IN THE MOUNTAINS OF FIRE by Dolores J. Nurss
Volume VI: The Rift
Chapter 59 Confessions
Sunday, February 28, 2709,
continued (Racing footbeats pound down the stone
hall. I tense, groping for...where’s my
knife? Where are my clothes? “Zanne!” “Zanne!” A soprano and a cracking baritone shout just as the door bursts open and I breathe
again. Not for long, though, as Apollo
and Courtney pile onto me before I can rise and they hug the wind right out of
me before knocking the cot down. Apollo
grabs Courtney so fast that he almost moves like Fireheart Friendclan so she doesn’t
even hit the ground, but I just splay in an unladylike manner while they look
on apologetically. I have enough time,
as Lula helps me to my feet and gets the sheet acceptably arranged around me,
to notice my clothing neatly folded on a nearby chair, and also that Courtney
has gotten rather round. Apollo averts
his eyes and sets the cot back up, his earlobes blushing. Breathlessly Courtney blurts out, “Yes, I’m pregnant—don’t kill me. I know, you warned me.” She pushes her red
hair out of her eyes and somehow manages to simultaneously look defiant and
embarrassed. Apollo rises and wraps his
long, dark arms around her protectively; those arms look rounded out, too,
about twice the width I remember and all of it muscle. “I’m going to take care of her, Zanne,” he says, lifting his chin
up. “I’ve married Courtney.” He holds up a finger with a new brass band
around it. “I want to spend the rest of
my life with this woman.” Girl,
whatever. “How? By thievery?” I say
before I catch myself, still a wee bit dizzy. “Now that’s unfair!” they both cry simultaneously as Lula helps me
sit back down. Then Courtney says, “He’s
learning the blacksmith’s trade. Will
says he’s good at it.” “We both are,” he says, holding her close. Courtney adds, "With the factories closed and so few cars
running, there’s a call for horseshoes and all kinds of metal things, anything we can
repair or make from scrap. They need a
smith at Outlier Farm, and that’s a safe place for mixed couples like us.” She giggles.
“Now they’ll get two. We shall be
Mr. and Mrs. Smith.” Softly Apollo says, “I only stole because I didn’t see any other
choice at the time. No parents, and
nobody hiring Black kids in my neighborhood.
Yeah, I got bitter about it, till I met you folks and Dalmar set me
straight. I thought that’s all I could
ever be. But I’ve got a way with metal,
it turns out.” “Dalmar?” I lean forward. “Do you know where he is?” They look at each other, then at me. “We’re not sure,” Lula says. “He made it here
to All Kinds Sanctuary; we thought for sure he’d set up at Ustawi Farm. He joined their drum circle one night, and I
never saw him happier. But then he hit
the road as soon as he could trade the formulas of several useful chemicals for
a mule and traveling supplies. He wants
to spread the word about treating magentine poisoning.” “He’s doing my job,” I say with a sinking feeling of shame.) Monday, March 1, 2709 Father also noticed my
absence from mass yesterday. Naturally–I
can’t pull over Mykolas what Man would have overlooked. So he comes in, and we talk and talk, and I
bare everything to him, my hands crocheting furiously though I ache to do
nothing at all, not even talk, not even think.
Trusting in the seal of the confessional, I finally go all the way back
to the Black Clam business, wondering if it doomed me to sin my whole life
long. He says nothing for the
longest time, just listening to my whispers, there in the privacy of my
quasi-room, afternoon into night, while the stars and swirls of my homemade
lamp dance across his thoughtful face.
At last his gravelly voice tells me that although I exaggerate my culpability
for necessities of war, I do indeed have
grave concerns in some matters, most particularly about returning again and
again to sins after I repent. Yet he
says also that it’s better to approach God, even risking His wrath, than to
despair and turn away from Him entirely, removing all doubt as to the
outcome. I tell him that I’ll think
about it. “I know what moral failure
feels like, Deirdre,” he says, holding up one paw. “I still have two fingers left.” My eyes water and I turn away. How can he even think to compare his
perceived failure to crimes of mine? But then he cups my chin in
one palm, and lifts my head to face him once more. “Don’t be afraid of me judging you,
daughter. I can’t blame you for
contracting a disease on duty–the only blame lies in not admitting it, not
seeking its cure.” My heart nearly fails
me. But I whisper, “What do you mean?
What are you talking about?” He smiles weirdly,
disturbingly like his old self. “I think
you have a problem with greenfire.” “Oh, not really!” I make a
show of grinning and shaking my head. “I
only use it when necessity demands.” And
my hands crochet like crazy. “Ah yes, I know that
necessity well.” And his smile fades,
and all the sadness of his life wells up in his eyes. “How do you think I managed to escort all of
those children from Tensei, watching over them night after night as they slept,
while my hands festered and my head swam?” I stare at him as the truth
hits me. “Father, I had no idea!” “I burned, child. The greenfire and the fever burned me up on
that journey, and some parts of me will never grow back beyond the scar.” Again, the weird smile, trembling on the edge
of dissolution, and the mad intensity of the eyes. “Would you like to hear my confession,
Deirdre? I still hear voices. I hear them all the time–all of them. All of the dead, the ones I tried to save and
the ones I failed, and with them saints and angels, and yes, tormenting devils,
too. But God has seared my lips with a
burning coal and my tongue untangled, all because Lufti’s illness so broke my
heart that I had to finally ask for healing, myself, though I dreaded healing
more than death.” He shakes his
head. “The healing only goes partway, my
friend, just enough. A sufficient thorn
still drives into my side to make me depend on Christ for every step, every
thought, every word.” After a speechless moment I
say, “That’s no confession, Father. You
couldn’t help it. It’s a, a condition
called schizophrenia, and now you may have become high-functioning, but...” “I know what schizophrenia
is, dear lady. Priests study psychology,
you know. It takes more than a
hereditary predisposition. And I know,
deep in the burning hollow of my heart, that it took more in my case than the
traumas of my life alone to trigger the potential. Abusing the greenfire made the final blow to
crack my mind. And I did abuse it,
Deirdre, after awhile. Some of the children
were old enough to keep watch, too, by turns; I had only to ask them to. Yet the greenfire helped me to forget that I
still have two fingers left.” And suddenly I understand
him. “I’ll think about what you’ve said,
Father.” He smiles more warmly this
time. “That’s all anyone can ask,” he
says, and leaves. I lay aside my
crocheting and turn to work on my map.
But even as I outline what I can remember of the islands in the Coral
Gulf, I think, longingly, of that bitter tingle spreading down my throat. (Bitterness. I like the taste of it in my soul. I like the hate that gives me cause to
live. It keeps me from curling up
another day around my grief. Instead I
sharpen my pitons and my grappling-hooks.
I’ve heard that the rebels have many tricks for improvising weapons. Well, they can hardly match the intelligence
of a scion of the highest caste, can they?) “No! No! *cough* Noooooo!” That’s Kiril’s voice! I drop my map and run out. “You’re lying!” I trip over a pile of bags, grab a battered
filing cabinet to right myself and nearly knock it over, too, and push on. When did my body get so weak? I
hear Makhliya ahead of me, using her most soothing voice . “Now Kiril, you know you shouldn’t be
shouti…” “He’s,
he’s lying!” He *cough*
*couch* he’s…” And she can’t say anymore. I dive under the
hem of her oxygen tent and scoop Kiril into my arms, leaving Makhliya to
reposition the rocks that hold its edges down.
“Breathe, dear,” I tell her.
“Give yourself time to take a few deep breaths, and then tell me what
upset you.” And so I cradle her in my
lap, just holding her, waiting for her asthma to subside, her tear-wet face
against me. The oxygen makes me a little
dizzy, but nothing spins my world like her sobs and gasps. (Bitterness fights the vertigo, the
free-fall sensation of dangling over an abyss of absences, nothing familiar to
get my footing on, and nobody, dear God nobody to hold a rope above me. What am I even clinging to, anyway, to not go
tumbling into hopelessness? Bitterness—a
rope of hatred, grief and outrage, plied strand by strand and wound so tight that it’s
got to keep me going. I don’t dare let
go.) When she’s ready,
gripping me like her entire world has crumbled out from under her and she might
fall at any moment, Kiril starts to speak.
“He…the smuggler, he, he came back from Thierry Valley. I, I asked for news. And…” I give her a moment
before saying, “He said something that broke your heart.” I feel her nod against me. “Does it have to do with your Papa?” Again, a nod.
“Is he dead, Kiril?” This time I
feel her head shake. Oh dear. “He’s been fired.” Oh, well, that’s
not so b…” “It’s why Farmer
said he fired him. The smuggler said he
was so sorry, but I don’t want his pity!” “No. Of course not.” “He…he wasn’t
lying, Deirdre.” “Farmer finally
found out where I went.” “That you’ve become
a rebel?” “That my goddamn
father freakin’ sold me to the ship that raped me!” And she breaks into wheezes all over again. “Oh my poor, poor
dear!” I press my cheek to the top of
her head. “Because you were starving,
because he wanted you to eat, to survive…” “Because he had to
pay off a gambling debt!” Oh my
God. “Because everybody knew but me that
he has a gambling problem. I was…Deirdre,
I was nothing more to him than a poker chip.” “Oh noooo, Kiril,
it’s not like that…” “We didn’t have to
starve. Yeah, a famine had the land, but
Farmer fed his help enough—what good were we to him too hungry to work?” I hear the realization in her voice as she
puts together clues. “Farmer didn’t know
why Mama got sick and skinny and then died.
Papa must have been cutting into our share, selling it to hungry people
off the farm.” “Ai, Kiril!” Tears of my own fall into her hair, because I
know, I know, that I let her down, too, everybody she has ever loved has let
her down. “Compulsion is…you don’t know what
you’re doing. You can’t think clearly of
the consequences. And then…then, when
you do, the only way you can bear it is to go back to your compulsion, try to
numb it out, try to numb out all the things that it made you do.” She hugs me so tightly that now I’m the one
having trouble breathing. “Kiril, you
were much more to your father than a poker-chip! He tried to send you away from the dangers of
what he could no longer control.” “Dangers?” she cries, pushing back from
me, “Like the one he sent—no, sold,
sold me into?” For a long moment we hold
each other at arm’s length, staring into each other’s wide eyes, reading what’s
there. Then, carefully, I pull her back
against me. In a much quieter voice, she
husks out, “Everything I’ve done since then.
Everything I am today. I based it
all on a lie. I’ve killed, Deirdre. I killed Sarge with my own hands because I
wanted to believe a lie.” “And so did he,” a
rough voice growls over us. I look up
and see a blur of Father Man through the ripply xylophane and tears. He hunkers down, his eyes burning, and says,
“We all want to believe lies. We all do
things to try and stop the truth from ambushing us. But somewhere the lying has to stop. And that’s what confession’s for.” “Father,” Kiril
cries, “Should I leave the rebels?” But
he has already walked away. He’s left us
to figure it out for ourselves, I realize—a harsh penalty for our sins of self-deception,
scouring out our own wounds with the sanitizing salt of reality. Zanne would ask, “What is the truth, here?” So, fighting my own
tears, I work it out. “Freedom isn’t
about whether or not you have a full belly, Kiril. You had a full belly with Sarge and were as
oppressed as you could be. Think—why did
your father become a gambler?” “Be…because nothing
in his life seemed in his control anyway?” “When you are
truly, truly free, you no longer need compulsions.” And I face the scalding truth, myself. I am not yet truly free. |
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