Something else occurred to her as she worried at her thoughts like a puppy with a bit of rag. This was the first morning in months when she hadn’t woken up with the claustrophobic feeling that her entire family was closing in on her. It always seems as if they’re right beside me, breathing over my shoulder, even when they ‘re in the next room. Now that might have been because the cubby she had shared with Shandi was scarcely bigger than a closet. . . .
But it might not. People are all beginning to irritate me lately. How many times have I gotten away from someone feeling as if they’ve been rubbing my nerves raw? How many times have I wanted to shove them away? For that matter, how many times have I been feeling as sick as the person I was treating until I got away from them?
Not that she was all that comfortable around people; that had always been Shandi’s gift. Shandi could make a friend out of a stranger in the space of a few words; unless Keisha was giving explicit instructions to someone or bargaining with a merchant, she always felt tongue-tied and awkward with strangers and friends alike. She actually preferred to be around the sick and injured, in a way, because then she had complete control over the situation.
For that matter, you couldn‘t really say that I actually have friends, not like Shandi’s. For me, a friend is someone I can get along with, like Alys of the Fellowship - but you don’t see her inviting me to dinner or sharing confidences.
She had to chuckle a little at that, despite the morose turn of her thoughts. Sharing confidences, indeed! And what sort of confidences would Alys be likely to share? Stories about the love lives of the chirrasl
Still and all, maybe that was why she got along better with Alys than her neighbors or her family. Neither of us is very good with people. Animals are simpler, I suppose. Animals certainly have less complicated emotions, and are never upset when you say the wrong thing.
In the thin, clear light of dawn, she saw yet another whole new side of Shandi that she hadn’t really expected; Shandi as her guardian. In retrospect, Shandi had spent a lot of time protecting her from having to deal with other people in day-to-day matters.
A thousand memories came flooding back, of Shandi responding to silent summons or unspoken entreaties as if she heard them, and taking the attention of others off Keisha with a word or a laugh.
And Shandi spent a lot of time keeping Mum and Da from worrying at me.
How had she not noticed, all this time? And now what was she going to do without that protection?
She frowned at herself for being such a coward. Cope, that’s what I’ll do. I’m a big girl.
She would just have to steel herself and learn how to interact socially with other people. She wasn’t stupid, after all, she could learn.
For a moment, though, it almost seemed as if her best option wouldbe to travel to Haven in Shandi’s wake and enroll in Healer’s Collegium!
Oh, yes, and just how am I to do that? I’ve nowhere near enough money to travel that far, and there’s no magic Companion to carry me off and see that I don’t get into trouble along the way -
No, that was a specious argument, and she knew it. Lord Breon would not only give her the money to travel on, he’d probably assign one of his guards and two horses to take her there. And if he wouldn’t - she had only to get as far as the nearest House of Healing, and the Healers there would see to it.
That was the trouble with arguing with herself - she had to be honest. She chuckled sourly and adjusted her blanket. I’m so bad with people I can’t even win an argument with myself.
All right, the obvious problem of leaving her people without someone at least marginally qualified to help them, was an excuse. She had to face it; the real reason she didn’t want to go was -
I don’t want to leave, to go off somewhere among total strangers for at least two years, to some huge city where I would be totally lost.
The very idea made her skin crawl. All those strangers, and nowhere she would know to go where she could escape them! All those strangers. . . oh, gods. No, and it’s no good to say that at least Shandi would be there, because she’s going to be at Herald’s Collegium. She’ll be so busy becoming a Herald that she‘d be just as far from me there as she is now.
She just was not like her sister; she didn’t make friends easily, and she never would. She’d get so tongue-tied with the people at Healer’s Collegium that they’d probably think she was feeble-minded! It could be months before I managed to say anything sensible to strangers. And I’d be so lonely. . . .
The larger the crowd around her, especially of strangers, the more she withdrew and wanted to hide. The only time she didn’t feel that way was when she was on ground familiar to her - actually, or metaphorically. She was able to make desultory conversation with people she knew, with strangers in her own home, or if the topic had to do with things she already knew. At the Faires she invariably hung around the outskirts; at celebrations - well, generally she did exactly what she’d done last night, go to bed early. I’m just no good at social chitchat, I suppose.
She was absolutely certain her own nature would condemn her among the expert teachers at Healer’s Collegium. Until they actually gave me something that I already knew how to do - I’d look like a right idiot, I know it. And worse, I’d sound like one, too. She could just imagine being called on in a class to recite something from a lesson - it would be worse than when she’d had her lessons with the other village children! The old woman who’d taught them had soon learned not to call on Keisha for any recitations; any time she’d wanted to know what Keisha had learned, she’d have Keisha write it out.
But that was here - they wouldn‘t give me that kind of special consideration at the Collegium. How could they? I’d be nothing special there, just another student, not someone they were going to rely on to tend their ills.
Shandi, on the other hand, would be fine in Haven even without the Companion. That’s what Mum doesn’t understand about Shandi; everyone likes Shandi at first sight and goes out of their way to help her. They always have, and probably always will. That’s why she has so many suitors; they all think they’re in love with her just because she smiles at them and they‘re enchanted. They don’t realize that they feel that way because she’s just that way and can’t help being so nice to them that it makes them feel as if she’s nice only to them. Shandi has always assumed the best of everything, everyone, and every situation, and more often than not, they live up to it.
Keisha shook her head, and reckoned that she must have been born somber, or at least, without humor. Without humor, I suppose; I never can see what most jokes are about. Havens, I generally can’t tell when someone is telling a joke! And no one seems able to figure me out, that I don’t really enjoy noise and carrying on like everyone else seems to.