Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (7 page)

Shísha
poked at the fire of her own small camp with her scorched elk antler as Adria approached.

“
You still make Aeman steps,
” the seer complained as Adria stood before her across the fire. “
My ancestors say you’ve awakened them.
”

“
Few ears are as keen as yours, Aunt,
”
Adria smiled. “
If I flew with the eagle’s wings, you would not be caught unaware.
”

The woman nodded and blinked her too-pale eyes. She had been blinded when very young, but her other senses had been sharpened, and now she ran among the Runners, for she saw into places few would ever know this side of death. Shísha
was so sensitive to subtleties of sound and motion, thought and feeling, that she mostly kept apart from the others, especially in recent months. She
complained of anyone, even the Runners, as “
far too noisy.
”

Like many of the Mechushegiya, the Holy Ones
,
much of what she said was half joke, half wisdom. Adria could never have guessed her age. Her limbs seemed as vital as the younger Hunters among them, but her face bore a timelessness, and her knowledge and wisdom were counted great among the Aesidhe elders.

When she spoke, it was with Yachaiotosu
, The Voice of Many in One.
Truth.

“Tonight I speak your tongue, for you will leave with it. And I will speak your Aeman name, Adria Idonea, for it is a beautiful name, and should never be forgotten, no matter where you walk.”

“You honor me, Lichushegi.”

Shísha
stoked the fire a bit more, more out of contemplation than real need, and she seemed to watch the sparks and bits of ash as they rose up and vanished amidst the tall limbs wreathing the stars. Her eyes moved always, as if in waking dreams. Even when she rested, they were rarely completely closed. Or perhaps she had little need of rest, only Tainábe.

“You are a child of the Spring,” Shísha said. “You love spring the most, more even than summer.”

“Yes,” Adria smiled.

“Summer is tame. We expect its warmth and its sun. And when it fails us, we find it in fault.”

Adria wasn’t sure who the “we” was. It didn’t seem exactly the way she felt, and certainly not how Shísha
must feel herself.

“The spring is different,” Shísha
mused, and the limbs above creaked a little in the wind, as if in agreement. “It is stranger, full of change. Sometimes simple, sometimes sudden. The air stirs or storms. The waters rise or flood. The trees and the earth drink and breathe more deeply… even gasp themselves into bloom in a single dawn.”

Adria nodded and smiled at this. It fit her well enough. She felt saddened and anxious all at once — half of her empty and the other half thirst, as the saying went. Still, she felt a calm beneath it, a calm that she had begun to take for granted, which had begun when she first joined the Aesidhe three years before. It was there, still — and maybe if she held the feeling, she could take it with her back... home.

“And spring is war,” Shísha
nodded, “Which you also still love, though you fear to see this in yourself, for you are young, but not young.”

Adria reddened a little at this. Despite all that had happened, all she had learned, she knew it to be Truth.

“The Aeman have taken many of our own people away from us, and they will take many more.” Shísha
didn’t always trace her thoughts well for the outsider. And for her, everyone was something of an outsider. Nonetheless, she almost always said what needed to be said, or else was silent. Adria had learned not to second guess her, nor to assume the simplicity of her words. There was a space here, though, for an answer of some kind.

Adria spoke very slowly, with care for each word. “If I could, I would remain as one of you. I would fight for you, and join the long retreat which comes. I would die as one of you.”

Shísha
only nodded, with no sign of emotion.

“I say what you already know to be true of me, Lichushegi,” Adria continued. “I say this because… because where the Aesidhe heart may not have had a choice, the Aeman heart has, and I have made a decision for both. But… where the Aesidhe heart returns me to my brother, my father, and my father’s kingdom, the Aeman heart longs to remain here.”

“I understand,” Shísha
responded, with a small nod. “You wish to show me your weakness. You wish for healing.”

“I wish for the knowledge which brings calm to the heart.”

Shísha
considered. Adria waited, head down. She breathed deeply, and she stilled her body and mind.

“No,” Shísha
said at last. “That is not what you want. Not yet.”

Adria raised her head to see Shísha
shaking hers.

“You love the war within yourself, your two webs and your two hearts,” Shísha
continued. “You do not wish to choose. You want the heart of peace that many among us have, but you still follow the Fire Heart, the fierce heart of defiance.”

It took Adria a moment to understand her words. Then she swallowed, and even an Aeman could have heard the sound across the space. She felt the truth of the admonition which, strangely, wasn’t spoken as one — it mattered little to the sting of conscience Adria felt.

It is true
…
I asked to be a warrior among the Aeman, and now I am a Hunter among their enemy, destroying those I would have joined, had I been allowed. Where would I have ended, had Father allowed me that final request, somehow?

Adria offered, a little weakly, “A mind divided can only defeat itself.”

Shísha
chuckled. “Good words. You have learned them well, but many of the best sayings have a bit of a trick within them.”

Again, Adria was a little slow to understand.

“Remember that being a whole person does not mean destroying half of yourself,” Shísha
offered. “Healing does not mean denying that you are wounded. It means joining all parts into a whole. Even enemies can grow into friends, allies, lovers... We need not destroy each other to become a people of peace, nor can we ignore one another’s existence. It is the same for a nation, for a family, for the self. It is the same on the outside as within. No matter how much we may use the word, there is no Other.”

Adria nodded, and she realized truly, just then, that this could very well be the last time she spoke with Shísha, with Preinon Watelomoksho, with Mateko.

If I had only one thing to ask…
Adria thought, and decided quickly. “
Why do we want what we want, Chosen Mother?
”

Shísha nodded for a long moment. It was a good question, whose answer was neither given swiftly nor easily.
“To stop any village from burning, you must know why it burns.”

Adria remembered. And Adria Understood.

“Zho wateli limiyati,”
Adria said. “We would burn what we know for the desire of something new.”

“Too often it is True,” Shísha nodded.

“
The words work better in Aesidhe,
”
Adria smiled, nodding, having relearned her own lesson with words. “Aeman is a weak language for wisdom.”

Shísha
shrugged. “Aeman is a young language, a much-borrowed language. It is a language of war, and there is purpose in it. It too will grow into itself, become whole, just as we pray its people will.”

“Will it be too late for us?”

Shísha
gave no sign of response. It made it easy for Adria to again assume that, somehow, Shísha
might actually know the future. And Adria realized, as well, that she didn’t truly want to know such a future herself, even were it carved in stone.

Still, I see a little,
Adria nodded, then spoke aloud. “You sent Mateko to follow me yesterday. You knew I would fail.”

“It is not that simple,” Shísha
frowned. “But… I sent him. It is True”

“What is it that you saw?” Adria dared. “And… what is it that I saw?”

“Tainábe?” Shísha answered. “You saw what some of us see, when we are most deeply aware, but most do not believe. You saw what I see in almost every moment.”

Adria stilled her impatience. She was meant to think upon this. And still… she was meant to ask. It was almost a game sometimes, with Shísha. But then Shísha
would probably say that games had a purpose as well. Adria could say it herself, for she had long played the game of kings.

So Adria closed her eyes, and she breathed, and she welcomed the careless memory. She felt the cold, the moonlight, the time of waiting before the hesitation. The blur gray motion, and before, at the edge of her notice, a figure. A figure, faceless, hooded and robed. A man.
Watching
.

Watching until watched. And then…

“You see what I see,” Adria whispered. “You see one of… us, but not one of us.”

“I see those who are meant to change this world, and those who are meant to watch. I see those who choose their path, and those who wait for the hunted to come to them. And I see and know that we are not the only ghosts who walk the Hei-land.”

Shísha said the Aeman name with a strange emphasis on each syllable — the way it was once spoken, Adria realized, her history lessons from the Sisterhood returning — the way only those now dead had spoken it.

This, as much as anything, sent a chill through Adria. Shísha
was no nursemaid, full of superstition. Her words did not need the frailty of a child’s fears to give them weight. And there was a weight in Adria’s stomach, then. The anxious uneasiness she felt when speaking of forbidden things, when frightened to turn a corner in a strange deep corridor of her childhood.

“There is one thing more I would teach you,” Shísha said. “One think I have seen, but may not have the chance to tell you again.”

Adria opened her eyes.

“There are five great rites among our people, taught to us long ago by the White Wolf Woman,” Shísha
continued. “These you know.”

Adria nodded patiently, immediately feeling a little ridiculous for it.

Shísha continued, “There was once a sixth.”

“Yes,” Adria said. “The Sun Dance.”

Shísha
nodded, poking at the fire a little more. “We… are a traditional people. But traditions are not… laws, like the Aeman have. They are not written down, as the prayers of your Sisterhood. The Aesidhe traditions live as the People live, and as the People change, so must our traditions. We choose not to honor the Sun Dance any longer, because we remember the sacrifice of its last dance. But there is an emptiness where this dance once filled our people’s lives. Our Hunters feel it most, for it was their way to show their sacrifice to the People.”

“
I do not understand
, Lichushegi,” Adria shook her head. She understood the words, but not the deeper meaning, not the relevance.

“Many were lost to us that day. It is what made us who we are now. And many have been lost since, no matter the strength and the speed of our Hunters, our Runners. And again we must change. We may retreat, but this does not mean we must be destroyed. And what we have lost must be returned.”

“The Sun Dance,” Adria nodded, though still she did not understand. “The Fire Heart. The Black Tree.”

“The Sun Dance is no more,” Shísha shook her head. “But soon we will make a new Ceremonial for the Hunters, a new dance. It will be a dance of the dead, a Ghost Dance, when those who have left us will return, and no King and no army can strike them down. When the ghosts dance, our fallen will walk again, and our enemy will fail against us.”

Adria sat a moment in silence. She had never heard such a thing before… such an open prophecy from Shísha, or any other Mechushegiya. It sounded more akin to Taber’s mystic revelations than anything of the Aesidhe. In spite of this strangeness, or perhaps because of it, Adria said, simply and honestly, “I hope I will see this day.”

And Shísha turned her eyes upon Adria, and they stilled, and Adria knew that, somehow, she could be seen. “Then know this, Adria Idonea, Princess of Hei-Land and Hunter of the Aesidhe... You
will
see this day, for you will be among those who return.”

The Voice of One as Many.

Adria could not turn away, could not close her eyes, could not even breathe for a long moment. And when breath came, it felt as if she had risen from the water, drowning.

Despite the myths of her childhood, despite the years of Sisters and their tenets and their unknown god, and despite the servants and their superstitions, for the first time Adria believed something without having understood it.

Blind faith
, Adria wondered…
The faith of blindness
. It is something she had once prayed for, when her vision of the world had grown too terrible, her place within it too difficult to understand.
Knowing without seeing
.

“
You have taught me well,
”
Adria whispered.
“
And I have no gift for you, Chosen Mother
.”

And she simply rose, leaned over, and kissed the women upon her forehead — more an Aeman parting than and Aesidhe one. Shísha
raised her hand and touched Adria’s cheek gently, smiling. “Bring me something from across the sea…sneak it home in your pack.”

Adria laughed, cried. “
Until that day, you have my thanks and my love.
”

“You are welcome, Chosen Daughter. You always will be.”

And Shísha returned to the full consideration of her fire, without speaking again, and without even seeming to notice Adria’s parting.