Overheard in a Dream (40 page)

“How so
?”

“There will be another growing with her. I wasn’t going to tell you this, not yet, but if it gives your heart some peace
…”

Mogri’s brow furrowed
.

“Ansel made good his word with me. He said that night he’d bed me for a child and so it seems he has. She’ll have a cousin before the spring comes back again.”

Mogri’s eyes went wide
. “Torgon,
is it true
?”

“Aye. I’ve been troubled by my stomach for many weeks and this had made me suspect as much. Now the faces of the moon have come and gone three times and I’ve still given forth no monthly blood.”

“Oh, holy Dwr.” Mogri searched her sister’s face. “I want to think this is good news, but is it, Torgon
?”

Torgon shook her head. “I don’t know … what it means and what will happen, I’m hesitant to think.”

“And where might you be coming from?” He stepped out suddenly from behind the tree, as Torgon worked her way down through the forest
.

It was Galen, eldest of Ansel’s brothers.

“What brings you here?” Torgon asked. “This is holy ground and not for common passage.”

“I spoke first, anaka benna, so mine’s the stronger question. Where have you been that finds you skulking back along such a tangled forest path
?”

“Be gone with you, Galen. Go on.” Torgon moved to push past him
.

With unexpected speed he drew his sword and barred the way. “Do not speak so dismissively with me. Do you forget that I am holy too? Pause, divine one, and honour me with conversation.”

Torgon glared at him
.

“Or perhaps should I mention to you first how easily I find this blade will run a worker through? It’s sharp. Feel it, if you doubt my word. And there are too many of the worker kind. Did we not wonder at last council how we’d manage to feed them all? Especially
babies.
The worker kind keep breeding. But my sword is quick with babes. Perhaps you wish that I should show you how.”

“Among my kind, we learn that only cowards hurt those weaker than themselves. It is not the work of noble men.”

Turning the blade of the sword flat, Galen reached out to place the tip of it under Torgon’s chin. He gently raised it making Torgon raise her head as well so that he could study her face. “Aye,” he said, “Ansel was right in his taste for you. You have a comely aspect. But I like not your eyes. They are too pale. They give a spirit look to you.”

Torgon said nothing
.

“He spoke well of your breasts too.” Turning the sword deftly again, Galen jabbed the point against her abdomen. With one quick flick, he brought it up and rent the white cloth of her shirt. The sword tip nicked her skin causing crimson beads of blood to rise. “Show me your breasts, that I might judge the matter for myself.”

Torgon did not move
.

Galen jabbed the point of the sword against her skin again. “Show me.”

“Be gone. Go back among the dogs, who are your kind.”

Galen poked the sword against her chest enough to force her into stepping back. “You’re naught but tits and cunt of worker kind, the sort a warrior pays but pennies for. Naught but a trifle my father chose to placate Ansel’s rutting.”

“Base men are always victims of their lust. It doesn’t matter how your father made the choice. In the act, Dwr’s will was done.”

“You think far too highly of yourself.”

“No. It’s just I think too low of you. Now move your sword and go your way.”

“No, holy benna, I would have us talk.”

Torgon regarded him
.

“I would, for one thing, have us speak about my brother, whose bones lay midst the ashes of his funeral pyre. There’s been no golden summer’s day for him.”

“What’s done is done. The elders sat in council and made their judgement. You know that well, for you were there, so nothing more remains for saying.”

“There was no honour in my brother’s death. You know
that
well, anaka benna. Even you were so ashamed of what you did, you ran.”

“I took retreat that I might seek Dwr’s counsel on how to heal the evil that your brother wrought.”

“So, holy one who talks with gods, what counsel did you get? More ways to use a warrior’s knife
?”

“You’ve all sent your souls before you into darkness and care not to call them back again. For this, Dwr says the end is come for holy born.”

His face reddened
. “Woman!
What is the matter with you? Were you born lacking all forms of common sense? This sword sits within a minute of your life and we are deep here in the forest where none would know who’d done the deed, yet still you preach at me. Put you so little value on your life? Show me rightful respect or I will simply run you through.”

“I know you will. For Dwr told me that as well.”

He looked astonished
.

She smiled. “But not today. The time’s not right to kill me now. For if you do, you will kill your brother’s unborn child as well.”

“T
his isn’t the moon,” Conor muttered, flapping his fingers in front of his face. “We didn’t go to the moon.”

“Come on in, Conor,” James said, holding the playroom door open.

“I don’t know why he talks like that,” Morgana muttered. She pushed past him and went over to the table.

“Kiss?” Alan called to her.

Morgana ran back and bounced up on tiptoes to give her father a kiss. Conor, oblivious, just stood clutching his cat. Alan brushed his lips across the boy’s pale hair. “See you later, kids.”

“See you, Daddy.”

Then the door was closed.

“How come you wanted us both here?” Morgana asked. “How come me and Conor didn’t get to come at our own times, like usual?”

“Because sometimes I like to see brothers and sisters play together,” James replied.

“Him and me, we don’t play together,” she said. “He doesn’t know how.”

“We didn’t go to the moon,” Conor murmured.

Morgana wandered off across the room. “What’re we supposed to do in here today? Am I supposed to do something with him?”

“You decide,” James replied.

“Conor? You want to do something with me?” Morgana called to him.

No response.

“He
won’t
play with me,” she said to James, her tone rather weary. “I could’ve told you that. He never does.”

“Well, that’s all right.”

“Guess I’ll make Lego,” she said and brought the large plastic container over to the table. “I’ll make a house.”

Conor remained immobile by the door.

“I’d like to build a castle. Have you seen them? Them Lego castles? You have to buy a special kit. But they’re really hard to do. My dad says I can’t have one, ’cause I’m not big enough to put it together and I’d just lose the parts. But I’d really like a castle to play with.”

“What would you like to do with it?” James asked.

“I dunno. Just play. Fairy tales, I guess. You know, like Rapunzel and stuff.” She picked up some bricks.

James raised his head and looked over at Conor, still standing by the door. For a brief moment he caught Conor’s eye before the boy quickly looked away.

“Would you like to join us?” James asked. He rose from the table and went over.

Standing stiffly, the stuffed cat pressed to his chest, Conor stared straight ahead, his eyes vacant.

James knelt to the boy’s height. “With your body and your face, I see you saying, ‘Go away and leave me alone.’”

A faint expression of surprise crossed Conor’s features at James’s accurate interpretation and he looked at him. “Yeah,” he said softly.

“Things are different today and I can tell this doesn’t make you happy.”

“This is the boy’s room.”

Morgana swivelled around in her chair in astonishment. “He talks sense to you!”

“Perhaps you could show Morgana what you like to do in here,” James suggested.

“No.”

“Would you like to come to the table and join us?”

“No.”

“Will you talk to me, Conor?” Morgana asked, getting out of her seat and coming over. “What kind of things can you say?”

His expression hostile, Conor looked at his sister.

“Can you really talk just like everybody else? Come on, Conor. Do it for me.”

No response.

“You want to come play Lego with me?”

James went back to the table and sat down. “I want Conor to feel welcome to join us. I’d like you to be part of us over here, Conor, but you don’t have to, if you don’t want to. In here, you decide.”

He marched over. “I
have
decided. I’ve decided I don’t want her here. This is the boy’s room.”

“Did you forget that Morgana was coming along today?” James asked

“I want to do my book today.”

“What book’s that, Conor?” Morgana asked. “Does he mean stories?” She rose up brightly. “I’d like to hear a story too.”

Conor turned on her. “It isn’t your story. It’s not for you.”

Deflated, Morgana sat back down in her chair.

“You can’t play with this,” Conor stated and approached the dolls’ house.

“I didn’t say I wanted to play with it,” Morgana muttered.

“You don’t feel like sharing the dolls’ house,” James reflected back.

“When I am here, I decide and I have decided that.”

“What if I decide I want to play with it?” Morgana asked, her tone not belligerent, just curious. She looked over at James. “What happens if I decide I want to but he decides I can’t? How’s it work in here then?”

“You would wonder that,” James replied with a grin. “And if it happens, then we’ll try to talk it through until we have a solution.”

Morgana shrugged. “It’s okay. He can have it.”

Alarm suddenly crossed Conor’s features and he moved swiftly to the bookshelves behind Morgana. “She can’t have this,” he said and snatched up the box containing the mechanical cat.

“Why? What is it?” Morgana asked.

Conor pressed the box tightly against his chest. “It’s mine. You can’t have it.”

“No, I didn’t say I wanted it, Conor. What is it?”

“It’s the mechanical cat,” Conor replied a little less gruffly.

“A mechanical cat? Really? What does it do?”

“It’s the mechanical cat,” he repeated.

“Let me see it. Please? I really like things like that. Please, Conor?”

He clutched the box tighter to his chest.

She turned, her expression an appeal for James’s intervention. “Can’t I see it?”

James smiled but didn’t reply.

“I do like things like that,” she said rather sulkily. “I seen this mechanical dog once. It had a ball in its mouth and when you wound it up, its tail wagged and it moved around and shook the ball.” She looked back at Conor. “What does your cat do?”

“It sees ghosts.”

“Oh, great.” Morgana let out a pained sigh. “You’re going to start crazy talk again.”

Silence.

“This girl at school, her name’s Britney, and she’s got a brother who’s nine like Conor,” Morgana said to James. “He can build really good Lego. He got a Lego rocket ship for Christmas and he brought it to school to show, after he’d built it. If Conor was like him, he might have been able to make me that castle I want. ’Cause my dad won’t. He says it takes too much fiddling. But Conor might have done it for me, ’cause he’s nine.”

At the other end of the table, Conor sat down. He still had the box of cardboard animals pressed against his chest, but he loosened his grip a little.

Morgana resumed her play with the Lego bricks.

The next several minutes passed in complete silence.

Furtively, Conor watched Morgana’s activity. When she didn’t look up from what she was doing, he quietly lay the box of cardboard animals on the table. Checking briefly to see what Morgana was up to, he then let his hand creep under the lid of the box and he carefully extracted the cardboard cat. Slipping it quickly into his lap, he held it there, looking at it,
tenderly caressing the faded print of its fur. Still holding it in his lap below the table level, he fitted the cat into the stand. Another furtive glance at Morgana. Then Conor stood the cat on the table. There was still a tiny wad of clay adhering to the end of the string leash, so Conor pressed it to the table top.

“There,” he said.

Morgana looked up.

“Here’s the mechanical cat.”

Her eyebrows knitted together. “How’s it mechanical? What’s it do?”

Conor seemed perplexed by this question. “It’s the mechanical cat,” he replied in a tone of voice that indicated he felt this was self-evident.