Re: Turn 54 yarn
Vanheim turn 54:
In which Anteirios thanks his dead sister, and Molly says good-bye.
Anteirios
She was very pale, and when I embraced my sister Tilneia, she was cold and stiff. But she lived, or something like it. For forty years, we believed she was dead. Now, she stood before me. Someday my curiosity would prevail, and I would question her regarding her condition; not today. My emotions flooded my thoughts, for my sister had returned.
"Thank you," I whispered as I held her.
"For what?" she asked.
"For rescuing my son."
She pulled away from me. "Not soon enough," she replied, with pain in her voice. "Pherios will never be the same again."
"He's with us again. Shh. Don't say another word. Just know: I will be forever grateful."
She contented herself with a small nod and thin smile. She'd changed so much, and yet so little, still chastising herself for minute failings while ignoring accumulated achievements, just as she had before. She had changed, yet in her time away from us, she had not forgotten her family. I had not forgotten her. And now I had the opportunity to learn the answers to questions I thought unanswerable.
"Forty years," I said. "It seemed so much longer. But why? Why did you...leave us?"
"I've missed you terribly," Tilneia replied. "I was so lonely. I kept telling myself we'd speak again, eventually. I knew we would. Forty years is not forever. Our father traveled for fifty before returning to marry mother. Our view of things in Vanheim is always long."
"Father wrote," I said. "Please, dear sister, don't be offended by my questions. You know my faults. I haven't cured my curiosity. And I will bury every question if they would drive you away. But if not, I need to know. Why?"
We sat and drank our family's good wine as she told me.
"There is a way in which you and I are more alike than either of us is like Belletennares. You do not have Alteion's gift of prophecy. Nor do I--almost.
"It was a single blinding vision," she said. "I had not known it before, nor have I since. But in that instant, I saw Vanheim's need, and the means to fill it. You are a scholar, brother. You must have seen it. We were not what we had once been. Magic that had propelled armies to victory over the giants was lost, within our own living memory. Belletennares tried to explain it to me once, why he could not call lightning anymore. 'It is,' he said, 'as if my mind were a leaky cask. I continued to pull the tap, just as I always had, but the flow of ale became slower and slower, and eventually it was gone. And I no longer remember how to brew any more.'
"I knew we would need the knowledge of magic again, so I hung myself from an ash. I suppose it was audacious, or at the least, pretentious, to think I could follow the paths of the gods like that, as if I were some legendary figure. But it worked! It open my eyes to all the secrets of life and death. It was a beginning. Then I made peace with the dwarves hiding deep in the hills, and so I came to Vanheim. To learn, to research, to teach myself, for that moment when I was needed."
"In hiding," I said. "For all those years, I didn't know the Lady of the Tower was my sister Tilneia."
She would not meet my eyes. "I was afraid. Would you accept me? I hoped so, but I couldn't bear the thought that you might not. Could our house protect me? Forty years ago, I feared not. Vanheim had no tradition of necromancy then. Our house was not as strong. They would have persecuted us, brought us down. You know that is the curse of our house, to bring ill tidings of the future.
"And now...I would not give up what I've learned, but it seems my moment was lost. Perhaps I did not see truly. Perhaps my time is not to come for another decade, or century."
"You are wrong," I said forcefully. "You have guided Vanheim into this War of Ascension. We believed that Belletennares and Pherios warned us of the present times, but we were wrong. You were there first. This age is the age of House Alteion, and it is you who gestated it."
I believe she was pleased at the image, but her smile vanished quickly.
"Then let us see it remains so," Tilneia said. "For I do not wish to live in the age of Vethru."
Molly
At least we had a few more months together before Pherios had to leave. It was good having him around to help understand the visions. We worked on it all the time together. The future was a pretty big mess, but we made enough sense of it for Belletennares to do pretty well up north. Hurray for us!
It was fall when we went for our last ride. We headed up into the hills near his parents' estate, him on his big, black, spooky-untrackable Van horse, and me on my little pony. We both knew, without saying, that it was the last time. We're both seers. It makes things easy between us. He's like the big brother I never had.
We tied our horses and strolled along the hilltop overlooking the estate. We talked about the weather, the war, who was away and who was at home. But then I told him how Mistepeillia and Sennei treated me like family, and how much I liked that. And that was the beginning of the good-byes.
He smiled and tipped his head, which was funny, because unlike Tilneia, who could never keep her neck totally straight, Pherios still had really good posture.
"You've grown up a lot in the time I've known you," he said. "How old are you now?"
"Twenty," I told him.
Pherios laughed. "Still a child, if you were a Van. I'm only fifty-six, and if it weren't for the war, I'd still be at my studies.
"They've been tough times," he continued, "But you've come through them a fine young woman. You're bright, and loyal, and you've learned to stand up to Vans older than my uncle. And I've seen all the young man who trail after you with wide eyes and sweet words."
I blushed. I wondered how he saw it. I knew I appeared as a wren in his visions. I laughed at the image of a gaggle of silly geese following a tiny songbird around.
He laughed, too. "You've made my hard times much easier," he said. "You saved me, once. And I couldn't have done the rest without you." And then he said it, what we were both dancing around. "I'm going to miss you."
Knowing it was coming didn't make it any easier to hear. I felt my eyes fill up with tears. "I'm going to miss you, too."
"It isn't clear what will happen--"
"I know." It was the one future we never discussed. It was dark, really dark.
"I have to go," he said. "There's no other way. And you know that the things we see don't always--"
"I know. It's OK. I figured it out," I told him.
"Figured out what?"
It's funny he didn't see it right away. He'd been living it for years. "The visions. Why we have them. It's not to avoid the bad roads. It's so we know the right roads when we come to them. Right?"
Then he hugged me really tightly, and I didn't want to let him go. But we both know what has to happen, has to happen. We mounted up and started to ride back.
"You never flinched, or looked away," Pherios said. "After I came back. Like this."
"Shut up," I said. "You're practically my brother."
He smiled. "I don't know, you're not very tall," he said, "and all my female relatives have blond hair."
"Shut up!"
"It's true," he insisted, conveniently forgetting Irulia. I let him.
"I'll pack you some meals. You can't cook."
"You don't have to. My mom and Aunt Sennei said they would."
"You'll need it all where you're going," I said, and he sobered.
Because we both saw it. Vethru was headed into dead lands, where there was no game, no crops to scavenge. And that's where Pherios would follow. To Ermor.
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