“Nanda!”
A dog came bounding into the room at my call.
“Nanda!”
“Hold your horses!”
The dog took off, stirring more dust into the air, to chase the new voice coming up the stairs. I could hear Nanda chatting with him as she climbed from our second floor flat. The clouds parted to the south and a ray of sunlight beamed into the room, spilling into the little hallway. A small, many-legged insect was crawling straight up the outside of the window and I watched, fascinated, as it crawled onto the branch and continued plodding along its merry way, upside down. A paper crackled behind me and I spun to see Nanda framed in the doorway, her body glowing with an outline of sun powered dust particles. A cleaning rag dangled from her hand and a whole patch of her hair was white with soap or paint or I don’t know what. She was wearing a ragged old t-shirt and torn-up jeans and she was covered in muck and soot from tip to toe. She looked beautiful.
She skipped over to me. Skipped. And kissed me on the cheek. I showed her the flower and she spotted the windows I had been looking for and we dragged them downstairs together. But I couldn’t keep my mind on cleaning anything so I quit and wandered out here to sit beneath our picnic oak.
Maybe this life is going to be okay after all. If I can forget all I’ve lost in Kaveg, if I can forget leaving Nanda and Donja and Annie drenched in blue blood, I could be happy. I will certainly get in trouble for sitting out here “lazing on my butt” instead of cleaning, but then I’ll make stew with double the dumplings and Nanda will forgive me. Kelly is coming to spend the week while Faite is teaching in New York at the Summer Sling, so after dinner we’ll play.
Kelly is an ingenious little girl and I do believe that I am learning more from her than she is from me. I admit that I don’t have a great deal of experience with kids, but I have known some and none of them was so bright and quick as Kelly. She has labeled Nanda and I. I am her teddybear; her playmate and protector. Nanda is her problem solver.
She used to bring problems to me. But I’d solve them. I’d fix her doll’s head. I’d tell her how to deal with a frightening dog. Nanda has no such patience. Nanda will tell her to present three possible solutions for the problem and then Nanda will pick one. Well once Kelly comes up with her first solution, she solves the problem and doesn’t bother Nanda with it again. This sounds, as I write it, to be an ingenious trick to sidestep the girl’s questions. However, Kelly is now running around in long pants, overalls they’re called, with one shoulder strap hooked to its button with the help of a bloody finger bandage. She choked herself trying to chew a wad of gum out of her hair because she’s not allowed to use scissors. She kept herself quietly occupied for three hours yesterday trying to figure out why M comes before N and if anyone could decipher all the equations she worked out in Nanda’s scratchbook, I think she’ll have invented alphamath. Her solutions are certainly all solutions, they just aren’t necessarily good solutions.
Here comes the crop-haired monkey now with the dirty, mangled one-eyed stuffed dragon Faite brought her from Japan when she was a baby. The colors are all wrong but it still reminds me of the Dormounts when I see it lying on the carpet where she’s dumped it in favor of a better toy.
Kelly threw herself into my arms as I was calling hello to her and I got a mouthful of dragon. Thanks to her momentum, she bonked her head on the tree behind me but after a couple limp seconds, she blinked it off with a startled, “Ow,” then dragged me inside to show Nanda how she’d tied her own shoes. Or rather that she’d tied her own shoes. If she’d shown us how we might have been able to get them off later without my knife. After ooing and ahing for about two seconds, Nanda tricked Kelly into scrubbing the hard to reach bits of the stove which earned each of them a bath before dinner, during which, Kelly followed Nanda’s lead in scolding me for making a mess on their nice clean stove.
Nanda’s mother called as I was dishing out seconds and she disappeared through the bedroom into the bathroom with the phone. Her inspiration gone, Kelly was forced to stop talking and actually take a few bites of her meal. The girl is very particular about the way in which she eats her food. I try to blend the flavors of the individual ingredients into a new and distinct taste all its own, but Kelly picked through and ate each ingredient individually. First, all the carrots. Next the peppers. Then the onions. These were tricky and she ate a few earthapples, sorry, potatoes by mistake. To make up for it, she finished them off next. This all was of course punctuated by her falling over and crawling away to examine this or that or the other exciting new discovery in the room.
We have no table, but Nanda has set down the rule anyway that no one leaves the tablecloth during dinner - unless, apparently, their mother calls. So Kelly devised ways to satisfy her easily distracted attention by ‘accidentally’ leaving the table. I let her get away with it because I’m a pushover and I'm entertained by the fact that when I call her back, she can't remember what portion of the stew she'd been working on.
“Kelly, put that down and get back over here before Nanda catches you.”
Kelly returned to the tablecloth still looking at the picture she’d picked up off the windowsill. “Where are you?”
I took the frame from her as she picked up her fork. It was the collage of Nanda’s family that she had kept under her carseat on the trip out. The center pictures were of her mother and father, then a picture of her sister Eva and her husband from their wedding, and a small picture of Nanda with her mouth wide open, screaming laughing at the camera.
“This is Nanda’s family.” I looked at her over the frame, “Dumplings. I’m not related to Nanda.”
She finished her dumplings and then spoke with her mouth full of beef cubes, “Why not?”
I whispered over the frame, “Because Nanda doesn’t like me.”
“I do so like you.” Nanda protested coming out of the bedroom with the phone still on her ear. “Just not very much. No, you hang up first. Don’t talk with your mouth full, it’s ineffective. I didn’t mean you, Mama. Hang up.”
Kelly seems to instinctively know when Nanda’s talking to her or to the phone, but I have to watch carefully to avoid responding to the wrong questions.
“No, you hang up. Hang up.”
That was to me. She handed me the phone to hang up on her mother. “Goodbye Mrs. Junior.” I leaned over and set the phone in its recharger and set the picture frame up next to it.
Kelly pointed at it, “Does your mom have a mom?”
I stood up to refill Nanda’s bowl from the stewpot up on our built-in bookshelf. “All mothers have moms.”
“Actually, thank you,” Nanda handed me her bowl, “my mother didn’t have a mom. She was given away at birth and tossed around foster homes until she went to college. She didn’t have any real family before she met my dad.”
“So she got your Daddy’s family.”
“Nope. And why is your napkin all the way over there? My dad’s parents died when they were kicked off the reservation. The lady who rescued him from the state disowned him when he married Mama in college. She couldn’t hold out though once adorable Eva was born. She had to visit after Eva’s difficult birth. And then she actually packed up and moved to Michigan when they almost lost me.”
“They leave you at the mall?”
“No. To lose someone is sometimes a metaphor for to die.”
My heart skipped, “You almost died?”
She smiled at me, trying to get one spoonful down her gullet. “At birth. Just like my sister, I was born in a thick amniotic sac and they had to cut me out and incubate me. It was like an egg. That's why Daddy called me his baby bird.”
I excused myself and left them for the kitchen to catch my breath. I had finished off a tall glass of water and was leaning against the coldstorage when Nanda came after me.
“We threw fingers for the last dumpling. I lost.”
I turned away from her and opened the fridge, “I made extra - with gravy.”
She cl
apped and cheered and reached under my arm to grab the pan of jello from the bottom shelf. “So, what’s wrong? Your twin die at birth or something? Is that your secret?”
She tossed the question out as if it were the most casual inquiry and turned away to the glass-doored cabinets to get dishes and spoons. I watched her gliding smoothly in the small kitchen from the cabinets to the counter, back around to the corner drawer to collect a serving spoon, head down over her work, offering me time and privacy. She flipped her braid over her shoulder and started scooping out dessert. She smoothes her hair to the nape of her neck these days and braids it into one thick plait down her back. I’ve watched her in the mornings. She flips her hair over and bends at the waist to brush it out. Then she stands up and reaches over her back to braid it as far as she can reach before she flips it over her shoulder and weaves down to the end. If she forgets I’m around, she’ll wrap it around her head like a circlet, tilt her head, and bat her eyes at herself in the mirror. Very alluring. Until I laugh at her.
I stared too long. She raised her eyes to me, “I’m sorry—”
“I knew you before I met you.” I glanced at her for an instant then refilled my water glass and shut the fridge door.
“You mean in a prior life?”
“In the life I was living before this one, yes.”
“Uh huh.” She countered me to put the rest of the jello back in the fridge. “And I died?”
My heart leaped into my throat, “I hope not!”
“Well I must have if I’m here again now.” She handed me a bowl of jello and picked up the other two as a quiet crash of paper sounded from the main room. “She’s worse than a cat.”
I took the spoons from the counter and followed her slowly out of the kitchen, “I don’t think death is a requirement.”
I can’t believe I told her. She didn’t understand, but I tried. I tried to lay on this delicate friendship we’ve established the fact that I’m from another world. I didn’t believe her tale when she told me she was from America. I never thought she was crazy, but I thought she was making up the ridiculous story. I gave more consideration to Scademann’s supposition that she might be a descendant of the dTelfur than her own assertion that she was from a completely foreign world. She wasn’t able to tell me how she got to Kaveg from there and she had no traveling supplies with her when we met. Naturally I assumed it was a very bad cover story for the trouble she was running from. And when her trouble became undeniable, it fully supported my theory.
I should have left her in Sapproach. It would have been the responsible thing to do. I knew I could trust Girard to care for her and I was considering how to approach him about taking her in when he approached me.
∞
“Geoffrey, I’m glad to see you still up. You can walk with me.”
It was two suns after my birth day festival, two moons before our departure. I had left Nanda strumming to herself in the common room of the small two-level mansion that Girard had built to provide shelter for the visitors Sapproach never received. Girard found me sitting on the front steps staring off to the west at the bondstar setting over the Dormounts. We walked in silence, circling the village as had been Girard’s habit each night since he’d retired here at the final outpost of our community. A man strolling towards the village through the appletree grove lifted his tall walking stick to us and Girard nodded in return.
“Kemberling. He’s quite an interesting man. He and the four Melli brothers take turns following their sheep through the countryside. He enjoys his months alone, centering he says. But get him back here and the entire town loses sleep. You should meet him.”
I turned to see the man jumping over a small puddle left from the day’s storms. “Sounds like he should have been here for the festival.”
“Did you enjoy your birth day fest?”
“The taleings were more spectacular than any I’ve heard before.”
Girard nodded at a woman unsuccessfully chasing her daughter into their cottage. The girl nimbly avoided her mother’s grasp until their homewolf dashed in front of her and she fell to the ground. A few anxious seconds passed as the mother and pet and indeed Girard and I watched to see if the girl was hurt, but she burst out in a spattering of giggles, staring fascinated at her bloody knees. Girard and I walked on.
“The people of Sapproach were deeply involved in the events of your eleventh frseason and they remember your parents with affection even though most of these people only met them when we passed through looking for a guide to the river bridge. They liked Laurienel and Stedon. And they have great hopes in the son.”
“I received gifts.”
“Anonymously, I assume.”
“Yes.”
“I have a gift for you, as well.”
He handed me a small chamois bag, its neck held shut with a shirt tie. As we walked, I untwisted the point and wrestled with its knots.
“I had this the last time we met and I can't explain why I did not give it to you then except to say it would have caused you more sorrow at an already difficult time. Your parents gave it to me when I was sent back to Sapproach with the healer to mend my leg. They asked me to give it to you if they were unable to return. It is a gift from them.”
The tie came off suddenly and I bent to pick it up from the track. As I bent, I tipped the bag and caught, before it too fell to the ground, my parents’ bond ring.
A simple metal chain that bound my parents’ wrists to each other on the day of their formal bonding festival, I held it up in the moonlight. It did not glint. It was not aesthetically impressive. It was a work of simple craftsmanship, a piece designed for strength not beauty. I hadn’t seen it since the day Mum and Da took it down from its pegs over their bed and rode off to kill the dragon.
I looked down, running the ring through my fingers. I turned away from Girard. “Why give it to me now?”
He looked down at me, still dwarfing me despite my several growth spurts since last we’d met. “You are ready for it, now.”
We walked again. I looked off into the trees and thought about Nanda. I remember my parents being so much in love I could have burned down our apartments while they stared at each other. I’ve heard it said that they would get lost in each others’ eyes, but that’s not it. I know now. I look into Nanda’s eyes the same way. I look into her eyes and I am found, at long last. They left me their ring because they knew that they wouldn’t be coming back to me. They knew and they waited until I was old enough to be recognized, trusting that I would do them honor and rule the kingdom well. But there I was in Sapproach, following their footsteps, not allowed to be in love and not able to rule alone.
We walked quietly around the open gaming yard with its bedraggled raincovers sagging from the weight of their work. The air hung heavy about us, waiting to release again in another rage of lightning and wind. Energy crackled in the air and I could feel it creeping up through my fingertips, teasing me with power.
I spoke what I felt. “I’m ready to return to Voferen Kahago and take the circlet.”
“You know that Nanda is not the queen Mobious sent you to find?”
I stopped. “The people need me, Girard. Not some myth.”
We walked on. Droplets from the awning tap-danced on the wooden floor of the gaming yard. Dark clouds drifted across the moon and my companion looked up at the new darkness.
“You could pretend that she is the queen with your heart.”
I laughed at the man who had been my teacher, “I was never a good liar. She is not the queen.”
“But she has your heart.” He strode up to a crossroads. One path would take us around the edge of the back row of cottages. The other circled behind the fields that extended the village’s civilized boundaries before joining up again with the smaller track at the lake’s edge. “Which road should we take?”
I looked down each road; leave Nanda’s company and return for her (or perhaps never return for her) or take Nanda with me and possibly get her killed
.
“Let’s take the long route.”
We turned towards the fields and walked silently for a ways. I twisted the ring three times about my wrist and let it hang loosely.
Girard broke the silence after a time. “May I speak freely with you, my lord?”
“You always have, my friend.”
“I think you have misunderstood Mobious. He sent you searching for your queen. That does not mean that this mythical creature has to be your bond.”
I don’t know if the lightning was in the sky or only in my mind, but it pierced my gut. I spun around on my heel. I was going right back to wake up Nanda and ask her to bond with me, but Girard grabbed the back of my doublet. He pulled me back to him and turned me around.
“You decided, so we are going to take the long route.”
“I've already taken the long route.”
“There is more to be considered than your feelings.”
So we walked around the fields, we walked around the lake, and by dawn, when we again stood on his porch stairs, I had decided to be patient. I would reserve my feelings until I knew more of hers and I would let her reveal herself as she would. I then blew all of these resolutions in one fell swoop at the river.
∞
The river. Two stone pillars guarded the river fifty greg south of our camp. Some scraps of wood hung in the bushes that grew from the slope’s edge, woven into the branches. They were all that remained of the bridge that had once connected us to the dTelfur lands.
Scademann warned us that Girard had torn the bridge down after he crossed it returning to Kahago after finding my parent’s wing. He had well and truly smashed it and the river had finished the job. The lack of a bridge was, of course, no deterrent to the dragon, but his intention had been to keep Landers from bringing destruction upon themselves by disturbing the dragon.
No one dreamed of doing so for a long time following my ascension to the circlet. The land was horrified by the royal incineration. Complaints of dragonic destruction lay silent in the mouths of the petitioners who came into my presence. For a full four seasons, Mobious had me suffer these visits. Country men and women come for reparation would be ushered into my presence and fall silent.
Geoffrey's Queen: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 18
