The Winds of Khalakovo - Bradley P. Beaulieu [155]
“Will Father meet us here?” Ahya had asked.
Rehada had smiled. “Neh, child. Not here.”
“Where?”
“The next island. Or the one beyond that. I do not know.”
“Will you teach me to touch Adhiya?”
“You are too young, yet.”
Ahya had looked up at her with those bright green eyes. Her face was sad, but resigned. “You are always holding me back.”
Rehada had laughed at the notion—a child of six complaining that she could not learn as an adult. Rehada had done the same to her own mother, but the difference here was how close to right Ahya was. She was very strong. Rehada had known it for several years, ever since she had noticed the spirits with which Rehada had been communing. She had felt them as a girl of twelve would have trouble doing, and she had been only five.
When she had come down from the mountain that day, she had decided that she would begin Ahya’s training. Perhaps not that day; perhaps not in a month; but soon.
How had she forgotten such a thing? She had remembered Ahya’s burgeoning abilities—that had always been a thing of pride—but she had completely forgotten, until the point where Fahroz began walking away, that she had been ready to walk with her daughter toward a higher consciousness.
The answer came almost as quickly as had the question: the pain in thinking of how her daughter’s promise had been snuffed from the world had eclipsed many things. It had been too painful to consider, and so she had buried it, hoping it would never resurface again.
Suddenly she realized that she was on the ground, and that Atiana and Fahroz were kneeling next to her.
There was a keening in the room—a long wail of pain, and it took her long moments of rocking slowly back and forth to realize that it came from her. No one else. Her. Cries of regret for a child so pure.
“I did not grieve because it was something I could not face,” she said through her sobs.
Fahroz combed her hair away from her face. “That’s right, child.” She helped Rehada to her feet, and when Rehada had composed herself to some small degree, she motioned for Atiana to take her place once more.
“Why did you come to Uyadensk?” Atiana asked.
“I came because I wished to know a place—another place—as well as I had known Nazakhov.”
“But why Uyadensk?”
Rehada shrugged. “It is as good a place as any to know.”
“By those standards, Nazakhov would be even better since you knew it so well already.”
“I will never face Nazakhov again.”
“You give it more meaning than it has,” Fahroz interrupted. “It is only an island.”
“It is a storehouse of misery.”
Fahroz shook her head. “That is why you have been here for so long, is it not? You hope that Uyadensk will replace Nazakhov, that it will heal those wounds that never properly closed and have been festering ever since.”
Rehada shivered. Fahroz had come extremely close to the mark, and it was less than comforting.“I wish to know a place and to move on with my life. Moving from island to island no longer held any allure.”
“What is the name of your daughter’s father?” Atiana asked.
“Soroush Wahad al Gatha.”
“He is Maharraht, is he not?”
Rehada nodded. “He is.”
“What do you feel toward Anuskaya?”
“Anger, and resentment.”
Her words echoed off into the immensity of the room. When all was silence, Fahroz stopped her pacing next to Atiana and faced Rehada. “Come, daughter of Shineshka.”
“I know I can never have her back, but I want in my heart for the Duchy to provide that for me. In my heart of hearts I hope to dismantle the islands, one by one. I wish to watch every single Landed man, woman, and child drown in the seas, swallowed whole, for what they have done to my child.”
“Ahya will be reborn,” Fahroz said.
“But what will she be then? Half of what she was? Less? She could have been great.”
“She will be. As will we all one day.”
Rehada