I do see, now, why this was considered a suitable punishment for my mistakes back home. I’m traveling twenty-seven days out of thirty each month, and the conditions can be grueling. The roads are poorly kept, the weather is unpredictable, and I’m always dirty and exhausted. My lodgings vary greatly in quality. I never thought I would be eating with my hands, crouching on the dirt at an open fire, with a woman offering me fermented milk of some unknown animal. I’ve learned some of the language, but there are so many dialects that half the time it does me no good.
This is not travel as I imagined it. There is no leisurely sightseeing, no servants, no hotels catering to Lorinarian travelers. I don’t know when in the history of the Parry family anyone has worked this hard.
Yet, it is so different from anything I’ve ever known. None of the social mores of home apply. It makes me wonder what is real.
I think you must know how it feels.
He went on for a while, in similar vein to the last letter-musing how I must have felt coming to Lorinar and talking of how different the people were. His tone had changed. It was more subdued and thoughtful. The pages held less romance and more grit.
I had an odd, fleeting yearning to be there with him, to see him change, to see his eyes open in a country where women wore bright colors and bare arms again.
But I had never really been in New Guinnell and quite likely I was romanticizing it myself. I didn’t think I’d care much for fermented milk.
He didn’t precisely acknowledge how I had scolded him in my last letter, but he did speak of Annalie:
Nimira, I know you are a girl of good moral character-better than my own-and I hope my letters don’t make you uncomfortable. I know you are friendly with my wife, and I know I shouldn’t write any other woman but her, especially you, considering how I once offered to run away with you.
I’m not trying to woo you anymore, Nim, I swear to that. It was the biggest mistake of my life to even consider it, and I know I am the villain in this piece. You know the facts of what happened between us: I cursed her in an attempt to save her while she was sick. I left her touched by the dead, trapped in the dark, haunted by spirits.
But do you know how it feels to harm someone you love? To see them changing, to know you caused it, to be helpless to stop it? You do know how it feels, I think. And at first, for Annalie there was only pity and regret and thoughts of trying to lift the curse, to put things back to how they were.
At some point, I was forced to admit that lifting the curse was beyond my power, and at the time I felt like the cursed one. Annalie didn’t want to see me. She wasn’t girlish and playful anymore, but she also wasn’t depressed and miserable. She was turning into that person she has become-strange and wiser than her years….
I admit I am slightly frightened of her. After all that’s happened, a part of me still longs to see that bright young girl who couldn’t dance well, and I have such trouble knowing how to relate to her anymore.
I am not sure, in saying all this, if I am looking for your sympathy or advice, or if I am merely trying to warn you that Erris might be changing with all he’s been through, and I hope you can weather it better than I could.
Strangely, I almost wanted to cry when I read this, and I wasn’t sure why. Was I terrified that Erris was changing into someone I couldn’t understand, or was I merely relieved to know that someone else shared my pain? I took a deep suppressing breath.
Now I picked up the letters from Karstor and Annalie, noticing suddenly the postmarks. They were the same.
Sure enough, Annalie wrote:
Linza and I have moved into Dr. Greinfern’s apartment. Vestenveld is rather isolated and he was concerned for my safety there. Several people have come nosing around since the public learned about me. I’m not worried, but Dr. Greinfern’s concern is reasonable, and the house has always been too large, especially with Hollin away.
Of course I don’t want you to worry. Dr. Greinfern has made things very comfortable for me. Moreover, I must say I’m fascinated to learn more about his work and how matters unfold with the fairies. He’s a very intelligent man. Hollin would never have talked to me about magic and politics, but Dr. Greinfern sits and talks to me and explains things very thoroughly. I think he’s lonely himself, poor man.
Karstor barely referred to the arrangement, merely saying he thought it better if Annalie stayed with him, but he did call her Annalie, not Mrs. Parry. He wrote me a very long explanation of jinn.
It’s hard to get much concrete information about jinn, because they are surrounded by a certain magic that makes people forget them and what they’re capable of. Besides that, their history belongs to antiquity, and surely is as much myth as fact. It’s commonly believed that they are humans with a streak of demon blood. I am never inclined to trust anything that brings up demons. Writers love to bandy about the notion of demons because they’re very sensational. I suspect storytellers have done the same for thousands of years. But whether or not they have demon blood, jinn are certainly powerful-and pitiable, really, it seems to me.
Thousands of years ago, it is said the jinn did something or another to infuriate a king who was, in turn, favored by the angels. The king cursed the race of jinn to serve his kingdom of men forevermore. Even after the king died, even after his descendants died, even after his palace fell into ruins, the jinn would be trapped forever in the king’s collection of vessels-oil lamps and decanters and such. To this day, any man who finds one of the vessels can expect the jinn to serve him.
This matched the myths I had heard. Sometimes my father even used to say, if I wished for something impossible, “Travel west for thirty days and your wishes will be answered”-a reference to that palace in ruins. I was never sure it was actually real. Travelers spoke of it, but no one I knew ever actually found a jinn. Then again, maybe they would forget about it if they had. It made my brain hurt to think of it.
Karstor continued with a list of things jinn were rumored to be capable of and not capable of. Nearly everything one could imagine appeared on the first list. If the myths were true, we were most definitely out of luck.
“I believe the best defense is likely spirit protection,” Karstor concluded. “Unfortunately spirit magic is not so common. I’ll try to find Ordorio and send him home, wherever in God’s name the man might be, and in the meantime, I’ll see what help I can provide. Don’t worry.”
Don’t worry? This hardly seemed a time not to worry. I sat for a long time, chin in hand, the other hand tapping the folded letter against my leg, pondering all these troubling letters-Hollin growing tanned and strong somewhere while Karstor and Annalie shared an apartment and a jinn of unknown power looked for Erris.
Of course, I shouldn’t be disturbed by Annalie moving in with Karstor. The logic was sound, the arrangement likely very proper-Karstor was old enough to be Annalie’s father, and while kind, he had always struck me as a private, withdrawn person. But was it really the only safe place she could go?
I suppose I wanted Hollin and Annalie to have a happy ending, just as I wanted a happy ending for Erris and myself. What would Hollin do if he came back? If Annalie was lost to him, and Erris lost to me?
Was I worried Hollin would continue to express interest in me?
Was I even worried I might be tempted to reciprocate?
Hollin was fully alive. Safe. Handsome. I didn’t love him-no, of course I didn’t, but… what if he changed enough that I could?