I sat in the parlor all that night, watched the sky lighten to gray, and went upstairs to dress. I caught myself glancing nervously at the door, as if Kefka might come in at any moment, and I forced myself not to do that. I went downstairs, calmly, began the epic task of breakfast for thirteen.
Birds were singing, the sun was rising over the trees in pink and gold splendor, and it was hard to believe that anything bad could happen in the world, but I remembered. I hadn't actually burned my hand, at least, and while I was tired, with a profound weariness beyond the lack of sleep, Duane and Katarin would be too busy with their own work to notice.
But Celes wouldn't be. "Terra, what's wrong?" she asked, over coffee, in the relative silence of the morning once most of the kids had been packed off to school. Duane was minding the store, Kat was weeding the garden, Charles and Rosie were playing quietly in one corner and Cassie, seeming very proud of herself for helping, was drying the dishes. I could deal with this, though I'd barely touched my breakfast; too many people, too much noise, even if they were my family, and what if they could see a difference in me? I couldn't face the idea of the store today. I'd told Kat I wanted to spring-clean the house. She'd agreed, happily, to take over in the store for me, since she hated cleaning.
"It's nothing," I said, after a too-long hesitation. I remembered taking Kefka's arm off with one clean strike of the Ragnarok, remembered blood spattering those pristine white wings. Remembered his appraising look, and while I couldn't remember context, I felt naked and afraid all over again.
"You were in a great mood last night. What happened?"
I handed Cassie another plate. She beamed up at me, and I smiled back at her, actually managing to mean it. "Locke's coming for a visit," I said over my shoulder, smile now faded. "He said in two weeks, though I don't see how he could manage that."
"He rides like a madman when he's got no reason not to," she said. "He'll get here before I leave, then. It'll be nice to see him again." I nodded, started to dry the last of the glasses until Cassie tugged at my apron and pouted. I handed it to her, pulled the drain in the sink. Celes watched me in silence as I began scrubbing the griddle.
"So why are you so upset now?" she asked, finally.
I tried to remember Kefka falling, wings shattered, smirk replaced by a look of purest astonishment, then by anger, then terror. I tried to treasure the memory of fear in that face. I tried to get back to the present, to my sunny kitchen and my kids and a life I'd built in spite of him. I smiled faintly as I watched Cassie carefully place the glass in the drying rack.
"I had a bad dream, had a hard time getting back to sleep. I'm just tired." It wasn't even a lie. At least not completely.
"Do you have a lot of bad dreams?" she asked. "You've mentioned them... maybe not that often, but more than I'd expect."
"You have bad dreams too, Mama?" Cassie asked.
"Sure I do, honey. Everybody does. That's all they are though, right? They're not real."
"Right," she said obediently, and grinned in response to my smile. Something looked odd about her smile, and then I realized that she was wiggling a tooth with the tip of her tongue. I remembered doing that.
"Is that your first loose tooth, Cassie?" I asked, and she grinned wider and nodded, so I hugged her and made a fuss over her and sent her out to show Katarin. Charles, of course, picked up and followed her, and Rosie toddled after him until she fell, at which point she began wailing. Celes picked her up, held her uncertainly out to me, and I jounced her a bit and hushed her.
When I looked at Celes again, she was watching me thoughtfully, and I finally answered. "I guess I do, but nowhere near as many as the kids had, especially not that first year." And I used to have more, too, back when I'd first joined Locke and the others, until I'd learned who I was. I'd never been able to remember them. I decided I was glad about that. I let Rosie tug on my braid, held on to her to make sure she didn't climb over my shoulder.
"I don't know much about children, but I think you have an unusually traumatized litter, Terra."
"That's kittens," I retorted, indignant. "Or puppies. My kids aren't a litter." She was right, though. Duane had said that Annie had been trapped in rubble for days with her family, and she'd been the only one they'd found alive. I couldn't imagine what must have happened to Cassie; no one could tell me. "I guess you're right, but—"
"I just mean I don't think you can judge by them," she said. "And I do think you have too many nightmares. You've mentioned them too many times in letters—"
"Well, I won't anymore," I said, seated Rosie on the counter and went back to work on the griddle.
"Terra—" she began.
I interrupted again. "Did you say you were staying till Locke came?"
I ignored her audible sigh behind me. "If he makes it in time. I'm supposed to tour your centers of industry sometime this week," she added.
"What centers of industry?" I asked, distracted from my pointless irritation. "Harris?"
"That sounds right."
"Well, I suppose you could tour him if his wife doesn't object."
I hear a gasping laugh behind me. "I thought it was a town!" She'd let the argument go too.
"I guess it's sort of a town," I said, grabbing Rosie before she could try to climb down from the counter herself. "Harris Toys and the cotton mill – Benjamin Harris owns them both, and I guess some of his workers probably live near there. The mill's a full-time operation, at least. I'll write and let him know you're coming."
Although I hadn't wanted to deal with people, I found it much easier not to brood when I wasn't alone. Keeping busy helped too, so I scoured and polished and swept and scrubbed. I was scared, and that was ridiculous – I hadn't remembered, but this had always been there in the past, and it would stay in the past because he was dead and couldn't hurt me anymore – but then I realized I was afraid of facing the memories.
And I was afraid of anyone knowing or guessing, afraid that my reactions would give something away, and I was no longer half as comfortable with most of the men of the town. Duane was safe enough, but it was minor torture sitting in the parlor with Martin two days later, even though I knew intellectually that he wouldn't try anything, and even though I could hear kids eavesdropping from the hall. I sat almost huddled in my chair, drawn in myself, answering Martin's conversational gambits with monosyllables. I felt vaguely bad for him; it wasn't his fault, but I wanted so badly to be invisible, to shrink away from male eyes.
When I thought of Kefka, whenever I remembered – even when I remembered things that had little or nothing to do with him – I felt a sort of exposed shame in addition to the fear. I'd submitted to him without the Slave Crown, had begged him not to use it, and he hadn't. So I remembered what he'd done to me now. And I was angry. At him, and at my younger self, for not being able to find a better way, for not just accepting oblivion. There must have been another solution, something to get me out from under that icy smirk.
That was the worst. Any pain was long since forgotten, the sense of violation distanced by time and the split between my two lives. In so many ways, it was like hearing about something horrible that happened to someone else, but I could remember triumph in his garish face and I hated that, wanted desperately to forget it.
When the census figures started coming in, I pored over them. Celes was probably bored to tears by my constant chatter about the reports – it was right around that time that she took a room at the inn, though she somehow managed not to run away screaming when I brought up the topic in conversation – but I was both fascinated by the project and thrilled to have something to keep my mind in the present when I wasn't bandaging scraped knees, settling arguments, or hearing the latest gossip. Edgar, supposedly, was courting Celes's lookalike Maria, making a real effort rather than just his usual flattery. There was talk that Cyan might take the Doma throne – I doubted it, though, knowing him – and that he'd met a young woman somewhere. No details.
"Not really the latest," Celes said, apologetically. "I'm only slightly more in touch with the world than you are."
"Oh, yes, dinner dates on the airship, you're moldering away at the ends of the earth, Celes."
"That was only once," she said, embarrassed. "Look, I think some of your children are setting themselves on fire out there."
I looked out the window, then deciding she'd been right, opened it and leaned out to yell at Byram and Theo about wasting matches. They generally didn't do permanent harm to themselves, but I didn't think it would hurt to let her change the subject, anyway.
After all, she'd been very convincing about pretending to be interested when I showed her the new map I'd been working on. I still got all the mail for Mobliz, and there were no signs of other post offices, but almost a dozen small communities had managed to collect the resources to build a schoolhouse, a church, a bar or a meeting hall. The population figures were still questionable – in many cases one person would report on his own household and two or three neighbors as well, and the census reporters had welcomed the excuse not to ride further – but it seemed plausible that we had over ten thousand people. Twice the number I'd estimated from the land claims, which meant many people hadn't filed. I'd have to do something about that, if only to avoid disputes, and I buzzed around talking about town meetings until I'd even managed to stop Martin Collier's visits. I felt bad about being happy about that.
I wouldn't say I'd actually managed to forget that Locke was on his way, but I hadn't been thinking about it much, either, so the sight of him dismounting in the innyard hit me with a jolt. I hung back on the porch while Celes walked out to greet him, watched them talk for a bit – her back was to me, but he was grinning – and then hug, and he kept an arm around her shoulders as they walked back towards me, still talking. She slipped away from him, made some sweeping gesture, and I took a few steps away from my porch.
Few things feel more awkward than making an attempt to get somebody's attention and stopping halfway through while they continue not to notice you. But Celes said something and then he turned to look at me. His face was peppered with stubble, and I couldn't really read his expression, not well, but his smile looked as uncertain as mine felt. Then he wrapped his arms around me, almost lifting me off the ground with the sheer force of the hug.
It was late enough in the afternoon that I had to drag them into the kitchen to talk. Locke stirred the stew, while Celes helpfully reported when she thought she saw smoke coming from the oven, and I hurriedly got to work on a cake because I hadn't expected this to be a special occasion. We talked, just like old times, or better, if he'd been as uncommunicative before as Celes said. Actually, they talked, and I occasionally said something, but that was kind of like old times, too.
He told us about the things he'd mentioned in his drunken letter, and elaborated. "Kalmadrian script – that was the complicated stuff in all the old ruins, you remember? We all just thought it was decoration at the time. Aside from a few characters that seem to be pictograms, no one living can read it. Anyway, I found this tablet that had some of that and some of their common script, which is a lot like ours, and this archaic form of Doman, more archaic, I mean. Same basic script, a few other characters, you know what Doman's like now. So I suggested maybe all three languages had the same message, and then we all got very drunk, and the next day once we stopped wanting to die we did some translation between the Doman and the other and they matched, so the smart people are decoding Kalmadrian as we speak."
"They can't be any smarter than you. You made the connection," I retorted loyally, and he grinned and squeezed my arm. I hoped I hadn't stiffened, but I thought the grin flickered, so maybe I had.
"No gift for languages, though. Just reading modern Doman gives me a headache," he said. "They're the ones doing all the hard stuff, even if I get the glory."
"You do the stuff they can't do," I insisted. "What they're doing is easy to them." Celes got up, began putting away the ingredients I'd strewn over half the kitchen. "Don't put anything where I can't find it," I said.
"Don't worry, I saw where it all came from. Locke, be honest, you really are a bigger part of this excavation than you want to admit."
"No, I'm being honest," he said, turning his back on the stew. "I do all the crazy stuff they think is too dangerous, crawling down in these caves to see how deep they got – pretty damn deep, this time, so I do have some use. The last one, I spent a lot of time hauling rocks out of the way."
"That doesn't seem fair," she objected. "You've been doing this for a long time, you shouldn't just be their beast of burden."
"Yeah, I was doing it, but not the way they like. I was never really careful – I could hit myself now for all the stuff I destroyed without realizing it."
"Like what?" she demanded, which would prompt an explanation I'd heard before, so I focused on the cake batter and let their voices wash over me. It was good to have them both here; I felt almost normal again, and safe, all the needless drama about how we both felt for him washed away by everything else I had to face when I couldn't sleep at night.
"Terra," he said, and I blinked and looked up. "You okay? You've been stirring that for the last five minutes. It's not supposed to take that long, is it?"
"Oh. Yeah, I'm fine," I said, shaking my head to clear it, and felt them watching me as I poured batter into a pan. "Really," I added, wrapping a towel around my hand to open the oven.
"If you're sure," Locke said uncertainly. I looked up in time to see them exchange some sort of glance, he shrugged, and began talking again about the importance of potsherds.
Most of dinner was like that – not Locke repeating himself, but me listening while the two of them, or my family, talked. No one commented that I was unusually quiet, and I was just enjoying having them around. I tried not to mind seeing how well Locke and Celes were getting along. They were allowed to. I'd get my chance to talk to Locke later. Things would have been awkward without her there, anyway.
I watched from the porch as they left that night for the inn, still talking and laughing. Halfway across the square, Locke turned, called "Forgot something" to either or both of us, and came back to the house. It turned out to be those fingerless gloves he wore for no good reason, and we rooted through the kitchen together looking for them. "Listen, can I talk to you sometime?" he asked, in a low voice, as if afraid someone would hear.
My heart was thudding. "Sure," I said. "Whenever you want."
"I'll, uh, I'll see you later, then," he said, looking as if he wanted to bolt out the door.
"Yeah," I agreed, stupidly, and he headed for the exit. I felt my arms wrap around myself. "Locke!" I called, just as he reached the door to the hallway, and he stopped and looked over his shoulder. "I missed you," I blurted, and I looked down, but then immediately back up at him.
A slow smile spread over his face. "I missed you too," he said. He looked like he was about to say something else, but I guess he thought better of it. I stood frozen in the kitchen, listening to his footsteps in the hall, listening to the creak of the front door as it opened and closed. I'd have to oil the hinges, I thought. I realized I was smiling, not at anyone in particular, for the first time in a while now.