by Sharon Shinn
“Did you sleep well, Jenna?” Everett asked. “Your voice sounded so tired yesterday. Are you more rested?”
“Quite rested, thank you. And you?”
“I don’t believe I slept at all, but I feel both rested and bursting with energy today. Usually it does not matter to me if it is noon or midnight, but I could not wait for dawn to come this morning.”
“Yes, I was looking forward to the day as well.”
Neither of us said why, and we spoke little more until we arrived at our destination. The oxenheart tree, which had been shattered by a mystical fireball the night Everett had declared his love, I had now expected to find a grayed, rotting hulk stretched full-length on the grass. But, “Look at that!” I cried as we approached, and Everett glanced at me with a smile.
“I cannot see it,” he said. “Describe it to me.”
“It has not been destroyed, as I thought. The bolt cleft it in two, but only partway down its trunk—it still stands, as firmly rooted and fiercely stubborn as it ever was. Some of its higher limbs are leafless and dying, but its lower branches appear stronger and fuller than ever. In fact, the whole trunk seems even more massive than I remember, as if it has bulked itself up after this latest assault and is determined to dig itself in place even more incontrovertibly.”
“And this pleases you?”
“Oh, yes! I am happy any time any creature is able to defy the fates—can face them down and say, ‘You cannot destroy or even harm me. You cannot bend me or uproot me or make me cease to flower. Come storm, come disaster, I am who I am, and I will never change.’ ”
Everett reached out a hand to give the rough bark of the trunk a friendly pat. “Very well put, Tree,” he addressed it. “I might almost think your philosophy is the same as my friend Jenna’s. You two must have a great deal in common.”
I laughed. “And, look! This is new. Someone has placed a bench under the branches in just such a place to receive sunlight in the chilly morning and shade in the warm afternoon.”
“I wonder who could have thought of such a thing?” he asked in such a tone that I was convinced the idea had been his. “Let us sit there, shall we? I’ll wager it is a comfortable spot.”
And so we settled on the rustic bench, and twined our fingers together, and talked quietly for a good hour. This time, step by slow step, Everett led me through the weeks and months of my recent adventures, learning names and relationships and events so well that I was sure he could recite them back to me if I asked.
Naturally, Sinclair Rainey’s name came up a number of times during this recitation, and when I had finally finished with my story, Everett immediately returned the conversation to my cousin.
“This Sinclair Rainey. You lived in the same household with him for three months?”
“With him and his sisters, yes.”
“Ate dinners with him, passed him in the hall on your way to bed, that sort of thing?”
“Attended church with him, met his friends, knew his fondest dreams and wishes, yes.”
“I can’t recall if you described him, other than to say he did not much resemble his sisters. He was not as attractive as they were?”
“On the contrary, he is quite a handsome man. Tall, slimly built, and yet fairly muscular, with strong cheekbones and pretty hair. Yet his eyes are his best feature, I would say, for they are so blue they are sometimes hard to look at, and they always send me groping for poetic comparisons.”
“Ah. And yet—what—there was something about him you did not like? Perhaps his standards of intelligence were not particularly high or his public manner was embarrassing?”
“No, Sinclair is quite a well-read, well-spoken man who handles himself extremely well in social settings. Indeed, the few times he spoke at our worship services, his voice nearly electrified the audience—we all went home feeling as if we had been visited by the Goddess herself.”
“But he was a busy man, you said. Ran the office, solicited donations from outside sources—you probably did not spend much time with him because he was always away at some function, is that right?”
“At first I saw very little of him, that is true. But once he discovered my technical skills, he became extremely interested in spending time with me. He wished to learn those skills, you see, and so he asked me to tutor him in the evenings.”
“You taught Rainey nuclear physics?”
“Yes.”
“Did you also teach his sisters?”
“Oh, no. They had often gone to bed in the evenings before our studies began.”
“Did you offer to teach him?”
“No.”
“He requested that you become his instructor?”
“Yes.”
“What was his motive for learning?”
“He wanted a skill that would benefit him if he decided to emigrate to an even less settled planet than Appalachia.”
“Did he learn his lessons well enough to apply them in such a situation?”
“When I left, he was, theoretically at least, nearly as proficient as I am.”
“Did he, in fact, decide to take his newfound knowledge to some environment where it would be of use?”
“Yes, he has already emigrated to Cozakee, though his sisters were not happy at his decision.”
“He went to Cozakee without them? Alone?”
“He wanted me to accompany him.”
“To Cozakee? In what capacity? Nuclear advisor?”
“He wanted me to go as his wife.”
“As his wife!” Everett exclaimed. “This is the first time you have mentioned that particular request!”
“It was not germane to the story. I turned down his offer.”
“And why? For this well-read, well-spoken, quick-learning, electrifying, and handsome man seems like the answer to any woman’s prayers. And he had, by your own account, recently inherited a sizable fortune, so he was a good catch in the monetary sense as well.”
I could not help smiling at the ill-tempered jealousy that Everett made no attempt to disguise. “I had no interest in emigrating to Cozakee,” I said. “And besides, Sinclair did not love me. I found the idea of being tied for life to a man who did not love me to be unappealing in the extreme.”
“Are you sure about the state of his heart? For you are easy to love, after all, though you give yourself little enough credit on that count.”
“I know whom he loved, and it was not me. A pretty, sweet, materialistic girl named Rianna, who was not at all the sort of woman you would take to rough, unsettled country. She fascinated him—whenever she was in the room, he could not take his eyes off her—but she was not strong enough to take into the wild. And so he asked me instead, for he thought I could work hard and bear children and keep my complaints to a minimum.”
Everett digested this comment in silence for a moment. “Well! If that is the way he phrased his proposal, I am not surprised you turned him down. Were your feelings hurt, Jenna? I would not for the world have you wounded.”
“No, for I understand Sinclair and I feel a great affection for him. But I am unwilling to be bound to him—or indeed, anyone—unless he feels true love for me, and I feel the same for him.”
“But you have a soft heart, Jenna—you might mistake pity for love, or tenderness for love, or any of a dozen other kind emotions. You might confuse the memory of love with the reality of love—you might love the ghost instead of the man.”
“I am not like you,” I said calmly. “I do not confuse flesh-and-blood beings with their otherworldly counterparts. I know a specter when I see one—and I also know a living, breathing, real, and beloved man if I am so lucky as to encounter him as well.”
I had put my hand to his cheek as I spoke, and he lifted his own hand—the scarred and mangled one—to cover mine. “And you could still love me, Jenna? You could forgive all, forget all, my perfidy and your own struggles? You could go back to those happy, innocent days when you believed in me and I swore no action of mine could
ever bring you a moment’s pain?”
“We cannot go backward. We cannot erase time and events. But we can go forward, hand in hand, hope in our hearts and love lighting our way. These are our choices, as I see them—to go forward alone, apart from each other, in grief and darkness—or to go forward together. For either way we must go forward—and as for myself, I would rather take that path with you by my side than attempt to walk it in silence and solitude for so many weary miles.”
Now he drew me against him, wrapping both his arms around me and murmuring my name over and over into my hair. I could tell that he was weeping, but I was not. Joy had gone scalding through my veins and was radiating out through the pores of my skin with such a whitehot fervor that it burned away any tendency toward tears. I had not known you could be this happy and not alchemize into something lighter, less substantial; I clung to him as much for the delight of it as the fear that otherwise I would waft away toward the iridescent ceiling overhead. I smoothed back his hair, and I kissed his forehead, and silently I laughed.
“I love you, Jenna,” he whispered, and I kissed his forehead again.
“I love you too, Everett, with all my heart.”
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Epilogue
Reeder, I married him.
Quiet as we had planned that first ceremony to be, this one was even quieter. Two days after my arrival on Fieldstar, we took the public bus into town, because he could not see and I could not fly his Vandeventer, and we walked into the Registry Office and were married. Afterward, we had sandwiches at Ameletta’s favorite pastry shop, and talked about where we would live and how quickly we could schedule surgery for his hand and his face. We talked about Ameletta too, and Mrs. Farraday, and all the beloved people with whom I had lost contact on my precipitate flight from Fieldstar.
Ameletta had been sent away to school on Salvie Major, but Everett admitted he was not sure she was content there, and I resolved instantly to investigate. We had pretty well determined Fieldstar would not be a happy home for us. Since Everett had several other estates on more hospitable worlds, I thought we should choose a location where we could be close to a good school that Ameletta could attend. He agreed to this, and suggested Brierly, which was reputed to have a fine educational system ; and so that problem was easily disposed of.
Mrs. Farraday seemed more happily settled than Ameletta, for she had taken up residence with one of Everett’s elderly cousins who required very little more than pleasant conversation over the breakfast table and a few errands run in the afternoon. “But I believe she would be willing to join us in any household we set up,” he added, “especially if it included Ameletta.”
“Then by all means, let us contact her at once. There is no one I would rather have by me as I run a new home than Mrs. Farraday.”
He also, to my great comfort and relief, had obtained news of Janet Ayerson. “As we all expected, Joseph Luxton abandoned her within a few months of seducing her, but she never did apply to me for help,” he said with some regret. “But, like you, she instinctively sought out a frontier planet, one of the last places in this society that an, outcast can find hope of a useful life. She is homesteading on a place not unlike Cozakee, I think—she tells me that in three years she will become eligible for citizenship. She has refused all my offers of aid, but once she established herself, she began a regular correspondence with me, and I know she will be glad to hear from you. She has asked me often about your circumstances. She does not know the whole story—or, if she does, she did not learn it from me—but she does know you have been missing and she will be overjoyed to hear of your return.”
I did not think we could convince Janet to join us in our cozy new household, but just knowing that she was alive and well suffused me with great peace. “I will write her immediately as well,” I promised. “Oh, how it lifts my heart to see how all our sorrows can be turned through gradual degrees to happiness again!”
“That does not erase the sorrows. They are still behind us, to be dragged along whether we like it or not. Before us too, no doubt,” he warned me.
I smiled and took his hand. “But the sorrows do not erase the joys either, nor do they cancel each other out. They alternate, perhaps, like sun and shadow, but the dark always gives way to the light and the impossible becomes possible again.”
He smiled. “You lift my heart, Jenna, with your indomitable spirit.”
I kissed his fingers. “And you lift mine with your mere existence.”
A year later, all had changed. Everett’s injuries had been repaired; his hand would never be quite as supple as it had been in the past, and his eyesight was, after a long or tiring day, unreliable, but he was virtually whole again, and profoundly grateful to be so. By that time, we were also living in a spacious, light-filled mansion on Brierly, where neither of us had to do a day’s work because Mrs. Farraday kept the household running so smoothly.
Ameletta, though she lived half a planet away, came home on regular visits and continually delighted me by her worldly wisdom and her sweet nature. She had grown even more beautiful and self-assured in the intervening years, and it was easy to tell that she would be a stunning woman of great poise and beauty; but either she did not realize this or she was not spoiled by her own radiance, for she was as unaffected and friendly as ever. She lavished on me all the affection a child might give a favorite aunt—even more so when she learned that I was carrying the child who would become her adopted cousin. The whole period of my pregnancy consisted of Everett worrying over my health and Ameletta covering me with kisses, so that, for more than the usual reasons, I could not wait for my child to be born.
Everett was more moved by this event than by anything I had ever witnessed, and as he held his son in his arms, he seemed struck mute with ecstasy. It was half an hour or so before he could bring himself to look away from his son’s dark face and meet my eyes again.
“I do not know whom you thank for happiness so profound as this,” he said quietly.
I smiled. “The Goddess, of course. For it is she who creates the cycles of our lives and she who has woven us into this pattern.”
He shook his head, as if my answer was not sufficient, and gazed down at his son again. “A year and some months ago,” he said, still in that quiet voice, “I did not want to go on living. I had, in fact, determined to take my life. It was a week or so after the accident at Thorrastone Park, and it seemed to me that I had lost everything I had ever cared for in my life. I was, at that time, living in the cottage with the Soshones, but one night, in secret, I crept out of my room and groped my way down the stairs and managed to get outside. I had brought a bottle of pills with me, which I intended to swallow, but some compulsion had made me leave that kind house so I did not taint it by such an unforgivable act.
“I took a few careful steps along the pathway toward the common green—that far I could get on my own by daylight, and naturally I had no reason to care if it was dark now—and I made my way to the middle of the grassy area. There, I fell to my knees, and looked up at that blank Fieldstar sky, and I wondered aloud why there was no peace or love or justice anywhere in the universe. And since you were the one to whom I had been unjust, and you were the one whom I loved, I called out your name, over and over and over again.”
He was silent a moment, motionless except for the flicker of his eyes as he watched his son’s changing expressions. I said nothing. I had caught my breath and did not believe I would be able to release it till this tale came to an end. “And after—in the blackest moment of despair in my entire life—I had called out your name, I held up the vial of pills that I intended to swallow, and removed the cap. And in that instant, before I could place the first tablet in my mouth, I heard a voice—your voice, or so it seemed—calling out to me. Just a few words—first my name—and then this phrase: ‘I am coming. Wait for me.’ And I waited. I put away the pills, I staggered back into the house, I lay in my bed that night. And I waited.”
Now he looked up at me, and his eyes were full of a fresh wonder even at so old a tale. “And three months later, you appeared on my doorstep. I have never put much faith in this Goddess of yours, this spiritual entity who collected every ounce and atom and laid them into a mosaic of souls. But I have no other explanation for what occurred that night, except divine intervention and the complicity of the universe. If it is, as you say, the Goddess who has brought me this degree of happiness, then I will give over to her what portion of my heart does not belong to you. For she is capable of miracles indeed.”
He seemed still so awed by this evidence of the Goddess’s existence that I hesitated to tell him my own part in that unearthly conversation, but a few days later, I recounted the tale to Deborah in a long letter. We had become regular correspondents, and she was even now planning a visit to Brierly to see my son, bringing her husband, Harmon, and her own daughter with her. Through her I learned most of my news of Maria, who was planning a wedding, and Sinclair, happily laboring away on Cozakee—and to her I told all the secrets I would tell a sister.
“There have been times I myself doubted what occurred that night,” I wrote her, “for I know that the human imagination is creative and willful and the heart can always be trusted to construct its own reality. But if it was a delusion, it was a shared one, and so powerful that it leaped across more miles than the mind can comprehend. But I think it was real, and I think it was love that gave us the voices to speak and the ability to hear words that no rational person would either entrust to the wind or pluck from it. He called me to his side, and I am content to stay here till I die, surrounded by more joy than I knew the universe contained.
“All of us are looking forward to your visit. Ameletta speaks of you already as if you were a long-lost relative, and she has posted a calendar counting off the days till your arrival. Everett frets that you will not like him, but I have no fears on that score. You have the happy ability to love upon the smallest encouragement, and certainly there will be no shortage of encouragement here! As for myself, I cannot wait to see you again, my closest kin and my dearest friend. Until then, know that I think of you daily and with the greatest fondness. Your loving cousin,
