Eventually Mari subsided to shivering, then finally was able to speak again, her voice sounding as lost as the place in her heart. “Gone. They’re gone. And it’s my fault for believing the lies of my Guild.”
“They are not gone,” Alain said.
“Yes, they are. How can I ever face them now? They never heard from me when I was an apprentice. I’ve been able to visit them for years and I never tried, never did anything. They must think I’m an awful Mechanic who looks down on them and wants to pretend they never existed. I can’t possibly ever face them.” Mari buried her face in Alain’s chest. “Why did you have to tell me this? It hurt less before, because at least I could blame them.”
“It is not too late.”
“Yes, it is!”
“It is too late for me to see my parents,” Alain continued, and Mari winced. “They are dead. You still have a chance to make it right.”
“Alain,” Mari whispered, “I can’t. I’m not strong enough, I’m not brave enough. I can’t go there.”
“You are not alone.”
This time it meant another thing, and she pulled back a little to stare up at him.
Alain nodded to her. “You do not need to be strong enough alone. You have a friend who will help you.”
“Would you really? But, Alain, even then—”
“I will be beside you.”
“What if they find out that you’re a Mage and they hate you?”
“If you are reassured that they love you, whatever they think of me would be a small thing.”
Mari’s despair was replaced by fear mingled with wonder. “Maybe I can, if you’re there with me. Maybe.” Mari looked out across the water, to the west where Caer Lyn lay, trying to grasp everything that had just happened. “My mother didn’t abandon me.”
“No.”
“I don’t have that in my blood.”
“No.”
“I could be a good mother, if we’re ever blessed with children. Maybe. At least I can try my best.” She turned her head to look directly at Alain. “Do you still want to get married?”
The clearest smile she had ever seen on him illuminated Alain’s face. On an average person, it would have been a small bend of the lips, but from someone trained as a Mage it was amazing. “Yes.”
Mari kissed him long and deeply, having to pause afterwards to catch her breath. “Then I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to promise myself to you. I tell you that right now. We’ll be married. I can’t believe it took me this long to be willing to say that. I can’t remember where or when it happened, but at some point I stopped being able to imagine life without you in it. And though I don’t know why you like me so much, and I don’t know what I’ve ever done to deserve your love, you’ve shown that you love me more than I ever thought anyone could. So I’m proposing to you now even though you proposed to me back in that inn west of Umburan. I want you to know that I want this as much as you do. Nobody and nothing will ever separate us.”
When Alain finally spoke, his voice was rough with more emotion than she had ever heard from him before. “I will never leave you. I wondered if your fears were about me, if my being a Mage was still something you could not overcome, or if you found other things about me wanting.”
“Stars above, Alain, you’re perfect. Except for little things. I looked for flaws, believe me. I wanted to run when I realized I was falling in love with you. But I guess this destiny of yours had its little joke with us.”
“I hope you retain this illusion about my perfection,” Alain said. “And I will remain certain that you are indeed perfect. Except for little things.”
“I think there’s a few big things, but we just resolved the biggest. You do realize that I’m getting the better deal, don’t you?” said Mari, fighting back tears again.
“On that we must continue to disagree.” Alain looked behind them, toward the east. “It will be dawn soon. Shall we watch the sun rise together, on this first day of a new day for us?”
She sat next to him, gazing eastward where the sky was beginning to show the tint of dawn, half afraid this was a dream as well. “Right now I don’t care if I never bring a new day to the world. This new day for us is enough.”
“That may be out of our hands,” Alain suggested.
“We could always give up, but I guess you and I aren’t the kind of people who give up. It does scare me, Alain, that…” She braced herself, then said it. “That I am the daughter of Jules. That I actually have a chance to overthrow the Great Guilds. Because there are so many things that could go wrong, and so many people could be hurt. I don’t know if you heard what that apprentice in the far-talker room on the ship said, but apparently there are Mechanics who are starting to believe things about me, too. It’s just crazy.”
He smiled at her again. “You are more than you think you are.”
“Says the man who thinks I’m more beautiful than Asha,” Mari replied, “who herself must be getting burned by the intensity of my bonfire right now.”
“You are more beautiful than Asha,” Alain began to protest.
“And you are delusional. Sometimes I wonder if you believe that I’m just one more imaginary thing in a world you believe to be an illusion, and you’re thinking you can change me just like you can change other things.”
He sounded puzzled by her statement. “What would I want to change about you?”
“How long a list do you want?”
Alain actually laughed for a moment, for only the second time since she had met him. “I am afraid my fate is to love you as you are.”
She grinned. “Another word for fate is doom, you know. Or destiny. Should we invite destiny to our wedding?”
The sun peeked up over the horizon in a sliver of dazzling brightness as Alain answered. For the moment, there was no hint of a storm threatening. “I have a feeling that destiny will be there whether we invite it or not.”
The rays of the rising sun brought light to the sky and shone on the peaks of mountains rising from the sea ahead of them. Mari used the sight of those mountains to adjust the course of their boat, her eyes sometimes distant as if she were trying to recall old memories.
Alain knew that feeling well enough. Strange how, given the differences in our lives before we met, so many things are similar between us even if the reasons are not the same. He watched her, thinking that Mari looked more relaxed than he had ever seen her.
At one point she gave him a half smile, eyes sad. “There are some walls I need to knock down before we get to the island. I’ve been building them for about ten years, so they’re pretty strong.” Mari paused as if gathering resolve, then spoke hesitantly. “Alain, what would you have done if your parents had lived and you’d gone back to them, and they’d rejected you like you said your grandmother did? You don’t have to tell me, if it’s too hard to think about, but I guess I’d like to know how you might have dealt with that.”
“I am not that good with people,” Alain said, his own reluctance probably obvious to Mari. The idea of that happening—of his parents rejecting him as his grandmother had—hurt a great deal even to think about. “I have too little experience with expressing feelings.”
“You’re a lot better than you think you are, Alain.” She forced another smile at him. “Can you try to imagine what you might have done? Please?”
Alain nodded to her. “I… think I would have told them that I had done as they wished, that even though I had become a Mage, I had remembered them. I would have told them that even though they rejected me now, I would always remember them.”