“Soup?”
The old man gave a sheepish shrug. “Figure of speech. Look, I’m sorry you went to all this trouble for nothing.”
With a grunt, Jorl hauled himself up from his chair to stand over his father. “It wasn’t for nothing, Dad. But … my whole life, you never understood me. I know you tried, but we just never quite made it onto the same page.”
“That didn’t get in the way of my loving you, Son. Or of being proud of you. I was always proud of you.”
Jorl sighed and let his eyes close. He nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Thanks for that. I, um, I’m going to let you go now, okay? Anything else you want to say?”
“Is your mother still alive?”
“She is.”
“Take her some flowers. For both of us. It’s probably been too long since you’ve visited. And when you do, mention you spoke to me, and tell her that even to my last day she was the most beautiful and amazing woman I ever knew. Can you do that?”
“Sure, Dad. Consider it done.”
Jorl settled back in his chair and with eyes still closed let go of the hold he’d maintained on his father’s nefshons. He began the task of actively dispersing them again and letting the mental landscape he’d crafted fade as well. When he was done he opened his eyes and started. Pizlo stood in the spot where his father had just sat, naked except for a pair of ragged shorts and a daypouch hanging across his torso by a braided cord.
“Who were you talking to?”
“My father.” Jorl frowned. “How long have you been there? And why?” A shiver went through him. For all his kindness in other aspects of his life, had Tral been able to see Pizlo standing there, he’d have seen only an abomination. He’d have been horrified to learn such a creature came and went freely in his son’s home.
The boy shrugged. “Not long. I wrote down some of the stuff.”
“What are you talking about? What stuff?”
“The stuff I know that other people don’t. But how do I know if any of them are visions?”
“Visions?”
“Like you said the Matriarch had.”
“Ah, right. Well, it’s not common, but it’s certainly true that every few generations someone on Barsk will get glimpses of the world to come and know things that others do not. The Matriarch had that.”
A brilliant smile spread across Pizlo’s face. “Yeah, visions of the future. Like how she saw you would get an aleph. If I’ve got prophecies, maybe I’ll get an aleph, too. Or something. You and Tolta are the only ones who talk to me. And Arlo did. But everyone else ignores me, and I don’t suppose having a mark would change things.”
Jorl waved the boy closer, picked him up and set him on his lap. “Probably not. And besides, prophecies are tricky stuff. It’s only after that people recognize them as important. At the time they’re spoken most people don’t want to hear about them.”
“Really? But aren’t they truth?”
“Especially then. Truth is tough.”
“Why? I mean, it’s the truth. It just is.”
“I think that’s so, in the abstract, but none of us get to really know the abstract. We only know what we think.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well … do you think I’m a nice person?”
“Sure,” said Pizlo. “But, I don’t know a lot of people.”
“That’s okay. I do, and they all seem to think I’m okay. At least, the Fant I know do.”
“You know people who aren’t Fant?”
“I did. When I was in the Patrol, every other person was something else. And you know what? None of them saw the truth about me. I met Brady, and they acted like they didn’t care one way or the other. I met Urs, and every one of them was belligerent to me, and to this day I couldn’t tell you why. I must have met a dozen or more Cynomy, and they were always frightened of me. They all had a different reaction. I was the only Fant any of them had ever met. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t done anything to merit those reactions. They were all true, for them. It colored every interaction I had with every person during my time in the Patrol.
“I don’t think I’d like to be in the Patrol. Is that why you left?”
“No. A few days after your father died I received a priority message. I’d been Second for him when your parents bonded. HQ had never been happy about having a Fant serve in the Patrol. For once the Compact’s requirement about respecting Barsk cultural norms worked to their favor. A diplomatic courier vessel docked with my ship and by the time it delivered me here the ink on my discharge had just about dried.”
Pizlo rubbed at his face with both hands, his pale skin so nearly translucent that Jorl could see the fine traceries of arteries and veins.
“So you’re saying, people not only may not want to hear a thing that’s true, that sometimes they make sure other people can’t either?”
“Yeah. Not all people, and not all the time, but yeah. When Margda tried to share her earliest prophecies, they weren’t well received by most of the people around her. After a while, she stopped telling people what she saw as truth, and just wrote them down for us to find later.”
“But she told some people about some of them?”
Jorl nodded. “She did. I’ve Spoken to some of them. Friends and close confidants of her.”
“Maybe one of the things I’ll know is who I can tell things I know to.”
“Maybe. But you should know you can share anything you like with me.”
“And you’ll keep it secret? At least for a while?”
Jorl lifted Pizlo from his lap and set him on his feet, gazing at the boy solemnly. “Your father was my best friend, for as long as he lived and beyond. And with one exception, we told each other everything and always kept one another’s deepest thoughts in confidence. He’s gone now, but it only seems right to give you that same vow. This may not make a lot of sense to you now, but I think we’ll talk about it again, when you’re older. It’s part of that same connection. So, yes, anything you need me to keep to myself will stay with me.”
“For real?”
“Absolutely.”
“Even if it doesn’t make any sense?”
Jorl smiled. “At the time they happen, visions rarely do. Not even to the people who have them.”
“Oh. That really helps. Because some of the stuff I know about you that you don’t know yet has me really confused.”
“You know something about me?” Jorl raised a hand to cover his smile, recalling his own flights of imagination at that age, and growing wistful remembering the adventures he and Arlo had had performing secret missions throughout the boardways of the Civilized Wood, much to the consternation of both their mothers and the plethora of aunts, sisters, and cousins back home.
“Yeah. I told you before how you’re going to circle all of Keslo.”
Jorl nodded. “I remember. There’s more?”
“Yeah. You’re going to leave Barsk again.”
“No, that’s not going to happen. That’s a promise.”
“I know. You’re not going to leave because you want to, but that doesn’t matter. You’re going to leave. But I don’t know if you come back. I’ve been trying to find out, or figure it out, but I don’t know yet.” At this last, the boy’s face had screwed up with emotion and he looked on the edge of tears.
Jorl slipped his trunk around one of Pizlo’s ears and drew him closer. “Okay. Well, I can see that that was a big secret for you to carry around all by yourself. Now that you’ve told me, the weight of it isn’t so much, right? But it’s still a secret, so I’ll keep it to myself. And if you’re right, if it happens, I’ll let you know that it came to pass. Sound good?”
Pizlo shrugged and pulled free of Jorl’s trunk. He turned away, his face already cleared of sorrow. He began poking through a collection of jars on a shelf that in other days had sometimes held cookies. “Okay. Are you hungry? Because if you are, I could have a snack with you. So you don’t have to eat alone, I mean.”