Worlds Apart (ThreeCon)

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  His sister saw Prax first. She gave a short abrupt shriek, and put one hand to her mouth.

  His mother looked past Iphigenia to see what was wrong. As soon as she saw Prax, she let go of the spoon, then turned and gave a glad cry, spreading her arms wide. Prax dropped his things and took two long, quick strides into the firelight. He swooped his mother up in an embrace.

  His father pounded him on his back, while Iphigenia called his name over and over. Finally, they let him step back.

  His mother looked him up and down, frowning. “Didn’t they feed you in that awful place? You’re as thin as a rail!”

  Prax grinned, feeling a sense of rightness. He had expected her to make the comment. “I’m all right. I just didn’t feel like eating on the ship.”

  “Let him sit down and eat, then,” his father urged. “Give him room to breathe.”

  Circe suddenly clucked with annoyance. “The spoon!” She used a pair of long-handled tongs to retrieve the spoon from the soup, talking all the while about how difficult it was to prepare dinner when unexpected things kept you from finishing what you had started.

  Prax listened to her and smiled with content. She hadn’t changed at all. He looked over the fire and saw his father watching him.

  “Is all well with you, Praxiteles?” Konstantin asked.

  Prax thought about Rishi and all he had left on Subidar. He wasn’t ready to tell anyone he had found happiness but left it behind. On the other hand, he had inherited his ability to recognize a lie from his father. “It’s as well as it can be.” He glanced around the campsite and realized his brother was missing.

  “Where’s Nikos?” he asked in alarm.

  “Nikos is fine,” Konstantin said soothingly. “He married Charis and moved away to live with the Kazanti.”

  “Yes,” his mother added. “Six months after you left.” She paused, and the words hung in the air.

  His father stirred in his seat. “Praxiteles, is our debt paid?”

  “Yes,” Prax said.

  They asked no more questions. Prax put away his belongings while his mother took tiny loaves of trail bread from the stone oven. Every winter, the Elliniká harvested the wild grains that grew in the rich bottom lands of the southern plains. They milled the grain by hand and worked hard to grind enough flour to last them all year through.

  Prax took the bowl of soup his sister served him and sat down to eat. His mother passed him a loaf of trail bread. When Prax crunched the hard crust with his teeth, the burst of bready fragrance as he chewed the soft interior told him irrefutably that he was home. Not even Thulan’s cooking was as good as warm trail bread.

  After they ate, his mother sent Iphigenia to bed. The girl went reluctantly, spreading her bed roll out next to the wagon. Prax could see her watching him as he sat with his parents by the fire.

  He asked after the others who had been hurt in the attack by the outlaws. His father told him everyone who had survived the first day had recovered eventually, and there had been only minor skirmishes since then. The bandits were said to be demoralized and fighting among themselves.

  “Artemis is getting married again,” Circe said. “A man from the Damapolous, this time. Achilles is pleased because her intended speaks the city language.”

  Prax remembered his neighbor helping him to rescue Nikos. “I’m happy for her.”

  Once Iphigenia fell asleep, Prax and his parents talked more quietly so as not to wake her.

  “Eugenie will have to be told you’re back,” Konstantin said, “and Achilles, too, of course.”

  Prax nodded. “Of course.”

  “I’ve missed your help on the trail,” his father said. “I’m getting old.”

  Circe clucked disapprovingly. “You’re not old. You were just spoiled.”

  Konstantin laughed. “Maybe.” He gave Prax a penitent look. “Achilles gave me your credits. I’m afraid I spent most of them already. We wanted to give Nikos a well-furnished wagon for the wedding.”

  Prax shrugged. “It’s all right. I don’t need anything right now, anyway.”

  His mother sat down next to Prax and put her hand on his knee. “Was it very bad?”

  Prax sat perfectly still. “No.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” his father said.

  “No,” Prax said again.

  “All right,” Konstantin said, standing up. “Better get some sleep, then. It’ll be a long day for you tomorrow.”

  Prax stood up. He was home.

  THERE were no overt questions the next day, but Prax noticed many sidelong glances as people saw him for the first time. After a few days, they stopped paying attention, and Prax went back to being one of the group. After a month back with the Mercouri, he had grown used to his old life again.

  The days had a familiar routine. Prax woke every morning with the sun, and ate breakfast with his family. He took his turn at whatever tasks had been assigned to him, and then helped his father with their own chores. He no longer ran every day. Sometimes he was just too tired. But when he could, or when he felt the need to take his mind off his troubles, he would run across the plains as far as he could go and come back too tired to brood.

  It had seemed strange to him, at first, to be speaking the language of the Elliniká again, and to sleep outside every night on a bed roll beside the wagon. It even seemed odd to see a blue sky in the daytime and one pale, white moon in the night sky instead of two large, golden ones.

  Prax tried not to think about Subidar and all that he had left behind. He was glad that life was so different that he had few reminders of Rishi. Occasionally, she came to his mind unbidden; he would remember how she looked as she lay sleeping that last night, her hair gleaming in the moonlight, inky black against the pale yellow fabric of her pillow. Prax felt an emptiness when this happened, as if he were hollow inside. He tried to keep busy, so that he had no time to dwell on the past.

  Keeping busy wasn’t difficult, because the Mercouri were preparing to join the gathering that was held every year once all the herds had migrated to the northern edge of the plains, right at the boundary of the foothills.

  The morning before the gathering, Prax got up from his bedroll, walked a few meters from the wagon, and watched the sky turn from charcoal gray to azure blue. Behind him he heard footsteps, and he knew that his father was up, too.

  “Good morning, Father,” Prax said, without turning around.

  “Good morning,” Konstantin answered. “It’ll be a good day.”

  A good day meant no rain. The Mercouri planned to butcher a bodi so they would have meat to take to the gathering. Attempting to do it in the rain could be messy, even dangerous.

  Prax nodded. He studied the pristine blue of Celadon’s sky, made all the more vivid by the thin white threads of clouds stretched across it. The morning sun tinted the bottom edge of the clouds an intense pink. “I didn’t know how beautiful it was here until I left it.”

  His father began to build a fire, and Prax went down to the nearby stream to wash. His first morning back, the cold water had been a shock. He missed the ability to have a hot shower every morning more than he missed anything except Rishi herself.

  His mother was cooking breakfast when he came back. She smiled when she saw him. She still had the happy look she had had the first morning when he woke up with his family.

  “Good morning, Praxiteles,” she said.

  “Good morning, Mother.” Prax kissed her cheek lightly, and she looked pleased.

  Iphigenia came to help her mother prepare the food. She still looked sleepy.

  They ate in a companionable silence. Prax had forgotten how comfortable it could be to sit together, without anyone feeling the need for speech. On Subidar, it had seemed as if you had to be alone to achieve silence.

  Prax spent the morning helping with the butchering of the bodi. It to
ok five men to cut one of the huge, shaggy, horned animals out from the herd and subdue it. The actual butchering took them several hours to complete. When they finished, Prax washed off the bodi’s blood and his own sweat, put his shirt back on, and then walked back to his parents’ campsite for the noon meal.

  His mother had made meat pies. Prax ate two; he found he was hungrier from the hard work of making a living from the herd than he had been from the artificial exercise of being a security guard. Wrestling a bodi took more energy than working out with Qualhuan.

  His mother commented on how he had filled out nicely, after coming home so thin. Then she began to try to persuade him to go to the gathering.

  “Nikos will be upset to miss you,” she said.

  “I can see him later,” Prax said. “The Kazanti herd isn’t that far from us on the trail.”

  “But why not go? What harm is there in going out and being with people?”

  Prax held back a frown. It would be disrespectful to flatly contradict her, but he had no wish to go to a gathering where his situation would be a topic of much gossip. “I have no reason to go, Mother. And if I stay, it frees someone else to go. Someone must stay and watch the herd.”

  “Let him alone, Circe,” Konstantin said. “He’s old enough to know his own mind. He already proved that. He’ll be fine with Penelope since she’s not going either. Quit pestering him.”

  Fortunately, Iphigenia knocked over a pitcher of water, and Circe was too distracted by the need to scold her to pursue the argument with Prax.

  In the afternoon, Prax helped his father load the wagon with everything needed for the gathering. After the wagon was loaded and ready, they took a break. Prax flopped down on the grass near the wagon. His sister brought them a drinking bottle full of water flavored just slightly with wine.

  Konstantin drank first. When their father went off to check on the alogos, Iphigenia waited as Prax took his turn with the water bottle.

  “Thank you,” Prax said with a sigh, handing her back the bottle.

  “You’re welcome,” she said. She sat down next to him and studied him curiously. “Did you miss us while you were away?”

  “Yes,” Prax said, smiling at her. “Even you, brat.”

  Iphigenia made a face at him. “You can’t call me that anymore. I’m old enough to be married now.”

  “Just barely,” Prax said with a grin.

  Iphigenia studied him again. “I’m old enough to know what happened to you five years ago. Mother told me about it after you left.”

  Prax looked away, ashamed.

  His sister touched his shoulder gently. “It wasn’t fair. It was Zoë’s fault as much as yours.”

  Prax shook his head. She might have learned the bare facts, but she didn’t understand.

  “I heard Mother and Father talking about it the night after you went away,” she said. “Mother said she was to blame for not noticing how things were back then. She cried a lot. Father told her it was too late to cry about it.”

  “You shouldn’t have listened,” Prax said. “If they had meant for you to hear, they would have spoken in front of you.”

  “Mother told me about it later, when I asked her,” Iphigenia said. “Besides, I wanted to know. No one would ever tell me before. I knew there was something, but Mother always said I was too young.”

  “She was right.”

  “Maybe I was too young when Zoë died, but I was old enough when you went away with that woman, and no one would talk to me about that, either.”

  Prax said nothing. Talking about Rishi might not have brought a sense of shame, but the pain was too fresh to make it comfortable.

  Iphigenia crossed her arms over her chest. “Well? You were gone a long time. How many times did you have to sleep with her to pay the debt?”

  Prax stood up, angry at her prying and appalled at her lack of decorum. “You need to learn some manners. No one will want to marry a woman with no manners.”

  Iphigenia scrambled to her feet. “It’s not fair,” she almost shouted. “I’ve always been the youngest. I never got to hear about anything. The most exciting thing that’s happened to this clan for as long as anyone can remember is when that woman took you away and now you won’t tell me anything!”

  “Stop calling her ‘that woman.’ She has a name!”

  Iphigenia opened her eyes wide. “Were you fond of her? Is that why Grandmother says you’ve come home with a hole in your heart?”

  “I have work to do.” Prax strode off and left her standing there alone.

  He walked down the line of wagons until he came to the area where the alogos had been tethered to graze. He found his father grooming one of their team.

  Prax took the brush from him. “Let me do that. You should have asked me.”

  “I’ve gotten used to doing it myself again,” his father said mildly.

  Konstantin watched while Prax brushed the alogos with long, even strokes. “Which one of them has been bothering you?” he asked after a few minutes.

  Prax was silent for a moment, debating how much he wanted to reveal to his father. He didn’t want to get Iphigenia into trouble, but on the other hand, it wouldn’t hurt for his father to know she had a lot to learn about manners. “Iphigenia needs to learn to curb her tongue.”

  His father nodded. “She’s young still.”

  “Penelope was never like that—not even when she was that age.”

  His father smiled. “Penelope is older than you by more than a year. You don’t remember what she was like at ten.”

  “Maybe,” Prax admitted. He continued to brush the alogos’ shaggy back and sides.

  His father stood close and put one hand on Prax’s shoulder.

  Prax stopped brushing the alogos. He rested his arms on the animal’s broad back, and then he laid his head down on his forearms and closed his eyes. The memory of what he had had on Subidar hit him, as clear as if it had been yesterday. Loss stung him, sharp and painful.

  Konstantin still said nothing, letting his nearness and the weight of his hand convey his love and support.

  Finally, Prax broke the silence. “She never made me sleep with her. Not even when I offered.”

  Despite the lack of context, his father seemed to understand. He smiled slightly. “It must have been the wine that made her so wild. It does that to some people.”

  “Yes.” Prax straightened up and took a deep breath. He had to learn how to talk about Rishi without falling apart.

  “You came to care for her?” Konstantin asked gently.

  Prax nodded.

  “Why didn’t you stay with her, then?” his father asked.

  Prax began to brush the alogos again. “She said our debt was paid. I had to think of my own debt, then. Besides, she must marry. Her family has its own kind of clan law. She must have children to carry on her House.”

  His father’s hand gripped his shoulder for a moment. “It’s a shame.”

  Prax swallowed hard. He finished grooming the first alogos and moved on to a second. The great beasts nuzzled him while he brushed them, blowing their hot breath in his face. Prax was comforted by the familiarity of the task and the warmth of their bodies.

  Konstantin went back to the campsite to check the harnesses and other gear for their trip. Prax stayed with the alogos until dusk fell, and then he walked back and found his family sitting down to dinner. His mother had made a stew from the meat of the tiny bird-like animals that nested on the plains. Plump, bready dumplings bubbled in a rich, creamy sauce. It was good, but it reminded Prax of the meals that Thulan had cooked.

  His mother had just stoked the fire when Prax heard footsteps. He looked up to see a figure approaching their campsite. It was a woman. When she drew closer, he could see the firelight flickering on her face. She looked very much like Rishi.

  For just a se
cond, Prax thought that he was seeing things. He stood up and stared as the figure stepped into the circle of light around the fire. It was Rishi.

  Prax’s mother turned to see what was making him stare. She dropped the ladle she was holding in surprise. His father stood up also. Only Iphigenia remained seated, but she seemed not to know who Rishi was.

  Prax noticed that Rishi was wearing what looked like a short Elliniká dress over full-cut trousers. She looked, in fact, like a woman of the Elliniká.

  “Good evening,” she said politely. It took Prax a moment to absorb the fact that she had spoken in his language.

  “Lady!” Prax said abruptly in Standard. “What are you doing here, lady?”

  Rishi raised one eyebrow, as if she found this rude.

  His father frowned at him, even though he couldn’t know what the words meant. “Where are your manners? That’s not how the Elliniká greet a guest.”

  Rishi smiled so that her dimple showed. “Thank you,” she said, still in the Elliniká tongue. “May I sit down?”

  Konstantin stepped back and waved her to his own stool by the fire.

  Prax still stood, amazed. She had spoken quite distinctly in Elliniká, even using the formal form of ‘you’ to address his father, something very proper in a woman of her age. “When did you learn to speak the language of my people, lady?” he asked in Elliniká.

  “I started studying it shortly after you left, Praxiteles,” Rishi said. “I apologize if I make mistakes, but I haven’t had much chance to practice yet.”

  “Not at all, lady,” Konstantin said. “You speak very well.”

  Prax’s mother seemed to wake from a trance. She offered Rishi a glass of wine. Her tone was stiff and a little formal.