Chapter 28 Araphi
Araphi
Children of all ages swarm around Araphi, shouting, laughing, and calling out to one another.
It’s mid-morning on a lovely late-winter day, and she’s seated in the village hall, in a carved chair in front of the fireplace.
Two windows on one side of the room show the icy face of the Kald Mountains, but the sky outside is robin’s-egg blue and sunlight glints off the snow.
The windows are no longer frosted, as they’ve been all winter, and it’s positively toasty by the fire.
Araphi holds her lute and her voice is a bit hoarse from singing.
Somehow, Children’s Singing Hour, a fun evening pastime Araphi started months ago, has now become a regular three-times-a-week morning event.
She enjoys it very much, though it’s exhausting.
“Sing us another one, Phi!” calls out Pyla, a tiny girl with two straw-colored braids curled and pinned into knots on her head.
“We’ve been here half the morning already!” Araphi strums the lute, playing a teasing little run of notes. “Shouldn’t you be doing your chores?”
“No! Momma said we could stay with you until lunch if we wanted.” Pyla crosses her arms. “And that’s what we want!”
“Play ‘The Wheel and the Whaler’!” shouts Tim, a ten-year-old with light-brown skin and a head of curls.
“No! I want to hear ‘Cheese for Me, Please,’ ” Alba, Pyla’s twin, suggests.
“Not that one, Alba! We’ve heard it twice already!”
Their words pull Araphi back to spirited evenings at her own family’s table.
Not the formal dinners they would have with her Aunt Menorath and Uncle Baremon, but the dinners that were just for them.
The ones that felt the most at ease. Her mother would sit at the head of the table, between her two fathers, and all Araphi’s brothers and sisters would sit along the sides of the table, laughing, telling stories, and fighting to be heard.
It was a familiar, delightful chaos, and the kind Araphi felt the most at home in.
She feels the pang of missing them, brief but sharp. She doesn’t miss being the Clauneck heir, or the thought of marrying Denby, but there’s part of her that misses her parents and her siblings.
What must they think has happened to her?
She was supposed to be going to a spa for a few weeks, and now it’s been nearly four months, though it hardly seems it.
Each day here in Arkney has slipped, one into the next, full of fighting lessons with Sage, cooking and some magical lessons with Wren, and a hundred other things.
Time has seemed a magical, cozy thing that’s made space for her and Sage to just rest in together.
And Clauneck being shut out of her head all these months has made it even easier to not worry about her family, her responsibilities, and everything waiting for her back in Ashaway.
She’ll have to consider them soon enough, she knows.
“Play ‘Stormy Seas’!” a familiar voice calls out from the back of the hall. Araphi looks up to see Sage walking into the room, two steaming cups of tea in hand.
Warmth floods through Araphi. Sage’s injured knee is fully healed, given proper time and care, and there’s an ease to her movements. She’s relaxed over the last few months in Arkney, and she’s no longer the wary, always-alert ranger Araphi first met.
“Sage!” Tim shouts. “I got a new bow! Want to see me shoot it?”
Not to be left out, Pyla and Alba stand up. “We want to learn sword fighting. Please, Sage?”
Sage grins at the children as they run up to her, peppering her with questions. She calls out greetings to them all and hands Araphi one of the cups of tea.
“Honey, lemon, and mint, as you prefer, Bard.”
Gratefully, Araphi takes a sip. “My favorite, thank you. My voice can use a break.”
“I figured as much. We have to talk.” Sage’s smile falls just a bit.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Fear fills Araphi. Have they been found? Is something wrong? A dozen old worries—all things she’s forgotten during their peaceful stay in Arkney—rise to the surface.
Sage leans down and whispers, “I just heard from Wren. The snowfall has stopped south of us and the passes are melting.”
“How long do we have until they’re clear?”
“Three days at the most,” Sage says. “Wren tells me that once the melt starts, it goes quickly. Like spring can’t wait to arrive.”
Araphi swears under her breath and takes a long sip of tea. As the sweet, fragrant liquid slides down her throat, she swallows back the tears that have risen with Sage’s news.
The passes are melting, which means their time in Arkney is nearly done. Which means her and Sage’s perfect little interlude of happiness is nearly over.
Today is their last day together in Arkney.
It’s Araphi’s first thought when she wakes, and she sits up, looking around the room she shares with Sage. The space beside her in the bed is empty, and there’s a note on Sage’s pillow.
A—
Gone to work in the greenhouse, and then I’ll get our horses sorted for the journey. Meet me at the pond for one last walk around the village?
—S
Araphi can’t believe she’s overslept when she has so much to do. There’s packing, and saying goodbye to the villagers, and somehow thanking Wren for her hospitality—though truly, Araphi has no idea what gift could possibly do that—and playing one last evening in the mess hall.
And it’s her last night with Sage in this perfect space they’ve created together…
She clutches Sage’s note to her chest and falls back against the headboard.
Gods. How is she supposed to say goodbye? Or pretend she wants anything to do with her old life and her family and all that Ashaway has waiting for her?
You don’t have a choice, whispers a voice in her head, and it isn’t even her patron.
But is that still true? She could stay with Sage. They could have a life together. A vision passes through her mind of the two of them together, walking toward adventure along a faraway road, sword at Sage’s hip, lute on Araphi’s back, laughing at some private joke…
It’s all she wants at this moment.
If she chooses that path, though, she walks away from her family responsibilities, and from the part of herself that once belonged in Ashaway.
Which she wouldn’t mind, but she loves her mother, her fathers, and her siblings.
Does she really want to say goodbye to them forever?
Yael never intends to see their parents again, it’s true, but Menorath and Baremon were always perfectly awful to them.
They never once saw who Yael was, nor loved them for it; valued only what they could provide for the family as its heir.
Araphi’s parents love her, for all of their flaws.
Araphi sighs, reading Sage’s note once more.
Though she doesn’t want to, she has to decide: either a life with Sage, or a return to life with her family.
No matter what she chooses, she has to give up some part of herself.
She doesn’t want to say goodbye to her family forever—not the better parts of it, the people she can’t help but love—or to Sage.
She wants to do the right thing and the thing that makes her happy.
Gods, why must this all be so complicated?
Adventure was always temporary, wasn’t it? She was going to get Phi Runesong out of her system and then return home. Sage hadn’t even been part of those plans when she’d first made them.
Araphi’s had her fun. She’s been gone for months, and her family is probably terribly worried about her. But despite all that, she still doesn’t have Phi Runesong—brave adventurer, bold singer, lover of a fearless ranger and surprisingly gentle companion—out of her system.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever manage to do that,” she whispers, finally admitting it to herself after all the long months since she’d walked into Sage’s adventure party audition at the Pearl and the Grit.
What is she supposed to do with that knowledge, though? Is there truly no way her two lives can coexist? Is there no way Araphi Clauneck and Phi Runesong can be the same person?
She scoffs at the thought.
What’s she supposed to do, preside over a formal dinner, then sneak out to a tavern where Sage will be waiting, and then steal back to Denby’s bed?
The thought is too awful to stomach.
Araphi blows out a breath. Trying to wrap her mind around her two selves, what she wants, what she doesn’t want, and how she can possibly go through life without Sage.
Tears rise in her eyes and she brushes them away. Easier to push all those questions and worries aside, at least for one more day.
For one more perfect day in Arkney, she can still be Phi Runesong. She can still love Sage. She can still have a bit of freedom and adventure. She can still not face everything that waits for her if she returns to her life as Araphi Clauneck.
Letting out a shaky breath, she washes, dresses, and then grabs her new lute.
It isn’t as ornate as her mother’s lute, but it’s sturdy and well-made and she loves it because it’s her own.
She plays the first few notes of the ballad she’s been writing in secret since they arrived in Arkney.
It’s for Sage, of course, though she’s nowhere near done with it.
She pulls the piece of paper she’s been writing it on from the drawer in her bedside table, and begins to sing “The Ranger and the Bard”:
The ranger had seen many things
Wandered the farthest shore,
But never did she expect
To succumb to the allure
Of a bard from the finest family,
A girl good with a song,
And equally as talented
As the ranger was strong.
The party assembled beside the sea,
In a pearl most gritty and rough,
The bard sang for the ranger,
Of how life on the road would be enough.
Long the road stretched before them,
Treacherous and hard,
But they rode side by side together,
The ranger and her bard…