009 - Telling my mother

I don’t believe such a claim could ever actually be proven. The world is too big. Nevertheless, Esora-e set himself to the task of making me it. Azaila was never party to this, nor any other war-teachers, but if Esora-e took me off for extra work, that was his business.

It was hard. The first few days he made me do so much I got dizzy and sick. There were other privations, such as letting me serve myself from the common pot then pulling away half, for several days running, or making me go without water for a day, to teach me how to override the body’s wants and thus be free of them. Once he locked me in a cellar chamber of the Hearthstone that was pitch-dark and soundless, with only a blanket and a flask of water, for three days; that was to get used to what was in my own mind.

Yet he never did anything without a reason that inspired me. He taught me pride in doing, or enduring, what I had thought was impossible. He never let me forget he loved me. He never let up on me and allowed it to be too easy, and, on my honour, neither did I. It should be understood, my shadow-father was one of those people who speak gravely of the hardship of war, how we only do it out of necessity, how it is sacred and so forth, but one can tell enjoys both the act and the thought of being a warrior.

To this day I question his choosing an ambition for me, and at times I have resented it. But I cannot say, had he asked my consent, that I wouldn’t have agreed at least to aspire to be the best in Yeola-e. In the end more good has come out of it than bad. I’d be dead several times over if not for that hard training.

One day, close to a year after my father was assassinated, it came to me that the world was going on without him. The government was still running, I was still growing, things were still changing. He was dead and that was how life was now, and that was that. Somehow, it was suddenly bearable.

The mourning custom in Yeola-e, for those very close, is to take off the black head-ribbon a year after at the latest. My mother kept hers on until the very day, as did Esora-e and I. I’d decided I should tell her of my foreknowledge a little while after she took it off, so I waited perhaps a month.

No thought-out reasons for keeping it to myself had entered my head yet. I had said nothing at the time, and it would probably be common knowledge if not for this, because I’d felt everyone had enough to bear. Why make it worse?

My own estimate was thirty. That was how old my corpse had looked to me. For a seven-year-old, thirty years is a long time, but I was suddenly aware, in a way that I never had been before, that days added up to moons, and moons to years. I was never again scolded for dawdling, not once. People say it is my nature to hurry, and it is, in the same sense a sword-stroke is in our nature, after we’ve practiced it ten thousand times.

Hand in hand, she and I went out into the cedar grove for privacy, because I told her it was a secret. She sat down; I didn’t want to, so I stayed standing. “Something happened the day Daddy got killed,” I said. “I’m going to die when I’m still young, too.” In the way of women, she was strong, showing nothing more than a tensing and a stunned silence.

“How do you know?” she said. I explained how I had seen the black-haired corpse through her hand.

“I know I was seeing into the future… twenty-two years from now, since thirty minus eight is twenty-two. I just thought, since you’re my mama, you ought to know.” She didn’t seem to disbelieve; there was nothing implausible about it. I’d be a warrior-demarch, just as Tennunga had been, and I was her child, liable to inherit her gift. All I’d got was a glimpse into the normal tragedy of life that people usually hide from ourselves so as to maintain happiness.

She opened her arms to me, and I suddenly felt I’d done something wrong by telling her. “I know what I have to do,” I said quickly, throwing my arms around her. “I already realized, and I swore an oath: I’m going to do two times as many things and love everyone two times as hard as everyone else.” I didn’t even have a choice about it in war-training; Esora-e already had me practicing with double-weight swords and staves and tunics when the other students didn’t have to.

“Chevenga…” She looked at me piercingly, suddenly. “It’s been more than a year. Why didn’t you tell me until now?” I told her. Her eyes fixed on me, frozen. “So… you haven’t told me now because you wanted comfort… you told me because you thought I should know... well, you said that.”

“Yes. You’re my mama, and you get foreknowledge feelings. One day in twenty-two years, you’ll get a horrible feeling like you did before Daddy died. But you’ll know why, you’ll know it’s going to be me, so it won’t be so bad.”

Her eyes closed for a moment, a bit like someone who is being stabbed but is resolved to keep her silence. I shouldn’t have said that, I thought. But finally she took a deep breath and said, “Yes. It’s easier to take that which is expected. And now you’ve told me, you will have someone to come to, when it troubles you.” I wasn’t sure why it would, but I also knew she was a grown-up, who’d been through life, and so knew much better than me what going through life was like.

She picked up her crystal between thumb and forefinger, and took my face between her hands, her fingers twining in the curls on the sides of my head, the kindest feeling, as always. “You swore an oath; I will too. I will love you twice as much, All-Spirit be witness and second Fire come if I forswear.”

“You, love me twice as much? But you love me so much already!”

That made her smile, and pull me into a proper hug. “My precious child! But if you set such a standard for yourself, well, so should I.”

“But… you don’t have to, mama. You love me so much, and I can handle this.” In my piping voice it must have sounded like a typical eight-year-old brag, such as “I can reach that shelf now,” or “I can multiply up to ten.” Alas, it was not quite so true.

“Well, I will nonetheless. Same as you, now, I know I only have half the time.” She smoothed my forelock from my brow, and pressed her lips to my cheek. “My child of pure steel! What a life lies before you… Have you told anyone else?” I signed charcoal. “All right… you are going to have to choose who and when to tell, if anyone else, or ever. Just remember this: once out, it can’t be called back. Consider the implications very carefully when that choice comes, both for your own sake and for others. And if you’re not sure, come to me.”

I wouldn’t understand for about five years exactly what she was thinking, but I sensed that I was over my head, as kids do, and so I should keep quiet until I did understand, so my choices wouldn’t be taken out of my hands before then. “I will do that, mama,” I said, holding my crystal. “Second Fire come if I am forsworn.”

We went back to her room. She let me stay up past my bedtime, and I fell asleep under her wicker chair with my feet sticking out the back along the floor, now that I was too big to curl there, and her hand ceaselessly caressing my hair.