by Catherine Rain
makocrystal@hotmail.com
Apple
startled at a knock on the door. She lowered the papers she had been looking
at, steeling herself to look as though she had not been upset about anything.
She was not in a mood to let her past interfere with her present. Had she let
enough time lapse since the knock that her visitor would not realize he had so
violently startled her from a reverie? Probably so. "Come in."
The door swung wide open, wider than she would have liked, and a shaft of too-bright
light pierced the dim interior of the room where Apple kept the lights low. She
had been reading by the soft glow of a golden lamp, and the overpowering
sunlight made her shrink back from the disheveled silhouette in the doorway.
"Close the door, Caesar, please."
He obliged
her request. "I got your message. About Toran."
"I'm
sorry for the long detour, but would you like to come with me? I shouldn't be
long, once I get there. It's a matter of some people I need to speak to."
"Depends.
Are you going to Gregminster?"
She looked
down at her desk. "No."
"Where?"
"Seika."
"Ehh…" He
put one hand behind his head, scratching his fingers through his shaggy hair.
"Not much to do there…"
Quietly she
said, "I know."
"So can I
wait here, if you don't mind…"
"That's
fine. I just needed a decision."
"Okay."
She kept
her eyes lowered, trying to wait out the silence. He would say something less
embarrassing soon. Why was she so embarrassed about her town? It wasn't a
defense—she knew it to be a tiny village, and had no problem with that fact.
She did not view Caesar's words as criticism. No, her embarrassment was merely
about secrets he could have no way of knowing; it was private and therefore
pointless.
"You have
family there, right?"
She caught
her breath as quietly as she could manage, closed her eyes to keep from
choking. "No. Not my family." It had to come from him, too.
"Really? But you're from—"
"I don't have family." Damn it, he doesn't know
how much this means to me. I kept it that way because I was embarrassed. But
had I told him, sensitivity would have been an option for him. Maybe I should
have told.
He was quiet then, probably mistaking the cause of
her embarrassment. It was not her own family she wanted to keep quiet about.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Your—Sheena is in Gregminster,
isn't he. I didn't mean…"
"That has nothing to do with it. I just need to go to
Seika. …It's only research." She looked up at him, and gave him a casual smile.
"So it's my
family you're looking upset over."
Thanks,
kid. "That's the blunt way to put it, yes."
"I see." He
furrowed his brow in thought.
She watched
him, his hair glinting brown and red from the warm lamplight. At this angle, he
really did resemble the pictures of Odessa. Of all the people in the world, she
thought, save for just one, it would distress me the most to see this
resemblance. But these thoughts were of long ago. Hadn't she just told
herself not to let the past interfere with the present?
"I'm not
sure I have family, either," said Caesar slowly.
She let the
sheaf of paper she had been tensely clutching slide from her hand as she melted
into sympathy. "Oh, Caesar, you do… you do, you just don't realize it now…"
"Do I?" he
said, visibly distressed.
"Yes. Yes,
you do." Visions of the past crowded unbidden into her mind, analogies in the
shape of memories, long-worn and fuzzy around the edges but well-cared for, the
familiar chorus at the back of her life. "I've never known two of you
Silverbergs to agree on your principles but once, and one of you never lived to
know it." And dear child, you look just like her.
"If you're
talking about Odessa… but… didn't she refuse even until her death to
acknowledge her brother?"
"Yes. And
if she had, they might have been reunited," she said pointedly.
"So what
are you implying? That I should go get involved in a power struggle in
Harmonia? That'll make me happy?" His face darkened.
"No." She
sighed. "No, listen, and calm down. I only mean that you need to remember that
he is your brother. You may disagree, but he will always be your Albert… so, if
you want to see him again at the end of the long course you each must take…"
"Pulled
along by the winds of fate, the caprices of destiny, the malevolence of
history, et cetera, yeah." He was completely scowling now. "Did you learn that
in the Dunan war? I learned about it with clear hindsight and I
learned that it was unnecessary."
"Unnec—"
She froze. He had caught her in a fault. "You're right about that. It did
become unnecessary, I know." She wasn't sure whether to feel bad about her own
inattention to that personal belief, or whether to leap up from the desk and
hug him and thank him for being the proper kind of Silverberg. Albert was right
about him—Leon would not have agreed, and that, so far as Apple was concerned,
was a compliment.
"You're
just content to let us drift apart, you see what you're saying? To just let
things come between us like it's nothing. Well, it's not nothing. We weren't
always mad at each other, and for all I knew, we were going to grow up being
not mad at each other and being the siblings that got along, and we made a
promise, and…"
The Dunan
war had been a good analogy, she could see. "All right. I don't mean it's good
for you to drift apart." Forget forgetting the past; it was the only way to
make sense out of the present. "But this is the way it always ends up working
out. Who's the expert on your family, okay, me or you?"
He cracked
a smirk. "You think it's you?"
"Do you
really want me to answer that question?"
"Single
combat, Apple. I'll prove myself and show no mercy."
"All
right," she said, laughing. "I've been breaking all my rules all day. You
really threw me off course when you came in earlier. I can let you be the
expert for one day."
"Let me?
Hey, it's my family."
"I know."
She sobered. And that should not be a big deal, of course. The Silverbergs were
not the only gifted people in this world, merely the most notorious.
"It really
is a big deal to you, isn't it?" He peered at her with interest, as though he
could read the answer on her face. It was not foolishness; despite her efforts,
occasionally he could.
What the
hell, she'd broken all her other rules; it was time to throw away the book.
"Yes, it is."
"Why?"
There were
too many answers. Why would she give anything to be one of them? Because they
were so brilliant, because she always felt that she was tagging behind? Or
because she felt connected to them in a natural way, fitting in the way she had
with few other groups of people? Because her life always recurred towards them?
Because they had never betrayed her? Or for another reason?
"The one
person I looked up to," she said quietly, "ever, the one person that I felt and
still feel was unequivocally good… the one person I would follow without
question, who had the answers to questions I didn't even know how to ask, who
saw truths I could never clearly see… my one role model, was your cousin." She
straightened some of the papers on her desk, keeping her hands busy and her
eyes away from her student. "That's why I have to do this. The single happiest
time of my life was in Seika, and I don't care what else is or is not there. I
had a guiding light. And I thought, once, that I could become just like him…
but that was a dream. I can never become what he is. All I can do is try as
hard as I can to sort out the facts… to show people what he was, and why…"
"You're
really obsessed, aren't you?"
She
blushed. "Yes. I won't deny it."
"It's all
right. I guess your job is to know all about him anyway, so it's a good thing. But,
you know… I'd trade with you. I'd let you be a Silverberg and deal with the
crazy strife. I just want a family that treats me as a person, that won't hate
me over ideology…"
"You'd
rather have a family that betrays you personally?"
"I didn't
say that!" He had the grace to look extremely embarrassed.
She was not
hasty to reassure him, nor did she sink into pain; she had said it for the
purpose of alarming him, not of thinking about it, and so allowed herself to
say only, "My point, and I think you may even see it now, is that you have
something that will not leave you, because of who and what you are. Even if you
are separated, you are still family. You are too famous to lose track of each
other, no matter how little you contact each other."
He nodded,
calm now, looking lost in thought.
Good, she'd
helped him, at relatively small personal expense, and could close the subject.
Heaven forbid that she would actually put herself through excessive emotional
trauma to help him. No, that would have been selfless. She shoved away the
self-criticism in the back of her mind, but lightly, trying not to bruise it
because she knew it was an old keepsake from Mathiu. It was a valid point.
Caesar was the one who mattered in this conversation, not herself. "Feeling any
better?"
"Yeah…"
"So." She
lifted the quill pen from its stand. "You're staying, and I'm practically
ready, so I'll be leaving for Toran tomorrow. I'll find you here when I get
back?"
"Yeah.
…Hey, Apple?" he said, stepping back in the direction of the door.
"Yes?"
"You really
believe that about not losing your family?"
"Yes. I
think so." She thought again of Mathiu's sorrow when he discovered that Odessa
had not forgiven him at her death. "I do."
"You'd live
up to it, and make yourself happier?"
"I try to
live by all my philosophy when I can, yes."
He nodded
languidly. "Do enjoy yourself in Gregminster."
She leapt
up from her chair, slammed her hand down on the desk, and shouted at his
retreating back in the shaft of light. "I TOLD YOU, I DON'T HAVE FAMILY!"