Chapter 76 #2
He places a hand on the young man’s back, perhaps in his early thirties. With heavy tears filling his eyes, the man makes his way to Niles’s casket in the ground. Not yet covered in dirt.
“Niles was a father to me when I was taken from my papa,” he says with a tight throat.
I look at Marilynn with confusion. Though her chin trembles as she already knows who this is.
I hesitate. “When was that?”
“Twenty-one years ago.”
I think back and look to Dessin.
“In the Vexamen Prison?” he speaks up for me.
The man shakes his head. “The Blackspire Ward of The North.”
Collectively, our family calculates this in our heads. We exchange looks. We shift on our feet. He was with Niles as a captive? He knew our Niles before he died?
As questions swim and float through my mind, I can see that for this man, his memories have been preserved over many years. This event happened for us a day ago.
“You were with him in the end?” Niklaus asks quietly.
The man’s black eyes lower to the casket. He thinks long and hard before he responds, taking a knee out of respect.
“I was the youngest captive there. Taken from my family by the Breed when I was only six years old. Niles said I reminded him of his son. He looked out for me. Took the beatings I was supposed to receive. He’d force me to close my eyes during the executions.
He’d shield me with his body when the mob threw stones.
” Those round eyes dart to Marilynn. “I wouldn’t have made it out of that terrible place without him. ”
Marilynn places her hands across her chest. She’s read the pages of this chapter. She’s read the words without the emotions coloring the page.
“He came up with a plan to get me out, to hide in the drainpipes until nightfall so I could escape to the coast and find safe passage home. I fled during the execution. Niles had to make a big scene, to give me my best chance at making it out. It’s why he was on that chopping block in the first place.
I was just a little boy, and he saved me. ”
One by one, we each hug and thank Rydran and Renly for coming. For sharing with us what Niles went through in his final days. What was going through his head when he was up there on that stage. That he saved a little boy’s life. I could not be prouder of my brother.
Before the end, Renly speaks with Ruth quietly, asking for passage back to the country that held him captive.
He let her know that Niles told him that one day, he might meet the next Mazonist leader, and if he wanted to learn how to govern his own people with wisdom and kindness, to look no further than his best friend, Ruth Mazonist.
She hugged him and agreed to take him back with her, allowing him to pay Niles’s kindness and sacrifice forward by doing good in the country he lost his life in.
After covering his casket with dirt, and moving his headstone into place, we stand around it and admire the words engraved there.
Niles Offborth
Friend
Brother
Husband
Father
We’ll see you again, our Golden Boy
Before everyone departs back to my house for dinner, I move to the other side of his headstone to speak. “I have something I’d like to close with.”
My family waits with dried cheeks and anticipation stilling their movements.
“When I met Niles in the asylum, he insisted on telling me all about his belief in soulmates. He was so passionate of the idea that there is that one person for everyone. That divine other half who was aligned with the stars. Well, he gave me a definition of soulmates that I have agreed with every day since…until today. Soulmates: when you find them, there is no life without them. Now on this day, as I stand in front of Niles’s soulmate and beloved wife he has left behind—I can tell you, like many things, he was wrong.
There is life still. Because he is not gone!
Not really. He lives right here…” I hold one hand over my heart, and the other over Marilynn’s.
“He is that warm feeling when you hug someone you love. He’s the snide comment.
He’s the inflated egotistical thought you’ll get when you look in the mirror.
He’s in every joke you hear. The laughter of children.
He’s the wind and the trees. And he’s cheering his wife and son on, every second he’s gone. ”
I touch Niklaus’s cheek and break apart. “He was your mother’s soulmate, but he loved being your dad more than anything in the world.”
Niklaus’s eyes fall closed. In peace. In guilt. In sorrow. In complete and utter loss of words.
“Now, we’re going inside to eat all of Niles’s favorite foods. We’ll drink and tell his most embarrassing stories. Because our golden boy isn’t gone. He’s just waiting for that special group hug when we’re all ready to join him.”
As Rydran, Renly, Krimson, Sapphire, and Niklaus enter the house—my lifelong found family remains at Niles’s grave. Kane comes to the front just for this.
With a confusing mix of smiles and tears, we complete the group hug in honor of Niles.
And it’s sad, every group hug merged so delicately into these passing seconds.
It’s the hug around Ruth when she lost her legs.
It’s the hug when Dessin broke me out of captivity with Absinthe and Albatross.
It’s time on the Fun House stage when we’d catch each other and drop Niles just to embarrass him.
It’s a ray of sunshine and a dark storm cloud perfectly aligned.
It’s a Niles group hug that will not be whole for a long, long time.