and your services will not be required.” I read that three times in mounting disbelief before continuing. “I hear that you have secured other important work during the hiatus, and I hope you will continue to find that fulfilling and prosperous.” Best wishes and the signature of the chief scholar of my department. My hands gripped the edges of the letter so tightly that my fingers turned white at the edges and my jaw ached from clenching my teeth.
He had heard? What had he heard, and from whom? Was this the hand of the Wraith at work, making sure I had nothing else to do but work for him—or the Lung or the pelenaut—from now on?
I had to sit down and rest my face in my hands, letting the letter fall. My temporary employment by the government was supposed to be just that: temporary. I’d spent the majority of my professional life as a scholar and introduced myself as such; my identity was bound up with a job that made me feel proud and useful. What was I now? Certainly not a soldier, though I seemed to be in their company more often than not these days. And I couldn’t tell people I was a spy even if I wanted to, and I didn’t want to. No: I was definitely not a spy. The last thing I wanted was to follow my wife into an abyss of plots and deception and poisons.
Rölly might intervene if I asked, but I’d be ashamed to play on that association any more than I already had. Asking him to help after the university closed was what had washed me into this tidal pool in the first place. And I had the uncomfortable feeling that this arrangement was what he preferred anyway.
There was a soft knock at my door, and Elynea called through it, “Dervan? Are you hungry? I feel like cooking if you want.”
Mastering my voice into something amiable, I replied, “Ah, yes, that would be grand. I’ll be out to help in a moment.”
I took a couple of deep breaths. Elynea’s example might be the one for me to follow. She had reinvented herself; it had not been without effort, true, or a good measure of pain, but she’d proved that it could be done. Opening the door of my room, I paused at the threshold so that I wouldn’t interrupt a family moment. Elynea was chopping up a carrot on a board in the kitchen, and Pyrella had frozen, staring at her. It was her intensity of expression that had caused me to freeze as well. Tamöd caught on and stopped jumping up and down on the couch, where he’d been singing the Current Chorus. The abrupt silence made Elynea look up to see what was wrong.
“What is it, Pyrella?” she said.
“You’re cooking?” her daughter asked, her voice tiny.
Elynea shrugged. “Yes. You want to eat tonight, don’t you?”
“But you haven’t cooked in a long time.”
Elynea looked down at the chopped-up vegetables and the knife in her hand, suddenly realizing it was true. Her shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Pyrella said. “I’m just noticing. And I’m glad. Because it’s like you’re back now.”
The knife clattered to the counter as Elynea rushed around the counter to give Pyrella a hug. They were already sobbing as they embraced, and Tamöd’s mouth dropped open; he was too young to understand. As I eased backward into my room and slowly shut the door, I heard him say, “Hey! What’s going on?”
Feeling guilty about eavesdropping but telling myself it was necessary so that I didn’t stomp through an important time for healing, I waited until their voices resumed their happy tones and I could hear the knife thwacking on the cutting board again. Then I cleared my throat noisily as I exited my room and joined them.
Over dinner I asked if they had heard that the pelenaut had declared Festwyf open for resettlement. Elynea nodded. “But you won’t be going back?”
The kids looked to their mother, perhaps a bit worried, and she caught it. “No,” she replied. “I’ve lived there long enough and for even longer in my mind. I’m here now. We are here now. Time to live in the present and be thankful for what’s in front of us.”
Pyrella beamed at her mother. “I’m thankful.”
Tamöd asked, “Is there going to be pudding in front of us after this?”
—
Fintan and I revisited the Kaurian restaurant where the bard had first been recognized in public.