It wasn’t the most tender of reconciliations. But it did the job. Tomorrow, I resolved, I would quietly call Muurmut aside and ask him if he had any thoughts on how to leave this valley of streams.
As I walked back to my side of the fire, Grycindil came by me and whispered a word of thanks. I nodded and kept going. None of this had been pleasant for me. I had done it the way one lets the cautery be put to a bloody wound: because one must.
14
Every moon was in the sky that night. In all that brightness anyone might have had trouble sleeping; but it was not the brightness that kept me awake. That little talk with Muurmut had left me utterly sleepless, my mind boiling over with turbulent thoughts. I lay tossing for what felt like hours, wondering if I had destroyed myself as a leader by my willingness to make the conciliatory gesture that I had offered Muurmut, which some might see as cowardice, or, at best, unsteadiness of purpose.
No, I kept telling myself. A leader can only gain by showing generosity of spirit. And it was wiser to neutralize and disarm Muurmut with kindness than to allow his rage to fester any longer in his heart.
But none of these fine philosophical thoughts helped me to get to sleep. I lay like a clamped fist, unable to let go. Finally I could lie there no longer. My eyes were aching and my face felt feverish. I slipped out of my bedroll and went down to the stream to splash water in my face.
The others, scattered here and there around the fire, were all asleep, all but Kilarion and Maiti, who were on sentry shift. They looked half-asleep themselves. As I went past them they nodded drowsily toward me. I envied them their drowsiness.
I looked across the stream and saw Hendy camped by herself, as she usually did. I had spoken to her more than once about the risks of keeping herself apart from the rest, but she did as she pleased all the same and finally I had ceased to trouble her about it.
She was awake and alert, sitting up in her bedroll with her chin propped on her hand, watching me. Her eyes were sparkling by the light of the many moons. I remembered how beautiful Hendy had looked, suddenly, while she had been urging a reconciliation with Muurmut upon me a few hours before, and how sweet the fragrance of her shoulders had been. I stared at her and waited, hoping against all hope that she would beckon to me. But of course she merely returned my gaze without responding. Then I remembered how in my anger I had asked her if she were making the Changes with Muurmut, simply because she had come to me to plead on his behalf; and I felt shame run through me like a bolt of lightning from head to toe.
I had to make amends for that bit of coarseness. Though I had had no invitation from her, I waded across the stream to her side of it. Halfway across I stumbled on a slippery rock and fell headlong, and for a moment I crouched there in the chilly flow, cursing my clumsiness, but laughing also. At such times laughter is best. But this had not been an amusing night for me and it seemed to be getting worse as it went along.
I picked myself up and went to her, and stood above her, dripping. She looked up at me and a flutter of some quick emotion—fear? Or something more complex?—showed on her face for a moment.
I said, “Well, I spoke with Muurmut as you asked.”
“Yes. I know.”
“I offered him an apology. He wasn’t particularly graceful about accepting it. I may not have been all that graceful in the way I offered it. But we made peace, after a fashion.”
“Good.”
“And tomorrow I’ll invite him into councils.”
“Yes. Good.”
She said no more than that. I stood there, waiting for something else. I felt more like a boy of thirteen than I did like the man of twenty years that I was, with half my life already behind me.
“May I sit next to you?” I asked finally.
Perhaps she smiled, a little. “If you want to. You’re all wet. Are you cold?”
“Not really.”
“I saw you fall as you were crossing the stream.”
“Yes,” I said. “I was looking at you instead of at the stream bed. That’s a stupid way to cross a stream, I suppose. But I was more interested just then in looking at you.”
She said nothing. Her eyes were unreadable.
I knelt beside her and said, “You know that I didn’t mean it, don’t you, when I asked you before if you were making the Changes with Muurmut?”
“I understood what you were saying, yes.”
“It was because I was surprised that you were taking the trouble to speak up for Muurmut, when you had hardly ever involved yourself in disputes of any sort before. And you came to me right after Grycindil, who is making the Changes with him. So I felt outnumbered. And in my anger—”
“I told you that I understood what you were saying. There’s no need to keep explaining it and explaining it. You’ll only muddle things up again.” Hendy put her hand on my wrist. It tightened on me with surprising strength. “I can’t bear to see you shivering like this. Come in here with me.” And she held the flap of her bedroll open.
“Do you mean that?” I asked. “I’ll get everything all wet.”
“Oh, you are stupid, aren’t you?”
For the second time in five minutes I laughed at my own foolishness, and scrambled in beside her. She moved to the right-hand side of the bedroll to make room for me; there was open space between us. For the moment I made no move toward closing it. I sensed a war going on in Hendy between her innate mistrust of other people and the desire finally to let herself go, to open herself to another person and allow herself to be embraced. Thissa too had been like that. But Thissa was a santha-nilla, cut off from all those around her by the powers of her witchcraft: she could never be anything more than a visitor in the lives of others. Hendy, I suspected, was struggling to put an end to the aloofness that imprisoned her; and the struggle must not have been a simple one for her. But she had decided that now was the moment for ending it. I was amazed and grateful that she would choose me for that. She could have whatever she wanted of me, whether it be an hour’s quiet talk or a gentle embrace or even the Changes itself. I told myself that I would be as patient and as gentle as I knew how to be. I had done all the clumsy things I meant to do for this night.
She said, lying back and speaking upward into the darkness, “You aren’t really stupid, Poilar. You were trying to be kind, I know.”
That is not the sort of thing to which one can reply. So I lay there quietly beside her.
“And you knew all along that there was nothing between Muurmut and me, that there never could be.”
“Yes. That much I knew. Truly.”
“I would never choose someone like Muurmut for a lover. He reminds me too much of the men of Tipkeyn who stole me from our village when I was a girl” She paused for a little while. Then she said, “I haven’t ever chosen anyone for a lover, Poilar.”
I looked at her in astonishment. “You’ve never made the Changes, not ever?”
“That was not what I said,” she replied, and I felt foolish all over again. “But I’ve never chosen anyone. To choose means to express one’s own free will.”
I pondered that for a moment. Then my face grew hot with confusion.
“You mean that when you were living in Tipkeyn—without your consent—they attempted to—”
“Yes. Don’t ask me about it. Please.”
I couldn’t stop myself. “But how could they?” I said. “It’s impossible to force the Changes. How can it be done, if the woman doesn’t initiate them in herself?” I faltered and fell silent. What did I know about such things? There were evils in the world beyond my dreaming, and unquestionably some of them had touched Hendy—and again, yet again, I was being stupid.