Shadowrun - Earthdawn - Mother Speaks (2 page)

They did.

Children loved J'role.

He was a clown. That helped, of course. He didn't stay at home and make up rules and tell them what they had to do if they wanted to survive and grow up to be able to take care of themselves. He just showed up every once in a while and made them laugh.

He extended his arm to shake hands with one of the children sitting several feet ahead of him. He took two steps forward, and then let his legs fly straight out from under him as if he'd slipped on the wet grass. His arms flailed, and his mouth opened wide in exaggerated terror. For a moment he seemed to float in the air, suspended not through magic, but comic practice. Then, SLAM! he crashed into the ground.

Screams of laughter cut through the peaceful afternoon. The children could not contain themselves. If they'd ever seen anything funnier before, this certainly made them think they hadn't.

J'role acted as if he wanted to get up, but again his legs slipped out from under him. Over and over again he struggled to stand, only to find the ground so wet he could only fall.

His legs flew out to the left. To the right. They spread apart. They slid out backward.

Again, I tried to keep my jaw tight, showing only anger and displeasure on my face. But as the falls went on and on, I too began to laugh. The other adults were also laughing along with their children. And you two—you laughed until tears came from your eyes.

The show continued with more falls, more juggling, handsprings, rolls, and cartwheels.

Finally it ended. The children and the adults applauded. You two let go of my hands and joined in giving praise to your father. He bowed low, several times, happy for the attention. He rose, and our eyes met again. But this time he held my gaze.

I panicked, frightened of having to deal with him, to speak to him, to have his warmth anywhere near me. He could trick me, you see. Turn my anger into sadness, my fury into laughter. And more than that, there was a part of him that terrified me. 1 never saw it clearly for what it was, always thinking instead it was something wrong with me. Only later would I know the truth.

I grabbed your hands and stormed away from the clearing, back to Horvak's to finish the furnace, and then home for supper and sleep.

Back home I locked the doors, sealed the shutters, turned off the lamps.

And waited.

He would come.

Of course.

4

You fell asleep quickly, not suspecting a clown would come calling. I remained awake, staring at the thin lines of moonlight formed by cracks in the shutters. The night was cool, the bed large. I held one of Mopa's brightly colored pillows against my chest, barely breathing, waiting for some noise to tell me J'role had arrived.

A strange paranoia buzzed in my thoughts, for, of course, there would be no noise.

I tried to remember how I had known he'd gotten in all the other times, but I couldn't.

Would he get in at all this time? I'd put in new locks, augmented by magic. The magician who sold them to me had seemed very confident of his wares. But when I asked him if his magic could hold against the skills of the half-legendary thief rumored to dress like a clown, his smile dropped. He made no guarantees, he said.

A noise? Was J'role outside? I strained, trying to become perfectly still so as to hear any sound. The jungle insects formed a pulsing breath. I tried to ignore them, and found myself confronting the formidable buzz of silence. The more I concentrated, the louder the buzz grew, until I could no longer stand the strain.

I relaxed, only to discover I desperately needed to take in a breath of air.

I waited and waited.

Was he already inside the house?

Would he come? I had no way of knowing. He always did. But would he come this time?

I told myself I didn't want him to come. In fact, I begged the Passions—all of them, not caring which one heard me—to keep him away. If he didn't arrive, then it meant I was probably done with him forever.

Finally, the suspense and tension drove me out of bed.

Stepping as quietly as I could over the floorboards, I walked as far as the beads hanging in the doorway and listened. Nothing.

I parted the beads and looked through into the gathering room. Standing across the way, in the door frame of your bedroom, was your father, beads hanging down over his shoulders like frozen raindrops.

He'd already heard me, of course. He was like that. He heard everything, but no one heard him. Rut he didn't react.

I knitted my indignation into a tight and tense spine and marched across the floor quietly, so as not to wake you up. I reached him and still he did not turn. I looked past him.

Samael, your small hand gently rubbed your nose; Torran, you turned over, your lips softly moving, speaking the silent language of dreams.

"Why do you keep doing this?" I asked him quietly, tersely.

His body was so close. All I had to do was place my arm around his waist. He would place his arm around my shoulders. Do you understand? Even now, in my flesh— not in my thoughts, but in my flesh—I feel him so much. How our hands fit against each other, how his arm curled over my body when we lay in bed together, the touch of his lips against my neck. There are no images. Just the echoes of touch from decades past. That night, the echoes sounded even stronger, and I longed—I admit it—for the source of the echoes once more.

"I wanted to see them."

"Why do you sneak in?"

"That's what I do."

"Why don't you ask?"

"Would you let me in?"

"No."

"I love you."

I laughed. Not that what he said was funny, because I think he did love me. I know he did. But by laughing at him—without him first doing a pratfall—I put him on the defensive. I didn't want him to confuse me anymore. Leaving his side, I walked to the gathering table and sat on a stool.

He turned and followed, saying with great pain, "I do." The pain was fake. He added that to support his indignation.

"You want. You don't love." Cruel, but I wanted to hurt. I opened my hand and a golden flame burned from my palm. His dark eyes caught the light and they glowed like two stars. He looked handsome. "You're looking well. The smooth features of the young and insane."

"I try to have a pleasant outlook."

"Samael almost died of fever last season. Did you know that? Did any of your late-night visits reveal that to you?"

He remained silent. He didn't know that. Then, "He's all right now?"

My voice became louder. "Of course he's all right now, you idiot. If he were ill, I'd be up, worrying!" I caught myself, remembering you two, and dragged my voice down to a harsh whisper. "That's what parents do!"

"I can't be a father to them. You know that."

"I know nothing of the kind. In fact, I know nothing. Each day I live, I know less and less. Know, know, know. That's what you want, isn't it? You have to know everything will be fine before you take the first step. Coward." I closed my hand; the room fell dark.

"You've got to stop coming back here."

"Part of me is here."

"Parts of you are everywhere! If you want to be here, be here. But don't leave a scrap of yourself behind every time you walk out that door. Take all of yourself out, or stay."

He swallowed. "You'd let me stay?"

I hesitated, trying to stop the words from coming out. "Yes, I'd let you stay. If only so you might figure out whether you really wanted to stay. My guess is you'd learn you don't want to... But then we'd be done with this!"

"You don't know... ," he began, hinting once again at that dark past of his.

"No. No! I don't know. I've never been privileged. I have no idea what you've been through I doubt I ever will. Now get out and stay out."

He remained still.

"I mean it. Stay out. I will not tolerate this anymore. This is not your home. You left.

You're out. I'll have you killed."

He froze, stunned.

My face became a mask. The truth sneaks up on us now and then, mugging us like a rough thief. "I really can't put up with this anymore, J'role. You've got to get out. Please.

Never come back here. I think I meant what I said."

At that moment the moonlight through the cracks vanished and darkness filled our home.

Loud voices, shouts, came from somewhere. We remained motionless, expecting something terrible to happen, but having no idea what it might be. Then we went quickly outside.

J'role saw the castle first. It floated several hundred feet in the air, heading north. Voices drifted down from it, and the sound of drums as well. Long oars protruded from the base of the castle, rowing back and forth. He pointed it out to me.

"What is it?"

"I don't know. I've never..." His voice trailed off with boyish wonder.

The castle flew on.

"It's like an airship, like the crystal raider ships."

"But it's made of stone. It isn't shaped like a boat."

"The magical cost must be tremendous."

"Theran?"

As soon as he spoke the word, we looked at each other. I think he was as surprised at the thought as I was. But there seemed little doubting it. The Therans could do such a thing, if anyone could.

Excitement passed up and down my spine; my hand began to shake, as if I'd cast one too many spells that day.

I don't think you can understand exactly what this meant to us, to everyone in Barsaive.

You, of course, encountered the Therans at an early age, and your impression was forged during the subsequent events of this story. But for those of us from the first generation after the shelters, raised on the tales of Thera, the thought that they'd actually returned was overwhelming and exciting. They were the world's saviors, but also rich with strange customs, including slavery. They were the master magicians and adepts, but also the profiteers of despair.

"I've got to go find out," said J'role. His mouth formed into an excited, boyish smile—a smile that years earlier had given me so much pleasure, but at that moment filled me with frustration and sadness.

"J'role," I said, "I'm curious too. But we can't go out every time something interests us.

The children..."

He stared down at me. The hot life had vanished from his eyes, replaced by a cold analytic stare, as if I'd just spoken a strange language he did not understand, but found fascinating. It chilled me.

"But, we have to know."

"Others will find out."

"But I won't be there to know. I won't be there to live it."

"What about the life here?"

The stare shifted and he looked past me into the house. His voice tightened. "I know this, already. I don't..." He looked away.

I touched his shoulder. Suddenly he'd become the sad, silent boy I'd met in the underground prison of the elf queen. "How can you know... ?"

He turned from me and out the door. "Releana, I have to go," he said firmly. Manly.

Then he smiled again. "A castle that flies!" He looked at me for a moment, then ran off into the night, vanishing into the arms of the night-black jungle. A few moments later I heard Jester whinny and then the distant sound of hoof beats rushing away.

5

I stood a moment at the door, wondering what horrible thing I'd done in my past to acquire such strong feelings for such a ridiculous man. I wanted so much to be able to pluck all thoughts of him from my soul, like splinters from a fingertip. But our passions are not foreign objects, jabbed into our flesh. They are as much a part of us as hearts and lungs, and just as alive and blood-soaked.

For a long while I stared into the night, the huts of the village lit by gray-silver starlight, the jungle deep and dark.

Finally my thoughts came to rest on the astounding sight of the castle floating through the air. Could the Therans have returned? A mix of thrill and fear bubbled up through my body. Then, agitated by not knowing what such an event might mean for you two boys, I turned from the door, from my thoughts, from the night, and returned to my bed. Alone or not, I was tired, and soon fell asleep.

The town buzzed, of course, when I told of what I had seen. Things had been quiet in the four months since the ork scorchers had raided the village. Theories abounded. The Therans had indeed returned; they would bring a new age of peace and prosperity. The Therans had been killed by the Horrors during the Scourge; the castle was a Theran vessel, but piloted by ghosts of the Therans. The Therans had become monsters, and were coming to finish the work of the Horrors. The Therans had been destroyed by the Horrors; this was just another strong magical empire come to claim land, as is bound to happen again and again.

Torvan the Scarred, Elasia Raven Hair, and a few others rode off in the direction I'd seen the castle flying, but came back a few days later, unable to pick up the castle's trail. I had wanted desperately to go with them. As village magician, it was, in fact, my place to do so, and arrangements could have been made for your care, as on other occasions. But I did not, and even then I knew it was only from an incoherent desire to spite your father.

By not going, I thought I was somehow proving he should not have left that night.

Yet as the days passed, my curiosity grew and I knew exactly why he had gone. I thought again and again of how lovely it would have been to ride off with him in pursuit of the castle, the night rushing by, closing toward the unknown.

Weeks passed, the odd event drifting to the back of our thoughts. We had run out of gossip and theories. There was nothing more to be said without new information, and getting that would require a traveler passing through our village. Of course, the world was even less traveled in those days than it is now, and visits by outsiders were few and far between.

A month after your father went chasing after the castle, we did in fact have a visitor; a swordmaster adept whose name escapes me now. She had fresh scars on her neck and arms, wounds made by sword blades. She told of how a town had hired her to defend against raiders from the north.

"Scorchers?" I asked. We had gathered in Tellar's home. You, as well as some other village children, lay asleep on a thick carpet before Tellar's hearth, the red firelight casting shifting shadows upon your soft cheeks. Also lighting the room were several candles. About a dozen or more villagers had gathered to listen to the adept.