Prompt 30: Never Look Back -- Because Once, We Were Close -- Part 2
He smiles, then frowns, realizing that his joke was not in the best of taste. I return his smile, though, not offended in the least. “It’s for Kikre,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about Kikre. She’s not worth your time.”
It’s incredible how he thinks his joke might be offensive but doesn’t stop to imagine that this comment would hurt me. I don’t stop smiling, though; I simply shrug and go to dress Tanin, but I can’t help wondering how he would react if I said the same thing about Atenin.
Tain rushes up to us as soon as our carriage pulls up to the cemetery. His hair is grey, now, and his face looks worn and tired. You and your husband are standing a ways’ back, by the tomb, I suppose. He looks like he wants to throw his arms around us, but at the last minute he decides not to. He kisses my hand, instead, and shakes Tanin’s hand. He gazes up at Etin for a moment, not sure what to do, then bows low, as though he were still a peasant, as though Etin is an old-time lord. Etin, while perhaps surprised, responds well. No sooner has Tain raised his head again than Etin salutes, a real revolutionary salute, general to general. Tanin, talk about a child of his era, immediately imitates his father, throwing up his hand to his head with perfect solemnity. Tain manages a small smile, but, before turning to lead us over to you and your husband, turns to me and whispers, “I need to talk to you.”
The service isn’t very long. I’m not paying all that much attention - it’s a strange funeral, with the body already buried. It makes me think of the yearly memorials for our fallen comrades back in Assera and I look on with the same kind of detachment as I do then. I think that maybe I should cry, but the tears won’t come. I look at you, instead, across from me. You aren’t crying, either, though you are clinging to your husband’s arm. You are dressed quite elegantly, I can’t help but notice, although the black doesn’t do you any favors you pause from time to time to look down at your puffed sleeves, your embroidered neckline, the jewel on your necklace. I don’t think my efforts insulted you. You look prettier than I do, today, and if that is a victory to you I don’t mean to take it away.
After the funeral, you and Tayken go off to your own carriage and Tain escorts us back to ours. We walk slowly, giving him time to say what he needs to, but he doesn’t speak until we’ve almost arrived. A few steps away, he stops. “Karrah,” he murmurs, “Liket didn’t die of a heart attack.”
“Oh?” This is a strange way to begin, and I don’t know quite how to respond. Etin wrinkles his nose.
“Did you think she had?” he asks.
“I didn’t say that she had, in the letter I sent you?” Tain is puzzled.
I shake my head; Etin frowns. Tain takes a deep breath and stretches out a hand to me, which I take. I’m beginning to imagine what he will say, and the look in Etin’s eyes says that he does, too. Tain, though, is having difficulty telling us what it seems we already know. “At least I didn’t lie to you, then,” he says. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then finally manages, “Well, … to all appearances it seems like Liket died … that Liket … that she took her own life.”
Etin frowns sympathetically and I squeeze Tain’s hand. Strange, perhaps, that it is Tain who is revealing this to us yet we are the ones comforting him, when he has known the truth the whole time. At least we never knew the lie, I tell myself. “The official word is a heart attack?” Etin asks.
Tain nods. “I wanted her buried in her family plot. I don’t know whether it’ll do any good, though,” he reflects sadly.
“What do you mean?” I can’t help but ask.
“I pray that Kayana li takes pity on her soul, even if she did…” Tain begins, but the idea is too troubling to voice, that Liket may not be saved. We know what he means, though. Etin bites his lip to keep from saying anything unhelpful. I feel that a response is required, though, so I try my best.
“I’m sure that she is at peace,” I tell him.
Tain nods slowly and turns to go. We stand there for a few seconds, then Etin calls him back. “Tain? I, uh, wanted to say something…”
The old man returns to stand before us. I look up at my husband; I have no idea what he’s planning. Etin smiles warmly before beginning to speak.
“I want to thank you,” he says, “on behalf of the Asseran state for rescuing Liket all of those years ago.”
Both Tain and I are surprised, but neither of us say anything, for we let Etin continue.
“I was a child of seven when you left with Liket and Kikaren-la. I already knew about suffering and oppression back then, but your actions taught me that a man can, why, a man can react, a man can do something to end the suffering, a man can resist. Before then I simply believed that to suffer was our lot in life, that as peasants we were worthless, but your heroism taught me that it doesn’t have to be that way. You taught me that life gives you choices and that change is possible, and that life is so valuable that people can stand up against tremendous odds to protect it. If you hadn’t saved her my consciousness to the people may never have been awakened and so, in a roundabout way, I must say that I owe the revolution to you.”
Was that speech completely unplanned? I have a feeling that it was. Etin’s a good speaker, though! Even I, at this moment, almost have the urge to clap. I’m smiling at him, anyhow, smiling gratefully. Tain just looks at us, bleary-eyed. “I only did what was right to do,” he mumbles. Etin smiles at him. The man’s even modest! Is what he’s thinking, I’m sure.
His next words, though, completely ruin the whole moment. “When Kayana li calls you to her service, you can’t do a thing but obey,” he muses. With that he gives his own little salute, almost a mockery of Etin’s, and leaves to rejoin his family.
Quickly, I climb into the carriage, sitting Tanin upon my lap, but Etin just stands there, dumbfounded. He stares off in the distance, towards where Tain has gone, though Tain doesn’t turn to look back. My poor Etin! His mouth is completely wide open! It would almost be funny, if it were, perhaps, happening to other people.
“Etin, you might want to close your mouth,” I jest, though my tone shows that my heart isn’t in it. “You don’t want your face to freeze that way.”
It’s a joke that Tanin has heard before and evidently it pleases his toddler sensibilities - he bursts out laughing. Etin, finally getting into the carriage, forces a smile. I shrug, trying to make him forget his anger, even as I know he won’t.
“I don’t think he heard a single word I said!” he finally exclaimed, once we’d begun to move. There is hurt in those blue eyes, hurt, betrayal almost. “He just … completely negated everything I told him! Can you believe there are people out there who believe shit like that?” (I frown at his word choice - Tanin is here, after all, but I don’t stop him. He continues.) “After everything that happened, after the revolution … this is the exact ideology that kept our people suffering for centuries! For centuries, Karrah! Because of their blind faith, people let themselves be oppressed, let themselves be cut down like, like dogs! This is how people like my father, like my mother and my sisters, died without complaint! People are paralyzed by faith in a goddess who doesn’t even exist, even today! And, look how it’s hurting him still! He thinks Liket went to hell! He thinks he failed, in the end he thinks he failed! As if anything awaiting Liket could be any worse than the hell she must’ve lived through! And, here he sees the one choice she made, the one grab for freedom she could possibly have taken, after all of her trauma, he sees it as a sin?”
He continues in this vein nearly the whole ride back to Atenin’s house. I don’t stop him. It’s not like I could stop him, anyhow. It’s not me he needs to convince - whether I completely agree or not I am well aware of his views on this subject. He can’t tell Tain, though, though he dearly wants to, so he tells me, instead. Tanin sits, not entirely content but not unhappy either, in my lap. With Etin’s and my blood running in his veins, hearing some people talk with voices raised doesn’t bother him. I stroke his hair.
Tain told me, by the way, not to tell you the truth. He instructed me to neither seek you out and tell you nor to answer you truthfully if you asked me. I must say that, writing this, it gives me perverse pleasure to imagine you reading this, learning the truth and not even from my lips but a cold and calculated letter. You will never read this, though, though I write it with you in mind. If I can, when I have completed it I will burn it. More likely it will be folded away in a drawer somewhere until somebody finds it, in the years to come. I’m not that cruel, after all, and besides, I did promise Tain that I’d keep it from you. Did you know, though, that it was in a letter, in a letter and some documents, that I learned the truth about you and our mother? Lord Kicyah had always told me that you had died. When I was ten I, feeling brave one day, went through his study, and the rest is history.
“I didn’t even cry.” Evening again. We’re still at Atenin’s place, though he and his roommates are avoiding us. I wish that we were leaving tomorrow, but Tain has invited us to lunch and the Kikaren king to dinner, so we’ve got another day to go. Etin and I are once again in our room, or Paith and Elisya’s room, I keep reminding myself. We are sitting together on the bed. His arms are wrapped around my shoulders.
“No?” he asks me, even though I’m sure he noticed this himself. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t even feel the tiniest urge to. I was staring at Kikre the whole time, staring at her admiring herself in her finery. What kind of funeral is this, one daughter enjoying showing off the baubles that her husband’s bought for her and the other daughter feeling nothing at all? What kind of example am I setting for my son, if I can’t even cry at my own mother’s funeral?”
Etin frowns, twining a strand of my hair through his fingers, holding it to the light so it shines like fibers of gold. “I think it’s give and take, though,” he tells me after a moment. “Of course, if things were normal, you would love your mother and she would love you. In a situation like this, though, when your mother couldn’t care a thing for you there’s no reason for you to love her in return. It would be sort of pathetic, … desperate, I mean, if you did, don’t you think?”
I shrug, crossing my arms, feeling strangely cold despite the warmth of Etin’s embrace. “I suppose,” I reply, but in reality I don’t know what to think.
Maybe I’ll bring Tanin over to you, I decide. You can think of me what you will, but my child will warm your heart, won’t he?
It doesn’t take me long to realize the fallacy of that thought. We eat lunch together, nearly silent. Etin and Tayken make conversation, small talk that neither of them really finds interesting. You pick at your food and I occupy myself with my son’s table manners. For a two-year-old he really does have good manners, but I think I’m making a show of taking him to task, today. Is it because I wish to keep myself busy? Or do I want to show you, just as you showed me, yesterday, your pretty clothes, do I wish to show you what a good mother I am, despite the fact that I never really had one of my own?
After lunch, when someone, Tayken, I suppose, has brought out a bottle of something - not wine, cognac perhaps, something like that, and both Tain and Etin are semi-discreetly taking shots to calm their nerves, I approach you, my son in my arms. I’m all smiles, really, all sweetness and light, like a girl of seventeen at a ball. “Kikre, I’d like you to meet my son. Tanin, won’t you say hello to Auntie Kikre?”
Tanin dutifully says hello, though he’s puzzled - I usually don’t take three days to introduce him to new faces. For a moment I think he’ll salute again. He doesn’t, but he says hello. “He’s telling you hello in Asseran,” I tell you. Tanin, at two, only knows one language. For a moment I think that things are working, but the look in your eyes dashes my hopes.
To your credit, you don’t speak your thoughts. You don’t need to, though - the venom in your gaze is enough to make perfectly clear what you think of all of this. How dare you show me your child! You are telling me, How dare you act like things are any different! How dare you rub in the face that you have a son, that your line continues, that Kicyah’s line continues, when you should never have been born in the first place! If you were dead, Liket would still be alive. How dare you?
Five years ago, when I was nineteen, I would have answered you with some well-chosen words of my own. Now, though … well, I don’t suppose I can consider myself all that surprised by the hate you show to me. Perhaps I even deserve it. Not that I think Liket’s death had anything to do with me, but I won’t deny I’ve said cruel things to you in the past, and haven’t stopped thinking them. Tanin, though! Have you no shame, looking into the innocent eyes of a little boy, barely more than a baby, with such hatred? What has he done to wrong you? Are you so selfish that you cannot see how you hurt him?
Tanin cannot possibly know what you must be thinking, but he understands that hatred well enough. He turns away, burying his head in my chest, tightening his little body against mine as I rise and, wrapping my shawl around him, turn away. I will not make him endure more. He shakes with silent sobs; I stroke his hair, his fine, straw-blond hair, and realize for the thousandth time how very much like his father he is.
“Why didn’t Tain take me, too?” I demand. Night once more, but this time we are hardly sitting quietly, calmly, together. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, tears that I could hold back no longer, and my hands are clasped below my chin as I rock back and forth. Etin is trying to embrace me, trying to calm me, but I shake off his touch. Everyone in Atenin’s apartment probably can hear me and if I were myself I would have taken more care to go unnoticed, but inside of me the dam had burst and my thoughts could no longer go unspoken. “Why did he leave me behind? Did he really believe anyone was fooled by that note he left? Why am I denied my mother’s love? Why was it me! Or, if it couldn’t have been me, why didn’t my father kill me, then and there? Why put me through this?!”
“Karrah, listen,” Etin finally cuts in. “Don’t ask why. You’ll never get an answer if you ask why. Rather, ask ‘why for?’ If you had gone to Kikaren back then we would never have met.”
I look up, still shaking, but I fall silent. This is true.
“If I had never met you, the revolution would never have succeeded. You know how much I needed you, for all those years, and you did heroic work! Who else could have done that for us, for Assera? Who else could I have found to spy on Kicyah in such close quarters? I can’t pretend that the situation with your family is ideal, far from it, in fact, but I’m sure you take at least a little satisfaction in your success and the service you’ve done for your nation! We can’t always get everything we want in life - you see how my relationship with Atenin is, and though I dearly wish it was otherwise maybe that’s the price I must pay for my success! Perhaps for you it’s…”
“But don’t you see!” I cry, “My whole goal was to find them, to find them and go to Kikaren and receive their love! That’s why I spied for you! That’s why I risked my life, time and time again, for your revolution, so that I could eventually go to where I belonged! Later, yes, I loved you, but my first goal, my foremost goal, was … I mean, yes, later it changed, but…”
“Surely, though, you take some comfort in the changes in Assera? Surely part of you is appeased, at least, by our success?” Etin is perplexed, not because he doesn’t understand me but rather because, in his heart, he does, but this comprehension is one he’d rather not have.
“I take more comfort in our love than in our government,” I tell him.
“But, the revolution…”
“It was never my revolution!” I shout. My whole body has tensed, as if bracing itself for a strike, though I know that Etin would never hit me. “It was never my cause!”
“You don’t mean that!” Etin’s voice is shaking; he almost sounds like he wants to cry. He’s not angry, or perhaps he is, but he is more afraid. I wish I could tell him that I didn’t mean it. “Karrah, please take that back. Please!” It’s sad to see him beg like this. But, how can I deny the truth?
“What do I know of revolution? What do I know of the people? Etin, I’m completely bourgeois! Not only that, I’m an aristocrat! You know that! You knew that all along! What do I know of oppression and suffering and injustice? No, but I love your cause because it is yours! I love your speeches not for your ideas but for the sound of your voice! I am proud of your successes and I’m glad that you … but I don’t know anything, I don’t know if the life of the average person has improved … I’m no altruist! There’s no one in the world I’d die for, except you, except Tanin! I’d certainly not give my life for someone I didn’t even know, nor for an idea, an intangible concept! I fought - I had my goals - and while yours succeeded mine did not! Can you compare that? Can you call that fair?” I am nearly screaming, even through my sobs.
“Karrah, Karrah…” Etin, for once, has no idea what to say. “I knew we started like that, but surely … for years and years we worked together! For years! You must have come to love … if you didn’t care at first…”
“I came to love you, Etin, the man! Not the … not the legend, the hero, the god!”
When Lilana first declared her love to Etin, Etin’s first words to her were, “I’m sorry.” He must be brought right back to that moment, now, for even through my own anguish I see the pain, the awful vulnerability in his eyes. He doesn’t want me to love him that way, doesn’t want me to love him for him. He loves me, though, he must know what it’s like! Finally, though, attempting, perhaps, to defend himself, he tells me coldly, “I never promised them to you, your family, I mean. There’s no way I could have done that.”
“I’m not talking about that!” I cry out. “Lord knows you didn’t promise me a damn thing, back then, other than an eye on my safety! I wasn’t asking you to promise me … I was simply acting under the assumption that I think one would consider normal that my mother would be interested in seeing me again, that she would miss me, would love me! You’ve never broken a promise to me, Etin. God knows you never made one!”
Now he buries his head in his hands and I clutch my arms to myself, knowing, just as he knows, that even as we are trying to comfort each other we are only torturing one another. “It’s nothing to do with you,” I insist, and now it is my tone that is pleading. “True, you never gave me a promise back then but you have given me so much I should hardly need promises from you. It’s not like it was … that was almost fifteen years ago - I was a girl of ten! You didn’t know me; I was willing to work for you, so why should you have promised me anything? Listen, Etin, I love you. Isn’t that good enough? I know full well that life isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have asked you why … why should you have an answer? I…”
Etin is facing away from me on the bed, his head still buried in his hands. I gaze over at him. My tremors and tears have subsided and I reach out, shy, to rest a hand upon his shoulder. His muscles are so tight, though! After a moment, he turns to face me, his eyes heartbreakingly vulnerable. “Karrah,” he whispers, “please don’t turn from me.”
“Nothing has changed,” I exclaim. “I’ve never been perfect, but you always knew how I was! I love you, though, I love you and I beg you to love me, despite my flaws! I love Assera, Etin … be content in that, and you are Assera, to me! I couldn’t live without you! Nothing has changed for me … if it has changed for you, then it is you who turn from me! I love Assera, Etin, … you’ve noted so yourself how I can’t stand to be beyond her borders! I support what is best for my country and I believe that to be your leadership. If I do not love the revolution it’s only because I don’t understand … I don’t understand, having always been privileged… Etin, you knew all this! Don’t turn from me!”
Finally, at long last, he takes me in his arms and cradles me like a baby. We weep together, tears falling and joining upon my slip. They are no longer tears of despair, though - they are warm against my cheeks and I suppose his as well. They are tears of catharsis, perhaps, maybe even tears of relief. “I love you,” Etin whispers to me. “I love you and I need you and I agree, nothing has changed, nothing will. Our lives are a mosaic, a patchwork we’ve sewn together of all of our shattered dreams, and sometimes there are parts that clash, that don’t fit… but our lives are a beautiful mosaic, all the same. We’ve both got to remember…”
“Etin,” I murmur, “When Atenin looks at me, with hate in his eyes like that, it scares me more than words can say … because you have the same eyes, you and he, and I can’t help but imagine you looking at me with ice in your gaze like that. I…”
He frowns sadly and caresses my shoulders. “I can promise that, Karrah. I’ll never desert you.”
“Nor will I,” I pledge.
“I know.”
It was like this that we left Kikaren, bright and early the next morning, and thus ended our strange and painful journey through our pasts. It had to be done, of course, done once. What can I say now? Can I say that I’ll never look back, after this? I don’t know what the future will bring. Still, though, there’s a sense of finality about all of this. I suppose that with my mother I have buried my past. I pray, … though I’ve no idea to whom, that the same is not true of Etin. I pray that someday he and Atenin can reconcile, that Atenin can put away his anger and accept us as we are. There’s still hope, I tell myself. As long as there is anger it means there is emotion.
I can’t pretend to be a saint, with regards to you. We have both behaved badly, across the years. I don’t want to hate you, but I cannot love you, so indifference it is. Perhaps it is this that will forever preclude our own reconciliation. In any event, this letter will not be sent and I shall never contact you again.
I just wish there was some way I could tell you: We were close once, weren’t we?
-END-
He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about Kikre. She’s not worth your time.”
It’s incredible how he thinks his joke might be offensive but doesn’t stop to imagine that this comment would hurt me. I don’t stop smiling, though; I simply shrug and go to dress Tanin, but I can’t help wondering how he would react if I said the same thing about Atenin.
Tain rushes up to us as soon as our carriage pulls up to the cemetery. His hair is grey, now, and his face looks worn and tired. You and your husband are standing a ways’ back, by the tomb, I suppose. He looks like he wants to throw his arms around us, but at the last minute he decides not to. He kisses my hand, instead, and shakes Tanin’s hand. He gazes up at Etin for a moment, not sure what to do, then bows low, as though he were still a peasant, as though Etin is an old-time lord. Etin, while perhaps surprised, responds well. No sooner has Tain raised his head again than Etin salutes, a real revolutionary salute, general to general. Tanin, talk about a child of his era, immediately imitates his father, throwing up his hand to his head with perfect solemnity. Tain manages a small smile, but, before turning to lead us over to you and your husband, turns to me and whispers, “I need to talk to you.”
The service isn’t very long. I’m not paying all that much attention - it’s a strange funeral, with the body already buried. It makes me think of the yearly memorials for our fallen comrades back in Assera and I look on with the same kind of detachment as I do then. I think that maybe I should cry, but the tears won’t come. I look at you, instead, across from me. You aren’t crying, either, though you are clinging to your husband’s arm. You are dressed quite elegantly, I can’t help but notice, although the black doesn’t do you any favors you pause from time to time to look down at your puffed sleeves, your embroidered neckline, the jewel on your necklace. I don’t think my efforts insulted you. You look prettier than I do, today, and if that is a victory to you I don’t mean to take it away.
After the funeral, you and Tayken go off to your own carriage and Tain escorts us back to ours. We walk slowly, giving him time to say what he needs to, but he doesn’t speak until we’ve almost arrived. A few steps away, he stops. “Karrah,” he murmurs, “Liket didn’t die of a heart attack.”
“Oh?” This is a strange way to begin, and I don’t know quite how to respond. Etin wrinkles his nose.
“Did you think she had?” he asks.
“I didn’t say that she had, in the letter I sent you?” Tain is puzzled.
I shake my head; Etin frowns. Tain takes a deep breath and stretches out a hand to me, which I take. I’m beginning to imagine what he will say, and the look in Etin’s eyes says that he does, too. Tain, though, is having difficulty telling us what it seems we already know. “At least I didn’t lie to you, then,” he says. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, then finally manages, “Well, … to all appearances it seems like Liket died … that Liket … that she took her own life.”
Etin frowns sympathetically and I squeeze Tain’s hand. Strange, perhaps, that it is Tain who is revealing this to us yet we are the ones comforting him, when he has known the truth the whole time. At least we never knew the lie, I tell myself. “The official word is a heart attack?” Etin asks.
Tain nods. “I wanted her buried in her family plot. I don’t know whether it’ll do any good, though,” he reflects sadly.
“What do you mean?” I can’t help but ask.
“I pray that Kayana li takes pity on her soul, even if she did…” Tain begins, but the idea is too troubling to voice, that Liket may not be saved. We know what he means, though. Etin bites his lip to keep from saying anything unhelpful. I feel that a response is required, though, so I try my best.
“I’m sure that she is at peace,” I tell him.
Tain nods slowly and turns to go. We stand there for a few seconds, then Etin calls him back. “Tain? I, uh, wanted to say something…”
The old man returns to stand before us. I look up at my husband; I have no idea what he’s planning. Etin smiles warmly before beginning to speak.
“I want to thank you,” he says, “on behalf of the Asseran state for rescuing Liket all of those years ago.”
Both Tain and I are surprised, but neither of us say anything, for we let Etin continue.
“I was a child of seven when you left with Liket and Kikaren-la. I already knew about suffering and oppression back then, but your actions taught me that a man can, why, a man can react, a man can do something to end the suffering, a man can resist. Before then I simply believed that to suffer was our lot in life, that as peasants we were worthless, but your heroism taught me that it doesn’t have to be that way. You taught me that life gives you choices and that change is possible, and that life is so valuable that people can stand up against tremendous odds to protect it. If you hadn’t saved her my consciousness to the people may never have been awakened and so, in a roundabout way, I must say that I owe the revolution to you.”
Was that speech completely unplanned? I have a feeling that it was. Etin’s a good speaker, though! Even I, at this moment, almost have the urge to clap. I’m smiling at him, anyhow, smiling gratefully. Tain just looks at us, bleary-eyed. “I only did what was right to do,” he mumbles. Etin smiles at him. The man’s even modest! Is what he’s thinking, I’m sure.
His next words, though, completely ruin the whole moment. “When Kayana li calls you to her service, you can’t do a thing but obey,” he muses. With that he gives his own little salute, almost a mockery of Etin’s, and leaves to rejoin his family.
Quickly, I climb into the carriage, sitting Tanin upon my lap, but Etin just stands there, dumbfounded. He stares off in the distance, towards where Tain has gone, though Tain doesn’t turn to look back. My poor Etin! His mouth is completely wide open! It would almost be funny, if it were, perhaps, happening to other people.
“Etin, you might want to close your mouth,” I jest, though my tone shows that my heart isn’t in it. “You don’t want your face to freeze that way.”
It’s a joke that Tanin has heard before and evidently it pleases his toddler sensibilities - he bursts out laughing. Etin, finally getting into the carriage, forces a smile. I shrug, trying to make him forget his anger, even as I know he won’t.
“I don’t think he heard a single word I said!” he finally exclaimed, once we’d begun to move. There is hurt in those blue eyes, hurt, betrayal almost. “He just … completely negated everything I told him! Can you believe there are people out there who believe shit like that?” (I frown at his word choice - Tanin is here, after all, but I don’t stop him. He continues.) “After everything that happened, after the revolution … this is the exact ideology that kept our people suffering for centuries! For centuries, Karrah! Because of their blind faith, people let themselves be oppressed, let themselves be cut down like, like dogs! This is how people like my father, like my mother and my sisters, died without complaint! People are paralyzed by faith in a goddess who doesn’t even exist, even today! And, look how it’s hurting him still! He thinks Liket went to hell! He thinks he failed, in the end he thinks he failed! As if anything awaiting Liket could be any worse than the hell she must’ve lived through! And, here he sees the one choice she made, the one grab for freedom she could possibly have taken, after all of her trauma, he sees it as a sin?”
He continues in this vein nearly the whole ride back to Atenin’s house. I don’t stop him. It’s not like I could stop him, anyhow. It’s not me he needs to convince - whether I completely agree or not I am well aware of his views on this subject. He can’t tell Tain, though, though he dearly wants to, so he tells me, instead. Tanin sits, not entirely content but not unhappy either, in my lap. With Etin’s and my blood running in his veins, hearing some people talk with voices raised doesn’t bother him. I stroke his hair.
Tain told me, by the way, not to tell you the truth. He instructed me to neither seek you out and tell you nor to answer you truthfully if you asked me. I must say that, writing this, it gives me perverse pleasure to imagine you reading this, learning the truth and not even from my lips but a cold and calculated letter. You will never read this, though, though I write it with you in mind. If I can, when I have completed it I will burn it. More likely it will be folded away in a drawer somewhere until somebody finds it, in the years to come. I’m not that cruel, after all, and besides, I did promise Tain that I’d keep it from you. Did you know, though, that it was in a letter, in a letter and some documents, that I learned the truth about you and our mother? Lord Kicyah had always told me that you had died. When I was ten I, feeling brave one day, went through his study, and the rest is history.
“I didn’t even cry.” Evening again. We’re still at Atenin’s place, though he and his roommates are avoiding us. I wish that we were leaving tomorrow, but Tain has invited us to lunch and the Kikaren king to dinner, so we’ve got another day to go. Etin and I are once again in our room, or Paith and Elisya’s room, I keep reminding myself. We are sitting together on the bed. His arms are wrapped around my shoulders.
“No?” he asks me, even though I’m sure he noticed this himself. “I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t even feel the tiniest urge to. I was staring at Kikre the whole time, staring at her admiring herself in her finery. What kind of funeral is this, one daughter enjoying showing off the baubles that her husband’s bought for her and the other daughter feeling nothing at all? What kind of example am I setting for my son, if I can’t even cry at my own mother’s funeral?”
Etin frowns, twining a strand of my hair through his fingers, holding it to the light so it shines like fibers of gold. “I think it’s give and take, though,” he tells me after a moment. “Of course, if things were normal, you would love your mother and she would love you. In a situation like this, though, when your mother couldn’t care a thing for you there’s no reason for you to love her in return. It would be sort of pathetic, … desperate, I mean, if you did, don’t you think?”
I shrug, crossing my arms, feeling strangely cold despite the warmth of Etin’s embrace. “I suppose,” I reply, but in reality I don’t know what to think.
Maybe I’ll bring Tanin over to you, I decide. You can think of me what you will, but my child will warm your heart, won’t he?
It doesn’t take me long to realize the fallacy of that thought. We eat lunch together, nearly silent. Etin and Tayken make conversation, small talk that neither of them really finds interesting. You pick at your food and I occupy myself with my son’s table manners. For a two-year-old he really does have good manners, but I think I’m making a show of taking him to task, today. Is it because I wish to keep myself busy? Or do I want to show you, just as you showed me, yesterday, your pretty clothes, do I wish to show you what a good mother I am, despite the fact that I never really had one of my own?
After lunch, when someone, Tayken, I suppose, has brought out a bottle of something - not wine, cognac perhaps, something like that, and both Tain and Etin are semi-discreetly taking shots to calm their nerves, I approach you, my son in my arms. I’m all smiles, really, all sweetness and light, like a girl of seventeen at a ball. “Kikre, I’d like you to meet my son. Tanin, won’t you say hello to Auntie Kikre?”
Tanin dutifully says hello, though he’s puzzled - I usually don’t take three days to introduce him to new faces. For a moment I think he’ll salute again. He doesn’t, but he says hello. “He’s telling you hello in Asseran,” I tell you. Tanin, at two, only knows one language. For a moment I think that things are working, but the look in your eyes dashes my hopes.
To your credit, you don’t speak your thoughts. You don’t need to, though - the venom in your gaze is enough to make perfectly clear what you think of all of this. How dare you show me your child! You are telling me, How dare you act like things are any different! How dare you rub in the face that you have a son, that your line continues, that Kicyah’s line continues, when you should never have been born in the first place! If you were dead, Liket would still be alive. How dare you?
Five years ago, when I was nineteen, I would have answered you with some well-chosen words of my own. Now, though … well, I don’t suppose I can consider myself all that surprised by the hate you show to me. Perhaps I even deserve it. Not that I think Liket’s death had anything to do with me, but I won’t deny I’ve said cruel things to you in the past, and haven’t stopped thinking them. Tanin, though! Have you no shame, looking into the innocent eyes of a little boy, barely more than a baby, with such hatred? What has he done to wrong you? Are you so selfish that you cannot see how you hurt him?
Tanin cannot possibly know what you must be thinking, but he understands that hatred well enough. He turns away, burying his head in my chest, tightening his little body against mine as I rise and, wrapping my shawl around him, turn away. I will not make him endure more. He shakes with silent sobs; I stroke his hair, his fine, straw-blond hair, and realize for the thousandth time how very much like his father he is.
“Why didn’t Tain take me, too?” I demand. Night once more, but this time we are hardly sitting quietly, calmly, together. Tears are streaming down my cheeks, tears that I could hold back no longer, and my hands are clasped below my chin as I rock back and forth. Etin is trying to embrace me, trying to calm me, but I shake off his touch. Everyone in Atenin’s apartment probably can hear me and if I were myself I would have taken more care to go unnoticed, but inside of me the dam had burst and my thoughts could no longer go unspoken. “Why did he leave me behind? Did he really believe anyone was fooled by that note he left? Why am I denied my mother’s love? Why was it me! Or, if it couldn’t have been me, why didn’t my father kill me, then and there? Why put me through this?!”
“Karrah, listen,” Etin finally cuts in. “Don’t ask why. You’ll never get an answer if you ask why. Rather, ask ‘why for?’ If you had gone to Kikaren back then we would never have met.”
I look up, still shaking, but I fall silent. This is true.
“If I had never met you, the revolution would never have succeeded. You know how much I needed you, for all those years, and you did heroic work! Who else could have done that for us, for Assera? Who else could I have found to spy on Kicyah in such close quarters? I can’t pretend that the situation with your family is ideal, far from it, in fact, but I’m sure you take at least a little satisfaction in your success and the service you’ve done for your nation! We can’t always get everything we want in life - you see how my relationship with Atenin is, and though I dearly wish it was otherwise maybe that’s the price I must pay for my success! Perhaps for you it’s…”
“But don’t you see!” I cry, “My whole goal was to find them, to find them and go to Kikaren and receive their love! That’s why I spied for you! That’s why I risked my life, time and time again, for your revolution, so that I could eventually go to where I belonged! Later, yes, I loved you, but my first goal, my foremost goal, was … I mean, yes, later it changed, but…”
“Surely, though, you take some comfort in the changes in Assera? Surely part of you is appeased, at least, by our success?” Etin is perplexed, not because he doesn’t understand me but rather because, in his heart, he does, but this comprehension is one he’d rather not have.
“I take more comfort in our love than in our government,” I tell him.
“But, the revolution…”
“It was never my revolution!” I shout. My whole body has tensed, as if bracing itself for a strike, though I know that Etin would never hit me. “It was never my cause!”
“You don’t mean that!” Etin’s voice is shaking; he almost sounds like he wants to cry. He’s not angry, or perhaps he is, but he is more afraid. I wish I could tell him that I didn’t mean it. “Karrah, please take that back. Please!” It’s sad to see him beg like this. But, how can I deny the truth?
“What do I know of revolution? What do I know of the people? Etin, I’m completely bourgeois! Not only that, I’m an aristocrat! You know that! You knew that all along! What do I know of oppression and suffering and injustice? No, but I love your cause because it is yours! I love your speeches not for your ideas but for the sound of your voice! I am proud of your successes and I’m glad that you … but I don’t know anything, I don’t know if the life of the average person has improved … I’m no altruist! There’s no one in the world I’d die for, except you, except Tanin! I’d certainly not give my life for someone I didn’t even know, nor for an idea, an intangible concept! I fought - I had my goals - and while yours succeeded mine did not! Can you compare that? Can you call that fair?” I am nearly screaming, even through my sobs.
“Karrah, Karrah…” Etin, for once, has no idea what to say. “I knew we started like that, but surely … for years and years we worked together! For years! You must have come to love … if you didn’t care at first…”
“I came to love you, Etin, the man! Not the … not the legend, the hero, the god!”
When Lilana first declared her love to Etin, Etin’s first words to her were, “I’m sorry.” He must be brought right back to that moment, now, for even through my own anguish I see the pain, the awful vulnerability in his eyes. He doesn’t want me to love him that way, doesn’t want me to love him for him. He loves me, though, he must know what it’s like! Finally, though, attempting, perhaps, to defend himself, he tells me coldly, “I never promised them to you, your family, I mean. There’s no way I could have done that.”
“I’m not talking about that!” I cry out. “Lord knows you didn’t promise me a damn thing, back then, other than an eye on my safety! I wasn’t asking you to promise me … I was simply acting under the assumption that I think one would consider normal that my mother would be interested in seeing me again, that she would miss me, would love me! You’ve never broken a promise to me, Etin. God knows you never made one!”
Now he buries his head in his hands and I clutch my arms to myself, knowing, just as he knows, that even as we are trying to comfort each other we are only torturing one another. “It’s nothing to do with you,” I insist, and now it is my tone that is pleading. “True, you never gave me a promise back then but you have given me so much I should hardly need promises from you. It’s not like it was … that was almost fifteen years ago - I was a girl of ten! You didn’t know me; I was willing to work for you, so why should you have promised me anything? Listen, Etin, I love you. Isn’t that good enough? I know full well that life isn’t fair. I shouldn’t have asked you why … why should you have an answer? I…”
Etin is facing away from me on the bed, his head still buried in his hands. I gaze over at him. My tremors and tears have subsided and I reach out, shy, to rest a hand upon his shoulder. His muscles are so tight, though! After a moment, he turns to face me, his eyes heartbreakingly vulnerable. “Karrah,” he whispers, “please don’t turn from me.”
“Nothing has changed,” I exclaim. “I’ve never been perfect, but you always knew how I was! I love you, though, I love you and I beg you to love me, despite my flaws! I love Assera, Etin … be content in that, and you are Assera, to me! I couldn’t live without you! Nothing has changed for me … if it has changed for you, then it is you who turn from me! I love Assera, Etin, … you’ve noted so yourself how I can’t stand to be beyond her borders! I support what is best for my country and I believe that to be your leadership. If I do not love the revolution it’s only because I don’t understand … I don’t understand, having always been privileged… Etin, you knew all this! Don’t turn from me!”
Finally, at long last, he takes me in his arms and cradles me like a baby. We weep together, tears falling and joining upon my slip. They are no longer tears of despair, though - they are warm against my cheeks and I suppose his as well. They are tears of catharsis, perhaps, maybe even tears of relief. “I love you,” Etin whispers to me. “I love you and I need you and I agree, nothing has changed, nothing will. Our lives are a mosaic, a patchwork we’ve sewn together of all of our shattered dreams, and sometimes there are parts that clash, that don’t fit… but our lives are a beautiful mosaic, all the same. We’ve both got to remember…”
“Etin,” I murmur, “When Atenin looks at me, with hate in his eyes like that, it scares me more than words can say … because you have the same eyes, you and he, and I can’t help but imagine you looking at me with ice in your gaze like that. I…”
He frowns sadly and caresses my shoulders. “I can promise that, Karrah. I’ll never desert you.”
“Nor will I,” I pledge.
“I know.”
It was like this that we left Kikaren, bright and early the next morning, and thus ended our strange and painful journey through our pasts. It had to be done, of course, done once. What can I say now? Can I say that I’ll never look back, after this? I don’t know what the future will bring. Still, though, there’s a sense of finality about all of this. I suppose that with my mother I have buried my past. I pray, … though I’ve no idea to whom, that the same is not true of Etin. I pray that someday he and Atenin can reconcile, that Atenin can put away his anger and accept us as we are. There’s still hope, I tell myself. As long as there is anger it means there is emotion.
I can’t pretend to be a saint, with regards to you. We have both behaved badly, across the years. I don’t want to hate you, but I cannot love you, so indifference it is. Perhaps it is this that will forever preclude our own reconciliation. In any event, this letter will not be sent and I shall never contact you again.
I just wish there was some way I could tell you: We were close once, weren’t we?
-END-