The Girl in the Tunnel
Iturned.
She was standing a few feet behind me in the tunnel, barefoot, wearing a nightgown slightly too large for her. Her hair, black in the dim light, caught streaks of deep indigo and wine-red whenever it found the sun.
She had been there for some time. The announcement was a choice.
"Your mother is right," I said.
"She says many things that are right." She tilted her head and looked at me carefully. "You have golden hair. And golden eyes." A pause. "And you stare at two children." She considered this. "You must be the golden eyed woman my mother doesn't like."
And you must be Ivanoxa’s child, I thought to myself.
I said nothing.
I reminded myself that children in Morrath were not children the way children elsewhere were children and that whatever Nox was her daughter had not chosen her mother any more than I had chosen mine.
Still. I could not stop wondering what a child was doing roaming the tunnels alone in her nightgown at whatever hour this was.
"What are you doing down here?" I said.
She looked at me as though the question had a very obvious answer she was deciding whether to share.
"Walking," she said.
She looked past me at the ward. At the two bassinets. At Saurin asleep in the chair. Then she pointed at the small stack of books near the bassinets.
"Why are they reading council ledgers?"
I laughed before I could stop myself. "Those are storybooks."
She looked at me. "What is a story?"
"Something that happened," I said. "Or something that did not happen but feels like it could have. Someone writes it down so other people can read it and feel what the people in it felt."
She considered this. "Why would you want to feel what someone else felt?"
"So you do not feel so alone in whatever you are feeling yourself."
She was quiet. Then, “I should like to try one of those."
"If you can find one I will read it to you," I said. "Or perhaps your mother will."
Something in her voice when she answered was careful. "Perhaps."
“When I was your age I wanted someone to read me a story too,” I offered. “But I did not have anyone.”
“What sort of story did you want them to read you?”
“There was one I would always hear other parents telling their children. It was called The Hare and the Crown. I was fascinated with it, but I was never able to hear how the ending really went.”
“So you still do not know it?”
I laughed. “There is a rhyme on the first page. I know some of it, but just not the ending.” I paused. “So I simply made one up in my head.”
Aviaryn said nothing in response. Instead, she looked back at the ward. Ari had shifted in his bassinet, one small fist raised above his head the way he slept when he was deeply under.
"They are very small," she said.
"They are."
"Do they do anything?"
"Not yet. But they will."
She seemed to find this acceptable. We stood in the tunnel together in the dark with the ward between us and my children and I did not ask her again what she was doing down here because I already understood that in Morrath that question had a different answer than it would have anywhere else.
"They are lucky," she said quietly. "To have someone watch them sleep."
I did not say anything to that.
"There is a man who comes and sits near the tunnel," she said. "On the other side. Every evening until morning. Sometimes all day." She paused. "He looks sad." Another pause. "One time I saw a tear fall down his cheek."
She said it the way she seemed to say most things, as though it was not an important statement at all.
Something in my chest clenched.
"Do you know him?"
My eyes filled before I could stop them.
"That is my husband," I said.
She looked at me. "Why are you crying?"
"Because I miss him very much."
She considered this. "He is usually here." She glanced back at the ward. "I wonder if he is dead." A small shrug.
Were the thought not so painful, her nonchalance might have made me laugh. "I will come every day and check." I looked at her. "But if you see him, can you tell him something for me?"
"What?"
"Tell him I'm alive. Tell him I love him. And tell him I'll find a way back to him."
She looked at me with those very still eyes. Then she nodded once, as though this were a perfectly reasonable errand, and turned and walked back the way she had come, barefoot and unhurried, disappearing into the dark without looking back.
I stood there a little while longer.
Then I went back to the Darkway.