Heart of Danger (20 page)

She only got this fierce when danger threatened Hera or me.

Willem focused the full force of his attention on my mother. ‘Sheen, I understand your worry. But consider for a moment – Juno has the abilities. No matter how hard she tries to ignore them, they’ll be with her always. I believe with all my heart that she’ll be safer knowing how to use them wisely.’

I glared at him. What about my opinion? He ignored me.

Dad took Mother’s hand. ‘I believe Willem is right, Sheen. Perhaps Juno was lucky at Mokau. I want her to be able to keep herself safe if ever the need arises again.’

Mother blinked away tears and nodded once. Willem stood up. ‘Juno. Hera. I’ll see you both on Tuesday morning at eight.’

There was no point in discussing it with my family, so I took myself out to the sleep-out to talk to Nash – he, at least, would have some idea about the scariness of what Willem was going to make me do. I poured it all out then said, ‘And don’t tell me to trust. I don’t want lessons. I don’t …’

‘Shh!’ He wagged a finger at me. ‘Why fight it? You know he’s right.’ He frowned. ‘You’ll probably never have to deal with the sort of power you faced up north again. You survived that. Nothing else can be as scary as that must have been.’

‘I do know he’s right. I do. But I just feel sick.’ I tried to explain. ‘There wasn’t time to think about being scared when …’ I didn’t want to go there. ‘But with lessons there’s plenty of time.’

He didn’t try to reason with me any further. ‘You have to do it, though. Give it four lessons and if it’s still freaking you out, ask if you can stop.’

The sick feeling faded. ‘You know something,’ I said, ‘sometimes you have really good ideas.’ We laughed and I was comforted.

When Tuesday rolled around, Mother made sure Hera was ready in time, although I could tell she still wasn’t any happier about the lessons than I was. We set out for school at 7.45. Willem took us into a small room I’d not been in before. Hera went straight to the little armchair that must have been made especially for her. He sat down, and I grudgingly took the remaining chair.

He didn’t mess about. ‘Juno, the first thing for you to do is unshackle your mind. You’ve convinced yourself that your abilities are terrifying, so you block them out. You are extremely fortunate to have been able to access them when you needed them so desperately. If you keep on trying to avoid them, you’ll lose them. Your choice, Juno. Stay and learn with your sister, or leave. But if you stay, you do it with your whole heart.’

He sat back, and I understood he’d wait the whole hour for me to give him an answer. I understood too that whatever I decided would be final. I would not get another chance.

Trust it
, Nash had said. I covered my eyes with my hands to think. I heard Hera stir, and Willem say something to her. I stilled my mind, focusing on the question of what to do. Go or stay? Awareness of Willem and my sister faded until it was just me alone with my future.

Never turn your back on learning.

I wasn’t sure if I’d heard the words, or if I just sensed them. If it was a voice, I didn’t recognise it. It wasn’t Grif’s voice, although the love behind it was similar.

I opened my eyes. ‘Never turn your back on learning.’ I stared at Willem. ‘Did you project that to me?’

He shook his head. ‘Absolutely not. I will never seek to influence you, Juno. Such an act would be an egregious misuse of power.’ He stood up. ‘Go to class now and I’ll see you both on Friday.’

Hera had gone already. Before I could ask why, he said, ‘She left soon after you began meditating. It’s too much to expect her to stay quiet for an entire hour yet.’

I gaped at him. ‘I don’t know how to meditate!’

He smiled and opened the door. ‘Go to class, Juno. There’s much for you to learn, but there’s also much you’ve discovered already by yourself.’

In the end, although I found it hard to credit, it only took two lessons before I was looking forward to Tuesdays and Thursdays. ‘I can’t believe it,’ I told Nash. I jabbed him with my elbow. ‘And don’t you dare say
I told you so.’

‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ he said, and the laughter in his face belied his words.

I grinned at him, glad he was part of our family. I liked chatting to him – he was undemanding and easy to talk to. I didn’t get a clear impression of what he felt about the time we spent talking about everything and nothing, but he seemed okay with it. For me, his presence helped fill the gap left by my learning stratum.

 

In late March the news flew round the gossip line that Sina was pregnant. I logged on to call Vima, but got James instead. ‘Yep, we knew a week ago. They came round and told us together.’

I felt winded. ‘Jov’s made his choice then? Did he tell Vima they were going to have another baby?’

He looked sad. ‘Yeah, and he told her weeks ago he was staying with Sina. He loves her and he’s staying with her.’

My head was spinning. ‘How …? Oh, tell me, James. Please!’

‘She’ll be here soon,’ he said. ‘But she told me to tell you if you called. She seemed to think you would. Look, Juno, the thing is – she’s really cut up about it. She still believes he was the only one for her. I think she hoped he’d see that she was the only one for him when Sina and I made them talk to each other again.’

‘He doesn’t love her? He doesn’t love Vima?’ I couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it.

‘I think he does,’ James said. ‘But it’s not the sort of love Vima thought it was. Plus there was the whole secrecy thing when they got together on Taris. Secrecy always adds an edge to love.’

I felt sick. ‘Oh James, it’s awful. Are you okay?’

‘Truthfully, Juno, it’s been damned hard. But we talk a lot now, about that and everything else as well. She laughs more these days, though she’s still deeply sad underneath.’

‘I’m sorry, James. So very sorry.’

He gave me a twisted smile. ‘Don’t worry about us, we’re doing all right. I’ll tell her to call when she gets in.’

She called almost an hour later. She was still too thin, and I could see the sorrow in her eyes.

‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘Sina and Jov’s baby, I mean. He always said he loved her and he was going to stay with her. I guess the baby’s made me accept that he really meant it.’

‘You’re all right though?’ It was all I could think to ask.

‘I think I feel like I’ve been hauled out of the sea and dumped on dry ground. I’m kind of winded and knocked around, but I’m still alive.’ She gave me a real smile. ‘I’m glad to still be alive, Juno. I’m going to be okay. James is great. I just wish I’d met him without all this drama in my life.’

‘But then you wouldn’t have had Wilfred,’ I said.

She laughed, ‘That’s what he says too.’

After we’d said goodbye I sat quietly for a moment, struggling to accept what Vima had said. I had to admit that I’d been hanging on to the Jov and Vima scenario almost as much as she had. It was peculiar letting it go.

When Nash came home, I talked to him about it, but he was no help. ‘I know nothing of romantic love,’ he said. ‘I do know enough of love, though, to understand the pain they’re all dealing with.’

‘You’ve never had a girlfriend?’ I was surprised he hadn’t. He was good-looking, and he was good company once you broke through the silence.

‘No.’

I knew him well enough by now not to probe any further.

T
he work at school was full on, and got more and more difficult for us as the year progressed. My stratum got into the habit of logging on in the evenings to figure out anything we hadn’t understood in class. Clemmie and Ginevra often joined in as well. A couple of times a week, Oban would come over to act as our tutor, and Nash was almost always there in the background to help if we asked.

‘You’re no slug, mate,’ Yin told him at the end of one of our physics discussions.

No, he wasn’t. It was good having him around in the evenings too, because during the day he was away from the house for long hours, working on a project to establish a farming hub just to the south of the city, and I missed his company.

At the end of July, word went round that Vima and James had looked after Jovan for the weekend. ‘So you’re all still talking?’ I asked Vima.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sometimes it really hurts and I think I’ll die, but sometimes too I find I haven’t even thought about him for a whole day. That was kind of freaky the first time it happened. But it’s good. Getting better is good.’

They looked after Jovan again in August when Sina’s baby came early, before her parents could get there. The new baby was another little boy. ‘He’s so tiny,’ Vima said. ‘But he’s going to be fine.’

She looked better, as if she’d settled something in her mind.

The year rolled onwards, and every week I looked forward to the Sunday afternoons that were our allotted free time away from study. By now I was spending them with Nash. Sometimes we’d go on an outing with Oban and Ginevra, but they were in love and didn’t require the company of others. Sometimes we’d go to one of the beaches, or we’d explore the wild parks in the city, but one winter Sunday I asked Nash if we could go to the land he was working on.

He said, ‘Sure, it’s a bit of a walk though.’

That didn’t worry me.

A cool wind blew a skittering rain at us, as we walked out beyond the city’s edges.

‘There,’ Nash said at last. ‘I’m in charge of bringing all that flat land back into production. Hard yakka, but we’re inching our way forward.’

We were looking down into a valley, at the bottom of which was a stream running through a flattish area choked with scrub, gorse and weeds. ‘Wow,’ I gasped. ‘That’s a mess.’

He nudged my elbow. ‘Come on, I’ll show you what we’ve done so far. We’re making progress. You’ll see.’

The clear patch of land looked pitifully tiny to me, but over the next few months we came back several times on a Sunday and the cleared area seemed to more than double with each visit.

Once or twice I’d catch Mother looking at Nash and me, and I knew she was hoping we’d marry. But I didn’t feel like that about him. He was my brother, not my boyfriend, and that suited both of us.

November arrived and exams began, spanning a week and two days. The only bright spot was getting English over and done with on the first day, though the exam was no worse than the school ones had been. All of us were cautiously hopeful of scraping through with a pass. But by the time we’d finished genetic biology on the last day, we were wrung out and exhausted.

I looked forward each day to Nash coming home. His presence was undemanding and soothing.

 

Results were due out three days before Christmas. With each day of waiting we became more and more convinced we’d failed.

‘Just one lousy mark,’ Fortun said, ‘and we can’t do our volunteer year next year.’

We’d already got the job we applied for, which was to travel the country to take a census of isolated groups and record their stories. Ginevra and Clemmie were to be part of our group as well. So was Oban, even though he didn’t need to do a volunteer year.

‘Exploring
and
working,’ he said. ‘Sorry if you don’t want me, guys, but I’m coming anyway.’

On results day I kept checking and re-checking the website, even though it clearly said
Results will be posted at 10:00 hours. Log in using your exam code.

Ten o’clock arrived and I couldn’t look, couldn’t key in my code. One by one, the rest of my stratum started yelling and jumping. They’d all passed, every single one of them.

Then they started yelling at me. ‘Just do it. Put yourself out of your misery.’

I couldn’t. I sat frozen, staring at the screen. Nash knocked on my door and came in. I snarled at him. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’

He took the slip with the code on it from my hand and keyed in the numbers. I couldn’t look as he scanned through the results, but I didn’t block my ears. ‘Five subjects, five passes. Some with merit, one with distinction.’ He patted my shoulder.

‘We did it!’ Silvern was shouting loud enough to crack windows. ‘All of us! We bloody did it!’

I couldn’t say anything. The tears running down my face were making it hard to check that Nash had got it right. But there it was – five passes.

‘Okay everybody,’ Marba said looking like he now understood feelings of triumph, satisfaction and plain old happiness. ‘I’m off. Let’s talk again the day after Christmas. We’ll need to start planning for next year. 2087. It’s going to be brilliant!’

I logged off, then swivelled round to Nash. ‘How come you just happened not to go to work this morning? And how come you just happened to know I’d be too scared to look at my results?’

He laughed and said, ‘I figured you might need a hand.’ Which didn’t tell me anything.

I wished the sessions with Willem had dealt with how to understand somebody who kept you at a friendly distance, because now that I wasn’t so focused on study, I was finding Nash frustrating rather than soothing. Was he happy? Was he still grieving for his family? Did he want to move on again, or did he feel settled enough to make his home in this city? I would have liked to talk to him about all of that, but he guarded his privacy and warded off any attempt to fully understand him. Ah well, his state of mind was none of my business and I’d be leaving soon anyway. He was quite capable of looking out for himself.

My family threw themselves into the preparations for my departure. The grandfathers made me a pair of sturdy boots. Dad taught me which plants we could safely eat, which ones to avoid and which ones we could use for medicine. Mother and Leebar sewed clothes for me. Sometimes I felt as if there was nothing for me to do, so I spent the time with Hera. She was going to change so much in a year.

When he could, Nash would come with us – not, I felt, for the pleasure of our company, but so that he could tell me the stories of his own travels and pass on the survival skills he’d learnt the hard way. I was sure he did it as a way of thanking my parents for welcoming him into our family rather than because he was concerned for my safety. I never knew what approach he’d take – whether he’d choose to describe lonely roads or whether he’d take it into his head to terrify me with stories of rampaging wild cattle or pigs. If it was animals or other dangers, he’d laugh, pat my head and say, ‘You’re a survivor, Juno. The pig will be in more danger than you will be.’

Once, I asked, ‘Did you ever go back to where you grew up?’

That question wrecked the day. ‘Yes,’ he said, and changed the subject, vanishing behind a wall of bleakness.

I learned my lesson and took care never to venture near personal matters again. The important thing was that I trusted him, even though he kept his innermost self locked behind a hedge thick with thorns.

One day when the three of us were at the beach, Hera slid her hand into mine and said, ‘I don’t want you to go away.’

‘I’m coming back, Hera. It’s not forever.’

She stomped on, freeing her hand and holding them both behind her back. ‘I know that, silly. You don’t have to tell me.’

Nash said, ‘She does know that, doesn’t she? She’s not just saying it.’

‘Yep. That’s a Hera prediction,’ I said. ‘And one I’m very happy to hear for once.’

My parents were too when I told them. The worry faded from Mother’s eyes and Dad’s shoulders relaxed. The prospect of being apart for so long had been a strain for all of us, even though Leebar refused to admit it. The nearer the day came, though, the brisker and more matter-of-fact she got. I wasn’t fooled, and knew I would miss her acerbic common sense.

A week before I was due to leave, Mother and Dad sat me down for a serious talk. ‘You’re not even sixteen yet,’ Dad said, ‘so we’re asking you to be careful …’

I felt my face getting hot. ‘You’re worried I might go and fall in love and …’ I wasn’t going to say more about that.

Mother sighed. ‘Yes. We trust you, but it’s going to be hard for you not having elders around you.’

I put up my hands to stop her. ‘I promise you – really promise – that I’ve learnt my lesson about love. I’m not going to get carried away again. If I meet somebody I really, truly like, he’s going to have to wait till I’m eighteen and then he can think about being my boyfriend.’

‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ Mother said. ‘So now all we have to worry about is your physical safety.’ She came round the table to put her arms around me. ‘Do be careful, my daughter. Don’t take risks and always remember we love you.’

Yes, I would be careful. And I would be careful, too, not to tell them of the list of dangerous places Nash had given me, places where the inhabitants chased him away with guns and knives.

The evening before departure day, my family held a farewell feast for me, Oban and Ginevra. When we finished eating, we lingered at the table, talking.

Ginevra said, ‘Things will change while we’re away.’ She looked at her brothers. ‘You guys will be all grown up.’

‘And Nash could be married,’ Leebar said. ‘
Twenty-four
– practically an old man!’

He smiled but didn’t rise to her teasing. Hera, however, leapt right in. ‘That’s silly, Leebar. Nash won’t get married till Juno gets back. He’s going to marry Juno and I want to dance at the wedding.’

That created a crashing silence. I absolutely wasn’t going to marry Nash – or anyone for that matter. But in the end I said only, ‘Nash is my brother, Hera. You don’t marry your brother.’

She sent me a pitying look. ‘Nash is my brother, not your brother.’

I couldn’t look at Nash, or anyone else. Hera’s predictions were never wrong, but – marrying Nash? I couldn’t love somebody who kept himself so shut off, so guarded. He was a brother, but now, thanks to Hera’s big mouth, that stupid prediction would always be there between us, and nothing would be easy ever again.

Mother stood up. ‘Let’s clear up. And Hera, you will not speak of this again.’

I escaped outside. I didn’t want to marry Nash. I liked him, but he was a friend – a guarded, walled-off friend. There was no spark, no electricity between us. I’d rather not marry at all than marry a comfortable shoe.

Ginevra, Oban and Nash came to find me. ‘Your sister sure knows how to break up a party,’ Ginevra said, keeping her voice light.

Nash sat down on the edge of a raised garden. ‘Don’t worry about it, Juno. Maybe she’s right, maybe she’s not. But it’s up to us to decide what we want to do.’

Oban buffeted his shoulder. ‘And you’re such an old man! Leebar could be right. You could be all snugly married by the time we get back.’

‘Could be,’ he said, all serene and peaceable – and he didn’t believe a word of it.

Ginevra laughed suddenly. ‘Do you think Willem will work with Hera this year about appropriateness?’

‘If he doesn’t think to do it, I’m sure Sheen will be giving him his orders,’ Oban said. ‘Come on, let’s go back inside. They’re settling in for a rowdy card game or two.’

So I spent my last evening at home snatching cards from my opponents, chatting and clowning around. All the time, though, there was an awareness of Nash that hadn’t been there before. He caught me looking at him and crossed his eyes at me, making me laugh. I shrugged away the tension and threw myself into the game.

But the next morning Hera’s prediction was there in my mind as fresh and insistent as ever. I jumped out of bed, threw on some clothes and took myself across to hammer on the door of the sleep-out. Nash opened it immediately – he’d been expecting me.

He didn’t say anything, just followed as I led the way out to the seat under the tree. ‘You think it’s true, don’t you?’ I demanded.

‘Juno, it doesn’t matter what I think.’ He shrugged. ‘No matter what your sister sees in her predictions, there’s still the small matter of free will. Maybe we’ll marry. Maybe we won’t.’

I kicked at his foot. ‘How can you even think about it? You’re my brother, not anything else.’

He took his foot out of range. ‘Who says I’m thinking about it? Not me. I’m not worried. You’re going away for a year. And if you’ll forgive me for pointing out the obvious – you’re much too young to be thinking about marriage.’

So bloody reasonable. And so guarded. I had no clue as to what he really thought. I wrapped my arms around myself so that I wouldn’t thump him. ‘But you’re not too young.’

He stood up. ‘No, and I promise to let you know if I find the right woman while you’re away. But now I’ve got to get myself off to work.’