"I-I-I'm going to m-m-marry…marry her."
Garibond's smile nearly took in his ears, and he squeezed Bransen up close to his side and continued to watch the departing pair. He knew that such a thing could never be, of course, but he simply said, "She'll be a fine wife to you." Why would he deprive Bransen of his dreams, after all? What else could the poor boy possibly have?
When he looked at Bransen then, his thought was only reinforced, for rarely had Garibond seen Bransen smile so widely. And Bransen didn't look back at him, didn't even seem to feel the weight of Garibond's gaze. No, he kept staring out the window at Cadalye, and he kept smiling.
Sometime later, when the mother and daughter were long out of sight, Garibond remarked, "Well, I must get myself cleaned up and get some dinner to cooking." He gave Bransen another hug, then moved off and went about starting a fire and heating some water for stew. As he stood there stirring the pot, Garibond wondered about the boy's smile. Glad he was to see it, after their humiliation in the town. How horrible that had been!
But more horrible for him than for Bransen, Garibond understood, if for no other reason than the fact that the poor boy was quite used to such humiliation. He second-guessed himself for all those occasions he had allowed Bransen to journey into the town on an errand. True, Bransen was always eaget to go, and often begging to go, but had there been a single occasion in the last two or three years when the boy had gone to Pryd Town and had returned without mud on his clothing or blood somewhere? Given the experience today, Garibond realized more fully that many of those falls were far from accidental.
He thought of Dynard and SenWi as he stood there cooking, remembering his old friends. He watched the swirl of the stew, the thick liquid rolling back over to flatten the wake caused by the passing spoon, and that motion invited him to look more deeply into himself and his life. Garibond the hermit, he supposed, and he thought back to all the disappointments that had led him to this place. It hadn't been a sudden decision for him to move out here and settle in the abandoned shell of a cottage on the small rocky island. It had been a gradual drifting away from the disappointments he always seemed to find when around other people. He remembered when his sister had been killed by powries and how the soldiers of Laird Pryd, coming in just moments too late, had been more concerned with celebrating their victory than in worrying about Garibond's grief. While he had knelt there over his sister's body, the soldiers had cheered and danced, arguing over who could claim credit for which powrie killed.
"Aye, and what a wonderful life it's been," Garibond muttered over the stew.
The moment of self-pity passed quickly, as it always did with Garibond, and he turned his thoughts to the good things he had known, to Dynard again and SenWi, who had touched him deeply in so short a time. And of course, to Bransen, that awkward and fragile little boy. Garibond chuckled as he considered how frustrated other people always seemed to get when Bransen tried to speak, turning a simple statement into a long ordeal. Garibond didn't think of things that way with Bransen; to him, the boy's stuttering only lengthened the moment of revelation, like having a hooked fish put up a good and long fight or watching a refreshing spring storm roll in from far away.
He looked up from the stew to Bransen, then, and found that the boy had again taken out the Book of Jhest, and was now gently moving his hands across the pages. Bransen was always at that book, it seemed, ever since Garibond had shown it to him and had spent many days with him trying to explain the lettering. For some reason Garibond didn't understand, Bransen seemed to take a kind of solace in just looking at the flowery text. At first, the man had worried that the clumsy child would damage the book, but it had quickly become apparent to Garibond that Bransen was taking more care with the tome than anyone else ever could.
So he let the boy play with the book as often as he wished, and he never concerned himself with the well-being of one of the most important artifacts he had to tie him to SenWi and particularly Dynard.
The two sat down to dinner a little later, the room full of the rich aroma of the fish stew and wood smoke. Several candles provided the light, for clouds had thickened outside, hastening the onset of dusk.
"Good lettering in that book," Garibond remarked between bites. "You like looking at it."
Bransen's face twisted into a crooked smile.
"Does it take you away from all of this?" the man asked. "Can you forget what happened in the town when you focus on the letters in the book? Bah, what fools are those soldiers."
Bransen's smile twisted even more, finally settling into a perplexed expression, or the closest thing the boy could approximate. He started to respond several times, and Garibond caught on that more than his inability to quickly verbalize his thoughts was holding him back. Finally, Bransen brought one hand over the table, fingers outstretched and palm down.
"This iiiiis…take," he said. His arm shook from the effort as he forced the palm to turn upward without any wild flailing.
Garibond tilted his head curiously.
"Nnnnnnnth. Nnnnnnnth…th-this iiiis…re-re-re-receeeeive."
"Of course," Garibond said quietly, and he took Bransen's hand and slowly guided it off the table. He could see that Bransen was growing quite excited, and knew that type of emotion usually foreshadowed some wild movement from the damaged boy. Garibond had little trouble in imagining bowls of his fresh stew flying about the room.
But then, even as he brought the arm over the table side, it hit him, and he froze in place, staring wide-eyed at the boy. "What did you say?"
Bransen's face twisted as he tried to form the words, and he started to turn his hand over again, though Garibond still held it.
Garibond did it for him and brought the arm back up over the table. "This is take?" he asked, not willing to wait through the stuttered explanation.
Bransen nodded.
Garibond turned the hand over. "Receive?"
The boy's smile answered it all.
Garibond leaped up from the table so quickly that his chair skidded out behind him. He scooped up a candle as he went to the book, and bent low to study its open pages.
And there it was, on the very page Bransen had left open, one of the Jhesta Tu explanations of the differences of posture, the connotations of movement and position. Those acting in anger or superiority, the text explained, often reached for something from another with their palms down-the inference being that they took what they wanted without regard. Like the soldiers on the road, pushing Bransen and Garibond away, like the prince himself, kicking the boy without regard.
Those who lived a receptive life, an open existence in which they hoped to, and expected to, learn from others, must reach out with their palms up, inviting compliance and sharing.
But how had Bransen figured that out? Garibond had never read him this specific page!
The man turned to regard the boy. "Are you reading this?"
The twisted smile, the awkward nod.
"Reading?" Garibond asked with a gasp.
Bransen gulped for air, as if he was setting his jaw muscles so that he could try to answer. He did start to stutter something out, but it was irrelevant to Garibond, who had been thrown into complete confusion. How could an idiot read? How could Bransen, a boy who could hardly master the simple movement of putting one foot in front of the other, begin to decipher the intricacies of Dynard's flowing script?
He shook his head in denial, then gathered up the book and moved over to the table. He surprised and frightened Bransen as he swept the bowls from in front of him, caring not at all that they crashed about the floor. He placed the book down and flipped the pages, coming to one of the early lessons the Jhesta Tu placed upon their beginning students. A student would be bound by the ankles to a heavy weight, then dropped into a pool that was just deep enough to keep the student, fully extended, under water. As with most of the lessons and pages in the book, Garibond possessed only a rudimentary understanding. From what he gathered, the Jhesta Tu wanted to see if their students could free themselves without help.