“Calm yourself, Irindel,” Murdock said from where I couldn’t see him, his voice filled with its usual diplomatic smoothness. “Your daughter has been through a trying experience, but felt she needed to relate the episode for our benefit. She would likely have been wiser resting first, but seems to have inherited a good deal of your disposition. ”
“Then perhaps one of greater wisdom should have seen to deciding the matter in her stead,” the man beside the woman Irin said in Centran while she looked indignant, his steady blue gaze now resting beyond me, most likely on Murdock. “One must be in full possession of one’s wits to see the necessary; should the situation be otherwise, those about that one must show sufficient concern to give assistance.”
“With all the experience you’ve had with Irin, Rissim, that’s easy for you to say,” Ashton put in, sounding much too amused for a situation like that. “One of the reasons your daughter tends to shield most of the time is because of the strength of her mind. If you combine that with Irin’s stubborness you get someone who isn’t that easily ‘assisted,’ no matter how concerned those around her are. You two may find yourselves glad she’s been gone all these years.”
“How dare you say something like that!” the woman Irin growled, her hands closed to fists as her furious gaze found her sister. “There’s nothing that will ever make me glad my child was stolen from me, nothing! I’ll make you regret that twisted sense of humor of yours, Asha, you wait and see if I don’t!”
“Surely, Irindel, there will be better, more appropriate times for recriminations,” Murdock said before Ashton could come back with an answer likely to continue the argument. “I, however, would consider it the perfect time for introducing yourself to your daughter, and in turn having her introduced to you. My study is just down the hall; why not use it before returning to your own house?”
Suddenly the woman’s eyes were back to me, and none of her previous anger was anywhere to be seen. As a matter of fact she looked more like I felt: completely at a loss with nothing of any sense or importance ready to be said. We stared at each other in silence for what felt like hours, neither of us apparently able to start taking Murdock up on his offer, and the double hesitation proved to be too much for Ashton.
“For pity’s sake, do you two intend playing statue for the rest of your lives?” she demanded, the words accompanied by the sound of rising. “Since you’re both incapable of taking a hint, let me put it another way: how about moving the reunion into the next room so the rest of us can get back to a conversation with words?”
She must have known her suggestion would do no more good than Murdock’s had, and wasn’t about to wait around to see it happen. Without warning her hand was suddenly on my arm, and before I knew it the cup of kimla was gone and I was on my feet. The next few minutes were very confusing in that Ashton took charge of me and Rissim began navigating Irindel, both efforts ending us all up in a small room a short distance away from the first. To this day I can’t call up a memory from then of how the room was furnished, but at the time it took me no more than seconds to notice that Ashton disappeared immediately without another word. That left just three of us in the room, and at least one of the three decided she probably would have been smarter staying right where she’d originally been.
“Perhaps it would be best, girl, if it were you who spoke first,” Rissim said after a moment, his deep voice very gentle. “It was, after all, we who allowed you to be taken from us, we who permitted the severing of your proper blood ties. Should you wish to voice anger at so vile a doing, the right is surely yours.”
I had been standing around on the carpet fur trying to find something to look at, but what Rissim said made me stop and think. How did I feel about it all, and if I didn’t really , believe these strangers were my parents, why couldn’t I look at them?
“I don’t yet feel any anger,” I said after a pause of my own, forcing my eyes back to where the two people stood. “I may decide it’s appropriate if I can ever get myself to believe all this on an emotional level, but right now I’m too confused and upset to believe in anything beyond daylight and dark. And if you want to be realistic about it, Ashton made a point that shouldn’t simply be dismissed. You’ve been looking forward to regaining a member of your family, but how do you know you’ll like the woman she’s become?”
It took quite a lot for me to get that question out, and while I was under a double light-eyed stare at that. There was no way to ever really know if what I’d missed would have been better and more satisfying for me than what I’d had, and that part of it was gone into the irretrievable past. My point was much more relevant to the time we stood in, and was the one causing most of my upset. At first I saw nothing but two people staring at me, no true expression on either face, and then I realized how wrong I was. Quiet tears were running down Irin’s cheeks, and the light of a very warm smile showed in Rissim’s eyes.
“Were the question of liking truly at issue, we would now have our answer,” Rissim said, the arm he had around his woman gently tightening as the smile spread to his face. “Our love shall always be for the child produced by a union of that love, yet liking, never so easily accomplished, is now the belonging of one who first considers our feelings in the matter. In no manner might a daughter such as that be unacceptable. ”
He seemed to be telling the truth, but the answer he’d given wasn’t really the one Iii been looking for. I hadn’t asked my question to impress anyone, just to find out something I needed to know, and then it carne to me that lowering my shield might be the way to get it. Most of the time it’s a good deal easier not knowing what others really think of you, but that time I wanted the truth even if it hurt. If all that turned out to be reality rather than a disturbing dream, the truth was something I had to have.
But the condition of my mind wasn’t something to be inflicted on those around me, most especially not without warning. Instead of simply dropping my shield I replaced it with my curtain—and the next instant was nearly bowled over. Reaching through the curtain showed that Rissim had been telling the truth as he saw it, the vast calm of his mind confirming his words, but Irin-! She wasn’t simply feeling agreement she was aching with it, her fiercely burning sense of pride nearly drowning in a flood of loss and guilt. Those reactions immediately made me think she couldn’t be trusted, a pointless, mindless thought I thrust away without knowing where it came from, and then I was able to understand why she felt as she did.
I hadn’t been told the truth until a few days earlier, but she had lived with it for all the years of my life.
No matter how good the reason, she had allowed her child to be taken from her, to be raised by hated strangers and never told who her real people were.
If her child hated her for it, or worse, simply had no interest in knowing her, there was nothing she would ever be able to do about it. It would come close to killing her, but could never, ever be changed.
I stood there feeling what she felt, understanding her more completely than I had ever done with anyone, realizing almost at once that she didn’t know our minds touched. Hers was bright and sharp, not possessing the strength of mine but one of the strongest I’d ever encountered, a loving, self-confident, normally self-satisfied mind that now quaked with terror. The fear I’d felt over not being liked was nothing when compared to her fear of the same thing, a nightmare shed lived with for so many long, empty years. The passing time had done very little to mar her prettiness, which meant I didn’t feel quite so strange when I opened my mind and my arms to her. She was, of course, the elder between us, but she was the one who needed a child’s comforting. She sobbed once before rushing to me, and then it was hard to tell whether there was more laughing or crying going on.