“So how do we stop it?”
“There are just two ways to stop it. One is quelling it by force. That’s the tool of authoritarian regimes. The other is to remove the issue that’s fueling the demonstrations.”
“Remove the issue? How do we do that?”
“Either we cancel development projects so the people who are opposed won’t need to protest, or we force them through so the counter-protestors can go back to work.”
“Do you see either of those happening?”
“Oh, you’re asking the wrong person. That’s a political decision.”
21
EMERGING LOVE
Over the next week, Darius showed Ilona around the house and the surrounding terrain. When she saw his bow and arrows, she laughed. She led him into the woods and cut a sapling he would never have chosen. When she was finished, her bow was stronger, more flexible, and more accurate than his. That day, they went into the woods and dragged back another deer.
The next day, she cut chunks of fat from the carcass—pieces he would have discarded—and cooked them. She poured the thick liquid into empty cans and put all but one on the balcony. With the rest, she cooked some leaves, adding deer steaks to the pan. She mixed some of the flour with water to make gravy. He had not eaten such a repast since he had been in the village.
Later, she puttered in the kitchen and worked some of the fat into lengths of twine, then poured a mixture into some empty cans with the twine sticking out of the top. When she lit it, her tallow candle caught, light flickering into the room. No longer were they dependent upon the day.
The snow had returned, making travel around the house more difficult, although with the food they had gathered, it was less important. Darius wondered about the free time they had available. He recalled his aunt and uncle and how there weren’t enough hours in the day for them to do all that had to be done. Even in the vice of a prairie winter, there were chores. Breaking up frozen bales of hay, collecting eggs, shoveling snow, gathering wood. When the snows left, there was even more to do, what with tilling and planting in the spring, weeding and spraying in the summer, harvesting in the fall. And always maintaining the equipment, fixing whatever broke, sanding rust off tools.
But now, as Darius sat in a comfortable chair surrounded by books, candles flickering in the evening, the aromas of food cooking in the fireplace, he was beginning to wonder if his uncle had taken a wrong turn somewhere. That the path to a peaceful life lay not in fighting the earth to produce what it didn’t want to, but in using what it had. Even when he and Ilona went out to gather food, they spent no more than two or three hours before they had enough to last for several days.
But one day when the snow was falling and ice was coating the paths and wind was hammering the trees, he reflected on how he would live without the comfort of this house. The house that someone had built and that gave him shelter and warmth. And he reminded himself that while the world could be bountiful, it could also be savage.
He filled his time reading. He had learned how the books in the library were organized. Some shelves held novels. Mysteries, historical stories, and several tales of the future. There were books on health, on economics, philosophy, government. He was like an intruder in a room full of people, not knowing where to start, whom to approach. A dabbler in a world that somehow demanded focus.
Over time, he began to settle down. He learned which books held his attention and which caused his eyes to droop. Which ones surprised him, and which seemed self-evident. And one of the revelations was a concept he had never encountered. Freedom. Oh, he knew what it meant to be free of chores, to be free to roam the woods around the village, to be free to have a drink at Mandy’s. But that just meant time on his hands. This concept was far more. It told him he had a right to live his own life, to be governed by nothing other than his conscience and the principle not to harm others.
Or allow them to harm him.
His attitude toward his battles with the Peaks began to shift. He had been driven by hatred and a craving for revenge, his sole motivation to kill. He had endured the knowledge that what he was doing was wrong. He was a criminal, a terrorist. He would deserve the penalties he would one day suffer. But these books challenged that point of view. They taught him his struggle was just. Moral. That he was fighting for freedom. Not just for him, but for everyone around him. He still knew retribution would come, and that on that day, he would have earned it, but now it was becoming a badge of pride. He kept returning to the same few books. Although he had never heard the word mentors, that’s what he thought of them. They became his guides as to how the world should be. As beacons he would never abandon. And as a vision of what might be possible.
To his surprise, Ilona spent as much time in the library as he did. He had always thought of her people—damn, he still didn’t know what to call them—as illiterate savages. But each day, she would pace the length of the shelves, examine a book, and replace it until she settled on one and curled up in a chair.
Ilona puzzled him. One day, he caught himself comparing her to Sarah before he slammed himself for daring to think such a thing. Ilona wasn’t Sarah. She was a Siwash, and even if she wouldn’t tolerate the word, it was uppermost in his mind when he thought of her. Yet as the weeks passed, he couldn’t help but see the differences between her and Sarah. And Sarah didn’t come out well. She had always deferred to him. He would ask her if she wanted to go on a picnic. Yes, if he did. Would she rather go for a walk or have a cup of tea? Whatever he preferred. When he asked her what she thought about some events or people in their lives, she evaded answering as if she hadn’t wanted to offend him with her unworthy notions. He’d commented to Josiah that she never seemed to have an opinion of her own, only to have his friend laugh and say that made her a perfect wife.
Ilona was the opposite. If he suggested going out for some fresh air, she sometimes agreed, sometimes shook her head and stayed inside. On one occasion, he stumbled upon some grouse and readied his bow to shoot one, but she pushed against his hand. Later, when he wrote a note to ask her why she had interfered, she wrote she didn’t like grouse. Sarah would never have done that. She’d even have made herself cook and eat them.
Watching Ilona reading or making candles or preparing food, Darius knew she was self-sufficient in a way Sarah never had been. And to his discomfort, he admired her for it. If only she wasn’t a…
Their communications were minimal. Writing everything out was a chore. Almost in desperation, they developed a set of signals. Rubbing of the stomach when they were hungry, tilting of the head onto the hands when they were tired, picking up imaginary things to suggest a food-gathering trip. He longed to talk to her, to discuss some of the ideas he was discovering, but other than just handing her a book, there was no way for him to convey or explore his thoughts.
She never shared her books with him, so he was startled one evening when she leapt from her chair and charged across the room, her face alight with enthusiasm. She thrust a book into his hands and jabbed at it.
American Sign Language. Sign language? He opened the book and was not past the first paragraph when its significance struck him. Sign language.
Learning sign language became their project—their obsession. They practiced the signs. They corrected one another. They learned the alphabet and the signs for complete words or concepts such as hungry, tired, like, and hurt, and on their second day, she signed, “I Ilona,” and he signed back, “Hi, Ilona. I Darius.” As they mastered the language, as their communications became fuller, more complete, as their shared project brought them together, the spiritual barrier between them began to dissolve. Their days were filled with laughter until the time they embraced. They separated, their faces reflecting embarrassment, but by the time the sun was getting higher in the sky and the spring heat was starting to melt the snow, their hands were like organized birds, dancing in the air, filling their days with the joy of conversation. And their nights with the passion of a growing love.