“Yeah, I’ll bet. So what are you? Her personal watchdog? She sends you to bring me toys and attend my birthday parties and report to her when she’s got the time?”
“That’s a cruel way to put it. She has seen you, many times. But she is a powerful wizard, able to transform herself into just about anybody or anything, and she had to visit in deep disguise so that her enemies wouldn’t know and follow her.”
Spirit felt anger, not relief at all this. “So why the big story now?”
“There are rumors that her old enemies have discovered who you are. Perhaps not, but they are closing in. They suspect. No matter what you think of your mother or what you think she might do, you’d better think another way. It’s not going to be her in the hands of Hell; it’ll be you.”
That was a sobering-up statement if there ever was one. She thought about it a moment, then shook her head sadly. “This is all so… new to me. I mean, all these years I’ve wondered about my real parents, and now you can tell me all this. It’s pretty hard to take.”
“Everyone tried to spare you all this. We worked very hard to do so. Were it not for the possible dangers, it would have continued that way. I’m very… sorry.” It was getting more and more difficult to keep up the act, the other persona, but it had to be done. It was sadly ironic that she could not come right out and tell her daughter the truth face-to-face, but if the girl was having troubles believing the truth as it was, nothing less than that would convince her that her doddering old “aunt” was truly the monumental figure familiar to all.
“I don’t see why my mother couldn’t do this job herself,” Spirit said sourly. “She sure has a funny way of showing she cares.”
“But, dear, don’t you see? The only way for that to work would be for her to come as herself—and that would lead her enemies right to you. She can travel nowhere anonymously except in deep disguise. Surely you can understand that. The only safe place would be in Flux, and there, if they so much as suspected, you could not be defended or defend yourself against a concerted attack.”
That logic was not what Spirit wanted to hear right now, nor was it what she was feeling. She felt a lot of resentment and bitterness churning within her, and a great deal of hurt, and yet, somehow, all of it seemed like some kind of crazy dream. Certainly none of the facts had any solidity to her, any kind of personal reality. To be orphaned and fantasize about your real parents was one thing; to discover that you were not an orphan, but that your mother was an alleged saint and the most powerful person in the world—and that she chose that path over you—was something else again. And now to find that you were in mortal danger from the enemies of the mother who didn’t give a damn about you—that was just a little much to swallow right now.
It had been three days since the revelations, and Spirit was still troubled by them. She had asked her mother—her real mother in all but the biological sense—to confirm the facts, and they had in fact been confirmed, although she still had the feeling that there were things they still wished to conceal from her. She moped around and tried to sort it all out, but it was hard.
It was far easier to look up the Cass of her own riding, though, than the mythical mother they had originally given her. She was struck both by the plainness of her photographs and the tomboy image the records and some of the older farm hands indicated. Eventually she wandered down to the blacksmith’s shop. The foreman there was a familiar figure and, she’d been told, a distant relation, but now she found herself staring at the brawny, silver-haired man at the forge with different eyes.
The first thing Kasdi had done after leaving Spirit that first day was to visit her dad and tell him. He looked up at the girl just inside the wide doorways, put down his tools, wiped off his face with a rag and came over to her. “Hello, Spirit,” he greeted casually.
“Hello… Grandfather,” she responded, not at all sure of what tone to take.
He frowned. “Never say that again around here, much as I’d like you to. Come on—let’s go someplace private and talk for a few moments.”
They sat again under the very trees where she’d been told the truth. “I hear tell you’re not very pleased at the news,” he began.
“Well? Should I be?”
He shrugged. “I’m kind of proud of her myself, as you might understand. I can’t say I ever understood her, but we got pretty close, you know. Even more after she took over the Church. Your momma’s a little weird, but she’s got brains and the guts to use ’em.” He gave her a smirk. “She still hasn’t got me back in the Church, though. Drives her nuts.”
Spirit laughed at that, and some of the ice melted. She hadn’t known him very well before, but she liked him now, as much as she liked the irony that the father of the sainted Sister Kasdi was an unrepentant nonbeliever.
He nodded sagely. “That’s better. You know, I think it drove me more crazy than your mom not to get close to you, because I saw you most every day. Still, the danger’s pretty real, and for your sake and hers I kept apart. I still can’t come out and claim you my granddaughter, but at least we can have a talk now and then. I can tell you’re pretty troubled. Want to talk about it?”
There was something about him that inspired confidence, the same solidity that he gave to the things wrought in iron by his own hands and forge. He had a reputation for being gruff and sometimes mean and nasty, but here he seemed surprisingly gentle and compassionate. She opened up to him, and he listened attentively, never interrupting. When she had finished, he sighed and looked thoughtful.
“Your mom’s a politician and a soldier, the two jobs that make more enemies than any other ten jobs combined. Me they’re only mad at when something I make breaks or isn’t quite right. It’s never personal. Her—it’s all personal. The people you beat hate you and want revenge. The people you never touched are scared of you, and to fear somebody is to be an enemy. Nobody ever agrees with the one who runs things, and everybody thinks they can do a better job. She didn’t want the job, and she hates it now. She’s hated it, I think, since the first. She got herself trapped into it by a bunch of slick politicians themselves who wanted what she could give ’em and suckered her into doing their dirty work. Now she’s really stuck. She can’t quit. Too many folks depend on her. It’s kind of funny, really. Here she is, the most powerful woman on World, and she can’t do anything she wants to do.”
This was a different side of the image, and Spirit was fascinated. “What does she want to do, then?”
“Well, she got stuck before she knew she was pregnant. They could have told her—that slick old fellow Mervyn or whatever he’s calling himself these days—but they needed her. So they got her in the spot where she had to make a real set of decisions before she knew. She hates this fighting, hates the responsibility. I think I would, too. She once told me that what she wanted to do most in the world was just to drop it all, disguise herself, and travel all over World, to every corner of it. See everything that could be seen, learn everything she could learn. No responsibilities, no guilt as she called it, no nothing.”
Spirit had to chuckle at that. “That’s what I want to do, too!”
He nodded. “Figures. That witch-magic gave you your good looks, but the blood’s still the same. She told me not long ago that she’d love to just take you away and have the two of you get to know each other, wandering around World, poking into things, having fun.”