Hares and Jewels
COLSAR
Later that evening, Colsar was deep in thought. Asha Bear would need new jewelry. A new ring, perhaps, now that they had gotten married all over again.
He did not know which style of ring she would want best. She would not like the idea of additional jewelry and the expense, but he would find a way to get her something beautiful. Something perfect.
As for the original ring, they could save it for when Fiorakis came of age.
He frowned at the thought of Fiorakis being old enough to marry.
Colsar was still deep in thought when Aviaryn knocked once.
He opened the door and she stood in the corridor with a book in her hands, her expression somber and certain the way it always was.
She held the book out.
"Asharin likes this book," she said. "She wishes to read it to me. But until she returns you may give it to Fiorakis."
He took it. "Thank you."
She looked at him. Then she turned and walked back down the corridor. He was not sure about how to respond to children. Should he have insisted she stay and listen to the story too? Oh well.
He closed the door.
The room was warm. Saurin was placing Ari into his bassinet, her movements quiet and practiced. Cambra had Fiorakis against her shoulder, rocking her in the slow methodical way that had started working sometime in the past week.
He looked at the book in his hands.
He did not understand the point of reading to an infant. Fiorakis gave no reliable indication that she was aware of anything beyond her immediate physical needs and her brother's whereabouts. Ari seemed marginally more present but not by much. Neither of them was going to remember this.
But Asharin seemed to think it mattered. She had said it more than once. He had watched her talk to them when they were barely a day old, her voice low and certain, as though they had simply not met yet rather than not existing yet as people.
He was not good at this the way she was good at it.
But until she was back with them he would do it. It was a small thing. Small things were what he had right now and he was going to do all of them.
He sat in the chair beside the bassinet and opened the cover.
He turned through the first pages looking for something suitable, running his eye down titles. Several were too long. One was about a merchant who fell into a river which seemed like poor bedtime material. He kept turning.
His eye caught a title near the back.
The Little Hare.
He almost smiled.
He was fairly certain his version of that rhyme was correct.
He had told Asharin so and she had disagreed with the kind of conviction she brought to things she had decided were important.
He had enjoyed that conversation more than he had let on at the time.
He had enjoyed most conversations with her more than he let on.
He turned to the page.
Everything in him went cold.
The rhyme was there. Four lines printed cleanly on the left side of the page with a small illustration of a hare beside them. He read through to the last line.
A little hare hopped here and there
Looking for a crown to wear.
He searched all day, Till Owl did say,
….
It was crossed out.
Intentionally. The ink had been applied with pressure, thick and certain, drawn back and forth until whatever had been written beneath it was gone. He held the page closer, but could not make out a single letter of the original line.
Below it, in handwriting that was cramped, someone had written a new line.
Beware the crown you bear.
He stared at it, then read it again.
He looked at the illustration beside the rhyme.
The small hare mid-hop, ears back. He looked at the crossed out line and the words buried beneath it that he would never recover.
He looked at the new line and the handwriting that belonged to someone who had opened this book and made a decision about what it should say.
He looked at Fiorakis.
She had her fist in her mouth and was looking at the ceiling with the focused intensity she brought to most things.
She was not going to remember tonight.
He closed the book slowly.
He sat in the chair with it in his lap and the room quiet around him and the twins settling. Then he opened the book again to a different page and began to read aloud, his voice low and even, and he did not look at the back of the book again.