Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
I don’t want to push or press my father, so I stand alongside him as silent as he needs me to be while he works through whatever thoughts are in the privacy of his mind. A part of me wants to reach for him, to see what’s there that he needs to be so quiet and seemingly within himself, but I resist.
Memories can’t be taken that way.
Not even between kin.
“I found her message,” my father says, then.
“As did I.”
He glances my way, a small smile playing on his lips. “And was it everything you hoped it would be, son?”
“That, and more.”
That, and everything I’m not ready for.
I don’t say as much out loud.
Nowas’ gaze, holding mine strong, tells me that he already knows, anyway. Like I didn’t push him before, my father doesn’t press me for more now.
“The drums will continue on until the new first moon,” my father notes. “It’s what I’ve asked.”
“And then what, will you hold court and join your family for meals again?”
His stare drops from mine.
I know it, then.
I know it instantly.
“I will hold court one last time, and we’ll share a final feast to indulge our good memories and well wishes, but—”
“You’re going to do it. You’re going to do the Onata,” I say.
The breath that my father exhales rattles from his chest. Whether from the words finally being out in existence between us or from him noticing the pain in my voice, I’m not sure the cause, but I hear it all the same.
“You have to understand,” he tries to say.
“I do understand,” I reply before he can tell me any differently. I want that clear between us first. “I would do the same—now, if it were Luna. I’d do the ceremony because what do I have to live for.”
“Your people. A kingdom, Halun. Hallalah.”
Maybe.
“But what good would I be without her?”
Vocalizing the answer is the final door shutting in my mind that this would play out differently for my father. Our circumstances are entirely different, but our end results would be the very same.
“I do understand,” I say again.
“It’s still allowed to hurt,” my father replies gently. “I shared a lifetime with your mother, Halun, and it will never be enough. I could have watched her grow old and gray before me, die in my arms as a great-great-grandmother of many, and it still wouldn’t have been enough. So here we find ourselves, and I know that she’s ready for me, wherever she is, to spend eternity on the other side with her. I don’t want to keep her waiting.”
I fidget on the spot.
Something I’m not at all known for.
“You won’t wait until Vabila returns?” I ask.
“Too long,” he returns.
“I better not even bother to ask you to wait for the birth of my first child, then.”
I don’t even try to hide the hurt.
He chuckles, but it sounds sad. “You know these are things that I will still see, Halun.”
Doesn’t he get it?
“I need you to do more than just see them!”
Like I needed my mother, too.
The outburst doesn’t sway my father.
“This was always our purpose, she knew it as so,” he says.
He’s as calm as ever sipping from his cup and reaching for one of the flowers overhead. He picks one, and the scent of the blooms spreads like an invisible cloud that surrounds us from the top, down.
“Cover me in these, Halun. I promise, you’ll forgive me someday.”
I shake my head slightly, but the action only serves to free the tears I’ve been fighting to keep at bay, and they spill down my cheeks. “I already do.”
Nowas crushes the flower between my arm and his hand when he grabs me. My forehead meets my father’s and I swear every time he’s done it before flashes through my mind. A lifetime’s worth of memories pass behind my closed eyes, and his tears mix with mine.
“Only let them drum for us until the newest moon,” he repeats, and I realize that he’d been trying to tell me since the very start what he planned to do.
I nod, but that still feels too soon.
It will always be too soon.
*
The good food that fills my belly and the echo of my family’s laughter clings desperately to the back of my mind as our group takes the walk through the courtyard garden. The laughter shared between my brother and father who walk ahead of me, Bo holding Fate against his chest so she can see everything, makes me wish we were doing something different.
Anything except this.
Beside me, Luna holds tight to my hand. “Can you smell it? It smells like rain.”
There isn’t a drop of rain in the sky overhead, but the clouds loom with the promise in the near future.
“Yes, rain for a fresh start,” murmurs my grandmother as she passes the two of us on the path. “It’s Hallalah sending us a gift to wash us of some of the pain that’s been lingering. We all need it.”