Chapter Three #2
The first half of the ride home is quiet.
Filled only with the creaking of wheels and Loki’s petulant sighs as he stubbornly makes his way up some of the steeper hills.
Once, when she was younger, Anna might have been tempted to fill it with questions just to save her from the awkward edge of silence. She feels no such need, now.
The centuries have given her the confidence that comes with knowing the fragility of a moment—taught her to recognize the insignificance of some and the importance of others.
She senses, instinctively, that she has more to lose with the boy beside her by pushing questions than she does by embracing his silence.
So she steers Loki around some of the bigger rivets on the dirt road leading to home and watches the landscape slowly change from the comfort of her seat until Jiro chooses to break the silence.
“You didn’t give a last name.”
“You’re right,” Anna hums. “People in town know it as Spector, but I ask that you not call me by that. I only borrowed it for the sake of avoiding questions.”
The suspicion in his gaze is as evident as the edge in his voice. “So what’s your real last name?”
“I don’t have one.” She shrugs. “Hard to have a family name without a family.”
The confession seems to snag his interest, but he doesn’t continue the line of questioning.
There must be a thread of understanding, of likeness, because the tension in him relaxes, the rigid set of his shoulders slowly melting.
The silence between them feels less forced now.
When he breaks it for the second time, it feels more candid than accusatory.
“A car would drive this a lot faster, you know.”
Anna doesn’t bother to hide her smile. “A car would,” she agrees, “but the trip keeps Loki young. He’s more prone to trouble when he’s bored.
” She also has no interest in troubling herself with the process getting a driver’s license would entail.
Besides, she doubts a car would make it past the redwood grove where the trail thins and winds between the giants.
Loki’s ears swivel back, hearing his name. Jiro frowns at him. “What kind of weird name is that?”
She glances at him from the corner of her eye, weighing his interest. “It’s the name of a Norse god. I could tell you about him, if you’d like?”
A moment of hesitation. Anna gets the sense that he is weighing her as carefully as she does him. He must find her offer sincere, because he eventually nods. “Yeah. Okay.”
She spends the next two hours telling him the stories of Loki and his mischief. The entire time, she thinks of blue-green eyes—of how they would light if he heard her spinning the same stories he once wove for her.
Anna knows next to nothing about Jiro’s past, but it quickly becomes apparent that her lifestyle is vastly different from what he knows.
He regards Loki with a curiosity that borders on distrust, as if waiting for the animal to bite him the moment he turns his back.
When the chickens rush him, eager for their meal, there is a shadow of panic in the way he tosses the table scraps as far away from himself as possible.
Still, if he complains about any of his tasks, he only does so out of earshot.
He takes to cooking much easier.
When Anna shows him the garden, points out the herbs and the vegetables and explains which of the scattered fruit trees grow what, she can see the interest in his dark eyes.
Sometimes when they cook, when he doesn’t notice her looking, she catches his lips moving soundlessly around the words as if trying to commit each recipe to memory.
On a whim, she offers him a cookbook from her shelves and lets him choose their evening meals.
He pours over the pages with an enthusiasm only matched by the excitement that lights his eyes when it’s time to eat it.
She has a sneaking suspicion that, with time, he will become more adept in the kitchen than she is.
The apiary also seems to spark an interest. Though, to be fair, Anna suspects part of his curiosity is fed by the honey they lick from their fingers when they harvest. Still, he listens as she explains things.
Looks when she points out the differences between the workers and the drones, squints when she points out the queen hiding amongst them.
“Why does she have a blue dot on her?”
“It’s just a bit of paint. It makes her easier to find,” she explains, tilting the frame as she examines the brood cells. “See the ones that keep following her? Those are her attendants.”
“The queen has attendants?”
Anna hums an affirmation, distractedly checking the other side of the frame. “They clean her and bring her food so she can focus her energy on laying.” She frowns, noticing a bulb of wax in the corner. “Though she might not be for much longer. Do you see that? It’s a queen cell.”
“What does that mean? That there would be two queens?”
Anna shakes her head. “It would be her replacement. I noticed a decrease in how much she was laying in the last few weeks. They must be rejecting her.”
The bridge of Jiro’s nose wrinkles. “They can do that? I thought the queen controlled all of them?”
“No,” she murmurs, putting the frame back into the box.
“A queen doesn’t command the hive—she’s a slave to it.
” The moment she’s born, her life becomes dependent on how well she does her job.
If she does it poorly, the hive will build a special cell for her replacement before swarming her.
The needs of the many will always outweigh the needs of the one.
Anna has always admired that about them.
She can think of more than a few monarchies that would have done well to learn a few things from the lives of bees.
Anna doesn’t hesitate to voice the thought and is rewarded with one of Jiro’s rare smiles.
She can’t help but notice how much younger he looks when there’s a hint of laughter lighting his eyes.
They’ve only shared a roof for just shy of two weeks, hardly enough time to truly know the other, but Anna already finds comfort in his presence. It’s nice, not being alone between the sometimes long stretches of Khiran’s absences.
Jiro, she knows, is still struggling to settle.
He walks through the house like a stranger.
There’s a hesitancy in his touch. Anna gets the sense that he is perpetually waiting for it all to be taken away.
The first week, whenever she said his name—to ask him to bring something from the garden, to stir the pot of stew on the stove—his spine would straighten.
He stared at her, breath held, as if preparing for the worst.
Anna understands that feeling. She has lived it every time the hem of her sleeve rose too high or her collar slipped.
Has spent centuries avoiding communal baths and swimsuits on the beach.
There is a torture in waiting for the fall; an agony in understanding that the world has given you every reason to expect it.
Two days later, they’re clearing the bed of broccoli and cabbage to make room for tomatoes.
Spring has started to warm into summer, too hot for her winter crop to thrive.
She rolls up her sleeves, pulling the old plants from the soil and places them in the wheelbarrow to compost later.
There’s dirt everywhere by the time she’s done.
It stains the knees of her overalls and powders her skin—she’s certain she’ll feel it on her scalp when she bathes later.
Anna knows it’s not the dirt that keeps snaring Jiro’s attention.
She pretends not to notice the way his stare lingers on her exposed arms—lets him have a moment to gather his question before deciding whether to voice it or hold it close.
“Are you sick?”
Anna thinks of another boy she brought under her wing lifetimes ago—the only one to ever call her mother.
Piers had been so much younger than Jiro is now, less hardened, but there’s a subtle thread of concern in the teen’s voice that reminds her of the terror that had rimmed Piers’ eyes when he first spotted the marks on her skin.
She remembers how her heart shattered when he asked, “Are you dying?” She spares Jiro a glance.
Long enough to read the crease bridging his nose and the furrow in his brow as curiosity and not fear.
Short enough that he won’t feel embarrassed for asking.
She pulls a stray weed from the bed, then another. “Do I look sick?”
A moment of silence. When Anna dares to look, he’s watching her as if she’s some kind of puzzle he can’t quite solve.
It’s only when she offers him a small smile of encouragement that he finds the courage to answer.
“I guess not.” His gaze lowers back to her arms, a frown teasing the corner of his mouth. “What are they?”
Her hand sinks into the soil, cupped palm making a pocket as her left tucks a seedling into the dirt.
“Vitiligo,” she answers. The word still tastes strange on her tongue, despite Khiran’s assurances that its origins are older than she is.
After enduring centuries of accusations ranging from leprosy to witchcraft, that particular bit of knowledge still feels like a slap in the face.
She brushes the soil from her hands, dirt smudging her gardening apron.
“It isn’t contagious. It doesn’t even hurt.
” Shrugging, she straightens and admires her work.
The seeds she started in the greenhouse had a high turn out this year.
She’ll likely have to thin things out later, but for now she can at least let each seedling have a chance to thrive.