Chapter 28
SULLHA
The dining hall was quieter than usual because the early breakfast rush had ended, and the second shift had not yet started filtering in.
Tomek was taking his time, dragging out the meal because he didn't want to go to class, but soon they would have to make room for the incoming crowd, and he needed to finish the sandwich Sullha had made for him.
They sat at the end of one of the long communal tables, near the open side of the structure where a light breeze came through.
The flatbread that she was eating with a smear of bean paste was good, but she was full already and wanted to be done.
"Are you going to eat the egg?" Tomek pointed at it.
"Do you want it?"
"Only if you don't."
She transferred the egg to his plate.
"You're not hungry because you ate your banana first. You're doing it all wrong. You eat the boring thing first, then the next boring thing, then the tasty thing. Banana is a tasty thing, so you eat it last." He smacked his lips. "The taste stays in your mouth."
Sullha laughed. "Can't argue with that, but you need to finish your sandwich and the egg now."
"I will." He swung his legs under the table. "My mouth is small. I can only take small bites."
"Sound logic." She smiled.
Tomek was a source of endless entertainment, but even his lecture about the proper eating sequence couldn't quiet the unease in her stomach.
Yaaf had not come yesterday.
She'd sat on the bench in the playground long past the time she should have taken Tomek back to their room to prepare him for his nightly shower.
Every slight change in the breeze had her turning around with excitement in her chest, expecting to see Yaaf materialize out of thin air behind her or beside her. When it was nearly dark, Tomek had come over, tugged on her hand, and said that it was time to go.
She was worried.
There could be a dozen rational explanations for why Yaaf hadn't come, but what made taking a deep breath impossible was the fear that the assassination plot had been discovered.
If something had gone wrong, she would have no way of knowing. There was no message that could reach her in the enclosure, and she couldn't ask anyone to check on him. She would just sit on her bench day after day until she was forced to accept that he wasn't coming back.
Sullha shook her head, dispelling the self-induced panic attack. She had to think positively, to believe that everything was okay.
Now she sounded like the Sacred Mothers.
"Mama."
"Yes, sweetheart?"
"Why are you sad?"
"I'm not sad. I'm just thinking."
"About what?"
"Stuff." She mussed his hair and smiled. "Boring grown-up things."
"Okay," he said, returning to swinging his legs back and forth under the table and nibbling on his sandwich.
"Finish it already so you can eat your banana," she said. "You'll be late for class."
His mischievous smile confirmed her suspicion that he was angling for being so late that she would allow him to skip class and go straight to the playground. She'd made the mistake of doing that once, and she'd regretted it ever since. Tomek hadn't stopped trying to get a repeat.
"You have five more minutes, and then we'll go, whether you've finished eating or not."
He pouted, and it was so adorable that her heart squeezed. How could her mother keep ignoring Tomek?
Sullha had tried to talk to her during dinner yesterday. She'd known it would be a futile attempt, but she had to try. Her mother had been sitting at the far end of the long table at dinner with two other women who worked in the laundry with her, and Sullha walked over and sat beside her.
"Hello, Mother."
Her mother had turned to look at her with those vacant eyes of hers. "Hello," she'd parroted.
"I was thinking that maybe you would like to come with Tomek and me to the playground tomorrow? I want him to know who his grandmother is."
Her mother had blinked at her with slow, unfocused eyes. "Why?"
"Don't you want to get to know your grandson? He's such a sweet boy."
"I have no interest in your son."
There had been no sharpness in her tone, and the words had not been meant to be cruel. Her mother had spoken in the same neutral, flat register she used for everything, the same tone she would have used to say that she had finished her bread or that the soup was warm.
She had no interest in getting to know her grandson.
Sullha had nodded and decided that there was no point in trying to pressure her mother to change her mind. She'd returned to the table where she'd left Tomek, finished her dinner, and left the dining hall without looking back.
When she'd put Tomek to bed that night, she'd lain down beside him, and when he'd fallen asleep, she'd allowed herself to shed a few tears.
Her mother's response hadn't been a surprise, but hope was a hard thing to kill, and some small part of her wished that her mother would show some interest.
Her mother had done that a few times when Tomek was a toddler. She'd sat on a bench in the playground and had even smiled, but she'd stopped after he'd turned three.
There was no love left in her mother's heart. She'd been worn down to a husk.
Sullha had tried to be forgiving, telling herself that some women broke more easily than others. Some just had less to start with, less determination to persevere despite the suffering. Her mother was one of the unlucky ones who didn't have that core of strength inside of them.
Perhaps her mother just didn't want to get attached to Tomek, knowing that he would be taken away at thirteen. To love a child in this place was to suffer a heartbreak, and many of the women chose to keep a distance from their children so it wouldn't hurt as much when the time came.
She could understand the choice logically, but her heart ached for all the neglected children who had to grow up like wild weeds with no one to tend to them.
Sullha couldn't do it that way. She loved Tomek with a fierceness that was sometimes frightening, and she'd always known that the price of that love would be losing a big part of her soul the day they came for him.
If Yaaf's plan worked, though, that day might never arrive.
She would not let herself fully believe that yet, because if it didn't happen, she would be devastated.
Sullha would believe it when she and her son were actually on a ship, the island was behind them, and no one was pursuing them to drag them back to the enclosure.
Whether it happened or not, though, she wasn't going to wait idly. Yaaf had given her a task to identify women who could be trusted and compile a list of possible candidates to include in their escape.
She hadn't removed her mother from the list even though she should. She just couldn't. Not even after the exchange of yesterday. The woman was still her flesh and blood, and Sullha couldn't leave her behind without having tried everything.
There was still hope for her mother. Away from this island, somewhere she would be free, she could heal, and she could love without fear.
Sullha resolved to try again.
A shift in energy had her lift her head and look to the right, but it wasn't Yaaf who had caused it. It was Asira. She stood with a tray in her hands, looking for a place to sit.
Sullha lifted her hand and waved.
Asira caught the wave, and her face lit up. She crossed to their table, set the tray down, and slid onto the bench beside Tomek.
"Hi, Tomek."
"Hi." Tomek smiled shyly at her. "Did you bring your pencils?"
"I always have at least two. Usually more."
"Are you going to draw me again?"
"Do you want me to?"
He thought about this with the gravity the question deserved. "No. I want to play."
Asira laughed. "I totally understand. Maybe next time?"
Tomek nodded.
Sullha stared at the girl. That laugh had sounded so carefree that it had been jarring to hear it from a woman of breeding age in the enclosure. Asira was young, but she'd been to the breeding building, and the fact that she could still laugh like that indicated that she wasn't broken.
"Tomek has a class with Saphira this morning," Sullha said. "After that, he has free play time until lunch, and we are going to the playground. Would you like to join us? You could draw my portrait."
Asira's eyes sparkled with excitement. "I would love to." She picked up a piece of flatbread. "We are on vacation, after all, so we should take advantage of all this free time until we have to resume our sacred task."
The bitterness in her tone made it clear that she didn't think of their task as sacred. Without it, her statement would have had a very different meaning, and Sullha would have been forced to deliver more bad news to Yaaf's friends.
Asira was obviously angry.
Underneath the brightness and the drawings and the laughter, the girl was bitter. The art and her cheerfulness served as a protective coating around that bitterness so it wouldn't burn her from the inside.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Let's enjoy the respite for as long as it lasts."
Asira nodded. "What time will you be at the playground?"
"Tomek's class ends at ten. We'll be there a few minutes later."
"I'll meet you there."
"I can't wait to see what you'll do with my face."
"I'll just draw it as it is. There is nothing to improve on."
Saphira's class was the same as always.
Sullha sat on a bench at the back of the covered area and helped wherever help was needed, which today consisted mostly of herding Pol back to his spot every time he wandered off. Tomek was in the front row with his back to her, concentrating on the letters he was tracing.
He was such a good kid, smart and kind. He would be an incredible person, given a chance to grow up somewhere that did not need him to become a weapon.
When the lesson ended, Tomek came running over with a page of white paper held up. "Mama, look. I made all the letters. Saphira said mine was the best in the whole class."
"You did a wonderful job."
"I know." Tomek thrust the page at her. "You keep it." He turned and ran ahead of her down the path toward the playground.