Virdon slowly closed the door behind him, careful not to make a sound. With all the curtains drawn, the room was bathed in a dim half-light, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust.
Zana was lying in bed, a silent heap of suffering; only the dark blob of her head was visible. Virdon hoped she was at least half awake. He didn't want to disturb her if she was sleeping, but this was probably his only chance to see her and to... to do what he had come to do.
She didn't stir when he sat down in the chair beside her bed and laid his gifts on the nightstand - candied fruit and nuts, an almond paste that was similar to marzipan. "Zana?" he said in a low voice. "Zana, are you awake? - I'll go if you're really asleep, I don't want to disturb you," he continued when she didn't react. "But this may be my only chance to see you, so I had to try... I brought you some sweets, I know you love them."
She drew a deep breath, as if she was indeed waking up just now, and turned her head a little. "You bought them?" she whispered. "You don't have any money..."
Virdon smiled. "I earned a bit on the side - I made leather bracelets for the chimpanzee children, and they paid me with a bit of their allowance. I didn't take much," he added hastily. "I made the bracelets really cheap, but I wanted to buy you something... something nice."
There was a moment of silence. "Thank you," Zana whispered.
Virdon cleared his throat. "Galen has forbidden us to come and see you," he explained in a low voice. "He is..." Furious. "... very protective of you. But you know that, of course." He slowly rubbed his palms against each other between his knees, not sure how to proceed.
"Pete got into a nasty fight with him over that decision," he informed her. "I just thought you should know - he hasn't forgotten you. He very much wanted to visit. Maybe he'll manage to slip by Galen, like I just did. But it's possible that your fiancé turns up here any moment, and kicks me out, so..." he drew a deep breath, "I better say what I wanted to say, before I waste this opportunity."
He flicked a glance at Zana's face, but it was too dark in the room to see her expression. He couldn't even say if her eyes were still open. Maybe she had already fallen asleep again. She had to be on drugs to numb the pain - and those drugs also dulled the mind.
He had to stop grasping for excuses to keep silent. "This was all my fault."
The admission didn't bring relief. But that was only right.
"You all were right, back when you tried to talk me out of going into that old city. You were right, and I was wrong, and the worst part is, I knew even then that I was just grasping for reasons to justify my desire. I was desperate to find something to help me get home to my family, and I let that despair overrule my good sense, and... and overrule anyone else's common sense, too. I was selfish."
Zana weakly raised her arm, and let it flop limply back on the coverlet, and Virdon didn't know if that gesture was meant to tell him to stop talking, or to comment on what he had said.
In any case, it told him that she was awake, so he ploughed on. "I hope you believe me when I tell you that I didn't dismiss the risks that my decision implied for any of you. I simply didn't even think of any dangers, which is maybe worse, but at least it means I didn't think of them and then decided I was willing to risk you running into them." He stopped, feeling he had somehow lost track of his original intent.
"If I could turn back time and undo what happened there, I would," he finally said. "But I know I can't, and that the consequences of my selfishness will be with you for the rest of your life, and I can't make that right again, ever."
The weight of that truth dropped on him the moment the words had left his mouth, and he struggled to draw another breath. It was as if his chest had been crushed, as if he was choking on his failure.
Zana didn't move. If she was still awake, she didn't acknowledge his confession at all.
He had wanted to beg her forgiveness, but Virdon found he couldn't say the words. He didn't deserve forgiveness. Not from her, not from anyone.
"Words can't express how sorry I am, Zana," he whispered. "If I can do anything, anything at all that would help you... help you to get better, feel better, just tell me, and I'll do it. Whatever it is, Zana, you can ask anything from me."
He couldn't ask her forgiveness; but even her wrath would be better than this nothingness that was emanating from her, cold and miserable, like burial shrouds.
The door opened behind him, and now Virdon felt another kind of coldness surging against his back, an icy gale of white fury. He slowly rose from the chair and turned around.
Galen was standing in the door, face and stance stony like a statue; if he was surprised to find him here, he didn't show it.
Virdon ducked his head. "I was just about to leave..."
Galen stepped into the room and closed in to him, trapping him between Zana's bed and the wall. "I couldn't help but overhear your offer," he said frostily, "and I might just take you up on it."
Virdon blinked. "I made that offer to Zana," he said cautiously.
"You offered to do anything that would make her get better," Galen corrected him. "I know of something that would greatly help her recovery." He ducked his head and pulled a leather string over his head. When he extended his hand to him, Virdon saw that it was the data disc.
Galen was giving it back to him.
"Take it," he said, when Virdon made no move to reach for the disc. "You were loathe to let go of it, so I think it would help you just as much as it will help Zana and me." He pushed the pendant against Virdon's chest and let go, and Virdon had no choice but to catch it before it dropped to the ground. He cast a searching glance to Zana. She met him with a stare that betrayed nothing.
Slowly, Virdon pulled the leather string over his neck. "If that's what you both agreed on..." he said hesitantly, still refusing to believe that Zana would throw them out for good.
He was met with silence from both apes.
Virdon turned to Zana a last time, still numb with disbelief. "Farewell then, Zana. I wish you... I wish that you'll find happiness again. I'll keep you in my... in my thoughts." He'd also keep her in his prayers, once he found the nerve to address God again, but right now, he wanted to avoid another altercation with her fuming fiancé.
Galen stepped back to let him pass, but Virdon didn't move immediately. "Pete will want to say his goodbyes to her, too. Will you at least allow that?"
Galen nodded curtly, and with a sigh, Virdon brushed past him. He'd have to find Pete and explain to him that they had been abandoned like dogs by their pretend masters - without papers, without money, and without a single piece of equipment. For once, he was content to let his hot-tempered friend sort things out with the chimp. As events had so vividly demonstrated, his own decisions might not be the sanest right now.
And right now, he was more than willing to turn himself in and be done with.
Zana kept her eyes shut when she heard her door softly open and close. She didn't want to know who it was - Galen, or Alan, both exhausting in different ways. If she pretended to sleep, maybe they would go away.
Maybe Peet had found a way to sneak into her room, as Alan had promised her... if she hadn't dreamed his words. She still wasn't sure whether she hadn't dreamed the whole encounter. Galen had worn Alan's pendant around his neck. Dreams often confused these details.
The visitor was slowly approaching her bed, and something - a faint scent, a movement, or maybe just their mere presence - sent Zana's heart into a hard and urgent rhythm, knocking against her breastbone in alarm.
She opened her eyes.
One of the Mothers was standing at her bed.
It took Zana one heart-stopping moment to recognize the midwife behind the feathered mask that was covering the old woman's face from ear to ear. A row of small shells graced her brow, and the little metal discs that circled her neck chimed softly as she sat down on the chair beside Zana's nightstand.
The visitor's chair. She really should get up one of these days and feed her tea oven with it.
"Blessings of the Mothers be upon thee," the midwife murmured, and Zana's heart began to race again. The old woman wasn't here in her capacity as a healer. She had come here as a priestess of the Mothers, and for a moment, Zana wondered if the old woman had sensed something in her... something that needed cleansing.
The priestess drew a herb bundle from the depths of her robe and held it against the candle of Zana's night lamp, then shook it to blow out the flame. The dried leaves blackened and crumbled. The scent of holy smoke filled Zana's nostrils, sweet and balsamic. She inhaled deeply, almost against her will.
The old woman rose from the chair and bent over her, moving the smudge bundle over Zana's body, from head to feet and back again. Her other hand was making signs, but Zana couldn't decipher them. The rituals of the Mothers were as old as apekind, and didn't require many words. Most was said with gestures, with paintings, or dance.
I should know what she's saying. But I was always more interested in science than religion. She had kept the prescribed rituals for her parents, out of love, and because it was done, and she didn't doubt the existence and the power of the Mothers, as she suspected Galen was doing, but she never felt the need to meditate, or to study the Sacred Scrolls. Now she wished she had - maybe she'd have remembered the answer to the question that was tormenting her in her waking hours...
Finally, the midwife stuck the herb bundle between Zana's fingers and sat down again. She felt the old woman's ancient eyes on her, watchful, unreadable.
"It is very dark in this room," the priestess said finally.
I knew it! Something is wrong with me, and she saw it! She looked right into me, and she saw it! Zana tried to hold back her tears. "I... had asked my fiancé to close the curtains," she whispered hesitantly. "The light hurts my eyes."
The woman pursed her lips. "Zana," she said, and Zana's heart leaped into a frenzied gallop. How did she know her name? She was traveling as Alta now, they had to change their names again...
"Spark of lightning," the priestess continued, as if she hadn't noticed Zana's shock. "Where is the fire? It is dark in here. Where are you, Zana? Where are you?"
And with a wave of dizziness, Zana found that she couldn't get a hold of herself, that she was grasping blindly in the darkness, in empty air. Tears sprang to her eyes. "I don't know," she whispered. "I'm gone."
The priestess nodded, slowly, like a branch waving in the wind. "Gone into the next world. So that your daughter doesn't have to go alone. So that she isn't frightened by the shadows."
The image sent shivers down her arms; Zana could feel her fur moving against the fabric of the blanket. She saw herself going down a dark, dark road - an alley, choked by tall and black trees blocking out the sky, a jungle of shadows. A little hand was grasping hers, calm and trusting.
She didn't dare to turn her head and look down at who was walking by her side.
"You sent a part of yourself into the next world with your baby," the rough voice of the priestess sounded far away. Somewhere behind her, in the gray light of her room. "But you don't belong there, little spark. You must call that part back to you, back to the world of the living."
With a sharp sniff, Zana was back in her bed. That hole in her heart was still there. The priestess hadn't magically healed her grief.
If only it were that easy.
"How am I supposed to do that?" she asked, feeling the tears well up again. Her throat was tight, as if someone had put a collar on her and was choking her with it. "I lost my baby. The only baby I'll ever have!"
It had been a mistake to say it aloud, but she realized it a moment too late. It was as if a trapdoor had opened up over her bed, and the enormity of that realization came crashing into her through that door. Zana could feel it hitting her as vividly as if someone had dropped a tree on her. It slammed into her chest and buried her under its weight.
"I'll never be a mother!" she sobbed, throat raw with anguish, "I'll never have children, Galen will never be a father, I'll never know what it's like... what it's like..."
"You are a mother," the old woman said firmly, "since the day you carried that child under your heart. Even though it died - even if all her children die, a woman carries them in her heart, to the end of her days. Nobody can change her again into a girl."
I want a real child, a living, growing child, Zana raged silently, not a flock of ghost children haunting my dreams!
The priestess laughed, a sound so shocking that Zana's tears dried in an instant. The old woman patted her shoulder. "You will have many, many children, living children of flesh and blood. The Mothers will bless you, little mother."
"No, they won't!" She couldn't hold the words inside any longer. "They won't bless me, they're angry with me, they... they've punished me for what I've done!" She couldn't breathe right, she was choking...
"The Mothers love you, little Zana, they aren't filthy old women shaking their canes at you." The priestess sounded amused, and Zana's agony turned into rage. She propped herself up on her elbows, too agitated to keep lying on her back.
"How can you say that?" she hissed. "You don't know what I've done, you don't know what the Mothers think of that!"
"Oh, but you do?" The priestess chuckled, an infuriating sound. "Tell me then, oh confidant of the Mothers, what did you do that you're so sure they condemn?"
"I... I... I stole a child, and..." She was back in the human's hut, vandalized by Urko and his men, the humans huddled in a corner. She was grabbing at the child, drawing it towards her, pulling Delia out of her mother's arms. Her mother, too frightened to plead with her, but her eyes... her eyes...
"Where is that stolen child now?" the priestess asked mildly.
"I... I sent her back to her parents," Zana whispered. "I was desperate, I needed a guide, but they refused, and I just... I just ordered them, and then I took their daughter. I just took what I needed, because I'm an ape, and they couldn't refuse me."
She had felt guilty then, but she had also fleetingly thought about her own daughter then, safe in her belly, and how nobody would dare to steal her child from her.
I shouldn't have thought that. I shouldn't have challenged the Mothers like that.
"A human? You really think the Mothers punished you for taking a human?" The priestess clucked her tongue. "The Mothers created all creatures to serve us, including humans. You lost your child because you put yourself in danger. Don't hold the Mothers responsible for your own choices." She rose. "Your spirit is fierce, Spark of Lightning. You will heal, if you choose so."
Zana's hands were prickling, whether with shock or anger, she couldn't say. But her tongue was suddenly thick and clumsy in her mouth, and she couldn't think of any words, as she watched the old Chimp move towards the door. When she finally choked out a "Wait!", the door had already closed again.
She sat up in her bed, shaking with... she couldn't pinpoint the emotion. Nervous energy was flickering through her like distant lightning.
She gingerly swung her legs to the side and put her feet on the floor. They felt strange to her, their soles tender and swollen. Zana wasn't sure if they would carry her.
She still managed to get to the window, and threw back the curtains. Outside, the sky was a wild blue, streaked with dark clouds. It felt as stormy and unstable as she did. She stared down at the street, at all the little people bustling around, going about their little lives, blissfully unaware.
"Where are you, Zana?" she murmured.