10 - Charcoal on the stepfather

All my life my mother had let us come and go freely in her bedchamber. But one day about three years after my father’s death, going there with an armful of fresh cedar branches to give to her, I found myself rebuffed. There was a man inside whose voice I didn’t know.

I told myself there was nothing wrong. I was ten, old enough to understand that, alone in her bed, she was lonely. Yet anger filled me. My father had died. I had known there would be grief, walked through its long dark passage with her, felt its purity like a knife-edge. I could not conceive that it could be sullied this way, that in her chamber and her bed and her heart, he was replaceable.

Esora-e and Denaina had long agreed to accept her choice. She took visits from many men at first. I noticed only one thing they all had in common: none were blond.

She would call in one of us to send for the all the others who were old enough to be introduced to him, and it was always, “First the eldest, Fourth Chevenga.” I remember their big hands clasping mine, some steely, some more fishy, some callus-crusted, some hurting as they clenched, nervous or wanting too much to impress, perhaps.

She never openly asked me what I thought of whom. But I noticed her gazing at my face as I met them; she had to think of us too. I soon learned that if I let a certain look cross my face during the pleasantries, he wouldn’t get past the ivy-carven lintel.

That gave me the chill of hardness again, as when I’d first heard my father was dead and felt nothing. Too much power too soon, a child feels like a weight. But this time it awoke a dark pleasure in me too. Though I banished none that I didn’t genuinely dislike, and she might have disliked them too for all I knew, I could laugh to myself that I ruled their fates. Not a true cure to my pain—there could be none but time—but relief of a kind.

Then one day I thought, ‘I’m not alone in this.’ My sibs and I had whispered about it. I thought of the class of children who’d been the ancestors of all Yeola-e. My sibs and I were free Yeolis, entitled to gather, and to vote.

All my sibs who were six or better I had sneak into my room at night. That was Artira, Senala-e, Naiga, Lanai and Handaotha. I sat them all in a proper circle, unfastened my crystal and said, “A very serious matter has arisen, that touches every one of us.” Some might say I’d sat in the Assembly gallery a few too many times.

Once I’d framed the issue, they all began talking at once, and it took much naked-handed use of authority to get them using the speaker’s crystal properly. “Shadow-mama is lonely since Daddy got ’sassinated, she needs another Daddy.” -- “I don’t want another shadow-Daddy, blood-Daddy combs me enough.” -- “But they need a fourth to take care of all us, ’cause all us are so many.” -- “But what if he’s mean?” -- “I didn’t like the last one, his smile was like the taste of the throw-up you make when you’ve eaten too many raisins.” -- “Shewenga, do we have to take whoever she wants?”

I grabbed the crystal. “No!” Satisfaction rang through me. “Remember the saying? The people wills. If we take a vote, she has to listen.”

Doubts and possibilities both filled their small features, which echoed in so many different mixes those of our four parents. “Can we vote out all the rules?” Sena said hopefully.

I grabbed the crystal again. So often, politics requires walking a fine line. “No. Because the rules were made for everyone. If you could steal anyone’s things they could steal yours, if we could kill each other there’d soon be no one left, and if no one said please and thank you we’d all be mad at each other all the time for being rude. Grown-ups aren’t complete fools.

“But this is about love, and grown-ups can be complete fools about that.” (I’d heard this from a grown-up.) “Besides, she’s choosing our fourth parent. She has to listen to us.”

Then little Handaotha burst out, “Shadow-mama shouldn’t marry anybody! It’s not fair, Daddy losing his wife to someone else just because he’s dead!” So good young children are, at speaking bluntly the unspoken thoughts of adults, or older children. We all fell silent.

That was where, had I been a wise person, I’d have gently said what should be said: we couldn’t bring him back to life. Should she be alone for the rest of hers because of that? Probably I was the only one old enough to say this. But, I admit to my shame, it stayed frozen behind the wall of my teeth. Handaotha had spoken my heart.

More words were spoken that I regret hearing, let alone allowing to go unchallenged, and I am sure my sibs don’t want their childhood folly laid out in ink. It lost order, for I neglected my presiding duties, and we somehow fell into fighting over who had made off with the best stone in whose collection, with Handa off in a corner crying and Artira comforting her while sending me vicious looks, Lanai and Naiga close to blows and Sena waving the crystal and trying valiantly to take my place as the voice of reason.

Still I kept my silence, feeling I was darkness as much as being in it. ‘Why should I call order?’ I was thinking. ‘This chaos suits me; it suits the world, that burned in the Fire; it suits children who have no sense, mothers who let strangers lie where fathers should, fathers who get stabbed in the back. What does he care whether I call order, when he is nothing, like the smoke of a candle blown out?”

Sena whipped my crystal into my hands, crying, “You make them shut up, you’re supposed to!” It hurt so I slapped her backhanded across the face, and she flew at me, her eyes, Esora-e’s grey, turned murderous. That started Lanai and Naiga in earnest, and my desk got heaved over, ink spilling over a sheepskin and centuries-old books flung like trash. Next thing I knew I was being hauled up by a very big thumb and forefinger on my ear. Esora-e held me that way in one hand and Sena in the other, while Denaina similarly held Lanai and Naiga.

“I’m sorry, shadow-parents,” I said. I had to think fast. “We all are. We were playing a part out of the Deliverance of the Tinga-enil, see, and, well, it’s not a real scene out of the play but one we made up where the champion meets up with these two Enchian travelers, a warrior and a healer, and the champion is wounded so he needs the healer and the warrior falls in love with the champion and the champion is in a hurry and wants to get up to fight for the people but the healer is trying to keep him down and we all started taking our parts too seriously and—”

Esora-e cut me off with a chop of his hand. “Enough… I get the idea. Do you know you woke up the little ones? And ruined a sheepskin?” I gripped my forelock in shame and so did everyone else. “I started it,” I said, holding out my hand. “Comb me.” I was still enough myself to do that. Yet I felt a dark smugness too, for putting one over on them.

“You are the one who should be most aware of what you do and where you are,” he said to me. “But the rest of you are not much less to blame. Think on Chevenga’s pain and your part in it. Next time it will be all of you.” He took a firm grip on my wrist. “Your comb, Fourth Chevenga.”

I stared at him, and he at me. I only had one comb.

“Would he not have done this, lad?” A whisper of dark unfurling wings seemed to touch the air in the room, as I drew my father’s ivory comb out slowly from the pocket inside my shirt, over my heart. I offered it to him handle-first, like a weapon.

He always combed me hard, even for a defiant look. I heard wind whistle through the tines, and felt the blow burn right to my bones. But the true pain came when he laid the comb in my stricken hand to crown his point. I think Handa saw, as small children feel feelings without understanding them, for she started crying hard.

All would have been different if my mother had been there. She’d have seen through me in a moment, got the truth out of me and settled it all with her quiet warm sense, without combing anyone. I knew that even as I lay scheming, the poison in me distilled bitterer still. She wasn’t there because she was in Terera with some man.

I gathered my sibs in a cedar stand on Hetharin the next day. It was winter, the snow up to our chests off the paths, good for keeping a debate short. When she chose a man, we decided, we’d line up before her and show her our vote on him. Disingenuous, yes, the question of whether she should marry at all hidden within the question of whom. Not honest, I knew. But I’d conceived it.

As winter eased, one man began to stick and the others to fade. He was Veraha Shae-Aniya, a stone-carver from Thara-e who’d found good work in Terera. I was softer on him than most because on meeting me he’d touched my cheek with one flat wide finger and said, “When you grow up, you’ll have Tennunga’s cheekbones, exact.” My eyes must have said, ‘How would you know?’ because he grinned uneasily at me and said, “Well, I never got a commission to carve him, true. But I wanted to, so I did many sketches and one low-relief just for myself.”

Now he was in her room often. Once I walked in and found them resting, her head on his shoulder, her coal-black ringlets spread in a fan across his muscular chest. He was more rounded than my father, with red-brown hair and beard.

Once when it was warm enough for the walk to be pleasant, he invited me to go to the market in Terera with him. Me alone; I didn’t need a day of deep thought to guess why. I dressed as I would any day, no extra adornments. As we headed down he offered me his hand as was civil. I took it as was also civil, my small fingers buried in his big ones. He smelled of stone-dust and polishing oil and faint sweat. He was well-versed in my childish accomplishments, my mother obviously having coached him well. Fear sprang from his every pore.

So I gave him one-word answers, looked mostly away, and even let him keep calling me ‘Anaraseye,’ though my position had to be worsening his nervousness. Who is a child, I thought, to put an adult at ease? I felt him struggle between speaking to me as to a child and as to a person on who judgment his fate depended, and I basked in the chill glow of my power.

He took me to the stone-sellers, of course, and taught me all the names of the different colours of them. “My favourite is a silken white marble, pure as milk, that comes from a place called Krera, which is now in the empire of Arko. There’s a whole mountain made of it there, and it works like the Hermaphrodite’s hair in your hands… em, pardon the expression. Which do you like the most, Anaraseye?”

I knew nothing of carving, but a warm green stone with a grain that reminded me of the curving lines waves leave on a sandy lake-shore caught my eye, and I pointed to it.

“Malachite,” he said. “The sea of the Earthsphere’s tears, frozen to bear witness.” Only an artist would talk like that, I thought snottily. He picked up the stone, turned it over in his fingers, then counted out coins from his pouch.

So he think he’ll buy me, I thought, anger welling. But instead of giving it to me with a gushing smile as I expected, he tucked it away in his satchel. In the days following, I’d forget about it entirely.

As we climbed back up beside the falls, he sucked in his cheek, which was ruddy in faint spots, and bit its inside, which I’d come to know meant he was searching for words. I wasn’t about to help him. “Well, it’s been a good day, hasn’t it, anaraseye?” he said finally. I signed a wan chalk. “I’ve enjoyed myself, and I think you have too, so I hope we are friends. Are we that? Maybe we be that?” A clever start, however awkwardly delivered; I could hardly say no.

“I suppose so,” I answered, but that sounded rude to my own ears, so I added, “Yes, we are.” With a big smile he took my hands—I liked his touch, in spite of myself—and said, “May we always be.”

I hope I never have a child like myself. That night I called council.

“All-Spirit be witness to this vote of free Yeolis,” I invoked, then stabbed out my hand. I wish I could say none of them waited to see which way it was turned before they put out their own.

What excuse could I make? The evil in me was formless, as such evils are, rising from a chaos of emotions not thought out. But it had form enough to direct my hand to a simple motion. As monarchy has its danger, so does demarchy, the danger of any power: that, as poorly conceived as the opinions of its wielder may be, he still wields it.

So I signed charcoal, and everyone else did also, and we marched into her room. It was only by luck Veraha wasn’t there. I shiver, imagining myself her, facing a phalanx of my own precious children, standing still and straight as warriors, their snub-nosed faces grave as news of death, their six tiny hands turned irrevocably down.