear, but her accent was quite different from Nanna Tierna’s.
He bobbed his head in acknowledgement of her statement and perched on the edge of the nearest chair. The abbess smiled. Michael realized with a small start of surprise that he’d misjudged her age. She couldn’t have been that much older than Nanna Tierna, but she carried herself differently, her manners more formal, her face less prone to smiling. Though smaller than Tierna, she exuded calm and self-possession, her presence taking up more space than her body. A bun bound her hair back too tightly in a style unflattering to her narrow face. It also made her sharp nose seem more prominent. Michael’s fingers itched to draw her.
“He’s an endearing child, Whiltierna. But that hair—”
Nanna Tierna fluttered. “Healer Tineson thinks he might be Reinra. They may have left him behind after their last trading voyage. Or perhaps something happened, and they didn’t know he’d survived it. His memory, you know. Who knows how long he was wandering before he was found.”
The abbess frowned at this. “But it’ll be moons and moons before they come back. If he is Reinra, what are we to do with him? They’re the strangest folk I’ve ever seen.”
“And they don’t cut their hair,” Tierna agreed. “So Healer Tineson thought it best to leave the boy’s hair alone. Just in case we can reunite him.”
“If the Healer thinks it best. Still, we shall have to do something to downplay it. Tie it back or something. The other boys will tease.”
Michael followed this exchange idly, having heard the healer’s theory before. It didn’t spark any twinges of memory, and he mostly dismissed it as something which would be irrelevant until the mysterious Reinra could be consulted which, as Abbess Ethene had just said, would be moons and moons.
He stifled a sigh and wo
ndered how much longer the two women were going to talk about him. After so much time at the hospital, he was more than used to being discussed rather than addressed. The first few times it had happened, he’d felt a dim sense of outrage, but this had subsided quickly. They’d all dismissed him as a foreigner who couldn’t speak their language, but that hadn’t been true for long. His ability to read had sped up his understanding considerably, though his speech continued to be a bit stilted.
Ethene sighed, resigned. “Well, he’s polite and very patient. I will say that for him.”
“Yes, and he’s very observant. He’s learning more and more words every day—he reads! And he has a goddess-given gift for art. I was hoping a tutor could be arranged.”
“We shall have to see about that,” the abbess replied. “Perhaps some of the other children could also benefit from lessons.”
She noticed Tierna’s disappointment—which was so strong Michael felt it from across the room—and shook her head. “Whiltierna, I did not say no. We are not exactly in a position to train up artists and authors, you know. Training and experience which will ready them for apprenticeships is the most practical. Even with the best training in the world, there’s no guarantee anyone could ever make a living as an artist.”
“He is so talented, Abbess Ethene,” Tierna said fiercely. “Please, let me ask my family if they could help. If someone of their acquaintance might donate an hour or two every quarter-moon, he could learn so much! And it needn’t interfere with his chores and other lessons.”
After a long moment, Ethene nodded. “You may ask. But if any other children show similar promise, this philanthropist must be willing to share his or her time with them also.”
SanClare Black (The Prince of Sorrows) Page 7
