Chapter epl1: Vol 11 Epilogue
CECILIA SEVER
The smell of smoke alerted me and I dropped the wool bundle that I was tingling before rus.h.i.+ng to the kitchen. My hip hit the side of the side table and I turned around too late to catch the lamp, which tilted to the side and broke against the uneven planks on the ground.
Suffering a sigh, I decided to do what I could for the lamp after saving the ruins of dinner, and I continued into the little open-air kitchen, where a pot boiled violently and released black smoke. I had already learned what it was to grasp the burning iron handle with my bare hands – I lifted the heavy pot of the solar heating element and put it on the table. The iron feet left small black marks on the surface of the wood.
Mying my lip so as not to sigh again, I took a wooden ladle and I stirred the soup, hoping that it had not burned too much, but knowing that we would eat it in one way or another.
I stirred the soup for a minute or two to prevent the still hot iron from burning it further, then I took off my hand and picked up the cracked lamp. Looking at her with regret, I walked towards the door, but stopped in the frame to turn around and look at the little house.
"House," I said, the word being strange on my lips. Nowhere else had this word agreed to me before, but the little hut, well outside the city, with its capricious electricity and its endless maintenance problems, seemed to me quite simply to be a house.
I smiled as I walked down the three brick steps and bypa.s.sing the outer wall of the hut by a worn gravel road that held more from the earth than from the rock.
The hut overhanged a meander of one of the many simulated rivers that surrounded the city, whose constant flow of fresh water was the fruit of pumps and valves rather than gravity. A thin row of evergreen trees bordered the bank of the river. A disused dock advanced from the edge of our property in the moving water, but we had never managed to obtain the permit to use a boat to enjoy it.
Between me and the river, on four legs on the rocky ground which we had got rid of gra.s.s and weeds, was Nico. For a moment I saw him not as he was, but as he had been at the same time the boy I remembered and the dark face he had worn in this other life.
This thought made me shake my head, as if I had got up too quickly and saw stars. It was hard to remember all of this. It was easier not to try to remember. But sometimes thoughts came back to me, and I couldn"t help but think about it. I had a life on Earth, as the Inheritance. This version of me had lived a short and tortured existence before being annihilated by my own actions.
My eyes closed and I had to be careful not to breathe too fast. At the risk of sinking under the waves of the following memories, I bite the side of the cheek and forced my eyes to open again, and then began to strolling on the gentle slope towards Nico. The sight of this Nico had faded. He had become himself again. Although her hair was still black, her face was soft and kind, his eyes tender. Just watching him eased my anxiety.
He looked up. There was a stain of black earth, or perhaps fertilizer, on the edge of his nose and on his cheek. I could not help smiling at this sight.
"That"s exactly what I feared," he said, smiling at my smile. But when he glanced at the ground, the expression disappeared to give way to a frown of thoughtful eyebrows. "This ground is horrible. The river has not been there long enough to irrigate the surrounding land, and it"s really rocky." He pa.s.sed his fingers into the earth, biting his lip. “Despite everything, we should be able to do it.”
"The dinner is ready," I said stiffly. I knew he wouldn"t say anything about the fact that he was burned, but I kept thinking about it. "Unless we can go to town? Buying something good? The soup will last for a few days.”
Nico got up and brushed his hands on his dirty pants. "You burned it, didn"t you?"
I uttered a dismayed moan. "I don"t know what happened. The saucepan was lit and I got lost..."
"I know," he said to console me. Suddenly, he found himself right in front of me and his powerful arms drew effortlessly to him.
I pressed my face on the curve of his shoulder and started shaking.
"I know," he repeated, with his hand running through the back of my long brown ash hair. The detail remained in my mind. Ash brown, not silvery grey. "It happens to me too," Nico whispered, shaking me against him. "I"m thinking about something, and the next moment, an hour has pa.s.sed and I haven"t moved. I think he swallowed loudly and his hands go down my arms until his fingers mingle with mine. "I think that"s what Grey did."
What Grey did.
Forgeing a radiant smile, I clasped his hands and moved him away from the struggling garden. "Come on, let"s go to the city."
He looked at me suspiciously. "This is your only weekend off a month, Cecilia. You know that if we go to town..."
"I promise you I won"t train you, okay?" I looked at him beggingly.
Laughing, he pulled me until his arm was draped on my shoulders, our fingers always intertwined. “I should be washed and put on my city costume.”
I leaned against him, smiling on his lips.
Once we were both ready, it took us 20 minutes to walk to the station, where we could take a train to the activities district. We talked about where to eat and whether we could buy tickets for an old retro movie, or maybe even check the license office for a car or boat license, but it was just words in the air. We both knew that we could not afford anything other than travel by train and an economical dinner for two.
Once we got into the maglev and took our seats, we"re silent. I guessed that Nico was sinking into a disturbing memory of the way his smile faded and how his unfocused eyes filled with sadness. I wanted to know what he was thinking, but I didn"t want to interrupt him. No, it wasn"t quite that. The truth is, I didn"t want to share this dark memory. I had my own share of these moments and memories, and sometimes the smells of blood and burnt flesh swallowed everything else. I felt cowardly, but I didn"t have the strength to shoulder part of Nico"s burden.
Nevertheless, I shook his hand and put my head on his shoulder, so that he would be there when he came back.
"How long have we been here?" he suddenly asked, his cheek leaning against the top of my head.
"What do you mean?"
"Here." He made a vague gesture around us. "This life. This world."
"Nico, we were..." I walked away and put a leg on the seat so I could turn and face him. “We are both born in this world. We have known each other since we were children at the orphanage. We have a lifetime of memories together..."
He nodded his head with a distracted air, the attention always elsewhere. "I know. I remember everything, but I don"t feel like it happened to me. I hardly remember other things, like my childhood in Alacrya, I broke through the evocation of the other world, but they still seem to me to be real. Here, I remember everything that happened before we bought the property and we were finally immersing ourselves together, the marriage, everything ... everything is so clear, but I have the impression ...”
"Like a life that someone else lived," I ended up for him, pa.s.sing my fingers through his black hair.
He glanced at my expression, then lowered his eyes to his hands stirring on his knees. "I"d like to understand what happened. I remember the cave, Agana, ma..." He swallowed heavily and closed his eyes. His breath escaped in a tense shudder. "I"m dead, Cecil."
"No," I said firmly, seizing his hands and drawing them on my lap, forcing him to turn to me and look me in the eye. "And even if that were the case, it doesn"t matter. I"m dead too, remember? All that matters is that we are here, together. There is no Heritage, no fight to become king, no crus.h.i.+ng weight of fate on our shoulders. We can just live. Together. Whatever Grey did, whatever he did it, he got rid of that fate and brought us here."
A little sad smile blossomess on Nico"s serious face. "I don"t think it"s Grey. Well, maybe his power, but I don"t think he chose this life for us." In front of my empty gaze, he rolled his eyes. "It"s you. This life, this picture in which we have been placed with all these perfect memories, is exactly what you always wanted it to be. It can"t be a coincidence. It had to be you."
"I don"t know..."
Part of me knew that I had not lived through all the memories I had of this life. It was a new reincarnation, but instead of being placed in a s.h.i.+p – a brand new body that would force us to take the place of someone else. Grey had somehow placed us in our own lives, our own bodies. I had checked the previous events and confirmed that my duel with Grey had indeed taken place and that this version of me had died at that time. This had not been written. His reign, the wars he had waged, his sudden and unexpected disappearance in this world, everything was as before.
I did not understand him, but the power he had given us in existence as if we had always been there. We ended up where I had imagined: in a little hut on the banks of the river, normal people who were doing the best they could. No inheritance, no mana, no ki. We were just... ordinary.
Perfect and ordinary.
There was a ding, and the maglev began to slow down appreciably. I jumped, realizing that we had been sitting in silence for a long time. "I"m sorry, I..."
"I know," said Nico, claving my leg as a sign of understanding.
We went down the activity district and walked along several streets of the city, where we sat quietly in one of our favorite restaurants and enjoyed a simple but delicious meal – and not burned. As we finished, my communicator rang, informing me that someone was trying to reach me. I had done a madness by equipping myself with a mobile communication device, but my work required me to do so.
Looking at Nico with guilt, I pressed the b.u.t.ton of the bracelet to answer the call.
"Director, I"m really sorry to bother you," said my a.s.sistant immediately, Evie. She looked exhausted. “There was apparently a problem with one of the bills, and two officials from the city office are here.”
“Dinner time, on a Sat.u.r.day?” I asked in disbelief, without waiting for an answer. "Luckily, I"m already in town. I can be there in twenty minutes."
Nico watched me carefully, the expression was carefully empty. He would not be upset by my inability to keep my promise, but I knew that he would mercilessly teasing me about it.
“Oh, thank you, Director,” said Evie, sighing relief. I heard her pa.s.s the information on to those responsible.
“At right.” I cut the call and I made Nico my most beautiful pout. "I"m sorry, it"s an official thing, I have to..."
He raised a hand to warn the rest of my unnecessary apologies. "You know what I think of what you"re doing. These children--all the children of the orphanage--you"re-a-great-great-great-great-great-girl--you"s--you"s-a-great-get-get-get-get You"re the best manager they can hope for."
“Expecs Director Wilbeck,” we said at the same time. We laugh lightly again asking for the addition.