The Ordinary (26 page)

“Yes.” She spoke quietly, clearly constrained from more. Starting to sweat, in fact, in spite of the cold of the room.

“The letter is Malin's signal. I have given her very clear instructions in it. She'll likely have it taken out of your luggage when she finds you. You'll be gone by then. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Jedda said, frightened now.

“Malin?”

“Yes.”

He went still and glazed for a moment, and Jedda understood something was occupying him, all his strength, and she shivered herself. “Say good-bye,” he whispered, “quickly, please.”

They had time to hold hands, to clasp them tight, and to face one another. “I'm sorry for what will follow, Jedda,” Irion said, and Malin looked frightened and started to speak before he stilled her. To Jedda, again, “I'm sorry.”

“For what?”

Listening again, his face catching the light in the most peculiarly lifeless way, as if he were not really here at all, he said, “The moment from which I took you, my dear. You haven't thought it about since, have you? At that moment you had become my enemy's prisoner. My own prisoner, in fact. And the part of me that holds Cunevadrim in your time, he'll have you when I send you back.”

That was the last moment, and it was impossible to tell whether Malin had heard what he said. He nodded gravely and announced, “It's time. Safe journey.” She remembered him leaning toward her as if to kiss her forehead, and nothing more.

Her earliest memory was her mother's sadness. In the room with the stone carvings that sometimes frightened Malin, Mother leaned over her, fussing with the fastening of a pin, a jewel for Malin's shoulder-fold, a charm from uncle to keep her safe. Mother looked Malin in the eye, stroking her hair forlornly. She thinks I'm too young to know, Malin thought, while Mother pinned her with the druja-pin from Uncle Jessex, stroked her hair, and kissed her forehead as if this were the end of the world.

“The pin's for good luck,” Mother said.

A party for Malin's naming day. She understood this was a special occasion, she understood she was a princess, everyone told her so; but even given all that, there were a lot of people. Pointing, saying her name, speaking in languages she had yet to learn. Uncle Jessex and the King had come, standing far across the room, the King dark haired, glittering, so beautiful Malin was transfixed, with uncle at his right hand, uncle with the dark eyes and the dancing voice, uncle with a ring on every finger, uncle who made everybody else afraid, everybody but the King, Malin's parents, and Malin.

Father held her hand. Father was also a King, but King Kirith was Father's king, too, as Father had explained to Malin, earlier when she became curious. “I'm the king of this city, but your uncle Kirith is king of the whole country. So you have to call him King Kirith and so do I. Even though he loves you very much.”

“Does he love you, too?”

Father's eyes could grow to be so somber she was afraid, at times. “Yes, he loves me, too,” but that had been yesterday, and now the King was seated above everybody else, including Uncle Jessex, who saw Malin across the room and walked toward her.

Everybody drew back from him. She remembered the effect it had, that he moved so quickly, rings and necklaces flashing, and there was a sound of breath-change from everyone around Malin and everybody drew back and there was silence. The moment felt awkward. She had no notion to call the feeling by that word but she could see that the reaction had surprised Uncle Jessex. He stood for a moment, still, raising his gaze to hers hesitantly, his smile finally returning. She was almost afraid, too, until he knelt and looked into her face. “It's the naming girl,” he said, his voice soothing. “She's wearing my pin.”

A long evening. A few other children had come to the party but Malin was already taller than any of the others, and they gave her looks that made her feel strange. Everyone had to sit at her table and eat bread for her name day. But one of the boys cried when he had to sit near her, and as quickly as his sobs began he was whisked out of sight. Mother stayed near Malin, anxious, but Malin simply sat still, without emotion, as someone moved into the vacant place, another stranger child, silver skinned like she was, as timid as the first had been. Malin began to cry herself, and Mother carried her out of the big room, carried her down the long stone corridor where the winds blew, where Father sometimes held her to see the mountains; Mother lifted her into the wind, let her sob till she was calm.

Uncle Jessex's voice, “Is she all right?”

“She's better. She's never liked crowds.”

“I don't like them either.” His hand on Malin's hair, stroking. Mother's breath on her neck. “Poor baby. It's not easy to be part of a prophecy. We should know.”

“She's almost asleep.”

Part of a prophecy. Even at the time the words had a familiar ring, she had already heard them. Even at the time she accepted the words as carrying the truth about herself.

She heard the rest while drifting to sleep. “What has Kirith Kirin decided?” Mother asked.

“He'll say nothing, as you wish. But the secret won't keep, Karsten.”

“I know it won't,” Mother answered, “but we have to try.” The words helped Malin feel safe, because this was for her, though she hardly understood why it mattered or what it meant.

A prophecy is a foretelling of what is to come by someone who has a certain vision of the future. When she studied the Jisraegen prophets, she already had a vague worry in her mind. She read the Book of Curaeth end to end and looked for herself in every sentence. One evening Mother caught her with the book, Malin eleven years old, fingers twisted in her hair, nearly as tall as Mother by then. A sitting room in the family apartments. “Is there something you're looking for?”

“I just like to read it.”

“Curaeth?”

“The words sound so big when I read them. To think he knew the future.”

“We say a man like him has the eye of God on him.”

“Do I have the eye of God on me?”

Mother in the light. Blonde haired, young. She was the most beautiful woman, whom Malin loved with her entire being, as earnestly as she loved Father, as earnestly as she loved everyone. But Mother, so beautiful. Mother was not one of the Drii, she was one of the Jisraegen, and Malin was half of each. But Mother would live forever and Malin would not. “What makes you ask that?”

“Nothing.”

Mother watching daughter. Daughter sitting still, feeling suddenly lonely. “If someone says something to you that puzzles you, Malin, you should tell me.”

Malin felt a heaviness in her limbs. She would always remember that feeling. Because she knew what Mother really meant. God's eye was on Malin, all right.

Every summer her parents took her south to stay with the King and Uncle Jessex in their house called Aneseveroth. She had friends in the village there who remembered her from year to year, who hardly cared how tall she was, who played with her in the parks and woods; she had King Kirith who was even more handsome than Father, to hold her on his lap and whisper stories in her ear; she had Mother all day long sometimes, for riding lessons or drill with weapons; she had Uncle Jessex for walks in the woods, for long talks, for the tricks he could do. She knew, by then, that Uncle Jessex was a magician and that other people's fear of him came from that. He was only her uncle, though, and she had never been afraid to ask him to make the light dance in his hands, or to make the wind blow her hair, or any of the other good tricks he could do if he wanted. He was only her uncle, he would never be anything else.

She traveled with her parents for the last time to Aneseveroth during her fifteenth year. The summer began as it had on the summers preceding, the bustle of settling into the house, the feeling of relaxation, Uncle Jessex in his garden already, tending a bed of mulcum that Malin loved, the rich honeylike scent of it in full summer heat. Weeding, from the looks of his posture. The King had gone out for a ride with Father and Mother. Malin had yet to see her friends from the village but felt shy of walking into the square just yet, dreading to discover how much taller she had grown than Anli. She and Anli were the same age, one year from womanhood, their bodies growing lush. In those days, under the long year of the Old Sky, a fifteen-year-old girl was fully a woman already, not like a fifteen-year-old of today, so long after.

She worked with Uncle Jessex in the garden instead, feeling the peace of the place settle into her bones. He said hello, put her to work, spoke to her quietly. He was a slim, dark-haired man, eyes that could be whatever color he liked, not as tall as Malin, his face bewitching, regular of feature, gentle, strong-boned, maybe not as handsome as the King, though at times she vacillated on that point. Simply dressed, cloth trousers and a tunic. Gloves on his hands. No jewelry at all. How was the trip? Was she tired? How was her schoolwork, did she like the public school? Did she have a special person in her life? A boyfriend or girlfriend? Not asked all at once, but patiently, in the rhythm of the work, pulling out the unwanted grasses and creepers, making space for the mulcum, the ferns, the elgerath vine trained to grow up the trunk of a duris-nut tree.

“Nobody special,” she answered. “I don't know if I like boys.”

“You don't have to know. You can wait to find out.”

“I don't have forever.” Malin sighed.

Uncle Jessex laughed at that. “You're feeling like an old woman, at your age?”

“Well,” she was speaking in her tragic voice, the one she used to her mirror, when she was alone, “I am mortal, you know. None of the rest of you are.”

He was kneeling, but stopped his digging with the trowel. Said nothing, but she was watching him, and this was Uncle Jessex, after all, he would know what she meant, he would know that she was watching. “Time will tell,” he said.

“What? Do you think I'll get the second name, too?”

“There won't be any more second names,” Uncle Jessex answered. “You know that perfectly well. Don't you?”

She shook her head, troubled.

He spoke with some hesitance. Unusual, for him. “When God came to us at the end of the war, that was what she said. All the Jhinuuserret have left the world, except the four of us.”

“Never, ever again?”

He shook his head. “Having two names will just be having two names, from now on.”

So she would have to die like everybody else. The thought made her sad. But at the moment she need not think about it. “Will you ever leave?” she asked.

He looked at her. At moments like that, she could be afraid of him, of the depth of his looking into her. “Yes,” he said, “we'll all leave sooner or later. But not at the same time.”

“When?”

This time his aspect chilled her so that she had to turn away. She concentrated on the weeds, on pulling them neatly out of the rain-softened ground. His voice, still patient. “I suppose it's time we talked to you about that.”

She ate dinner with the adults that year, with the King, with Uncle Jessex, with Mother and Father, the food wonderful, and now she could drink wine without permission, without water added, since she was nearly a woman. The evening passed in the most pleasant way and she felt very grown-up throughout, the conversation drifting over her, mostly Father and King Kirith, talking about matters in the southern cities, the navy, exploring Ocean, the Charnos merchant guild wanting some change in something she couldn't really follow, not serious talk though, more in the way of sharing anecdotes, and in a kind of shorthand, since the King and Father were such old friends. They were eating in the upstairs dining room, the hearth dark, the windows open for the smells from the garden. Uncle Jessex had his head bowed toward Mother, the softer of the conversations, at first, until after the dessert and jaka, when Mother put down her napkin and eating sticks and said, “Jessex, I've said no already.”

“Karsten, this can't go on. Kirith Kirin has already made the announcement in the south. She's going to hear.”

They were talking about Malin. She looked at Mother, the soft blue eyes, her face feeling like a wound at the moment. Malin asked, “What am I going to hear?”

All of the adults were quiet now. The King was looking at Mother, whose eyes had filled with tears. Mother met his eye and nodded, a look of bitterness on her face. The King answered, his eyes on Malin's, gentle. “I'm going away, Mallie. When winter ends this year. After Uncle Jessex's birthday.”

Mother had frozen in place. Father was looking into his hands. Neither would look at Malin.

“Why?”

“Because it's my time to go.”

“How do you know?”

He shook his head and wouldn't meet her eye. “I just know.”

Her mouth was trembling, her lips. No one was offering her any comfort. The news was too big. “You're coming back, though. You're going away but you're coming back.”

He shook his head. “No. I'm not.”

“Why?”

“I've told you that.”

“But why now, you haven't told me that. I don't want you to go.”

He reached for Uncle Jessex's hand. Uncle Jessex had closed his eyes. A tear in the corner of the eye, he flicked it away with a finger. The King said, “I don't want to go, either, but that doesn't make a difference.”

“Where?” But she already knew the answer.

“Across the mountains,” he leaned his head against Uncle Jessex's hair. “To that place.”

She nodded. Where dead people go. Across the mountains, to Zan.

Mother had turned to her now. Malin could see how deeply sad she was. Most of the time it was easy to think of her as simply Mother, but at moments like this one, Malin remembered how old she really was, how old Father was, and the King oldest of all of them, or so Mother said. Mother spoke quietly now. “When the time comes for one of us, one of the Jhinuuserret, to leave the world, we can either wait to die or we can cross the mountains on our own.”

“But you don't die. Do you?”

“A time comes when we can't be renewed, anymore.” Her face flitted from expression to expression, faster than Malin could read. “Your father and I will wait here, with you, for a while longer.”

Her heart was racing. “No, Mother. Please.”

Mother reached a hand down the table. Malin leaned into her embrace, Father leaning close as well. He spoke in her ear. “Our time's coming soon, Malin.”

“How do you know?” But she already understood the answer. She sat up straight, looked at them. She could feel it like a weight in her stomach. “It's because of me. I'm fifteen this year. You know because of me.”

Silence.

“Answer,” she said.

Uncle Jessex said, “I told you she'd know for herself, Karsten.”

“Yes,” Mother's voice hardly a whisper.

“Who told you?”

“God,” Uncle Kirith said. “The last time she was here.”

After that she hardly needed to hear more. None of the adults spoke. The King and Uncle Jessex walked outside, hand in hand.

“This is hard,” Malin said.

“I know,” Mother stroking her hair.

“You're not going soon?” Malin asked.

“Not for a long time, till I'm old.” Mother laughed a bit as she spoke. “So you'll get to see me with wrinkles and no hair before I'm gone.”