A Promise Broken

by Lynn E. O'Connacht

  When her uncle stirred, she bolted over to him, the blanket slipping off her shoulders, and she pulled at his arm. “Arèn-minnoi! You promised!” With the chair in her way and her uncle’s body making his lap inaccessible, Eiryn just hugged his arm and sniffled against his shoulder. She felt him move, but that only made her cling more tightly for fear that he’d disappear. His voice made soothing noises and one arm stroked her hair, but it was still a long time before Eiryn calmed down.

  Her uncle shifted her around carefully and got up. “It’s all right, safai. I was just asleep. Let’s get you dressed. You’re shivering.”

  She hadn’t noticed, but she was. Eiryn was all too eager to follow her uncle into the bedroom and let him dress her. The sash he picked was ticklish, but wonderfully warm and soft. And big. Arèn-minnoi tied it just the right way for a girl, but it still covered half her body. Feeling better, Eiryn started to practice one of the farakaoina she still hadn’t quite mastered. When her uncle joined in as he changed, just like dai used to, Eiryn was delighted.

  “You will return to your lessons with the other children today,” her uncle sang as he changed his own clothing. “It does you no good to spend all day running wild.” That meant she’d get to see Radèn-minnoi again! When her uncle shifted the farakaoina he was singing, Eiryn mimicked him as well as she could since it wasn’t one she’d heard before. It made her uncle seem more alive and awake, though.

  “What’s that?” she asked, pulling on her uncle’s sleeve as they walked to the door.

  “What’s what?” he asked, his voice racing through the notes before it returned to its usual neutral tone. “What I was singing? You don’t need to concern yourself with that, safai.” There was a sharpness to her uncle’s tone that made Eiryn wrap her arms around his waist. She didn’t know what had made him so grumpy, but she didn’t like it.

  “Child, you are not a limpet.” Eiryn only clung more tightly because if she let him go then he might disappear like dai. “Eiryn-minnai, that is enough. Let me go.”

  “Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go,” she whimpered into his sash. “You promised.”

  Arèn-minnoi sighed and stroked her hair and then tried to pry her arms loose, for all she’d buried them between his sash and his shirt. “Eiryn, if you want your morning meal, you need to let go. I need to fetch someone.”

  “I don’t want my morning meal!” Eiryn stomped her foot and accidentally hit her uncle’s because it was in the way. Hopping backwards, her uncle dragged her with him as she continued shouting, “I want you! Arèn-doi! I want you!”

  Her uncle wobbled and so did she. Eiryn pressed her face against him with as much force as she could muster and they stumbled back another few paces before Arèn-minnoi managed to find his footing and knelt down.

  “I won’t be long, Eiryn. I just need to find someone to fetch Mayry-minnoi and some food.” Her uncle stroked some tears away with his thumb and Eiryn sniffed. “I need you to be a big girl and stay here. I’ve left plenty of times and come back.” So had dai. And then she hadn’t come back. “Play with Innas for a little while. You’ll hardly notice I’m gone until I’m back.”

  Eiryn nodded sullenly. She rubbed at her nose with Arèn-minnoi’s sash and she didn’t care that he frowned at her. Her nose was drippy and it felt weird. And she was cold and miserable and her stomach rumbled at her.

  “Good girl.” Her uncle looked like he was about to say something more or perhaps like he was going to kiss her the way dai had always done when she was a good girl. But Arèn-minnoi settled for a pat on her head as he rose. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Eiryn refused to watch him go.

  When Arèn-minnoi came back with Mayry-minnoi, Eiryn had dragged one of the blankets into the main room and made a nest near the window. She knew it was them because she’d recognised their voices, but she didn’t want to talk to them. She didn’t want food because she wasn’t hungry and she didn’t want to attend her lessons at all. She wanted to hear dai, but it had gotten harder and harder. She could barely hear her mother most of the time now.

  “Och, Spirits look at the child,” Mayry-minnoi exclaimed in gaodansaoina. “What are you doing on the floor? Why didn’t you sing up a fire before you left? She’ll catch ill again.”

  Eiryn didn’t answer because she knew Mayry-minnoi didn’t really want one and she didn’t hug back when Mayry-minnoi came over. She hated his cheerfulness and his tendency to hum entirely off-key. She hated food and she hated school and she hated Janyn, who was at school, and she hated her uncle who’d make her go.

  So she ignored Mayry-minnoi as he muttered to himself and she ignored her uncle singing up a fire now. Instead she looked out the window. There wasn’t much to see. The fog was so thick it looked like it could have been floating soup. Grey, tasteless floating soup. She shivered when Mayry-minnoi peeled the blanket away from her, but she didn’t protest. He wiped at her eyes with a corner of the blanket and then gathered up her hair to put it into a pony tail. She beat his hand away, but he just gathered it up again. “All ready for your first day?” he asked.

  Since she could feel the gaodansoi tug at her hair to cover her ears, Eiryn decided she wasn’t too grumpy to talk to him and nodded at the question. She didn’t point out that she’d been going all summer already and it wasn’t her first day at all either. She let Mayry-minnoi pull her up. The blanket spilled like a large grape stain from his arms as he carried them away.

  Arèn-minnoi held out some small cakes to her. At first, Eiryn was going to ignore them just because she was angry at her uncle for leaving her behind, but she caught the scent of apples and all but snatched them from his hands and settled down to eat them as quickly as she could.

  Mayry-minnoi tsked at her and brushed away the crumbs on her dress. “Go clean your teeth,” he said and Eiryn vanished off into the bedroom to do so. She didn’t like the way it made her mouth feel, but she knew Mayry-minnoi would be standing in the archway to watch her and make sure that she brushed the way she was supposed to.

  “Are you ready?” he asked after she’d put the brush back into its holder and rinsed her mouth.

  Eiryn nodded. She slipped her hand in Mayry-minnoi’s as they walked to the door of Arèn-minnoi’s chambers. She didn’t know how to get to Orryn-minnaoi’s classroom from here yet. At the door, her uncle patted her head. “I want to hear all about your day when you come back, safai.” His smile made her feel a little bit better, but once she was out on the corridor and the door clicked shut behind her, Eiryn thought she might throw up. If she went to class then Janyn-minnoi would be there. If Janyn was there, he’d be mean to her.

  She didn’t want to go. She walked beside Mayry-minnoi because he was holding her hand. He tried to tell her stories of the house he’d grown up in and the colder climate it had, but Eiryn wasn’t listening and eventually he stopped and just led her through the corridors.

  “Here we are.” Mayry-minnoi stopped in front of an open door that led off into a large room. Peeking in, Eiryn couldn’t see Janyn-minnoi anywhere. The room itself was light and bright with pine benches and desks and only a few of the other children seemed to have gathered there so far. Mayry-minnoi squeezed her hand lightly and said, “You’ll be all right.” And then he handed her a couple of biscuits before leaving her standing there outside the classroom.

  Eiryn inched her way inside and ducked into the shadowy space behind the door where Janyn never thought to look for anyone. The other children didn’t even seem to notice her and Eiryn was glad. Orryn-minnaoi had allowed her to join the class because her mother had convinced aon she was ready, but Eiryn was the youngest child after Radèn and Orryn-minnaoi hardly ever asked her to participate. She tried anyway because she’d spent a week simply playing at her desk with Innas and the paper and charcoal everyone got at the start of the day, and it had been boring. Trying to understand what the other children were doing was hard, but at least it wasn’t boring.

  Her own desk was at the far end
, where she couldn’t bother anyone else, so only Orryn-minnaoi and Radèn knew that she tried hard to do the same work as everyone else. And Radèn only knew because she asked him about things she didn’t understand and she’d had to tell him. Orryn-minnaoi knew because ao read the assignments. Ao didn’t mind if she tried to join with the other children as long as she didn’t try to practice farakaoina with them, but ao’d never noticed that she sang them along under her breath anyway.

  Sometimes, Orryn-minnaoi would ask her to stay after class and to sing a farakaoina for aon, or to tell aon what she’d done that day. And then ao’d tell her that she was very remarkable and that made Eiryn feel very proud of herself. But Orryn-minnaoi wasn’t in the classroom yet. Ao usually didn’t arrive until most of the children had. According to aon, they were always too early rather than that ao was too late. Everyone knew that ao didn’t mean it, though.

  In her corner, Eiryn nibbled at one of her biscuits. Neither Janyn nor Radèn were in the classroom yet either. Hidden as she was, she wouldn’t be able to see them, but she’d have heard their voices. She didn’t, so Eiryn tried to watch the other children play some games they’d taken off one of the shelves. They’d invited her a few times, but she’d been too scared of Janyn to accept and they’d stopped asking.

  Pressing herself against the side of the bookcase, Eiryn made herself as small as possible, squeezed her eyes shut, and let the chatter of other children wash over her. She whimpered softly when Janyn-minnoi’s voice joined them. He was singing. Eiryn didn’t recognise the farakaoina that he was using, but she could hear his voice struggle to get it right. Whenever the song jumped too much, his voice got caught just a little too low and, once, a smidge too high.

  Eiryn started to sing Anou-minnoi’s farakaoina softly and hoped that Radèn would arrive soon. He wasn’t scared of Janyn-minnoi, though almost everyone else was. She still hoped the farakaoina would make her invisible just as it had the night before when she’d learned it, but part of her ached to be on the beach, far away from nasty boys who wanted to hurt her and her voice caught on her own fears when her feet found only stone instead of soft, warm sand.

  “Little, little fishling,” Janyn-minnoi’s voice sang next to her ear and Eiryn jumped, slamming herself against the wall behind her, tears already stinging her eyes and clouding her sight. Janyn-minnoi loomed over her, but for once he left enough room for her to move in. Eiryn gulped down air and tugged at her hair, but it was tied too tightly back for her to get a grip and pull it over her ears more effectively. Everything was wrong.

  “Frightened as a mainland rabbit,” Janyn-minnoi continued, voice weaving another farakaoina that Eiryn thought she knew. If it was the simple pattern it sounded like, that one was all wrong too. When the boy reached out to touch her ears, Eiryn reflexively beat his hand away and flinched into a corner. “Why are you so scared, sifanou? You should be proud, pointy-ears. Sifanou and still here.” That was when Eiryn realised he’d been addressing her as a thing again and she couldn’t hold back the sob. Though she dug her nails into her hands so hard it hurt, she couldn’t hold back a sob.

  “Leave her alone, Janyn-minnoi,” Ellai-minnai’s soft voice pleaded. Eiryn wanted to look at the older girl, but she didn’t dare take her eyes off Janyn. The boy tweaked her nose and hissed something in her ear, but Eiryn was trying very, very, very hard not to pay any attention and didn’t know what he’d said because she was too busy thinking about how to make something pretty out of scalloped shells. If she didn’t think of something else’s, she’d cry and she didn’t want to cry. It always made Janyn worse.

  Eiryn tried so hard to be strong and it never worked. She hunched in on herself and just waited, but nothing happened.

  At last Eiryn heard Orryn-minnaoi’s voice calling out names. She scrambled out of her corner and to her own desk. It was behind five other children and Orryn-minnaoi was too busy looking at the sheet of names to notice her slipping into her seat. Eiryn hadn’t heard aon start, but, since ao always called out the eldest first and there were plenty of other children in the class, Eiryn had enough time to sneak over to her desk without being noticed. Janyn glanced over when Orryn-minnaoi called her name and grinned at her. She couldn’t see Radèn anywhere, but she raised her hand to show Orryn-minnaoi that she was present and cringed when all other children turned to stare at her. Normally, that didn’t happen. Normally, Orryn-minnaoi would make a note, nod and start aos lesson.

  This time ao nodded, made a note on aos paper and… stared.

  “I am truly sorry, child. How are you?”

  Eiryn flinched. Had ao seen her and Janyn? She’d get into trouble if anyone knew what Janyn had said to her. But Orryn-minnaoi only gave her a sad smile. “Eiryn-minnai? Are you well?”

  She didn’t respond. She wanted to say ‘no’ and that she would never be all right again and ask aon why ao couldn’t hear how badly Janyn could sing farakaoina. She wanted to say that if there was anyone who was sifanou in the room it was Janyn. Eiryn took a small, worn book from her desk. It’d been her mother’s once. Dai’d given it to her for her third birthday. Farakaoina calmed Eiryn and she was so frightened her breath came in very rapid little bursts that made her dizzy. Everyone was staring at her, waiting for her to respond. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t. All she wanted was for dai to come back and the day to be normal.

  “She forgot her book of farakaoina, Orryn-minnaoi,” Janyn-minnoi said politely. Eiryn felt her cheeks flushed. She was holding her mother’s book in her hands. She did have another book that Keilan-minnai had given her and that was in Arèn’s chambers still, but Janyn couldn’t possibly know that. Keilan-minnai had told her never to show it to anyone, not even Radèn. And promises were meant to be kept. They were. They were.

  The classroom was silent, though some of the children shuffled in their seats or with their paper. Eiryn could feel her eyes burn with tears wanting to fall, but she wouldn’t let them. At least it kept her from thinking about her mother and the way she couldn’t let dai hear all the new farakaoina she’d learned.

  When spots came and went into her vision, Eiryn tried to do the exercises that Keilan-minnai and dai had taught her to prepare for singing farakaoina for a long time. Distantly, she could hear children muttering in concern and it felt like forever before the spots vanished and all she felt was dizzy.

  Orryn-minnaoi was kneeling beside her bench, humming softly, with aos honey voice and honey skin almost like hers. Aos eyes were full of concern, but ao didn’t speak. Just looked and then got up to return to aos big desk at the front. Eiryn wanted one just like it when she was older. It had lots of little drawers to store things in.

  The other children whispered among themselves, though they fell silent when Orryn-minnaoi had reached aos desk. In the silence, Bunren-minnaoi’s voice whisper sounded pretty loud. “She’s too young to be here,” the tarènaoi said. Eiryn didn’t know who ao was talking to or if she wanted to know. “It’s just a stupid sifanou.”

  Eiryn could feel the fear curling around her shoulders. She wanted to hide, but she couldn’t move. Someone — or several someones, Eiryn wasn’t sure — drew a sharp breath. It cut through the room like a knife. Orryn-minnaoi’s otherwise star-sparkled eyes turned as stern and cold as water. Benches scraped across the floor as people shuffled nervously. Their teacher kept looking at Bunren-minnaoi, though neither said a word.

  Eiryn hated being called sifanou and she didn’t like being called an ‘it’ either. She huddled on her bench and sniffled softly. That seemed to spur everyone into action. Suddenly the class stopped staring at her or Bunren and the room filled with barely hushed whispers, most of them filled with disbelief.

  “Silence.” Orryn-minnaoi’s voice was even softer than usual, but it carried through the entire room as easily as calm seas carried a ship. Eiryn couldn’t stop sniffling, but Orryn-minnaoi came to where she sat and rested a hand on her shoulder. It made Eiryn feel a little stronger, but she was still sobbing. Their tutor squeezed her
shoulder lightly, but ao never told her to be silent. Eiryn leaned against aon a little. She was certain that her uncle would have been angry with her. Orryn-minnaoi only stood beside her.

  “Bunren,” ao said. Even sobbing, Eiryn found herself cringing at the tone. She’d never heard anyone so angry. “Explain to the class what your choice of words implies and why it is wrong to use them.”

  Eiryn didn’t want to hear the explanation. Her uncle had scared her enough. When Janyn-minnoi said it wasn’t fair to make Eiryn listen too, she wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or stare at him in shock. He’d said something in her defence? Why? Orryn-minnaoi silenced the boy with a glance.

  She wasn’t sifanou. Anou-minnoi had said she wasn’t. Eiryn tried to repeat that over and over to drown out Bunren’s voice, but she didn’t manage. Some of the words ao used were ones she didn’t know, but she understood enough to follow aos words: Imbalance.

  Eiryn couldn’t help but cry, then. Even she knew that Imbalance would destroy the world if not destroyed first. Orryn-minnaoi’s voice when ao corrected Bunren-minnaoi was so sharp it just made Eiryn feel sick. She didn’t want to do bad things to the world. She wouldn’t do bad things to the world. Everyone always said Arèn-minnoi loved the Balance more than anything and he’d never love her if she was Imbalance. He wouldn’t have said that she wasn’t sifanou.

  I won’t do bad things. I won’t, I won’t.

  When Bunren-minnaoi finished talking, ao was trembling. Orryn-minnaoi fetched a pile of papers and dumped them on Bunren-minnaoi’s desk, told the tarènaoi to leave the classroom with aos homework and not come back until tomorrow with all the assignments filled in. And that was the end of that, apparently, because Orryn-minnaoi strode over to aos own big desk and announced that first on today’s list was checking everyone’s arithmetic homework.

  Everyone groaned. Everyone but Eiryn. She hadn’t known they’d had homework and, anyway, she hated arithmetic. It was the one class she never paid much attention to because no matter how often Radèn tried to explain things to her it always went wrong. Listening to all the other children reciting their answers one by one was boring, but it made her feel a little better.