by Kaplan, EM
Like Jenks? Why would I be like him?
"She is talented. She would not be a failure here," her mother said. The unspoken like Jenks, trailed her words. "And she might be ostracized and viewed with suspicion out in world. What would she do, be a fortune teller, a healer, or a courtesan? You of all people know how difficult it is to live among them. And she is not deficient. Not in any way."
"She lived among them all this past season successfully, did she not? She had a whole season to make friends and connections."
"Who are all dead or missing. Use your heart, Ley’Albaer, if you have one. It must be somewhere still beating inside of you." Then her mother said, "I will not send her away. And that is my final word."
"I have never known you not to compromise, Ana," her father said calmly. He was surprised, but his pulse was slowing. He was beginning to detach from the conversation, Mel realized. Her mother realized it, too and ceased pressing her point, knowing that the discussion was over.
He doesn’t care what happens to me?
Mel heard the sound of shuffling papers, the whisper of books being removed from a stack. Without any bidding of goodnight or farewell, her father left silently, closing the front door behind him. His restraint was far worse than any outburst may have been. Mel heard a faint gasp, an intake of breath, and she realized with alarm that her mother was crying. She sat up in bed, but before she could get up, the door opened and her mother came in.
"I'm sorry you had to hear that," she said sitting on the edge of Mel's bed. Mel wasn't sure if her mother meant the argument or her gasping sob. She'd never heard her mother cry before. Never. As she examined her mother’s face in the near-darkness, she didn't find any trace of tears or discomfiture. Her mother was still upset. The air in her room was chilly, but Mel preferred to hug herself under the blanket instead of going to the trouble of warming her skin by concentration. She liked the feel of the warm weight against her, its familiar smell of herbs and rainwater that they used for wash.
"I've never thought disparagingly of Jenks," Mel said. But she had never considered Jenks one of them, that was for certain. He was not a Mask. He was just a quiet man with kind blue eyes, a solitary outsider, who ran messages and errands between them and the outside world. She thought he lived apart from all people by choice.
"Jenks was born here," her mother said. "He's a relation, in fact. Related to you by blood."
That news stunned Mel. "You grew up with him? Trained with him?"
"Yes."
"But he doesn't live here in the settlement. Was he made to leave?"
"Made to?" Her mother shook her head. "No, he was allowed to stay here if he liked. He chose to leave." Mel struggled to comprehend. Her mother was being purposefully cautious with details.
"But he was asked not to wear the Mask?"
"We all thought it a wise decision, but it was his to make. However, it's true, he would not have made an adequate Mask. He was too . . . impulsive. Unable to remain neutral, which is essential to our role when we're on the outside. If we cannot remain impartial, we are all but useless to others."
"And you think I am like him?" Mel steadied herself. If she let herself, she could burn with shame at her earlier outburst in the meeting hall.
"No, Mel, I do not."
"You don't think I need to leave, too?"
"No, Mel." Her mother took her hand. Her mother's fingers were cool and smooth. She had calmed herself as well.
"But my father does."
Her mother was silent for a minute. "I'm afraid you do not know your father as well as you might. He has been away these four years during some of your most formative times. He's very highly valued as a Mask. And further, he cares about you very deeply. Never doubt that for an instant."
"He may care for me, but he doesn’t think I belong here," Mel said.
"He merely wants what is best for you."
"Does he?" Mel wondered aloud.
Instead of answering, her mother said, "Maybe you should talk with Jenks about his decision, if he's willing to discuss it. He might talk with you." She sounded doubtful. "In any case, I intend for you to take the Mask and to accompany me on my task."
Mel was stunned yet again.
Her mother explained further, "I have received a summons. We have an assignment. I'm preparing to attend a labor dispute in the north. I mean for you to travel as my second."
Mel had a thousand questions. She was going to wear the Mask? So soon? Was it the right thing for her to do? Though frequent travel was in the cards for a Mask, did she want to leave home again? Was she ready? She could manage only one word. "When?”
"The dispute is quite heated. And although I need time to prepare, we have been solicited with some urgency. I have past experience with these types of negotiations and a great deal of scholarship in the behavioral patterns of workers. We are hoping to curtail any violent actions, so we hope to be in place fairly quickly. I believe we can prepare ourselves and leave before winter. We will not want to encounter their winter while we are traveling. It could make for quite a treacherous passage. Also, that will give you time for study and memorization until then, and I can gather a few provisions." She stood and smoothed the blanket where she'd been sitting. "We travel very lightly, you know."
"I know," said Mel.
"You are satisfied with this plan?" her mother asked her.
In the dark, Mel nodded, knowing her mother could see her.
"Good night then, Mel." They did not embrace—it wasn’t their custom other than following a long separation—and although her mother’s presence soothed her, Mel wished for a moment that they could be like any human mother and daughter that she’d read about, that she’d heard about first-hand at the Keep. She would have liked to have been wrapped inside her mother’s velvety caress.
Sometime later, Mel still could not sleep. She draped her blanket around her shoulders. Pausing by her mother's room, she could feel, finally, the relaxed mind of her mother as she slept deeply, the even exchange of breaths in and out. Mel pushed open their heavy wooden front door and slipped outside, stopping on the porch to slide on her shoes before she stepped out onto the road. Her father's house was a few hundred paces down. Though it was the middle of the night now, she saw light in the windows. Her breath came in ghostly clouds in the chilled air. The sky was clear, but she was sure they would have their first snow before too much longer.
At ten paces away, she saw the front door of his house open. He stood waiting for her. How great a distance did his sense radius encompass, she wondered. Did he know she was awake even as she lay in her room tossing and turning? She climbed the steps of the porch. His face was calm, unreadable. He stepped aside to allow her to enter. The inside of his house was the same cool temperature as outside despite its cozy light.
"Do you feel the cold?" Ley’Albaer asked her immediately, not concerned but curious. His steel gray eyebrows flickered upward.
"Yes," she said. "But I like the comfort of a blanket."
"You can control your temperature, but you choose not to do so," he said, summarizing carefully.
"Yes."
"Why?" He surprised her.
She struggled to find words. Then she said, "I like to feel."
"It's our ability to control our emotions that makes us valuable to others."
She felt chastened and pulled the blanket tighter around herself.
"I'm sorry," he said, though she wasn't sure if she believed he was. "I don't mean to antagonize you or to lecture you. I would just like to understand." She was silent, so he continued. "You have twenty-five years. I have sixty-four. I forget that I cannot always treat you as my equal. You look full grown now, so it is easy for me to forget."
She frowned. "So in four years away, you have forgotten me?"
He allowed himself a smile, faintly amused. "I begin to remember." He lifted his arms, the most infinitesimal gesture, but it was enough encouragement for her. She threw her arms around him and hugged him tightly.
He stiffened, but accepted her embrace.
"I missed you," she said.
"Ah, our little rose, so like your mother." He clucked his tongue like a grandmother and awkwardly patted her hair. "Perhaps what makes you superior to us is your ability to feel so much more. And to make us envy you for it. What are we going to do when you leave us?"
"You were gone for four years. My mother and I won't be gone as long as that," she said stepping back from him. He nodded thoughtfully. She searched his face, but his features were as fixed as iron, as smooth as glass. She swept over his face again looking for a crack in the façade, any movement or tick. Then, she simply realized what his silence meant. "You're coming with us? On the task?"
He nodded. "It might be a bit more than the labor dispute that your mother thinks it is. Yet, she insists on taking you for training." He gave a little shrug. "Trial by fire?"
"Now I don't understand," she said.
He flicked his hand. "I don't want to presume anything prematurely. We must collect the evidence before attempting to administer opinion." Mel looked at him with exaggerated skepticism, which caused him to laugh, a strange sound coming from him, as strange as from her mother. Rare and warm. It transfigured his face, and she saw something of herself reflected. "Such broad humor. And from my own child. I believe your mother has given birth to a comedienne. I know you're giving me that ridiculous look because you think I'm ridiculous." He held up his hand when she started to protest. "I think I might be out of touch with you, as they say."
"No, Ley’Albaer, you're above ridicule. I grimaced at you because you, of all people, are gifted enough to be called a seer. You must know that people think of you this way." Of course Mel didn’t believe in magic. Masks disavowed its existence. Seeing the future was really just a matter of reading the signs and making educated predictions.
He shrugged noncommittally. Humble acknowledgment, she wondered. Well, she would be like him then. She would wait and see before she decided who he was. She would have their entire journey to figure him out.
Chapter 15
One afternoon, Mel headed away from the settlement to see Jenks. When she thought she was far enough from the settlement's collective range of sensation, she broke into a run through the forest. A sleeping owl awoke momentarily as she passed underneath, and then shut its eyes. Her furtiveness was not about her desire to run, but rather, her failure of communal expectation—definitely a broader concern than her wanting a little exercise but entwined inextricably with her love of motion, her inability to always sit still, her failure to become one of them and further their knowledge base.
Since coming back from the Keep, her lapses in control were becoming more and more frequent. She hoped a run would help alleviate some of her excess . . . she didn't know what it was. Energy. Spirit. Restlessness. Heart-break. She leaped over a fallen tree, skidding slightly on a carpet of fallen leaves. More evidence of encroaching winter. That and the snapping chill in the air. She caught her balance easily and accelerated. Her arms pumped, and a light sheen of perspiration beaded on her skin. Instead of stilling her breath and matching it to her pace, she let her heartbeat escalate, the blood flowing into her skin to cool.
Let it move. Let the heart pound. By pumping, it tells me I am alive. I am here. Beat away the numbness.
And then tears welled up in her eyes. For Liz, Rav. For Ott. For herself. She could hardly see, but pushed her pace further, not caring if her footsteps rang out, not caring who she startled or what walls within her suddenly came down out here in the open with no one to hear her. She pounded on. By the time she reached Jenks' low-roofed clapboard cabin, her face was wet. She was soaked to the skin, panting, and winded.
"Well, that's interesting," he said, observing her as she braced her hand against a tree and tried to catch her breath. He was sitting in a rocking chair on his porch reading a book. She straightened as soon as she heard him, but he gestured with his hand, a peculiar, dismissive move, a tired wave mingled with the half-hearted brushing away of an inattentive fly. "Don't trouble yourself on my account," he said. "But if you'd like to sit while you rest, I have a hard and uncomfortable porch step you can help yourself to."
She concentrated, dried her skin, and slowed her heart. She left her legs to cool and ache on their own. "Did you know I was coming to see you?" she asked him, throwing herself down on the step inelegantly, almost defiantly, waiting for him to chastise her.
"Expected it. Didn't know it for sure," he said. "Thought it might have been sooner."
"I meant to come," she said. "Every day, I meant to come talk with you." She plucked at the sole of her shoe where it was separating from the rest.
He flicked his bright blue eyes at her and set his book aside, spine split open at his place on the dusty porch floor. It was an old book. She glanced at the spine and corrected herself. Not an old book, just a beat up book. It was a recent publication, a novel, a story written for the sake of entertainment. He saw her looking at it.
"You can borrow it when I'm done. It's a little romantic though. Don't know how you'd feel about that. Heroes and heroines. People running around in a big hurry." Right. Just as she had been doing.
She looked at him. Dark, weathered skin. White hair, cut short so it bristled. He was looking at her wryly, a faint glimmer of a smile around his mouth. She said, "Why didn't you ever tell me we're related? All those times we said hello. All those times you delivered things to our house? Messages. Vegetables. Family connection thrown in along with the delivery?"
"It's true. We didn't say much more than 'hello,'" he said.
"We don't even look alike. You don't look like my mother, but you're related to her? Are you cousins?" She ran a hand through her own auburn hair, thinking of her mother's. Her mother had the same color hair as Mel, but light brown eyes and ultra-fair skin. Librarian skin. Jenks was ruddy with silver hair. Bright blue eyes—he was looking at her with amusement, slight crinkling in the corners. Pure, unadulterated amusement, emotion on display. Being with him was like being with outsider humans. Except, he knew everything about her. Somehow, he managed to live in both worlds. On the other hand, he lived in neither world.
"Don't look like her at all, do I?"
"What's so funny? This is all amusing to you?" Mel asked mildly. He was teasing her. Not that she minded. She'd just forgotten what it was like, casual banter, conversation at cross-purposes. Plenty at stake, though, at least for her. She was reminded of the verbal give and take they practiced at the Keep.
"Of course it's funny to me." His eyes met hers directly. As she looked into them, they changed from bright, crystalline blue to black. The outlines of his face blurred for an instant, and she realized his appearance as she knew it was a façade, a disguise. For just an instant, she saw pale skin. Eyes as dark as her own. Hair as dark as her father's. She stared, slightly open-mouthed. She caught just a glimpse before the Jenks that she had always known wavered back into focus, his bristled white hair and sun-weathered skin. She gasped, not sure what she was seeing. Because there was no such thing as magic.
"It's always entertaining," he said again, ignoring her shock, smiling again with the face she knew as his, bright blue eyes twinkling. "That's my job. My role as village idiot. To react inappropriately to things." He stood up and opened the door to his cabin. "That's why I live over here. And the rest of them live over there." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the settlement. "Are you coming?" She scrambled up and followed him inside the cabin.
"You're a shifter?" she asked, breathlessly. "I didn’t know they existed outside of children’s stories. You have a truly rare talent. I can change the shade of my hair for about a minute and then I'm exhausted. Do they know about this? You have this talent and you're hiding out here? Doing . . . " she searched for words that wouldn't be insulting, but ended up just waving dumbly at the furnishings of his modest cabin. Comfortable chair. A warm fireplace. Piped water. Indoor kitchen. Wooden carvings littering the floor. Door to another room off t
he side. Strong smell of herbs and something mineral, but not unpleasant.
Standing in the middle of the small room, he shrugged. "Shifter. Seer. Healer. Scholar. Your mother is a natural healer when she chooses to let herself be. We all have our talents. Who better than I to walk among them?" Did he mean the settlement or the outside world? He shifted again. A little man, hunched with arthritis and dotted with age spots, stood in his sitting room. Dressed in a stained, wrinkled holiday-best suit, he shrugged, his voice weak and cracking, "Who better than I?"
"That's really disconcerting," she said with a sharp intake of breath.
His blue eyes twinkled and he shrugged again, back to his former appearance. "A lot of people think so," he said cryptically and looked away from her.
"Is that why you were asked to live out here? Were you ostracized?"
He chuckled. "Me? No. They didn't ask me to leave. I chose to."
She thought about it. "And this is as far as you went? You can just about see the settlement from here."
He laughed outright. "Can't have it both ways, can I? Too near. Too far." He abruptly turned and left the room through the only door. She stood, uncertain of whether he meant her to follow. Then, she went to the doorway and looked in.
The room was as big as all of the other parts of the house put together. Part workshop, part laboratory, part artist studio, but utterly cluttered. She identified the source of the herbal smell—dried bunches hanging from the ceiling. Not just dried herbs though. He also had live cuttings that he seemed to be rooting in glass jars. And dyeing. Jars of colors, swatches of paint lined the table. Those were the sources of the mineral smells. Yellow dyed flowers which should have been white naturally stood in brilliant yellow water. And blue ones, sitting in what looked like crushed agamite, turning blue like the trees near the Keep. Mel froze at that thought. Was there a large quantity of agamite underneath the Keep? Did the agamite bring the beasts? She stared at Jenks.
"What else are you?" she said with an uncontrollable edge in her voice, aware that she might be overstepping the boundary of polite manners. She lightened her tone, tried to match his playfulness. "Herbalist? Alchemist? Are you trying to turn things into gold?"
