Redemption in Indigo (21 page)

I cannot think that you would need to know much more about Paama's life after she gave up the Chaos Stick. You may, however, want to know more about what happened to Chance, and Patience, and the Trickster. I could tell you, I suppose, but humans are the proper study of humankind. Why should I encourage you in this inappropriate interest in beings you cannot fully understand? Let us just say that the Trickster entered the equivalent of a witness protection programme. He would emerge at a time in the future with a new identity which would protect him from the suspicion of his former adversaries and any possible retaliation from his former allies. Chance underwent rehabilitation for a similar period of time, and Patience watched over them both, but from a distance, visiting only occasionally. Senior as she was, she delegated the day-to-day observation of her charges to someone else, someone who had proven skills in the field.

Now I have come at last to the end of the story. For some in my audience, a tale is like a riddle, to be solved at the end. To them I say the best tales leave some riddles unanswered and some mysteries hidden. Get used to it. For others the tale is a way of living vicariously, enjoying the adventures of others without having to go one step beyond their sphere of comfort. To them I say, what's stopping
you
from getting on a ship and sailing halfway around the world? Tales are meant to be an inspiration, not a substitute.

Then there are those who utterly, utterly fear the dreaded Moral of the Story. They consider it an affront to their sensibilities and a painful presumption on the part of the storyteller. They are put off by the idea that a story might have anything useful to say and, as a result, all the other joys a tale has to offer them are immediately soured. I save my most scathing remarks for them. Do you go through life with your eyes blindfolded and your ears stopped? Everything teaches, everyone preaches, all have a gospel to sell! Better the one who is honest and open in declaring an agenda than the one who fools you into believing that they are only spinning a pretty fancy for beauty's sake.

I
was honest and open. Don't you remember? I told you from the very beginning that it was a story about choices—wise choices, foolish choices, small yet momentous choices—for with choices come change, and with change comes opportunity, and both change and opportunity are the very cutting edge of the power of chaos. And yet, as the undying ones know and as humans too often forget, even chaos cannot overcome the power of choice.

I have no way of knowing which of these characters will most capture your attention and sympathy. Paama will be too tepid and mild a heroine for some, they will criticise her for dutifully caring for her estranged husband in his last days. Chance will be too cold, the Trickster too odd, Patience too distant. In stories as in life, it is an impossible task to please everybody. But before you dismiss them, I ask those who care for the weak to look at Patience and see their own professional distance, so essential for maintaining their own strength amid the trials of many. Look to the Trickster to see your eccentricities, your talent for mercy deep-hidden underneath a fearsome exterior; to Chance for your self-centredness, self-pride, and despair; and to Paama for your sense of familial duty ... and yes, I think I can get you to admit that you may not like my people, but you cannot fail to recognise them.

Do I have more stories to tell? There are always more stories. I could tell you about how Giana grew up and became a famous choreographer who captured some of the dance and movement of Dreamland for the waking world. I could give you the amusing tale of what happened when Neila and Alton did finally have a daughter. And then there are sadder, more serious histories, like the account of the general's war, or the not-always-lucky and terribly volatile adult life of Jevan, the boy who met a baccou. I can give you any tale you like, and some that you might not like, but which would still be to your benefit.

And yet??t is terribly dry and thirsty work, speaking these lives into the dusty air of the court, speaking for you to hear and ponder and judge. Perhaps, if you would be so kind as to contribute, I could purchase some refreshments now, find a place to rest my head later, and return to you on the morrow with my voice and memory and strength restored. Please, ladies and gentlemen, if you have at all enjoyed my story, be generous as the pot goes around, and do come back again soon.

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i have been authorised to add this epilogue to the tale. Not only is this in order to placate that demanding portion of my audience who felt that to end with vague hints of Paama's married life was to end too abruptly, but it is also to round off the story according to my own rules. I have been hoist by my own petard, constrained by that offhand statement:
the proper study of humankind is humans
. So be it.

Imagine then two humans, boys, aged about twelve years, sitting in a primitive treehouse. It lacked walls, there was no roof—in fact it was more of a treeplatform than anything else, but imaginations that can make castles out of the air can certainly build marvels on a few planks.

'She knows,’ said the elder twin smugly. ‘That's why you're her favourite, admit it.'

'How can you be sure?’ his brother replied, looking far too serious for a boy his age. ‘I know she worries about me. She's constantly afraid that I'll get hurt, or that people will laugh at me, but that's just her way of protecting me. It doesn't make me the favourite.'

'Trust you to see the sunny side of things,’ came the exasperated reply. ‘If I weren't around, I swear you'd have no life at all. You think she feels sorry for you? You think that's all there is to it?'

He pushed him roughly, half in jest, half in genuine frustration, and the younger boy, who was also the smaller of the two, almost rolled off the unbarred edge of their domain. He let out a yelp of fear and scrabbled quickly back to safety.

'Ajit! Yao! Stop that right now!'

Both flinched with guilt and looked around. The house was only twenty metres away, and they could see their mother looking out of the kitchen window, frowning threateningly at them.

'Your father already warned you—no skylarking in the tree-house or down it comes for good. Do you
want
to fall to your death?'

The boys looked at the grass a scant two metres below, rolled their eyes at each other, and said together, ‘No, Maa.'

It did not satisfy her, or perhaps even at that distance she caught the eye-roll.

'Kwame!’ she called. ‘The boys are idle.'

'Are they?’ her husband answered. ‘How fortunate for me. I could use the help of two sturdy youngsters. Come!'

Each shooting the other ‘this is
your
fault’ glares, they climbed down from the tree and walked up the hill to where their father was digging a drainage trench for the garden.

He grinned at them. ‘The pick and spade are too big for your hands, but you can move those stones out of the way for me. Stack them over there??nd down there. We can mend the terrace with them later on.'

The grin did not fool them; their father had a pleasant yet implacable manner, and the more pleasant he was, the less likely it would be that he could be persuaded from his path. They set to work, Yao flinching slightly in the bright sunlight now that he was out from under the shade of the tree. His father took off his own hat and dropped it, oversized and sweaty, onto the boy's head. Then he squatted comfortably nearby and occasionally pointed out where he wanted the stones placed.

'What were you quarrelling about?’ he asked.

'We weren't quarrelling,’ said the elder in disgust.

'Ajit was talking about who's Maa's favourite,’ said the younger, looking with narrowed eyes at his brother from under the hat's shady brim.

'Not about who's
my
favourite?’ their father said, pretending to be disappointed.

'Oh, I know Ajit's yours,’ Yao replied offhandedly.

The words had an odd effect. Speaking with a dangerous courtesy, his father said, ‘May I know why?'

'Because he looks just like you,’ said Yao innocently while Ajit covered his face with a dust-whitened hand and groaned.

'Boys, leave the stones a moment,’ said his father in a surprising gentle voice, so gentle in fact that Yao finally realised that he might have said something wrong.

Kwame pulled the boys to sit down on either side of him and said, ‘You don't look at your own face, Yao. You're the one who looks like me, not Ajit.'

He paused and fondly traced the line of his son's brow and jaw with his fingers. ‘My facial structure, my nose. Even the shape of the eyes is mine, though that purple colour isn't anyone's fault.'

He tweaked Yao's nose, and the boy's habitually serious face broke into a rare smile.

'Now Ajit doesn't really look like your Maa, but if you could only remember what your Grandda looked like, you'd realise he's the image of Semwe. Except for those hairy arms—we can't account for them,’ and he dropped a light, playful punch on Ajit's shoulder as the lad grinned up at him, his deep black eyes twinkling.

'But I don't like this talk of favourites, and I'll tell you why. There was a man??is name was Ansige.'

He paused for a moment and looked very thoughtful, almost sad.

'I never met Ansige, but he was the sort of person you get to hear quite a lot about. He was the son of a chief's daughter, but his father did not acknowledge him. People say he used to pass Ansige on the street as if he didn't know him. Ansige used to eat as much as twenty men until at last he ate himself to death. At first I thought he was a weak man, a sick man, but later, after I learned about his past, I wondered if perhaps he was just hungry for recognition. I promised myself I would never do that to my own sons.'

There was a slightly baffled silence. The twins gave each other the wide-eyed look that youngsters get when a parental lecture becomes a bit too complicated. Kwame caught it, smiled ruefully, and gave them the brief man-hug that a father uses on his sons.

'You are both mine,’ he summarised. ‘I may understand Ajit's sense of humour a little better than I can grasp Yao's deep thoughts, but you're still both mine.'

'And mine, too,’ came a voice behind them.

There was Paama, smiling approvingly at her husband, a tray of tall glasses in her hands. Their sides were cloudy with condensation, but the pale greenish-brown liquid inside them was too familiar to be mistaken.

'Ginger and lime!’ said Ajit, jumping up for his share.

'Good of you to be so quick, dear. Now take this glass to your father and then come back for yours,’ she said smoothly.

Kwame accepted his drink with a broad smile at the family joke. ‘I was just telling the boys a true story about a less fortunate son??nd speaking of true stories, why don't you tell them about the exciting life you led just before you met me?'

Paama's gaze flickered quickly over her sons as they took their drinks, and she said, ‘I don't think we need to bother with that old story any more.'

Ajit eyed his brother over the rim of his glass and waggled his eyebrows meaningfully.
She knows.

'Why not?’ Yao said, glaring at his brother. ‘We'd love to hear it.'

Paama gave him a look that was at once so knowing and so amused that he gulped lime and ginger juice the wrong way. He choked and wheezed helplessly as his father and his brother laughed at the turning colours of his face.

'Take him inside and flush out his lungs,’ Kwame advised, taking pity on him at last.

Paama took the empty glasses back on the tray and walked Yao back to the house. Once inside, she made him drink a glass of goat's milk to soothe the irritation of the ginger, and then she passed him a honey-almond cake for the sake of comfort. He stood beside her at the window while she washed the dishes, and gazed outside, watching Ajit as he helped his father continue work on the trench.

Suddenly he felt very jealous.

'I wish I could stay out in the sun,’ he said angrily.

'But you can't,’ she replied with calm. ‘Not with your skin the colour it is.'

Yao did not ask why. He had asked why many years ago when he first struggled under the discipline of covering clothes, sheltering hats, and carefully timed outdoor sessions. Instead he said, ‘If I could choose, I'd want my skin to be??lue. A really deep, dark blue.'

'Indigo,’ his mother clarified. ‘Yes, I bet you would.'

He did not look up at her, but he leaned against her in that affectionate way sons have with their mothers when they feel they are too old for all that babyish hugging and kissing. She leaned against him too, and splashed him with the dishwater, whether accidentally or on purpose he couldn't tell, but the smile she flashed him was mischievous.

'Your father and I have been thinking about travelling again. The Sisters have taught you all that a lay person can know, and it's time you boys were apprenticed anyway. What do you think?'

'I'd love to see what else there is besides Makendha,’ Yao said with enthusiasm. ‘As for being an apprentice?? know Ajit wants to be a tracker like Da,’ he added a little wistfully.

She glanced at him. Her face was sympathetic, but not pitying. ‘I'll teach you how to cook if you like. No need to be out in the sun for that.'

'Yes!’ he exclaimed, thrilled at the idea. Though he was her son and had grown up eating at her table daily, he was not immune to Paama's fame as a cook. ‘When can we start?'

'Today if you like. What would you like to make?'

He did not have to think for very long. The memory came to him, as the memories often did, although he found it impossible to discuss them with anyone except his twin brother.

'Chocolate cake,’ he declared.

Paama guided him through the recipe that very evening. It went rather well. He even tried a slice of the end result on Constancy, the family cat, and she too seemed to agree that he might yet have a future in the art of providing humans with sustenance.

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