The Simbul's gift - Lynn Abbey [103]
"Every time I came back, Ebroin, she was more beautiful than before, but her roots had gone deeper. I wanted you to grow quickly, before I lost her. I took you with me, hoping she'd follow us. You know she didn't. When we came back, she said she wanted another child."
Bro couldn't-wouldn't-imagine his mother dressed in her own hair and a wolf skin. For him Shali was the one-room cottage, the hearth with its ever-simmering pots, the little garden weaving between sunlight and shadow beneath the trees. She loved the forest, but for her the forest began on her doorstep and ended a hundred paces farther on.
"I told her no, Ebroin. We argued. I wanted the woman I loved, the woman who lived free in the Yuirwood. She wanted something else, and that was the end. She knew I wasn't coming back."
Bro's strength failed; habit kept him standing. A thousand memories clamored for his attention. Yes, Shali was the cottage, the hearth, and the garden, but didn't he remember her standing in the sun, the moon, or the rain, staring up at the trees as if she knew their names? And of all those times when Rizcarn came home and he got sent to stay with his cousins, wasn't that last time-when they'd come home together-different? A twelve-year-old didn't know the subtle language of adults in love and anger. A nineteen-year-old still didn't know it well, but he remembered the important parts.
These were bits of understanding Bro would rather not have had, but unlike everything else Rizcarn had said lately, these words had the ring of truth to them. They weren't the answers he'd come looking for, but they were answers.
"You died, Poppa."
"She didn't want me to leave."
"I saw you buried."
"A body. I hadn't finished Relkath's work."
"She loved you, Poppa, and you loved her."
"Did I say otherwise?"
"I was born! I kept the two of you apart! You'd be living free, if I hadn't happened."
"A tree," Rizcarn said patiently, "doesn't grow until a seed's been planted."
Shivers raced down Bro's spine. Those were Shali's words, her favorite words in the spring when she turned the soil in her garden and when she gave him motherly advice he didn't want to hear. Hearing them from Rizcarn pushed Bro to the edge of belief. He reached into his shirt neck, withdrawing his talisman beads and Shali's, which he'd looped around his while they'd walked through the swamps. "Can we go to MightyTree on our way to the Sunglade? Will you…?" In the back of his mind Bro conceived the one gesture that would answer so many of his lingering questions. "Can we go together to tell them what happened in Sulalk?"
The light around Rizcarn faded. They stood in a quarter-moon's light filtered through the summer trees. Bro couldn't see his father's face as Rizcarn freed Shali's talismans and hung them around his own neck. He breathed deep and slow and refused to blink.
"We'll go together," Rizcarn said softly. He put his hands on Bro's shoulders and drew him into an embrace. "We'll leave tomorrow."
Bro didn't trust himself to speak. He nodded, instead, and his eyes overflowed down his cheeks, his chin, onto his father's neck. Ashamed, he tried to jerk free. Rizcarn wouldn't let him go; after a heartbeat, he stopped trying.
"You're weary, son. You've carried too much for too long without my help. I'm sorry. Now, go and rest-sleep, if you can-we've got a lot of walking ahead of us."
Sniffing tears, Bro allowed his father to hug him tightly, as hugs had been when he was half as tall as he'd become. "I'm sorry,"