had things gone right. The money meant she could buy herself into the shadows, though. Buy passage to some other great long stretch of spans, leaving no trail to follow, no way to guess which way she’d gone.
“The day Soter came down those steps, carrying you as proof of his tale of her, of her death, was the first we’d heard of her in years.
“Your uncle cried like a baby himself. I know that’s hard for you to imagine, but it’s true. So long as he had no idea of his sister’s fate, he could make up whatever he liked, and even if it was awful and cruel and defamed her with every word, it was comforting somehow. Like he kept her alive by inventing a world of failures for her. The truth wiped it all away. It broke him. It went much worse on him than on either of your grandparents. They’d come to accept her choice. Gousier took to drink. What he made in the stall of a day he spent in the pursuit of his own undoing. Trying to erase her, hiding from her. I couldn’t talk to him, almost like he couldn’t see me. One time he fell partway down the steps from Ningle, he was so drunk. For a while he wasn’t allowed to go up. Soter and I filled in as much as we could. Of course then Gousier accused Soter of trying to usurp his position—Soter, who wanted nothing at all to do with fish, but felt he owed your grandfather something for letting him stay. Gousier was crazy awhile, and nothing he said during that time is worth recalling. When it went on past all reason, your grandfather locked himself and Gousier in his workshop for the better part of a whole day. Neither one of them ever told what went on in there, but when they came out your uncle was bruised, bloody, and sober. And quiet. Whatever his opinions were, he said no more about her. Never mentioned his sister afterward, as if he’d never had one. He went back to work and after a time, he eased up. He was good for a bit—you might even remember from when you was little. Then, when your grandfolk died, it all came out again, everything he’d bottled up, and he cursed her for their deaths, too, blamed her all over again, but this time it was different. He bellowed at her as if she were hiding in the woods and could hear everything he said. He told her she’d killed them by breaking their hearts as surely as if she’d murdered them by her own hand.”
The idea terrified her. “Is that true? Did she?”
Dymphana leaned forward and took her hand. “Now, you think on it. Years had passed between her going and theirs. She wasn’t no more responsible than you was. They were old people. Whichever of them went first, the other was going to follow. Them Kuseks up on Ningle had more to do with your grandfather’s going than your mother and you. No, Leodora, your uncle’s like the Omelunes—he needs there to be someone responsible for all the bad things. Someone he can point at. I think he was in love with your mother a little bit, and I think part of it’s envy. I think there’s a part of Gousier that’d like to roam the spans, but the dutiful part tells him he has to stay here and maintain the tradition that his father maintained. An’ if he has to, then so does everyone else.”
Leodora stared, dumbfounded. Her aunt’s story revealed a depth of comprehension and thought that she’d never suspected. How could Dymphana think and see and know so much, and keep it all to herself? Why didn’t she feel as Leodora did the need to express her feelings—to fight the restrictions that were placed on her?
Then Leodora’s face clouded with another puzzle. “If the boy from Omelune is dead, then who is the man who thought I was my mother?”
“I expect he’s one of the other villagers, someone who didn’t leave there with the rest. There was a handful, tried to rebuild. I daresay he won’t come our way again, not now he believes the witch is still with us.”
“But how can he have been there for so many years and not come here before?”
Dymphana shrugged. “Life’s full of mysteries. Not all of ’em have answers, Leodora. Why did a storm destroy Omelune when it did?