CHAPTER TWO
BROTHERS REUNITE
Terra awoke to the sound of Edgar's voice. She had not slept much, and her tiredness, combined with all the discomforts and fears and alienation of the night before, put her into a mixed state of mind. She was both angry and in desperate need of something familiar. It is understandable, then, that she reacted as she did towards Edgar.
"Terra?" said Edgar, with a note of curiosity in his voice that betrayed his surprise at finding her sleeping outside. To add to this surprise, Terra jumped out of her tent, threw her arms around him, and cried into his shirt.
"Why, what on earth is the matter, my dear?" said Edgar, stroking her hair and giving her a kiss on the forehead, which, under the circumstances, Terra didn't mind.
She pulled away and rapidly recounted the whole terrible night to him. She did not find, as with Locke, any contempt in his response, but only his full sympathy, which she believed to be genuine.
"I am terribly sorry, my dear. I will see to it myself that you find your quarters tonight. Locke's behavior is really inexcusable. I would have excused myself from Banon if it had been possible."
At breakfast Locke found Terra a changed woman. She sat with Edgar—who, to his discredit, lorded over his newfound favor with her—and hardly spoke a word to Locke. When she did, it was only short, curt replies. Not once did she make eye contact with him.
All this was not lost on Locke. True to his word, he was trying to keep her company, but what with her ignoring him and her sudden friendlessness to Edgar—which of course Locke misinterpreted, partly due to Edgar's misinformation, partly because Terra wouldn't correct it—and what with Locke's friends teasing him to no end, he finally gave up. As a consequence, when Terra decided that he had been punished enough, he was no longer trying to open up communication, and each was too proud to approach the other. Thus they did not speak to each other at all that day.
You or I might think that Terra was (all things considered) a bit too hard on him, but Terra herself would live to regret it, for, as often happens in life, she counted on having more time with him than she had.
That day Terra saw the inside of the Returners' cave. Edgar, who after breakfast suddenly manifested signs of great anxiety, nevertheless managed to spare some time in the morning showing her around. It was lit by mounted lamps and cracks in the rocks overhead, through which sunbeams shot in and scattered the darkness. It looked to Terra like an old mine, and indeed there was a dilapidated and fragmented track running along the ground from the entrance to a huge cavern. This room, aptly called the Commodium, was well-lit by a narrow crack that ran the whole length of the wall. Sunlight and a freezing breeze poured in through this fissure. There was the sound of running water and a little pool in a sunken place in the floor at the bottom of the crack, the end of the little stream that ran away and out of sight when the cleft narrowed to a point or else turned to the side. It was terribly cold in the cave, even during the day.
In the Commodium, which the Returners had made into a living area with tables and benches and fire-pits, every cave and tunnel converged. From here Edgar showed Terra her room, which was a little way in inside one of the tunnels, and which even had a door. It was even colder in here. Edgar distractedly assured her that she would have a pile of blankets and furs to sleep under that night, and that she would have a hot pan of coals to put under her feet.
Then, having shown Terra her quarters, and not being able to contain his anxiety any longer, Edgar left her, apologizing profusely. Terra didn't ask any questions. She took a fur from her room, wrapped herself up, and went to the Commodium. There she saw a group of men talking at a table in the wide sunbeam issuing from the fissure. They lowered their voices when she approached, but otherwise didn't acknowledge her presence. Terra walked past them towards the tunnel leading outside, trying not look as if she noticed the silence she had caused. She sighed and left the men to their plans. This too promised to be a long and lonely day.
Outside Terra managed to catch a few words from a couple of boys who didn't notice her approach. (By now she was used to being treated like a leper.) She distinctly heard them say, "His brother sent ahead to say he'd be arriving by midday—Listen! There's the signal arrow! He's back!"
Terra had heard the same high pitch sound she had heard when they were fleeing into the forest. She looked around the clearing, and by a stroke of luck spotted Edgar nearby, who had just stood up from a rock he'd been sitting on, pipe in hand. His face was pale as he watched to see the moment the forest would give him his brother. Everyone stopped what they were doing and waited. Even the wind was quiet; the trees seemed to stand to attention. All this time Edgar forgot to smoke.
And then he came. He emerged quietly from the shadow that fell upon the path, without bird or horse or companion—quietly, I say, though the moment he appeared there was a cheer and a "Hurrah for Sabin! Hurrah!" The boys that had announced his coming looked like they wanted to run to meet him, but didn't know if they could. Edgar too took a tentative step towards his brother, but halted. His pipe had gone out.
Sabin, as we have seen before, was even more broad and muscular than his twin. He shared Edgar's blonde hair, but wore it short. His skin had been darkened by the sun, and a heaviness wrinkled his brow, from care or sorrow. It gave him a markedly stern expression, which, combined with his strong bearing, made him appear unapproachable.
But in the time it took for me to describe him, Sabin had crossed the clearing and locked Banon, who had come out to meet him, in a titanic embrace. Only Banon could make Sabin look small. Sabin smiled, but his was not a face of many smiles, and so it inevitably gave him a worried look. And yet in that instant Terra perceived what perhaps few ever saw (or were allowed to see): gentleness. Beneath that iron-clad exterior still beat a living heart.
Next, Sabin turned to his brother. Terra watched with a beating heart and rapt attention as the two brothers stood face to face like two walls of gravity and tension—or like two cresting waves about to crash into one another. Terra didn't know if they would hug or kill each other. Then, at last, when the suspense was at its height, they embraced and shook hands with laughter and friendly words and even tears. There was a universal sense of relief, and yet not all was as it should be. There was a certain artificiality about it. The waves had broken upon each other and the waters had stilled, though how long the calm would last no one knew. The brothers were reunited but not reconciled.
