He readied himself to wait, for she would surely have to listen to what he had said once more, in her mind—but she spoke almost immediately. “I’ve come back. Forever.” She wrapped her arms around herself. Her cloak was too thin for a spring night; he could see goosebumps on her skin. “Aliser,” she said, forcing his name through the chattering of her teeth, “are you even a little bit happy to see me?”
He felt the rush of heat within him spread to his cheeks, to all his flesh, so that he truly was Alnila’s child. He walked around the fire, and even though Alea had not agreed to his terms—not really—he folded her in his warmth and held her there.
FORTY-FIVE
The oasis pool was very high, and the green around it stretched back further than Aldira had ever seen it. People spoke of Alneth’s particular blessing this season, and greeted the Alilan of other caravans with particular joy. Comradeship, an excess of green and verdant plants, cool, deep water: Aldira should have been well content. She very nearly was, until Alea came to her.
“May I speak to you?” she said, a tall, slender shadow in Aldira’s doorway.
Aldira said, “Of course, child,” and set aside the stitching she had been trying to do before she had dozed off. “You haven’t sought to speak to me alone for a very long time.” Not since Alea’s return, which could not be mentioned because it had never happened, just as her departure had not. “I worried at first that you were angry with me for being distant, for not coming to you immediately”—Such a bother, all this dancing around the matter, but so it must be—“though I now believe you understood this was due to no lack of affection on my part. And you’ve seemed happy, these past few months, which has heartened me.”
“Happy, oh yes, very happy.” The words themselves were bright and cheerful; it was the pause after them that set a warning flame flickering within Aldira.
“But?” she said, prompting, stiffening against dread and the eagerness that always seemed to accompany it.
Alea was sitting on the edge of the bench, clutching at it with both hands. She was looking at the squat iron stove, not at Aldira. “I shouldn’t say. I shouldn’t, for I am happy, truly. And yet there is one thing I need to tell someone—one thing, out of so many. I can’t tell my parents, who’d be too grieved by it, and I can’t tell Aliser, who’d be horrified. . . .”
“So you’re asking to tell me.” Alea nodded. “Think, for a moment: why do you need to say this thing to me? I cannot promise absolution or sympathy or even pity, if those are what you need.”
“I know. I’ve been silent this long because I’ve known so well. But it’s not pity I need. It’s . . . I need to speak so that this thing can be real. No matter what you think of it, once it’s said, it will be real.”
“Ah, I see”—though she did not, yet. It might be about Aldron—a forbidden and unfortunate subject, but what else could this desperately urgent thing be? Aldron—yes, Aldira thought and was instantly furious with herself. But it was not Aldron.
“I had another baby,” Alea said. Aldira waited for her to say more, but she did not. Her head was lowered, her face hidden.
“Ah,” Aldira said again. “A sibling to Alnissa—that is, fathered by the same. . . .”
“Yes,” Alea said, apparently unaffected by the awkwardness of Aldira’s words, “a sibling. Even more than that, really—a twin.”
Aldira listened to the silence in the wagon and the noise outside it. Laughter and horse’s hoofs, the thud and crack of palm nuts being opened, cloth dipped into water and wrung out above it. She took a drink from a wooden cup that sat on the bench beside her: a long, noisy drink, to give her time and a feeble sort of concealment.
“A boy?” she finally asked, when the cup was empty. Alea shook her head. “A girl,” Aldira said. “Twin girls, and only one . . . what happened to the other?” Perhaps she should not have asked, should have said instead, “You’ve told me now. Off you go.” But Alea lifted her head and Aldira asked anyway, looking at her face.
“I don’t know. The second one was dead already—had been for awhile, I think. Her skin wasn’t the right colour and she was much smaller. The Goddesses’ punishment, of course—and my punishment is not being permitted to tell of this horror. I know I deserve this, but it’s been too terrible, being alone with it.”
“Of course it has,” Aldira said, very quickly, “but now you’ve told me, and that will have to suffice. Do not think of sharing this information with anyone else—not ever. And do not speak to me of it again, for I have heard it—as you wished—and now it is done. Finished.”
“Yes, I know—but I thought that Alnissa might . . . that someday she’d deserve to—”
Aldira rose. She did not have her staff to hand, and she was achingly slow about it, but she stood. “Alnissa above all cannot know—not about her sister, not about her father, not that she was born away from her caravan. Such knowledge would bring her only shame and confusion, which she in turn would yearn to share. Tell no one, Alea—especially not your daughter.”
Alea stood to face her, as straight with defiance as she had been at ten (except that she had glared up at Aldira then, not down). Let that be all, Aldira thought—yet she felt no relief when Alea turned and left the wagon.
Alnissa’s laughter was loud and high, but Alea hardly heard it above the wind in her ears. She felt her daughter, though, wrapped securely against her back. Alea made extra knots in the sling for riding, and rarely allowed a gallop. Today the horse was galloping. Aliser’s horse.
“What happened to Ralan?” she had asked Aliser a few weeks after her return. He had rolled away from her. She had traced the bumps of his spine upward from buttocks to neck.
“You know we can’t speak of this,” he had said, and she had flattened her hand against the skin between his shoulder blades.
“It’s us, Aliser,” she had said. “Only us. Surely I can make a reference like this to you and be answered, with no promises broken.”
He had rolled back to face her. “I said never—not to anyone.”
So she knew that her Ralan was gone, likely killed as all Alilan horses were whose riders died before them. I was dead to them all, she had thought, and this thought had thrilled her a bit, because she had returned and was lying against a solid, comforting body; she was reborn. Now, though, reining Aliser’s horse in among the conical buildings far from the oasis, the same thought made her shudder. Dead to them all, and reborn—but not fully. Never, ever fully.
For a moment she watched Alnissa walk and fall, walk and fall, and smack her hand on the clay where a lizard had been, seconds before. She tugged at vines and pulled petals off the closed flowers, and Alea swept her up, wriggling and whining. “I know, Nissa, now that you can walk you have no patience for this, but there are steps, where we’re going.” Her daughter did quiet as soon as Alea carried her into the shade, and she even clung, going down into the darkness.
Alea nearly turned back at the bottom of the staircase. One quick, half-blind look showed her no light, no doorway—but a few blinks later it was there, blue wavering onto the hallway sand. Alea stood in front of the door long enough that Alnissa grew restless again. “All right, then, let’s go in. Both of us. Now.”
The blue light was as vivid as it had been when she had last been here. With Aldron, of course, the two of them clutching, burning with need and secrecy. That had been a few hours before the Perona attack and Aldron’s forbidden Telling, a few hours before Aliser had sent them out alone, on foot, away from their people.
Aliser had given her a dagger one night when they were still in the lake country. He had not given it to her directly; it had been lying beneath her blanket one night. They had never spoken of it. She wore it in her belt, though she had not used it yet. She supposed her first dagger had disappeared along with Ralan.
Alnissa shrieked with excitement as she grasped the carved shapes in the walls. She reached for wisps of blue light
and chortled when her hands passed through them. Alea knelt near her, not touching the walls herself. She knew what they would feel like. Her fingers remembered even if her voice could not.
“Nissa,” she called, low and steadily. Alnissa did not pause or glance at her. “Your father made this light,” Alea said, as her daughter fell backward and giggled, then leaned against the wall to raise herself up again. No—do not, Alea thought, but she spoke over her own warning. “Your father Aldron, of the Tall Fires caravan.”
Alnissa fell forward. Alea started up, to hug her or brush the sand from her chin, but Alnissa was already sitting, grabbing handfuls of sand and tossing them into the air. The sand looked blue for the few seconds it hung there.
I said it. She didn’t hear, and even if she had, she wouldn’t understand. Twins forgive me—I had to come back here, but there will not be a second time. . . . Not for the name, and not for this chamber. She would ride back now, and she would have to lie about where she had been, but it would only be once.
As it turned out, she did not need to lie. Aliser asked her nothing, just said, “I’ll do that,” when she started to rub his horse down. “Nissa can help me,” he went on, lifting her up and giving her the brush. Alea watched his red head bending to Alnissa’s dark one and listened to him saying her babble-words back to her, very solemnly. Alea sat in the open doorway of his wagon, which was also hers, and felt heavy with sleep and slow relief.
“The leaping will happen in the next three days or so,” Aliser said, tipping Alnissa closer to the horse’s flank. She thwacked the brush against it and he laughed. “Gently, sweetling—you’re lucky he’s so patient.” He looked over his shoulder at Alea, whose eyes were closed. She was not asleep, though; he often watched her when she slept, and knew the difference. “Alea, did you hear me? The leaping, soon, and then Alneth’s Night.”
“Mmm, I heard you. And I know.”
He took the brush from Alnissa and gave her the damp cloth instead, which she slapped against the horse and him and herself. He laughed again. She made him laugh, this very small person whose presence had so unsettled him, but not for as long as he had expected it to. Everything about her was Alea: her dark hair, her wide brown eyes and almost sharp chin. She was silly and fearless and very, very irritable when deprived of the tiniest amount of sleep or food. And she had begun to rub her stomach when she was hungry, just as Aliser did, large circular motions accompanied by an expression of sweetness and pleading. She learned that from me, he had thought the first time she had done this. A little girl who learned from him and lived with him could be his little girl—he was certain of this now, as he had not been during those first few giddy, fearful weeks.
“So,” he said, glancing again at Alea, “I’ve been looking forward to Alneth’s Night. To having you take your place among all the other Tellers.” He saw her eyes open, though she did not move any more than that. “It’ll be wonderful to have you there,” he continued, “Telling as you always used to—as you always have. . . .” He cursed himself for the slip. Used to—the wrong words, an impression of time past, and change.
“No.” The word, on its own, was hard, but she softened it with others. “I don’t think that would be a good idea. I haven’t Told in a long time, and you know how nervous I always was, in front of so many people. And anyway,” she added, swinging her legs down onto the step, “I wasn’t ever very good at it. Never as good as you were.”
“You were! You were just as good as I was”—though neither of us was ever as good as he was. A sharp, clear thought, as all the forbidden ones were. And hers? What must hers be like?
He walked over to her and up the first two steps, so that he could reach down and touch her cheek. She put her hand over his and held it, clutched it, in fact—and though he felt the desperation in her fingers, he called it love instead.
“Leaf!” Alnissa cried. She was lying in a pile—a scarlet, bronze, russet pile.
“Leaves,” Alea said, bending over to tickle her. “Leaves, Nissa!”
“Leaves,” Alnissa repeated, writhing away from her mother’s hands. “Tree, cloud—no, mama, no!” She was gurgling, choking with laughter.
So many words already, Alea though as she sat back against a tree trunk. She could see the wagons of several caravans from here, and the tall golden grass—but she could not see the town. She’s so young, still, not even two until next spring, and yet she speaks so clearly. Alea’s pride was fretful and tentative—for what if her daughter made a leaf with her words someday, or felled a tree? No, love—for you I wish a life of listening, not speaking.
Although Alea could not see the town, she could see its smoke, darker and thinner than the smoke of the wagons on the plain. She wondered how much longer she would be able to remain seated. She had kept the town in sight since their arrival a week ago—not that she ever looked at it directly. She glanced at it, slid her eyes over it while she was pretending to be searching for something above or beside it. Every glimpse of wall and rooftop made her breathless. She paced among the wagons and the trees—especially the trees, since she hoped they would make her own body feel rooted. But she was more restless every day, and every night too, when she would slip to the edge of the camp and watch the torches flickering in the gatehouse towers. Twins, she thought, make me calm, make me content.
She knew that Aliser was worried about her. She was away from him more and more. When she returned to his wagon, he was always waiting and trying to seem as if he wasn’t, burnishing his dagger, carving wood. He would look up at her and feign surprise, as if he had not noticed that she was gone. She groaned out loud, thinking about it, and Alnissa ran to her, pressed her crackly, earthy body against hers.
“Alea,” Aliser whispered that night, “are you asleep?”
She pulled the blanket away from her face. “No, are you?”
He did not smile. “When Alnila’s Night comes, why don’t you stand with us? I was just thinking . . . you could stand fifth or sixth: the middle Tellers are always less noticeable than the first or last.”
She sat up, dragging all the layers of blankets with her. “I told you no in the desert,” she said slowly, “and I’ll tell you no here.”
He sat up beside her. “You claim insecurity, which I still say is foolishness—”
“I claim insecurity because it’s an easier thing than the truth.” Keep talking, she thought. It’s what you’ve been wanting, isn’t it? “You’ve forbidden me to speak of my time away from the Alilan, but if you’re to understand why I won’t Tell, you must know something of that time. During my entire absence I only Told twice, and both of these Tellings were excruciating. I’m afraid now. What if my Tellings here, among my own people, were tainted by these others? What if, caught up in Telling passion, I Told something of my time away—some image or event? A boat, say, or a palace—”
“Stop.” He leaned forward and gripped her upper arms. The blankets had fallen away from her. “Stop before you say something that will make me lose you again.”
She twisted her arms and his fingers loosened. Her skin felt bruised. “Are you so afraid of what I might say? It was a few years, Aliser, a few, compared with all the years we’ve seen together since childhood. Tell me why you refuse to hear about them.”
“Tell me why you insist on sharing them with me.” When she opened her mouth, he clamped his hand over it, his palm and fingertips digging until her eyes watered. “No—don’t tell me. I have no desire to know what kind of woman you were during those few years. You’re back—I’ve allowed you this much grace. Be thankful for it.” His hand lingered a moment more and then it was gone, and she was doubled over holding her own hands to her aching jaw and cheekbones.
He was not there when she finally looked up. She stood, lifted herself onto the balls of her feet—not to seek out his shadow, vanishing among the wagons: to find other shadows, of wooden wall and rooftops, sharp against the sky.
I am too weary for this. Aldira’s staff was thick and tall, but even it was not enough tonight. She might have to sit down even before her turn came. She could not remember ever having seen a Teller sit during a Telling. This will certainly be my last Alnila’s Night, she thought, and tried to straighten, tried to stand in her place as if she were a younger woman.
The Telling began. Aldira blinked away the snowflakes that were clinging to her eyelashes. The snow was already thick on the ground, and more was falling; it shone in Alnila’s colours of heat and flame. Aldira attempted to concentrate on the Telling—the second Teller was speaking now, and the Goddess-shape was beginning to appear far above them—but she could not. She saw Alea in the glow. She was sitting with her parents in the first row of onlookers. Alnissa was in Aldill’s lap, only her wide eyes visible among the blanket folds. Alea was not concentrating on the Telling either. She was staring at the ground, so motionless that her shoulders and hair were heavy with snow. When her mother brushed some off, Alea smiled at her and gestured to the lights of the Telling. “Watch that,” she seemed to be saying, “not me.”
She was very thin: her face, her hands, all edged with bone. Aldira had observed this the last time Alea had come with Aliser to her fire, over a month ago. Aldira had not asked if she were feeling unwell. She had asked nothing, because Aliser had been there—and even if he had not been, she would have kept silent. She had hardly spoken to Alea at all since their conversation at the oasis. She had watched her, though, as happiness turned to worry turned to this new thing that stretched her skin taut. Not proper to meddle, Aldira thought, watching Alea still through the spinning snow.
The Silences of Home Page 44
