Reparations (3 page)

I put on my most pathetic pout—the
one I used to use on my father when I wanted something from him.
“If you’d just untie my hands, I could hold onto them
better.”

The anger dissipates from Tohru’s
face almost instantly. He laughs. “That’s very clever, Amaya, but
I’m not untying your hands.” His smile is one of genuine amusement,
neither cruel nor condescending, which somehow only makes it
worse.

“
My name is Hana,” I
mutter.

“
Of course it is.”

He waits for me to finish eating,
then takes me to another tent, where two female soldiers stand
guard. Tohru explains to them that I am a valuable asset to the
Tainted Army should be closely monitored. They salute him and he
lifts the flap of the tent. Inside, I can see the prone, blanketed
figures of some thirty women and young girls. “You can sleep here
tonight. I know it’s not much, but by tomorrow, we’ll be in the
Imperial City with all the comforts there. Pleasant
dreams.”

Tohru leaves and I find an empty
space on the ground in one corner of the tent. I have no blanket,
but the night is warm. As I lay down to sleep, I consider that
Tohru is not the villain I want him to be. He has been kind to me
today, but my suspicions remain. Perhaps he’s only pretending,
believing that I’ll be more willing to tell him the truth if he
gains my trust.

I plan to disappoint him.

We leave the guard station early
the next morning and reach the Imperial City that afternoon. Tohru
asks me one more time to tell him who I really am. “My name is
Hana,” I say. “My father was a merchant.”

He sighs and shakes his head. “I
suppose we’ll just have to ask Rokuro.”

We dismount at the palace gate. He
hands the horse off to another soldier and we walk up the stairs
that lead to the main entrance. Tohru speaks to a series of guards
and officers of increasing authority until finally, we’re allowed
to enter. Another guard takes us to the area where the Tainted Army
houses their hostages. We enter a small room at the end of the
hall, and for the first time in almost a year, I see my
father.

He looks much older than I
remember. His black hair is streaked with gray, and he seems small
and bent in his simple brown robes. He sits on the floor with his
hands in his lap and looks up only when Tohru says, “We’ve brought
your daughter, Rokuro.” The captain’s eyes are narrowed as he
watches my father for some sign.

I look back at the man across the
room. Our eyes lock, but my father’s face remains dispassionate.
His hands lay still on the fabric of his robes. For a moment, I
think that maybe he doesn’t recognize me; I have changed too
much.

Then something touches his eyes—a
flicker of recognition, joy, grief, and guilt all mixed into one.
It disappears an instant later. “This is not my daughter,” he says.
His voice is as steady and commanding as I remember.

Tohru clenches a fist at his side.
“Look closer. The past year has been hard on her, thanks to your
barbaric prisons. She may not look the same.”

My father shakes his head. “She’s
the right age. I’ll admit she even has some of the same features. I
can see how you misidentified her, but she’s not my
daughter.”

“
She has to be,” Tohru says. “I saw
her almost every day for years. I know her face.”

My father straightens and raises
his voice. “Do you honestly think I wouldn’t recognize my own flesh
and blood? What kind of cruel joke is this? You tell me my daughter
is alive, and then you bring this imposter before me. This girl is
not Amaya.”

They regard each other like two
wolves tensed for a fight. Tohru waits for some indication that
Magistrate Rokuro is lying. My father does not even glance at me;
his face is as hard and still as marble.

Tohru sighs. “Fine, then.” He
takes my hand, and leads me outside. I steal a glance back at my
father before the door closes and for a moment, I think I can see
the faintest trace of a smile on his lips.

Tohru cuts the rope that binds my
hands and walks back the same way we came in. I scurry to keep up
with him. We say nothing to each other until we get outside. “You
know the way to the gate, I trust,” he says.

I nod. “I’m sorry,” I say, without
really knowing why. He’s the one who should be apologizing to
me.

He shrugs. “Take care of yourself out there.
If I were you, I’d keep the name.”

I nod and we shake hands. “Goodbye,” I
say.

He gives me a wry smile. “Goodbye,
Hana.”

I make my way to the walls
surrounding the palace grounds. There, I hear a familiar voice.
Kito argues with some soldiers on the path ahead, demanding to be
allowed inside. He stops when he sees me, his eyes wide. I’m not
sure how he managed to get here so quickly, but it doesn’t matter;
I’m glad he came. I smile and run into his arms, and we leave the
soldiers muttering about what a pair of crazy fools we
are.

“
What happened?” Kito asks, taking
my hand. “Did you see your father?”

I nod. “He said he didn’t know me.”

Kito scowls. “After everything that’s
happened, he still denies his only child.”

I shake my head. My father wasn’t
denying me as his daughter. He was protecting me. I recognized the
fleeting look in his eyes. In that moment, he wanted nothing more
than to wrap his arms around me and welcome me home. But he hadn’t,
because he knew it wasn’t in my best interests to be affiliated
with him in any way. Maybe he feared the same things Kito had—that
the new authorities would use me to manipulate him. Or perhaps he
simply knew I’d been a prisoner for far too long already. Either
way, I knew it hadn’t been easy for him. I’m not sure I can forgive
him. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But I am grateful to him for that one
small gesture of atonement.

“
No,” I say to Kito. “He gave me my
freedom.”

The idea for “Reparations” started
with a single line from a writing prompt I saw somewhere about a
year ago, at which point Amaya entered my head with the full force
of a Category 5 hurricane. I don’t write first-person stories
often; I have a hard time getting the character’s voice just right
and tend to dislike sticking in any one character’s head for the
duration of an entire story. I didn’t have either of those problems
with Amaya. She just wrote herself, and I enjoyed every second of
it.

I sent this story to a grand total
of five publishers before I decided I didn’t want to go that route
after all. Two of them sent back very positive rejection letters,
but they both suggested changes that I realized I just wasn’t
willing to make. Maybe I would have been better off listening to
them. Maybe (probably) the story isn’t as good as it could be.
That’s okay. “Reparations” is a deeply personal story for me—more
personal than I ever anticipated it being. It’s the story I’d been
trying to write for five or six years, though I didn’t realize it
until long after it was finished. It was a sort of catharsis, and
because of that, I couldn’t bear the thought of making any major
structural changes. For all those reasons and more, I decided to
publish the story myself and make it available to readers for free.
I can only hope that someone will find it and enjoy reading it in
spite of its imperfections.

T. A. Hernandez grew up with
her nose habitually stuck in a book and her mind constantly
wandering to make-believe worlds full of magic and adventure. She
began writing stories after reading J. R. R.
Tolkien’s 
The Lord of the
Rings 
for the first time at age 10.
Thankfully, her writing has improved significantly since then,
though she will happily admit that she has much more to learn and
is looking forward to a long and exciting journey in her Quest
to Tell Better Stories.

She is the proud mother of two
girls and a college student working towards her degree in social
work. She also enjoys drawing, reading, watching movies, riding her
motorcycle, and making happy memories with her family and
friends.

Her debut novel,
Secrets of PEACE
, was
published in July, 2016. More information can be found on her
website listed below.

* * *

Contact T. A. Hernandez through any
of the following to stay up to date on her stories, view concept
art, and more:

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Your questions and comments about the story and characters are
always welcome and appreciated.