Within Walls Chapter 23
“She’ll need to hear that. From you.”
23
“Like I said, she’ll need a little time, you gave her quite a fright.”
Mebre nodded, throwing her arms around Kerahl in a farewell hug. “I know, I’m sorry.”
“She’ll need to hear that. From you.” She patted Mebre’s back in a clear signal that the hug was over. “Now off with you.”
“Thank you.”
“I said ‘off with you’”
“I know, but I feel much better after talking, so thank you.”
Kerahl let out a small laugh. “Come, I’ll see you out.” Her voice was soft with affection.
Mebre couldn’t help but be reminded of Ma. The two women were very different, but Mebre was convinced Ma would have liked Kerahl.
The scrape and thud of Kerahl’s makeshift crutch put an end to Mebre’s musings.
“Oh, your leg!” Mebre winced in regret at forgetting Kerahl’s injury. “You don’t have to, I can see myself out, you should sit.”
With her free hand Kerahl waved them all away. She hobbled down the hall and opened the door. Leaning against the frame, she gestured for Mebre to exit.
Mebre stepped out into the sunny afternoon, blinking in the light. She turned back. “Thank you.”
“You said that already.”
“I know, but I really mean it.”
Kerahl’s head tilted slightly and her eyes squinted. “Mebre, is your hair different?”
Instinctually, Mebre’s hand went to her curls. They were soft to the touch, pliable and pleasant. “Zayaf’s been combing it. And using some oil or something.”
“Hmm, it looks darker, but maybe it’s just a trick of the light. It’s nice but…” She pursed her lips. “Don’t listen to me, get yourself home. I’m sure Zayaf is wondering where you are.”
Mebre wanted to ask about the ‘but’ but she was pretty sure whatever answer she got would be a dodge. Grown-ups were like that. She leaned forward and, in an unnecessarily whispered voice, said, “She thinks it’s a boy.”
Confusion twisted Kerahl’s face. “What’s that?”
“Zayaf thinks there is some boy I’m meeting up with. As if I’d be looking for romance with everything going on, as if anyone would be.”
“Yeah…” Kerahl said, nodding slowly.
Mebre liked that ‘yeah’ even less than she liked the ‘but’.
“I’m sure Ehrten will go looking for you soon.”
“I hope so,” Mebre said, and, not liking the tone of the conversation, she waved and departed.
She walked past the damaged villas without looking. Mebre’s thoughts remained stuck on the unsaid. Her worries were now light enough that she could start to feel the physical exhaustion. She’d rowed hard that morning, and then twice traversed Hyr Yugehn in a panic. She made it as far as the Hyr Tree square before she knew she had to sit.
Her knees gave out midway through taking a seat on one of the benches. The soreness of sitting too hard was lost in the relief of no longer being on her feet. Mebre leaned forward with her forearms bracing against her lap and just breathed. It was hot in the sun, but not enough to get Mebre to her feet again. Aches went numb as time moved on; sunlight turned to shade. Feeling slightly recovered, Mebre straightened. The parasol-like shape of the Yugehn tree sheltered her.
In the daylight it was a nice enough tree: pretty, provided shade. But she couldn’t escape the memory of roots probing, searching in the night. She’d always sided with Pa: that the hyr trees were just trees that people made into symbols so they could believe in something bigger than themselves. Ma was different. Her reverence for the hyr tree had always carried with it an edge of fearsome wonder. Mebre began to wonder how much of what she’d always brushed aside as ‘Hyr Besat superstition’ was actually real.
It was a short leap to go from thinking of the strangeness of the Yugehn tree to all the things Ma had said to her about the Golos tree. The Golos tree had been huge and tall. The stump it left behind was bigger across than a dinghy. Depending on the telling, the storm that broke the tree was on the night Mebre was born. Other times Mebre’s birth happened the day they first noticed new green shoots growing out of the jagged remains. In every telling Ma mentioned that since Golos was so poor they had no tree-tender and had to send for the Ensaa of Hyr Yugehn. He came, declared the tree dead, promised to send word to his leaders at Kitrek-Tavak, then he departed. As usual, Hyr Golos was left to fend for itself.
Ma was convinced that Mebre’s birth and the fate of the Golos tree were linked: some sort of sign that Mebre promised a bright future. While Mebre was willing to accept some of Ma’s tales about the Hyr trees, her insistence in the resurgence of Hyr Golos seemed even less possible now. The repeated claim that Mebre would somehow save the hyr was the source of many of their yelling matches.
A surprise sob grabbed Mebre. Those stories, Ma’s assumption that Mebre would save Golos, made Mebre angry every time. But she knew that she would give almost anything to hear Ma tell her again, to hear Pa shush those mountain beliefs, or to hear Rahim tease her about her fate. It felt like they’d been gone a lifetime; like they’d been replaced by Beylem and Zayaf, Ehrten and Kerahl.
Not replaced. Mebre insisted to herself but didn’t know what better word to use. None of them were replacements for Ma and Pa and Rahim, just like she was no replacement for Seyneb. Sadness clung to her as she tried to work out her thoughts and how to put them in order.
In many ways, Ehrten was like Rahim to Mebre. Even as she thought that, the whole idea fell apart. Ehrten was Ehrten, Rahim was Rahim; she loved them both differently. There was overlap, but that was true with Ma and Pa and Beylem and Zayaf.
Mebre wiped her eyes and looked up at the Yugehn tree blocking the day-end sun’s heat. She stood, a sudden idea had her in its tide. She walked up on the grass at the base of the Hyr Tree. She didn’t bother looking for the marks of her previous digging; she didn’t believe they would be there. Close to the base she knelt down. With no other digging tool she pulled out her knife and began cutting into the dirt.
When she had a sizable hole she reached up and grabbed a lock of her hair. It was harder to cut with a straight blade than she expected, her roots tugged painfully, but with a little sawing motion she made it through. She tossed the hair into the hole, squinting at it for a moment. It did seem darker, or perhaps that was just the shadows.
She reached out and touched the trunk. The bark was wrinkly, poking into her palm. She hesitated, wondering if she should communicate with the tree out loud, or do it internally. In the end she whispered.
“This is to bring back the ones I’m missing, or to let me keep the ones I’ve found.”
She patted the dirt back, filling the hole, burying the part of herself she’d offered.
Then she looked up and added in her normal voice. “Or both.”
Finally!