63 - Fate walking

I have awful nightmares sometimes, but this had been among the worst. Please, may I wake up now?

Everything seems so peaceful... Despite the worries about Arko, I have at heart been thinking I might have ten gentle years of semanakraseyesin… that I can only save my entire people by going into the lion’s jaws and some agony beyond imagining can’t be true… it can’t be true…

I am the only person in all Yeola-e who knows… and I’m just a kid! This is too much for me, too big for me, I’m only nineteen, I know nothing, mamaaaaaah!

The thoughts of a child. I calmed, as I could not help but do, and so had to face it as an adult must. On my night-table, above me, the noteboard lay with the words I’d scrawled, news of war like a venomous snake out of a hearth, demanding to be examined and fully understood.

I tell Assembly: Red armour, horseback, with a sun on their chests—the Sunborn Elite Cavalry of Arko, that was their insignia. You are on a black horse—Akaznakir—plains somewhere, just one horse to their many and they are all after you with long spears—[war yells, he is being me fighting] Aigh aigh aigh mila—I was a milakraseye, that was the position I would have, at least at that time, if I told Assembly.

The words swam before my eyes, I am seeing you die here, on spears and under hooves, the despair far worse than the pain for Ye [he is weeping here] it’s a battle for all Ye and we’ve lost it—I put the noteboard down, gasping, sat straight as if I were meditating and seized hold of my breath.

I don’t tell Assembly: he’d seen nothing again, but this time because I had to decide something else as well. So the next was a double path, ‘I don’t tell Assembly and I don’t go on a state visit.’ Already so many of us, dead— they had a trick— you have the shape of what they did in your mind but l— words can’t shape it, I can’t say it, words are not my gift. You are cursing that I couldn’t, I’m sorry I’m sorry sem’kras—Kahara… so close, he’d seen their stratagem in his way but couldn’t explain to me… I tugged on my hair for a time.

Fighting alone against a man in red armour, taller than you, blue eyes [here he is me fighting] aigh! On the head [he strikes me] you are down, in the throat [he points]—it was exactly the same, I was dead and Yeola-e was conquered, whether I told them or not. One year, two, something like that. I wouldn’t be dead at thirty; I’d be dead at twenty-one, and my people slaves. Whether I tell or not; it doesn’t matter… deep breath, master yourself, steady down, Chevenga.

So then I’d chosen the last fork; I seized on it again now. ‘I don’t tell Assembly, I go on a state visit to Arko.’ The only way that seemed to hold any hope. I scoured the words for meaning, trying to see a whole mosaic in a scattered handful of shards.

Arko. Arko. You are there, I can tell, because there are blondies everywhere and your thoughts are thinking of it as Arko-ness—this could mean the state visit; or more. Terrible things like dreams— that don’t make sense… A blob of jam of some kind of berry I don’t know but they’re turning into worm’s heads swimming in blood and crawling off the plate— there’s the black lightning bolt with the fork above you that never goes away—these things had to be dreams, or hallucinations. Pain so much pain more pain than I can see so much more than you can bear so huge beyond imagining—but he’d seen me survive it, so that meant I could bear it. Shakora All-Spirit Shakora! I hear someone saying the whole city is dead—if it stood out so, did it mean every other city in Yeola-e had not been taken? A man with blue eyes in red and gold armour you’re fighting him though you love him—that sounded like an Arkan, though how I could love one, when they were trying to do this to us, was beyond my understanding.

I skipped over his warning I’d die young. A huge thing with metal and wood pieces that’s alive it’s moving all over in rhythm and making huge thumping clanging noises and I’m thinking I mean you’re thinking it’s a blessing to all the world—a machine? and the wing thing that too same—another machine? But what were these things, and who had them, and why were they blessings, and what did they have to do with going on a state visit to Arko?

A crowd of blondies Arkans yelling your name, acclaiming you you are speaking to them—and my age, that he’d said without hesitation and with utter authority when I’d asked, twenty-seven. Arko-ness is twined with the whole rest of your life.

Not just in the age, twenty-seven, but in the feel of the third-fork reading, was written ‘more time.’ The war was still there, in the mention of Shakora and the man with blue eyes in red and gold armour, but nothing about my dying in battle, or Yeola-e being conquered. Arkans acclaiming me, machines that were blessings, these were good things; if I was thinking of blessings to the world, I was thinking beyond Yeola-e, which meant I was not worried about Yeola-e. Arko twined with the rest of my life, did that mean I’d always be fighting them? And yet some had been acclaiming me. I’m not understanding this because it’s something I can’t conceive.

But if I looked at the whole as if from up on the mountain, it seemed to mean that keeping my secret and going to Arko would not forestall the war, but would preserve my life, and Yeola-e’s freedom… somehow. All-Spirit… can it be that simple? And the opposite of what everyone thinks, somehow; if I say war with Arko is coming, they’ll chain my ankle to a ring to keep me from going there…

I laid the notes, and sank down onto my bed, as the full horror of having received the reading sank into me. Arko was coming; that was definite. It had been in all three forks, and it fit with the last reading, which had been full of war references, as well as the one clear reference to Arko-the-City. They are going to come intending to conquer us; I can’t doubt that. But I alone in the entire nation knew for sure, and I alone knew what to do, at least for myself. And it was the thing that to everyone else would seem most foolhardy.

It was then, I think, I first truly learned the meaning of empire. My people had raised me as high as they raised anyone. I lived clothed in silk and ivory, my name spoken by two million; I need only say the word and all the warriors of Yeola-e would march; I was the embodiment of my people’s soul. Yet in the face of Kurkas’s power, I felt small.

I looked out onto Hetharin for a moment, then thought of all Yeola-e enslaved, and curled in on myself, the reality of the reading imposed on the reality of the sight of the home I loved tearing me in two. I am ashamed to admit what I did: buried myself under the covers and screamed into the sheepskins again. Then I went to my mother.

I’d waited till my eyes were dry, but she took one look at me, hauled me into their bedroom, and then wrapped me in a hug with arms like steel. "No matter how old you are, Chevenga,” she whispered, “you will always be the child I carried under my heart. Let it out." I cried yet again, for a long time. “Now tell me.”

“I… had Jinai read for me,” I whispered, when I could.

"Ah; the curse of foreknowledge again."

“Arko's coming. He saw... All-Spirit, they’re probably already kyashin planning it!” I lost words for tears again.

“Despite all you can do?” she said gently.

“I should just tell you how it went. I left my notes in my room... All-Spirit, maybe it's all wrong, maybe it's not real...” A child’s wish, the wiser voice in me told me.

My mother stroked my hair. “What could be worse than what you already know, my son?”

A cry escaped out of me before I could stop it. “What I already know is only about me!” Between deep breaths and crying-breaks and her holding me, I found the strength to tell her how the whole reading had gone.

Where my mother finds her strength, I cannot know. She listened to it all, and didn’t so much as shake, or raise her voice.

“So you are going to do something that people, including your shadow father, will think is futile and dangerous—which in one way you know is futile. And it will hurt you a great deal.” I signed chalk. “You, of all people, my son, would not choose anything easy. Losing a war is easier than enduring the third fork, by what it sounds.”

I stared at her. “I can't let Yeola-e lose a war.”

“No, my child. Of course not.”

“You know what I wish, Mama?” I got up from the bed, and went to the window. It was past Bring-Down moon, the flocks in the valley lower than Vae Arahi now. I found the one standing dark figure among the white backs of the nearest, and pointed him out. “I wish I were him.” She came up beside me, and put her arm around my back.

“I wish I were nobody. A shepherd, just tending my sheep. Nowhere near any great responsibility. Now and then I've wondered what that would be like; now I can't tell you how much I envy them.”

She smoothed my forelock back from my brow. “But if you were a shepherd, when Arko came you'd have your own hard choices to make.”

“I know, but it would just be for myself and my family. I wouldn't have to worry that the whole kyashin people might end up enslaved because of something I'd do or not do!!” I buried my head in her shoulder.

“I understand, Chevenga... but if you were a shepherd's son you'd still feel for your country as strongly, but you'd be more helpless to do anything about it. It is harsh, either way.”

I took a deep breath and lifted my head off her shoulder. “I know, I know, it's stupid, it's a child's wish, a child's envy. I don't feel big enough for this, but I am, right?”

“It’s not stupid. It’s the longing we all have, by our true nature, that no one had ever picked up the sword. Yes, you are big enough. Someone is coming who has no ears for your words of justice and sense. That was why you picked up Saint Mother's sword to begin with.”

“Yes.” She wiped tears from my cheek with the back of her hand, and there was a hardness in it.

“And you, semanakraseye, will not be alone. You will never be alone in it. All Yeola-e will be there with you. Together, we will be big enough.”

“I hope so.” I took in a breath quiveringly, let it out smoothly. “I'll keep my secret. And I'll go to Arko. Though I might get Jinai to do another reading for me before I finalize the arrangements...”

She kissed my hair. “And I will know then, when the harsh news begins, to have hope for all of us. Chevenga—leave me a copy of the notes, a legible one, when you go. Without the part you want no one to know.”

“To show to people… once they start saying I was a reckless fool.” She signed chalk. “You really think I'm big enough for this, I'm up to this, Mama? My confidence is shredded right now.”

“Of course I do, Chevenga. You know that.”

“All-Spirit… I've got to look at the notes again when I'm not so in the grip of emotion. I could be reading it all wrong.”

“I don’t think so.” I looked at her. In her eyes was that certainty I knew. “You will do this in the hope and the knowledge that it is the only way Jinai has seen for us to survive as a people.”

“I am thinking…” Tears came fresh, for what I was about to say. “That to expect no, or even a little, more pain and struggle in my life... I must be out of my mind. It's me.”

“Oh, love.” She wrapped her arms around me again, and started patting my back as she had when I’d been a baby. “From what you said there was good there, too.”

I leaned my face into her again, shutting out the world with closed eyes. “Mama, can I just cry on your shoulder for a while, like nineteen years ago?”

Her voice was sonorous through her body, as I pressed my ear to her, again like when I’d been a baby. “Of course, Chevenga. Of course.”

“I know I can't go on feeling overwhelmed. I'll have to have the strength, find it in myself... whether it seems like it's there or not.”

“Yes. It’s there. We all will. One step in front of the other, as if we don't know what we're walking into. My son, this way you are able to have the emotions now, rather than when they could stop your actions.” I signed chalk.

“Another thing… what do I say to people, Mama? I did a reading with Jinai and it was clear, Arko is coming; but I don't want to tell anyone just how badly they're going to hurt us, insofar as I can tell. I don't want to demoralize everyone; but they also have a right to know. But if I say they’re coming, everyone and his sister will argue that I'd be nuts to go. Assembly might even move to forbid me.… Aigh! I want to herd sheep.”

“Chevenga…” She took my face between her hands. “You have to trust yourself. You have a better sense for what to tell people than I do. You need only think about it, and feel it out in your heart, and you will know.”

“I'm going to have to argue for what I know is true even if everyone else thinks I'm out of my mind, and I wonder myself.”

“Yes. You also have to remember all of what Jinai saw, not forget part.”

“Right. If I believe the bad in the augury, I must believe in the good, too.”

“Yes. You cannot only look at the pain you will suffer—”

“I don't care about the pain I will suffer.”

“Or the pain we will—”

“That's what I care about! I'd take a thousand lifetimes of pain to save Yeola-e from one.”

She stroked my hair again. “Yes. You would. My Chevenga… I love you, my son.”

“I love you, too, Mama.” We held each other silently, for a time. “Thank you. You always have wisdom when I think none is possible.”

“If you need to talk or cry again, I am here.”

“I know. Thank you. All-Spirit… I’ve got a paper to finish tonight… how I'm going to concentrate on common property law with this in my mind, I have no idea. If I fail my exams, you'll know why.”

“I am here, Chevenga.”

“I'm dreading waking up tonight at the death-hour.”

“If you do, come here.”

I closed my eyes, let out a long sigh. At least now the quivers were only slight. “I need to go to the Shrine.” She signed chalk. “I have to master myself; I have to be a grown-up. I have to stop saying to myself, 'Anyone would be flattened facing this,’ and not be anyone.”

“You aren't just anyone. You are not a shepherd boy on the mountain. We would not ask it of that boy.”

“Semana kra.”

“You have to trust us, as well as yourself, to be strong. You aren't alone. Anyone who faces you faces all of us.”

I let out a longer and smoother sigh. “Yeola-e isn’t a nation of cowards. I'm forgetting that.”

“No we aren't, and I dare you to say we are to Azaila.”

I felt myself smile, in spite of everything. “Mama, I'm too much of a coward, or too smart, to do that. But… I know what you are saying. I'm alone with the foreknowledge, not with the war. I can't get the two mixed up.”

She smiled at me. “Yes. Exactly."

“Anyone who faces Yeola-e,” I said, “faces me.”

I said it strongly, and drew strength from the words, but the last were fading distant from me as they left my mouth. It was like a moment of light-headedness, as if the ground had moved under my feet; but I was seeing all as from the highest mountain, and feeling the walk of history, the vast course of the world, as if it were inside me.

“Kyash… Mama, I have a feeling. I don't know if you know what I mean... maybe you've felt it, I don't know... As if you are feeling fate walking. The world is being changed, invisibly, inside and under everything you can see; and you feel it. And only you feel it.”

“Yes. I have felt that. I've always thought it was a form of All-Spirit.”

“When did you feel it—when you married Dad?”

“A little, then. When he was killed, no; the change of the world was very visible. I felt it strongest when you were born.”

“Really? Mama—” The feeling grew stronger, and words came to me that were too certain not to say. “Mama… when I have gone to Arko and you hear I'm dead, or I've been captured, or whatever... don't mourn me, or worry for my life. I'm not going to die there.”

She smoothed my collar with two hands, in an unthinkingly motherly way. “All right. I won’t.” I looked down at my hand. It was trembling, as it had not been a moment ago.

“I sometimes wish I lived in total blissful ignorance of the future,” I said. “But I'll be a better semanakraseye for seeing it.”

“Yes. I have always said it is more curse than gift, but you will be.”

“Thank you, Mama. I'm all right now.” I was; I felt a kind of lightness and cleanness inside. “At least for now… I’ll get the vapours a few more times, I’m sure. Thank you. I love you.”

“Then you will be back, and I will be here. I love you, too.”

In my room, I looked in my mirror. Never mind whether there’s a beard hair there or not, I told myself. And never mind whether you’re up to this. If the time comes that you are all that Yeola-e has, you will be up to it, because you must be. I opened the common property law books to write the paper.