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to help our daughter out of the tub. "Duncan, how quickly can you teach me StanTerran?"
"I don't know," he said. "The Terran you speak is very old and corrupted by Toskald. A purer form may confuse you. Jarn, what happened just now--"
I rubbed a drying linen over Marel's damp curls. "It was nothing," I lied. "As Squilyp says, a momentary thought disorder. But I would know the meaning
of all the words that come out of my mouth."
"I can teach you Terran, Mama," my daughter said as she pulled on her night garments. "I have all the language files on my datapad. We can read
together every night and in the mornings before I go to school."
"It will have to wait for now."This was the perfect time to tell her about the expedition, but instead I crouched down and took her into my arms. "Daddy
must tell us a sleeping-time story."
We did not hurry through our evening rituals, and by the time Reever finished telling a strange but stirring tale about a young shepherd who had used his
wits to slay an armored giant, Marel had fallen asleep in my arms. I breathed in the soft, sweet scent of her as I covered her with her bed linens. I wanted
to lie on the floor and sleep beside her, but I made myself turn down the emitters before I walked out of her room.
Long fingers laced through mine, tugging me back against my husband's chest. Candy is a sweet-tasting treat favored by Terran children. There is no
word in Iisleg for it because your people do not have the means to make treats or sugars. Liquor is a liquid once made of fermented botanicals. The
alcohol produced by the fermentation made it an effective intoxicant. It is synthesized now. I did spend four years in a boarding school on Terra. I must
have heard the words during that time.
My shoulders stiffened. Your lies are not going to make this any better. They were her words, not yours, and I remembered them.
Very well. We will talk about something else. Or do something else. He kissed the tip of my nose. "Do you have any suggestions?"
I could not dismiss it so easily; I felt as if I couldn't breathe.
"I need air," I told him, pulling away and crossing the room to the courtyard access panel. "I'm going for a walk." When he began to follow me, I turned
and held up one hand. "By myself. Please."
He studied my face. "As you like."
The nights on Joren were cool and dry, causing the indigenous flora to close their blossoms during the darkness. That cleared some of their perfume
from the air and made it seem less alien to my nose. As I walked the pathways through the courtyard, I still felt trapped.
I did not belong here, on this world, in this pavilion, inside this body. She had been born to do all of these things, not me. Xonea was right in that sense. I
had not meant to, but I had stolen everything from Cherijo: my body, my husband, my child, my life. None of them belonged to me.
Was Cherijo still somewhere inside my mind? Had her personality somehow survived the crash and the brain damage? Was she returning to this body,
to take back what was hers?
I walked blindly for a time, until I found myself standing in a field of waist-high, silvery yiborra grass. Above my head the stars glittered, a hundred
thousand tiny, hostile eyes.
I did not mind being alone. I had spent years in silent solitude on Akkabarr, living in my head as I came to know who and what I was. My sister skelas'
superstitions made them believe my survival meant I was touched by the goddess, and so they had cared for me while I ignored them. They had loved me
in their way, but I had never truly cared for them. I remembered the time when I had considered walking out on the ice in the night, when it was too
dangerous and cold to cross, simply so I could escape their noise, their smell, and the shadows in their eyes.
Among the ensleg, I had done little better. Reever loved me, but who was I for him to love? Who was I to be a mother to the child Cherijo had made with
him? A presence, a thing that had filled a void.
I could not even be properly called a person. I had not been born. I had no parents, no family, no one to call my true kin. If I had not awoken in Cherijo's
body, no one would have cared what happened to me. If not for the work she had begun, and that I was obliged to carry on, I would be useless, pointless.
Wasted.
"When Kao Torin died, a part of Cherijo died with him," Reever said as he came to stand beside me. "That did not happen to me when she died."
I glanced back at the pavilion. We were too far from the child out here. "Marel is alone. We should go back." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]