67 - My parent's initiation

I was to dine at the mayor’s that night. “I hardly dare ask,” my shadow-father said drily, as we made ready. “But to whom does that child belong, and why do you have him?” My friends all swapped smirks.

“Two questions, one answer, no words needed,” I said. “Look closely at his face and mine.” For once in his life he was speechless; not, alas, for long enough. “Oh. I see. You pronged some poor Leyere girl during the war, and now you’ve charmed her out of her baby so you can be a father before you’re really finished being a child.”

Mana crept like a cat out of the room, pulling Krero and Sachara with him. But my son’s presence, more than anything else, kept me from answering angrily as I was inclined. I just told him the story. When I said the child’s name, I added quickly that Tanazha had chosen it, not me.

“It will still be seen as the height of vanity,” Esora-e said, frowning.

“There is no question of changing it,” I said. “He knows himself by it.”

“And I somehow doubt he was stream-tested.” I hadn’t even thought of that. No law requires it, fortunately, only custom. I just had to pray Assembly would still approve him. “Well, he’ll have to prove himself other ways, then,” he said gruffly, then went on to ask if the child had weapon-sense, of all things. I just said, “When he’s six, if he touches the Sword, we’ll test him.”

Because Fifth Chevenga was not in a state to be let off my arm, I had to take him to dinner. That ensured that the news would be all over Leyere in a day, and Yeola-e in a half-moon; I just had to hope my letter to Shaina and Etana got to Thara-e first. Well, I’d had to let it be known somehow. I hid nothing about his conception; to be tight-lipped would make people think even worse, as I’d learned from Esora-e. Eyebrows rose, but everyone congratulated me.

I was traveling for another month, the larches on the heights turning to gold and maples to crimson, and my son gave me my parent’s initiation.

He stopped sleeping through, and would scream “Mama!!” at night, sometimes during the death-hour, waking everyone. Before I knew to change his diapers fast enough, I had to pay one inn for a ruined feather-mattress. He threw tantrums until Esora-e said, “You either comb the brat to silence or the two of you sleep in the anteroom.”

I slept with him in the anteroom. I never gave him into anyone else’s arms except while speaking to the people, I let him cling or have my notice or have food or water whenever he wished no matter whom I was conversing with, played with him every spare moment, gave him bright toys and soft. I let him scream “Hate you! Hate you!” and batter my chest with his little fists without even a word of correction.

How many times I curled around him and said, “She loves you, she’s not dead, you’ll see her again soon, I love you,” I cannot say. I was the only constant presence for him now, at the time when a child is most delicate for need of constancy; so it seemed to me I had better be perfectly constant.

My schedule had already been full to the eyeteeth, and I didn’t get much help with him, Esora-e cold to him, my friends not knowing how; I was the lightest sleeper anyway. Soon I was feeling like the walking dead from morning to night, my arms and heart leaden; I felt nothing would change and I was a slave on a treadmill, chained to it for life, since he’d still be a child when I died; I caught momentarily myself wishing him gone, no matter how, then loathed myself for the thought, and made myself sick imagining him dying. He and I would cry ourselves to sleep together, sometimes. It was harder than war.

When I got back to Vae Arahi, I had found no one else more suitable than Shaina and Etana; after I’d taken on Fifth Chevenga, I’d given up looking, not wanting to leave him with someone else to meet with prospective spouses. I found a letter from Shaina and Etana waiting for me at home; I pleaded inwardly that it not be a cancellation of our agreement because Shaina would not be bearing my anaraseye as I opened it. It wasn’t; they acceded to the altered plan I’d proposed, so I wrote back saying I’d make their case to Assembly.

Of course there I had to face a questioning that need not be polite. In twenty different ways they asked me, why did I not trust that I would find love in good time, when I was so young? It’s not that I don’t, I said; I just wanted to be sure I had heirs in very good time, since I planned to be a fighting semanakraseye and so would risk my life if there were war, and one never knew when there could be. (Let this seem like prescience afterwards, when the Arkans came). For an exchange or two, the debate came up that has raged on and off for two centuries, whether semanakraseyel should even be allowed to fight, but no one seriously argued that I shouldn’t.

The question came up also of Fifth Chevenga. There is no law that an anaraseye must be born within wedlock, but it is preferred, as Assembly then has approved the spouse.

But they had no argument against Shaina and Etana; in fact the Servant of Thara-e-Olingae knew them, and spoke well of them. It went through with a decently-strong chalk, so I wrote to Shaina and Etana telling them to give their notices and come to Vae Arahi.

So much had happened since, they seemed almost like strangers when I gave them the two-handed welcome to the house, and then the hug of friendship. I couldn’t imagine Shaina had not become fond of the notion of bearing an anaraseye; but she said nothing, and they both began treating Fifth Chevenga as if he were their own. Now instead of two by me first, Shaina would bear one by me, one by Etana, the third by me and the rest by him.

Fifth Chevenga steadied down; the Hearthstone was an unchanging place for him to get used to and come to think of as home, and my mothers and stepfather and siblings all lent their hands. His nightmares and tantrums eased, and he learned how to use the chamber pot at least for the solids.

One day I came in after training, and he trotted to me with his fat little hands out, saying “Daddy, Daddy,” as usual. I swung him as always; then he threw his arms around my neck and said, “Daddy, I love you.” My eyes rained tears; the brush of a finger could have knocked me flat.

We made our wedding modest, inviting just family and friends. Strange, to put on the Shae-Arano-e wedding tunic, last worn by my father, and kiss the crystals of two people who were truly only acquaintances. They shone, beautiful in their finery, in the gazes of passion they exchanged, in the joy of seeing their love celebrated. I had what I had; I made my oaths with my firstborn child on my arm.

Now they lived here, I sometimes felt I had been mad to do this. I would stay in the offices till late at night, trying to complete my studies and start the transition with Tyeraha at once, well past when Shaina and Etana made love, or else I’d creep out to the balcony, watching the moonlight over Hetharin.

Once, catching me weeping, they both made love to me, though it was not her fertile time, and let me sleep cradled between them, tossing a vote-stone for who would have the honor of my head on his or her shoulder. In their happiness they were generous. That’s all I can ask, I thought. If I were a Lakan, I would have an arranged marriage; this is one, in truth, and friendship is better than many spouses have.

So, I had what I’d wanted: a marriage, a child and easy plans for more, before I’d become semanakraseye. Should I complain that it felt too easy, undeserved, that I’d got it by my position, that however we caulked them over with friendship, the cracks of lovelessness remained? I had enough to love for now, I told myself, with the semanakraseyesin and Fifth, as he was coming to be called. (If people shortened it to Chevenga, he got confused with me; as far as he was concerned, though, he was Chevenga, I was Daddy, and that was that.)

As well, if Jinai’s predictions were right, war was coming, and it can cut through love as easily as a sword through flesh. I had the jaws of Arko to walk into; just as well I had no true love, to miss and worry about me while I suffered whatever I must as much as a true love does. Should I, of all people, complain that it all felt too sudden?