After a moment he twisted toward Menders, wrapping his arms around Menders’ waist, hiding his face in Menders’ shirt front. Menders put his hands on the big shoulders and let Hemmett cry, saying not a word.
Soon the words started jerking out of Hemmett. His confusing and conflicted love for Katrin. His guilt over feeling it while he also loved Luntigré. His rage with himself over his failure to protect Katrin from what had been done to her. The guilt for that failure that was eating away at his sanity.
He finally stopped speaking, but still held tight to Menders.
“I have always known you love Katrin beyond a brotherly affection,” Menders said simply. He felt Hemmett flinch in surprise.
“You knew I love her?” he whispered.
“Since you were children,” Menders answered, his voice soft.
“And you let me stay here?”
“You went to military school. That helped you, because you met other people and weren’t always with her,” Menders replied, reaching behind him and pulling over a chair. He settled in it, close to Hemmett, who leaned against him as if he had no strength left.
“I love Luntigré dearly,” Hemmett said brokenly. “But she and I both acknowledge that it isn’t the great love of our lives. I thought for a while that it had taken away my love for Katrin. I was wrong. I can’t leave The Shadows and her or any of the rest of you, even though I thought I could when I was so angry with her in Artreya.”
“I have always understood this, Hemmett. I’ve admired your self control and wished that things could be otherwise,” Menders responded gently, pulling two handkerchiefs from his pocket when Hemmett exhausted his own.
“I’m sorry – about all this,” Hemmett finally said.
“No harm done, thank the gods. You have a good second in Vil, Hemmett. I’ve never said so, and that was wrong. Your judgement is good.”
Hemmett, despite his severe emotional exhaustion, managed a look of pride. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
“Now, as you know, I am assigned as your commanding officer,” Menders said. “I’ve never observed that, of course. I consider your Guard your command and yours alone – but as your commanding officer and your foster father, I am ordering you to begin taking care of yourself. I’m ordering you to eat. I’m ordering you to sleep. Katrin asks for you every day. It would do her a world of good to have her closest friend with her. Can you do this for her?”
“Yes,” Hemmett said, straightening up.
“Whenever the other thoughts come into your mind, put them away from you. Don’t give them a chance to take over. It will be difficult at first, but it can be done.”
“How do you know this?” Hemmett asked honestly.
“I have the same thoughts. I have had similar thoughts all my life, because of events in my past. You have a choice. You can let your anger eat you alive and destroy you, or you can put it aside and refuse it room in your mind. With your self-discipline, you can do this. I have every confidence in you.”
“Franz thinks she’ll live?” Hemmett said after a long silence.
“Yes, he told me so today. She’s still septic, and will be for a long time. She’s constantly running a high fever but she is not getting worse. Some of the smaller wounds are trying to heal. Her body is fighting the infection. She needs rest, support and most of all, peace of mind. She is so close to you, Hemmett, that she can tell when you’re angry and it upsets her. You must, for her sake, control your mind.”
Hemmett nodded and looked resolute.
“I will,” he said. “I’d rather march forty miles in the snow, but I will.”
“I know it. I know my first boy very well,” Menders said, managing a smile. “Now, do you want me to talk to your men?”
Hemmett shook his head and stood, seeming surprised to find himself unsteady on his feet.
“No, I’ll explain to them. This will go no further,” he replied. He straightened his great spine, drew in a deep breath, then another. He went to the door, properly upright, once again an officer.
“Thank you, Papa,” he said very softly before he turned the knob and left the battle room. Menders could hear him walking down the corridor and starting down the stairs, on his way to the Guard Room.
Menders sat wearily at the table, spent. He’d been methodically forcing himself to eat and sleep. Eiren had insisted a mattress be put down in Katrin’s room so he could sleep when he stayed by her at night, but his body was still run down.
A small sound let him know Borsen had come in. A moment later the small but strong hands were on his shoulders, easing his knotted muscles. Menders closed his eyes and let the young man minister to him.
“Thank you for wedging that door,” he said after a while.
“I wasn’t about to let him out to begin a bloody rampage,” Borsen answered. “He would have had to go through me.”
Menders smiled a little.
“You know, I don’t believe he would have gotten past you,” he said. People dismissed Borsen as a physical presence because of his small stature, but Menders knew his strength – and his indomitable spirit. If he’d been determined to stop Hemmett, stop him he would – by any means.
Menders sighed and prepared to rise. He found Borsen was holding him in the chair, pressing down on his shoulders.
“Stay a while, Uncle,” the cadenced voice said softly behind him, the Thrun emphasis very heavy. “Just rest for a while. Rest.”
Menders did.
***
Darling Luntigré,
I am so very sorry that I haven’t written to you. Eiren told me she let you know what has happened, so I won’t go through it all again.
I have been very ill in my mind, but I’m getting better now. Being so close to Katrin, seeing her like that was – I can’t talk about that.
If I may, I would like to come and see you and Flori, if you will have me. I might not be the most fun fellow, but I love you both so much and I miss you.
Katrin is improving, everyone else is well and they all send love.
Hem
Dearest Hemmett,
You never need to ask. Come when you can and I will be glad.
Luntigré
***
My dear Menders,
There is nothing I can say that will be of much comfort or use to you at this time, but I so wanted to let you know that my heart breaks for Katrin and the rest of you. If it would be a help and not a hindrance, I will come to The Shadows and lend a hand. Please let me know.
You must care for yourself, Aylam. I have seen Luntigré and she’s told me of Hemmett’s illness. Your children need you, my dear friend. You must find your strength again, for them.
Gladdy D.
Saronilla, Samorsa
The Shadows, Mordania
3
Willow
H
emmett rose from the sofa in Luntigré’s beautiful living room and paced again
He wasn’t even aware he was doing it, Luntigré thought. His mind was back at The Shadows, as it had been on all his visits to Samorsa since Katrin had been tortured.
Luntigré shuddered when she thought of it. She and Katrin had become close friends during the time the family waited in Samorsa until the latest dingdong between Mordania and Artreya was over. Luntigré loved Katrin’s spirit and enthusiasm and she loved her devotion to Hemmett. Lovers might come and go from Hemmett’s life, but he had a friend whose love would always ring true.
Hemmett turned away from the view outside, which he had already studied at least twenty times that evening and caught Luntigré looking at him. He ducked his head slightly in embarrassment and smiled.
“I’m sorry, darling,” he said. “I’m a long way away.”
“Does our love still bring you joy, Hemmett?” she asked. His eyes met hers, steady and true.
“It does,” he answered.
“Then we go on,” Luntigré smiled.
***
Katrin sat up against her pillows, slowly u
ndoing her long braid. She was preparing to have her hair properly washed. She’d been getting by for months with Eiren brushing powder through it or only washing her scalp. She felt absolutely filthy. It would be wonderful to finally have her hair clean and gleaming again.
It was early spring. Almost a year had turned, the summer, autumn and winter since she was Suspended lost in a haze of illness, fever and pain. She had no recollection of days passing for much of that time, only of burning with fever, shivering with chills, crippled by pain and weakness.
It was only in the last week that she had not been continually feverish. She’d had to learn to be philosophical about fever. Franz told her it was the body’s way of fighting infection, literally burning it away. She was still infected but some of her wounds were healing. Franz said she was getting better, but that is would be a very slow process.
The infections had turned inward, and Katrin had been low most of the autumn with infection in her lungs, only to have her womb become infected as soon as her lungs cleared. Franz believed the infection was traveling through her blood, affecting different organs. Katrin had taken so many blood cleansing medicines that she’d joked to Franz that she should just start eating some of the soap she’d made. He laughed heartily and told her if that was the cure, he’d have tried it long ago, that the only answer was to do everything she could to strengthen her body and let nature do the healing.
Nature was taking a long time and as for strengthening her body – it seemed impossible. She wasn’t wasted, she was wizened. Her skin hung slackly from her arms and legs, wrinkled because she had lost so much weight. It was still difficult for her to eat and she could only manage small amounts at a time. Smooth soft foods were the most she could manage and not much of them. When she got out of bed she was very shaky, but got up as often as she could, so her flabby leg muscles would strengthen.
Eiren tapped at the door and came in, smiling brightly, several bottles in her hands and a basin under her arm.
“All ready?” she asked. “Do you want to commence operations there in bed or come over to the dressing table?”
“Oh, the table, too much trouble in the bed,” Katrin replied, swinging around so she could use the bedstairs. Eiren swathed her in her warmest dressing gown and helped her sit at the dressing table. Katrin made a face at herself in the mirror.
“The face of ill health,” she pronounced, making Eiren smile.
“Nonsense. You’ll fatten up soon. And with your bones, your face will never be anything but lovely, at any weight,” she replied, loosening the rest of Katrin’s braid. “What this needs is a very good brush out before we wash it. Then you can move over to the window and let it dry in the sun. It’s a beautiful day. It’s warm early this year.”
It had been an unusually warm winter, rain more than snow, even this far north. Katrin had been sorry, because the Thrun hadn’t been able to come. Though she could never have attended the Thrun carnival outside, she would have been overjoyed to see Tharak and Thira. The early spring days were quite warm and the trees were rushing to come into bloom.
Eiren picked up the hairbrush, taking the first long strand in her hand. Using short strokes to smooth any tangles, she worked her way up the five foot strand. Then she brushed down from Katrin’s scalp with a full stroke. Katrin relaxed, glad they were finally started.
Eiren made a strange noise. Katrin looked at her in the mirror. Eiren’s face was white and she was staring at the hairbrush. A long strand of Katrin’s hair, at least a handful thick, hung from it.
Katrin’s eyes flew to her own reflection. There was a large bald spot on the left side of her head, where Eiren had started brushing. She raised a hand to it curiously, pulling gently at the hair surrounding it. There was an odd sensation as the hair came away as easily as pulling a weed from wet soil.
Katrin felt very distant, as if she was standing across the room watching as she reached up to the other side of her head and gently tugged another handful of hair away.
“Katrin, don’t!” Eiren cried. “Menders!”
Suddenly Menders was there. He looked at Eiren, who showed him the brush full of hair and then turned to Katrin, who was dreamily lifting more hair out of her scalp.
“Look, it just comes right out,” she said, looking at the strands of golden hair in her hand.
“Don’t!” Menders cried, catching her hands, keeping her from lifting them to her scalp again. “Get Franz,” he said to Eiren, who dropped the hairbrush and rushed from the room.
Menders was saying something about this sometimes happening when fevers went on for a long time, but Katrin really didn’t hear. She was studying the hairbrush, with so much of her hair ensnared in it.
“Ho there, Willow!” Hemmett spoke in the lounge of the suite. Then he was in the doorway of her room, come after his shift to visit with her, as he did every day. He smiled and she smiled back dreamily in the mirror.
“My hair is all coming out,” she said in a voice that sounded like a small child’s. “See?” She plucked another strand from her head with slow precision, as Menders shuddered and reached to hold her hands still.
Hemmett covered his mouth with his hands and burst into howls of agony, staring at the fallen golden hair.
***
“I’d hoped to avoid this and thought we’d gotten away with it,” Franz said wearily to Menders and Eiren. Katrin had been put to bed after a dose of ramplane, though she was eerily calm and kept on pulling her hair out until she fell asleep, making quiet remarks about how odd it was. She almost sounded cheerful.
“I had noticed her hair was shedding a bit,” he continued. “That’s not to be surprised at, considering how long she’s had the high fevers. Many people tend to shed in the springtime anyway.”
“I noticed the last time I helped her with it that she lost quite a bit, but I didn’t worry. When hair is as long as hers, just a few strands coiling up in the brush looks like all the hair on her head is coming out,” Eiren said. She was pale. “What frightens me is the way she’s acting. If she’d cried or screamed, I would understand, but that little girl’s voice and the way she just kept pulling it out …”
“Shock,” Franz said simply. “Katrin’s been through so much, and has been so ill and still is – she will slip back into shock very easily. It’s almost a cushioning influence. It protects her from the import of what is happening. Her fairytale hair has always been a very large part of her identity. Having it suddenly come out is an incredible trauma. Her mind is shutting it off.”
“What about her hair?” Menders asked, feeling cold and sick.
“It’s all coming out,” Franz said, his voice shaking for the first time. “Even if she doesn’t pull at it, all the follicles have stopped producing hair because of the long fever. In most cases the hair grows back after a while – in almost all cases. It’s the same as her recovery. We need to get her body as healthy as possible. That will give her the best chance of her hair growing back.”
“She isn’t even over the infection yet!” Menders exclaimed. Franz sighed.
“No, she isn’t and she won’t be for a long time to come,” he replied. “Menders, Katrin is very fortunate to be alive at all. She survived only because of the very healthy and active life she has led here. Anyone else would not have survived the first day, not after what happened to her.”
Menders closed his eyes.
“I know. I’m sorry, my friend. It’s just so painful, after everything else,” he muttered.
“Yes, insult to injury.”
“What about Hemmett?” Eiren asked.
“Sleeping. I knocked him out with some ramplane,” Franz answered. “Look, we all know what has been going on with Hemmett about Katrin since they were children. He’s always idealized her as a sort of fairytale princess, complete with the beautiful golden hair. The fact that she will always be out of his reach romantically complicates matters, because it only strengthens the idealization. That is what was behind his extended and extr
eme anger with her in Artreya. She turned out to be a normal girl after all, not the princess on the pedestal he’s always considered her. Add his extreme guilt over not protecting her from being tortured, even though that would not have been possible, and you have the recipe for a breakdown.”
Menders nodded. It was true. As a boy, Hemmett made excuses to touch Katrin’s hair, sometimes would catch hold of a strand of it and simply hold it in his hand. Even the nickname he’d given her when they were tiny children, Willow, had to do with her hair. One day when they were small, he’d said she looked like a weeping willow tree in the autumn with the long golden strands flowing down around her.
“Good of you to put him in his old room in his parents’ suite,” Franz mused. “That way Menders’ Men didn’t hear him crying. It’s bad enough that some of them consider him weak because of his madness after you brought her back from the Palace.”
“They should be ashamed!” Eiren said fiercely. She stood abruptly. “He’s been through hells, all of us have! Who are they to judge him as weak when it’s because he loves her so much!”
“Shhh,” Menders soothed her. “I’ll speak with them.”
“We must find a wigmaker right away, the best to be had,” Eiren said, her voice still harsh and strained.
“Wouldn’t it be better to wait and see if her hair comes back in? She could wear a scarf or cap…” Menders began. Eiren cut him off.
“No! She cannot be without hair, Menders. She’s a young woman, not a man who can think nothing of shaving his head if it’s hot in the summertime! I saved every bit that came out today. They’ll be able to make a wig out of it, possibly two, because it was so long …” She shuddered and swallowed hard.
Love and Sacrifice: Book Two of the Prophecy Series Page 36
