The Silences of Home by Caitlin Sweet Page A

“I wonder if Baldhron would still love you if you were a horse?”
    “No doubt,” Ladhra said, holding the letter under the spray of a fountain until the writing bled away. “He seems fairly single-minded.
Devoted
, I believe was his word.”
    Lanara lay and Ladhra sat, and the ivy whispered into their silence.
    “It’s strange,” Lanara said at last, “that I often feel so normal. As I do now. But then I’m so sad, or restless. I thought time would change this, make me feel the same always
—s
teady.”
    Ladhra angled her head into Lanara’s vision. “Foolishness. You’ve had a fairly remarkable year. It will probably take several more years to recover. Years which,” she added, “I hope you’ll spend here. Though you say you’re restless, and I fear we’ll lose you again.”
    “No, not yet. I’m not ready to go anywhere.”
    There were footsteps on the stairs then, and she saw Ladhra look up. “Seront, what is it? Does my mother need me?”
    Lanara rolled over and leaned on her elbow. The Queensguard was red-faced and sweating. She thought he might be trying not to lean against the door frame. “No, Princess,” he said. “I have brought someone to see Queenswoman Lanara.”
    He was nearly blind with sunlight and exhaustion. Colours blurred as the Queensman led him from a gate into the palace. Colours, shapes that somehow had no form, noises so loud that he could not hear them. Steps, on and on, to a place even brighter than the others. Brighter, but quieter. He raised his head and rubbed his eyes and saw falling water, trailing plants, clouds that he could touch. And her face, lifting to look at him.
    “He asked for you at the gate,” he heard the Queensman say. “He claims to know you. I was ordered to bring him here and to escort him away if he lied.”
    She rose and said his name like a question. She took two small steps and then she ran, and her arms wound around his ribs and held him.
    “My choice,” he said as he dropped to his knees on the stone.

ELEVEN
    She is standing on the deck of the ship, looking west toward her home. Her bow is slung over her shoulder, and her brown bag is beside her, its buckle winking daylight at him. He calls her name, but his voice is lost in thunder. He tries to walk to her, but the boards of the deck are slick with lynanyn juice. The blue pours over his feet and spatters his legs, and he trips and begins to slide, past snakes of rope and rolled-up carpets and writing trays full of wooden blocks. He slides until he can no longer see her. Then he falls.
    Nellyn lay with his arms and legs spread wide, feeling his heartbeats and the firmness of the bed. A soft bed, with cushions and a light sheet. He turned his head and saw a low table beside him with a candle on it. He had never seen a candle; it was her word, and he stared at the colours of its flame as the images of his sleep faded.
    When his eyes had adjusted to the candlelit darkness, he saw a shape he knew on the table. He reached for it slowly, his fingers trembling until they touched it. It was nearly ripe, its skin barely yielding. Not one he would have scooped out of the river, one that should have been on a branch still. One he would have left to water and birds and fish. He cupped it on his chest and watched the flame turn it from blue to black.
    “Would you like me to help you peel it?” She rose from the floor beside the table. He felt the sheet and cushions shift as she sat on the bed. She was wearing white, not blue and green. Her face and arms looked very dark.
    “Yes,” he said—a whisper, because he could not imagine his voice yet in this room. He watched her fingertips, her nails, the skin bending and breaking away from the fruit. Juice droplets fell onto the sheet. Her head was lowered, and she was smiling. Shonyn time would hold her here, her skin and the wavering candlelight and the night-blue of the lynanyn. But he watched her and knew he could not keep this moment; it was slipping