Falnight 08 (of 14)

[mother_herbivore]

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<td>CH14</td></tr></tbody></table>

I awoke later to the sound of scuffling, and a shout from Harlan made me sit straight up. It was not yet dawn, and I could only make out vague shapes moving about the campsite. There were the squeaks and growls of some animal, then the heavy clicks of a gun being loaded.

 

“Harlan?” I asked into the dark. A gunshot rang out, deafeningly close.

I snapped my fingers at the fire and the embers flared back to life as Harlan ejected a spent shell. Three scratchers recoiled from the firelight, then squealed as he fired another shot. One of them was holding a bag of my dried fruits, but it dropped it as Harlan reached for more ammunition. Scratchers are simple scavengers, their long, spindly limbs perfect for reaching into boxes and packs to steal food, but they are smart enough to recognize a gun and the danger it poses them. They ran. Harlan fired again after them, and stood there until they had disappeared into the trees. Then he rounded on me.

 

"Why was this not loaded?” he demanded. There were several cuts in his cheek, slashed open by a scratcher’s claws. He pumped the rifle’s lever and snatched the shell up off the ground. Blood was starting to drip off of his jaw and onto his shirt. “I wasted precious time loading your damn gun.”

 

“I never intended to use it,” I said. He was pointing the gun at the ground with a marksman’s disciplined grip, and I was not worried. I met his gaze steadily.

 

“Then you shouldn’t have it!”

 

“And I did not want it!”

I did not like the rise in our voices, the snappishness of my tone. I had scarcely been awake for two minutes, my heart was still beating too fast, my ears still hurt. I turned away to check on the horses, who were wide-eyed and alert but did not seem in danger of bolting.

 

“If there is one thing I can’t stand, it’s disrespect for a weapon,” Harlan said. “This is not a decoration.”

 

“It is not mine,” I said tersely. “Vicaste insisted that I take it with me.”

 

“Do you even know how to shoot?”

 

I closed my eyes for a moment, breathing in deep through my nose. Then I pointed to my bedroll. “Sit down. You’re bleeding.”

 

“I know I’m bleeding,” Harlan snapped. He sat, setting the rifle aside, and I took bandages and one of Ishgod’s salves from my pack. The cuts were deep, and they would surely scar without healer’s magic. Still, I would not break my vow. Ishgod’s salve would kill infection, and I plastered on a bandage to keep dirt out. His eyepatch had fallen off, but his empty socket seemed alright. He twitched away from me when I reached out to clean a stray drop of blood from the socket’s edge, so I let it be, and sat back.

 

“Well,” I said, “tomorrow night we will have a roof over our heads, at least.”

 

“We should have gone to Verible,” Harlan said. I closed my eyes and sighed.

 

“There is no use in should haves.”

 

“Clearly.” He stood, and I stood with him.

“This is not just about Verible,” I said. Harlan shrugged. “If you have something to say, please say it. You are not a child anymore.” I saw his lip twitch in annoyance.

 

Then he said, “Don’t you have a daughter in the good graces of the Council?”

 

“Fairlark?” I frowned. That was not what I had been expecting. Fairlark is my eldest daughter, and was Council Bastion throughout the Tului Conflicts and Eclipse War, and for another two centuries after that. She retired with the rare title of Honored Council Bastion as a reward for her long service, protecting the Council. “She retired years ago.”

 

“So did I,” said Harlan. He put on his vest, reached for his boots. “Long before she did, actually, if I’m not mistaken. And she is so much more decorated. Why didn’t you ask her to help you?”

 

Of course I had thought of Fairlark, but surely even Harlan knew that she lived far, far away, in the capital with her husband, and I told him this in no uncertain terms.

 

“Ah, of course.” He tapped his heel against the ground and pulled on the other boot. “I didn’t think of the travel time, never mind that she could easily take a mage port. But why would that stop you? You’ve already waited half a year, and now taking another day to go to Yuville instead of continuing on to Verible—you seem to have no problem waiting.”

 

That stung, in both guilt and anger. It was his tone more than anything—carefully light, nonchalant, like he expected that I would not care.

 

“What are you saying?” I asked. He did not reply, instead turning away as he picked up his bedroll to shake dead grass from it. My patience was at its end. I went over and snatched the bedroll out of his hands.

 

For a second, he just stared down at me. He still had the presence of a captain, his empty socket an intimidating shadow in his stern face, but I have faced worse and I held his gaze. I was tired of his surliness. I wanted him to be honest and communicate with me, and if it was to come down to stubbornness, I would have my way.

 

“If you do not tell me what’s wrong, you cannot expect me to do anything to change it,” I said. “I will not stand here and guess until I get the right answer, not like when you were a boy.”

 

“Of course you can’t see it,” Harlan snapped. “You won’t see anything past the end of your own nose.”

 

“Excuse me?”

 

“Can you really not think of a single reason I might be upset with you? Not even one, decades-long reason? You haven’t even acknowledged how long it’s been since we last spoke. Just, ‘come along, Harlan, I need a favor now.’”

 

“I thought I was respecting your space,” I said. “You don’t seem to want to discuss it. I wanted to let you broach the subject on your own terms.” He scoffed. I shrank back slightly. “Wasn’t I?”

 

“You just, sit and let things happen. It’s like nothing matters. Not things, not people—”

 

“Please do not accuse me of not caring about people,” I said, aghast. My frustration, my anger was quickly giving way to confusion. “Why would you ever think that?”

 

“Do you think I don’t remember my father wasting away?” Harlan demanded. “Actually it’s all that I remember of him, because I remember every time I wanted to play with him or when I wanted him to teach me the things all the other boys learned from their fathers, he was too sick or weak, and you—”

 

He backed a step away from me, bringing his hands up to cover his face and breathing deeply. I stood there, jaw slack, just staring at him until he recovered enough to continue, “You just moved on after he died. How many more times have you married? How many other families have you replaced? How can you just… forget?”

 

Every question was like a hard slap to the face. We had argued about my marriages and children—his siblings—before, about his disinterest, even disdain for any new family members, but never had he accused me of being so fickle that I would replace the ones I loved when they were gone. I had always thought he was just jealous of my attention being taken up elsewhere, like any child would be jealous of their younger siblings until they learned to love them. How deep did these waters run? When he was so eager to strike out on his own, was it because he thought I did not want him anymore? The idea brought tears to my eyes.

 

“Is that what you think of me?” I asked. Harlan did not answer that. I reached for his hand, but he jerked away, turned and walked toward the horses. I followed him. “Harlan, please! I have never sought to replace anyone I love.”

 

“Then why did you remarry after my father? Didn’t you love him?”

 

“Of course I loved him! I still do!”

 

Harlan looked at me with such vexation, it broke my heart. I thought I had taught him about the enduring promise of love as I raised him, but perhaps I had simply been too young, still learning it myself. I had never noticed that he felt he was being left behind, thinking that his father, my first love, was forgotten—I could have lost him forever somewhere along the way, and that thought terrified me. I clutched at my skirt, thinking.

 

“Harlan, I have so much love within me, it would be an unkindness to me and everyone else if I kept it to myself,” I said at last. “There is nothing in this world that matters more than love, and there is nothing as abundant.”

 

I took Harlan’s hand in mine, and this time, he did not pull away. “My heart is not a pitcher that grows emptier with every person I love,” I told him gently. “I do not have to take it back from those that came before so that I will have enough for the next person. I never stopped loving your father. I never stopped loving you, either.”

 

“Very eloquent,” Harlan said flatly, “but we haven’t spoken in decades. You only came to me because you needed something.”

 

“I know, and I wish I had done it differently,” I said, my voice nearly breaking. “I am so, so sorry that I did not see how you’ve been hurting all these years.”

 

Again Harlan turned his face away from me, his lips pressed into a tight line. He let me hold on to his hand, but he did not move any closer. I did not press him. It was his turn to speak, and I would wait.

 

When he finally did, the tremble in his voice was unmistakable.

 

“You chose them over me,” he said. I gasped—I could not help it. I felt like I could not breathe. Had I really been so awful? Surely not. I had written to him so often, invited him to weddings and solstices and new years, given him every opportunity to involve himself with the entire family, and he had all but ignored me. We had hurt each other, and I could not take all the blame.

 

“You forced me to,” I said, as much as I hated to admit it. “I cannot lead a double life—one for you and one for those that came after you. You resisted me for so long, I gave up. I shouldn’t have, but a thousand years, Harlan…” I shook my head, dropped my shoulders in exhaustion. “This age has been so hard for us, why must we struggle against each other, too?”

 

Harlan shook his head. His shoulders were beginning to shake, and I drew him to me, wrapped my arms around him and held him tightly. To my relief, he did not resist even for a moment—he melted against me, as if his legs would not support him fully anymore, and I nearly staggered under the weight but did not let go. It was bittersweet: I was glad that he found some comfort in me still, but I had not held him like this, nor had I seen him cry since his father died, well over a thousand years past, and I found myself painfully aware of the time that had passed. I could no longer set him on my lap and wrap us both in my shawl, I could no longer distract him with fables or a promise to make his favorite dinner. I could no longer be a shelter from the things that were hurting him—not when I was the cause of his pain. I clutched the back of his shirt and cried too, until we were both spent.

 

Harlan drew away from me rather abruptly then, turning his back as he wiped his face on his sleeve, apparently embarrassed. I stayed where I was, drawing my empty arms against myself, my breath still wavering. Neither of us said anything, for we could not find our voices.

 

When I could finally speak again, I asked, “Can you forgive me, Harlan?”

 

He did not respond as he searched his pack for a handkerchief. I bit the inside of my cheek, then said,

 

“Can we be open, then? Too long we have assumed and misunderstood.”

 

“I don’t want to talk,” he said. A pause, and he added more softly, “Not right now. I need some peace.”

He went to the horses, and I had to firmly tell myself that this was the start of the communication that I had wanted—he did not want to talk, and he was telling me so, rather than leaving me to wonder why he wouldn’t reply to me. I don’t know what we would have talked about, anyway. Of course I had questions, I wanted to know everything that I had missed in his life, but I would not interrogate him. I let him be. At least this time, there was not resentment or uncertainty. The silence between us did not make me sad.