Heavier Than a Mountain (Destiny's Crucible Book 3)

by Olan Thorensen

  CHAPTER 24: HOME LIFE

  Yozef and Maera

  Sixdays passed. The Kolsko household settled into a routine. Yozef and Maera had moved into their new house before its final construction details and those of surrounding structures were finished, but Yozef wanted to be in their home. The Keelan Manor, although large, was crowded with the new additions to the entourage, and it wasn’t theirs.

  They increased the originally planned three workers’ and guest cottages to four. Balwis and Carnigan shared one, for when one or both had duty as bodyguards. Gwyned Walstyn and Mirramel Killin and their two daughters, Morwena and Dwyna, shared a second cottage. Anarynd completed the Kolsko household with a bedroom in the main house. A cook, Serys Clithrow, a widow who had relatives in Caernford, rode her own horse back and forth.

  Balwis and Carnigan made themselves useful but hovered around Yozef whenever someone they didn’t know came to the house: both took their bodyguard duties seriously. At other times, Balwis trained city Keelanders to stay on horses, and Carnigan played the intimidating sergeant major.

  Gwyned likewise helped with a variety of chores, which included caring for Aeneas, cooking when Serys needed help or wasn’t home, and, the most important to Maera, keeping Anarynd company when Maera was away from the house or busy in her study.

  All of the women wondered at Maera’s speedy recovery from childbirth. Most men didn’t notice—yet Yozef wasn’t most men. He noted how quickly she recuperated and filed it away for future thought, pleased when Maera resumed many of her previous activities. Maera again managed his schedules and continued planning for the university. She understood the necessity of giving the plans a lower priority, but there were still things to be done. She insisted that planning for the future symbolized faith that the Caedelli would have a future, in which a university would play a major role. She also began contributing to Pedr Kennrick’s logistics planning.

  The resumption of work led her to question herself and her roles, particularly that of a mother. Her model of motherhood came from her own family, where Breda ran Keelan Manor and had only informal roles outside the family. It was a rare day when Breda didn’t spend most hours inside the manor or on the grounds. For Maera, life was different. Many days she spent half of the day or more at St. Tomo’s Abbey or at the clan headquarters in Caernford. And even when home, she might be in her study reviewing communications to and from her father or Yozef, keeping up with her studies of off-island languages, or poring over writings about other nations and people of Anyar, scrounged from libraries all over Caedellium.

  On top of all of these tasks, she was a new mother. Maera worried that she wasn’t taking proper care of Aeneas and chafed at the endless amount of attention he needed, which took away from everything she wanted to do and felt she needed to do. She found herself almost angry at Yozef when he offered to help with the baby. Changing, feeding, and washing Aeneas fascinated him, although his opportunities were limited because of endless demands on him from his shops and factories, her father and his advisors, and seemingly everyone else. She caught herself wondering whether he passively criticized her for neglecting Aeneas, even though she recognized it was probably her imagination. Her internal conflict grew until she took the baby and walked the half mile to see her mother.

  “I’m a terrible mother!” Maera exclaimed, almost in tears.

  Her mother got within ten feet of her and stopped, surprised at the outburst. Breda recovered quickly and moved to embrace her daughter and grandson. “I wondered if such thoughts would hit my precocious daughter, as they do all new mothers. I thought maybe you were above such self-doubts, and I’m both relieved and sorry you’re not.”

  “You’re glad!?” exclaimed Maera.

  “No. Glad isn’t the word, but you have always castigated yourself for being different from other young women. This just proves you’re not that different. Questioning yourself is something all good mothers go through.”

  “But I don’t spend enough time with Aeneas!” she wailed. “And when I do, I find myself wishing I were somewhere else!”

  Breda sighed, took her daughter by the arm, and sat with her on a veranda swing. “Do you love Aeneas?”

  “Oh, Merciful God, yes! I love holding him and breastfeeding him and, yes, even sometimes changing him. At times, it’s like he’s the only thing in the world. Then I remember some work I need to be doing, and it all changes. What’s wrong with me?”

  “Nothing is wrong, dear. You’re going through what all new mothers do. In your case, it’s worse because you have tasks outside the home that are not only important to you, but are important to Keelan and all of Caedellium. I only had our family, so I didn’t have these added pressures to put on myself.”

  “What do I do, Mother?” pleaded Maera.

  “You have plenty of help with the baby, don’t you?”

  “Lord, yes. Anarynd adores him, and Gwenyd’s always ready to take care of him. When I’m not around for feedings, Mirramel is a great wet nurse. She’s not the brightest person but totally good-hearted and has plenty of milk for both her own daughter and Aeneas.”

  Maera smiled. “Oh, Mother, you should have seen Yozef’s face when we first met Mirramel. He thought I would be the only one to talk to her, but he went along when I said he should be there, too, since her husband died at Moreland City. I assumed he’d want to give her condolences. Mirramel had her daughter with her, and while we talked, she started breastfeeding. After Dwyna finished, Mirramel assured me she had plenty of milk and how she loved breastfeeding. She said she needed another baby to feed because her breasts ached with more milk than Dwyna wanted. When she fed Aeneas, the little beggar went right for the nipple, which is bigger than mine. I think Yozef felt embarrassed by it all. No, there’s plenty of help with Aeneas. And then there’s you and my sisters, always begging me to bring Aeneas here and you’ll watch him.”

  “Have you talked to Yozef about this?”

  “I know what he’ll say!” Maera’s tone showed her annoyance. “He’ll look all confused at what I’m talking about and then start offering reasons why it’s not true, and if it is, he’ll propose solutions, such as him trying to help more.”

  Breda had to restrain her laughter, and Maera missed the twinkle in her mother’s eye.

  “So let me see if I understand. You love your baby and caring for him, except when you recall other duties you want to do. However, when you are engaged in those activities, you have three women around the house, along with me and your sisters, all more than willing to help. And then, oh, Merciful God, you have a husband who obviously does not think you a bad mother and wants to help more. Surely, this is a nightmare!”

  Maera looked angrily at her mother, then broke into raucous laughter. “I knew I could count on you for motherly advice!” Maera roared.

  Breda joined in, and minutes passed before their laughter subsided.

  “Yes, yes,” Maera admitted. “You warned me, as did Diera, my cousins, Gwyned, and who knows how many other women, to expect doubts and depression. I guess I didn’t take their words seriously. After all, I am Maera Kolsko-Keelan and am above such frailties. If nothing else, it’s a lesson in humility. Not that I expect to be content. I expect I’ll always worry that I’m not doing enough.”

  “Which will only prove the positive, not the negative. Keep that in mind,” said Breda.

  Kolsko Estate, Bedroom

  The coupling was as gentle as Yozef could manage. It had been only four sixdays since the birth, and despite Maera’s insistence she felt fine, she still experienced a bit of soreness, along with awkwardness in finding a position that felt comfortable. However, she didn’t begrudge her husband’s need, and she made the overture and deflected his concern. Later, they lay together side by side, the back of her head against his face, his arms wrapped around her.

  His thoughts dwelled on her naked body against his. With one hand, he stroked her abdomen, which had shrunk back to near its original shape. He thought about it
s previous contents, idly wondering whether he’d bumped the baby while it was in there or if it had felt the rocking motion during the last months before they’d stopped, a few sixdays before the birth.

  Maera turned to face him, her breasts and belly pressed to him, her face against his chest. “Yozef, what do you fear most?”

  “Huh? Where did that come from?”

  “Oh . . . I was talking with Mother today. It made me think about what I fear. Although it should be the Narthani and what may happen, I find the fear that’s most on my mind is that I’ll be a bad mother, and then I think how selfish that is, and, oh . . . you know.”

  He hugged her tighter. “All I can say is that I don’t have any such concerns. You know you can ask me for any help you need, but only you can deal with what goes through your mind.”

  His words relieved Maera, though she suspected people might think they sounded cold. She didn’t doubt him when he said he had no qualms about her ability to be a good mother or about her being able to talk to him about it. His sincerity just was. She also appreciated his not thinking he could make her thoughts different just by something he said or did. It was ultimately up to her.

  They stayed molded together for several minutes in silence until Yozef spoke.

  “Maera. Wife, lover, mother of my child. I’ve always respected you, right from the first time we met. Such a lovely young woman, even if you didn’t realize it. So smart. So responsible, though at times too much so. When we got married, it was a rational thing to do. It solved problems for everyone—you, me, your family’s responsibility to have heirs. I think it’s been good for you, but there’s no doubt it has been for me.”

  Maera didn’t know where her husband’s words were going. He seldom spoke of his deepest thoughts or emotions.

  “Things changed,” he said. “Even before the baby came, and even before we knew you were pregnant, I knew I loved you.”

  She burrowed her face tighter against his chest, her free arm clutching around his back, her heart pounding.

  “I know I should have told you earlier. I guess I was afraid of what you’d say, since neither of us ever used the words. I just thought you should know how I felt, but you shouldn’t feel you have to say the words back. I’m content just having you for a wife.”

  “Oh, Yozef,” she said into his chest, then pulled her head back to speak clearly. “I knew after the first few months that I loved you. Like you, I didn’t know how you felt, so I kept it to myself. Maybe I was afraid of losing the hope that you loved me, too, and that kept me silent.”

  “Well, aren’t we a pair?” said Yozef, his voice choked, though also indicating amusement.

  They lay together for another ten minutes, both relaxing after the spoken words.

  “Yozef, you didn’t answer. What’s your greatest fear?”

  It was a question he faced regularly. His answer wasn’t that he feared being exposed as more than a stranger from another part of Anyar. He suspected that by this time, his reputation would let him lie or evade any revelation. As with Maera, his mind told him the Narthani threat should be paramount, but it wasn’t.

  “I’m like you, Maera. I worry about something focused on myself. Maybe it’s just part of being human. I’m afraid I’ll give advice that people will follow, and it will turn into a disaster, with deaths and other consequences the clans can’t recover from.”

  Anarynd

  The travel from Moreland City to the Keelan border had been hard but liberating. Despite stepping into the unknown, her going to find Gwyned and the other women and their trek to Keelan had been the freest she’d felt in years. Whatever the future held, she felt as if she’d left nothing behind.

  She first saw the man she suspected was Maera’s husband the second day on the wagons, when the group of armed men approached. She hadn’t known what to expect when she met Yozef for the first time. All she had known about him came from Maera’s letters, which described the mysterious, interesting man found naked on a Keelan beach. Then the letters changed, with more descriptions of time spent with Yozef, her confusion about what she felt, her taking the step to propose marriage, and finally, before the raid on Lanwith, Maera’s growing satisfaction with the marriage.

  Anarynd’s first hint that there was something special about Maera’s polite but otherwise undistinguished husband was the obvious deference given him by the other men in the mounted party. Anarynd had picked up nuances of men’s interactions during her months in Hanslow and saw how the Narthani behaved around one another. Their ranks and social positions laid out rules and formalities, even when the men didn’t realize it.

  That experience told her Yozef was, in many ways, the equal of Memas Erdelin, the Narthani colonel who had been her master. The difference was that she sensed caution or fear in the behavior of men under Erdelin, whereas with Yozef the men showed respect tinged almost with affection.

  The reunion with Maera was everything she’d dreamed of and had feared wouldn’t match the dream. Maera and Yozef quashed her doubts about where she would go and how she would live; she would live with them as long as she wanted. As sixdays came and went, the previous months didn’t go away, but she could feel a scar forming, a sign of healing and evidence of past wounds.

  The birth of Aeneas was a time of joy and sadness: joy at witnessing a new soul appear in the world and sharing the experience with Maera, sadness because it might be a joy she would never experience.

  Anarynd expected Maera to take many sixdays to recover from the birth, but to everyone’s surprise, except Anarynd’s, Maera was up and active within days. Anarynd could only shake her head. After all, wasn’t this Maera Keelan, Kolsko-Keelan, who could do anything she set her mind to?

  The warmth and casual acceptance of her by all members of the household elicited an occasional embarrassed flicker of envy within Anarynd. She remembered her own family and her lost dream of marrying the distant cousin and starting a family, one she had sworn would be different than her own.

  She didn’t understand how Maera seemed somehow different. It had nothing to do with how Maera treated her, though it took a few sixdays for them to slip back into knowing what the other was thinking, based on the merest change of expression or bodily twitch. Maera was more relaxed. As long as Anarynd had known her, Maera had seemed to exude an aura that combined defensiveness and assertiveness. Now she exhibited a calmness that was missing in the past. Maera seemed surprised when Anarynd mentioned this, then she wondered to her friend whether it was due to Yozef and how he seemed to accept everything about his wife.

  “Is it Yozef, or is it you?” Anarynd asked.

  Maera looked thoughtfully at her friend. “You mean, is it really Yozef who treats me differently than others do, or is it how I perceive it? I suppose I can’t be sure. Maybe it’s a bit of both. I have no doubt he treated me differently right from when I first met him. Partly, it’s because he’s not from Caedellium, but somehow there’s more to it.

  “Maybe it’s because since I married Yozef, so many new things have happened in my life. Oh, getting married and all that entails, of course. And then there’s Aeneas. Although I helped Father by being his scribe and assistant, it was informal, something we didn’t admit to everyone. Since Yozef, that’s different. I do as much or more to help him as I did for Father, but Yozef has always publicly acknowledged it with pride—not that by now, anyone would have problems with almost anything Yozef Kolsko does or approves of.

  “And the university idea I told you about. Think of it! A large center of scholastics with me in charge! When Yozef first proposed it, I felt as if I could fly. After my emotions settled, I became more aware of how much work it would be and of the responsibility, but by then, it had coalesced into determination and a vision of a long-term calling that would truly be Maera Kolsko-Keelan’s. Again, things have changed since then. Not just Aeneas, but the Narthani and how everything has to shift to them, as the only priority for the clans. But the idea of the university is still in my m
ind as something that’s mine. Something to return to when the time is right.”

  After listening to Maera’s theorizing about her changed outlook, Anarynd said, “No matter what the cause, you’re still Maera, but it’s like you’re ‘Maera, the woman,’ instead of ‘Maera, the girl.’”

  CHAPTER 25: DANGERS IN HEALING

  As his status rose, Yozef’s trepidations faded about people’s reactions to his innovations and the knowledge he purposefully or inadvertently introduced. Although he still tried to restrain what he said without thinking, accidental lapses happened occasionally, and those that did, he could either explain away or attribute to his idiosyncrasies.

  However, he couldn’t ignore one issue—the consequences of the elements the Watchers had injected into him to help his body recover from the plane collision. Harlie had explained that the elements—or nanoelements/nanomachines, as Yozef thought of them—also conferred immunity against infections and cancer. The elements somehow recognized any foreign organisms or abnormal cells and eliminated them. As much as he appreciated never again becoming sick or getting cancer, a third feature Harlie had not enumerated was that Yozef healed from physical injuries faster than normal.

  Although all three effects of the nanoelements were positive, the first two would go unnoticed, but healing fast could attract unwanted attention. The benefits of fast healing were obvious, and so was the complication of explaining why he healed so fast—an explanation that dare not mention advanced technology, so that Yozef risked being labeled a demon and an agent of the Evil One, the Anyar version of Satan.

  After his transportation to Caedellium, Yozef became suspicious of how quickly his minor cuts and bruises healed. His first serious injury occurred when a musket ball slashed a shinbone during the courtyard fight defending against Buldorian raiders. Carnigan saw the wound, as did the medicant who applied stitches, but neither of them nor anyone else again examined the wound hidden by his pant leg. During the following hours and days, Yozef swore he could almost see the wound heal, it progressed so quickly. He recognized the danger; how could he explain or reveal injuries healing so fast that they inevitably invoked thoughts of divine or demonic intervention?