“Really?” said Arris. “Because when we were twelve, I remember you practicing kissing on one of them—”
“Give me that,” said Yvlle, snatching the book.
“Talvi was right, you are extraordinarily hostile,” said Arris.
His sister glared at him and stalked off.
“I love you too, my darling sibling,” he said.
Yvlle continued muttering.
Alone in the Ozorald Cave, Arris let the day wash over him. What he wanted was quiet, but before he could enjoy any peace, he wished for confirmation of his own instincts. Some of the contestants’ smiles had struck him as artificial. Others seemed… tender. Honest. Who was lying? Who spoke true?
Demelza would know, but Arris had not seen her since her time on the stage. He thought she might have been hiding and listening and would make herself known any moment now… but he was alone. Which left him only one choice:
He must go to her.
16King Eustis Laments the Responsibilities of Parenthood
Arris had not intended to walk past the Grove of Ancestors, but that was where the path had led him in his attempts to locate Demelza.
It was said that the ancestor trees stretched as far back as Enzo himself and that for those who could reach him, he would still speak. The idea had captivated him as a child. When they were thirteen years old, Arris and Yvlle had packed a satchel of food and set off, convinced that if they could find Enzo, they might find some way to avoid Arris becoming a tree. They walked for hours. They walked until the trees stopped speaking and commenting on how tall they’d grown and whether or not so-and-so had kept the sitting room the way they liked it. Arris and Yvlle trudged past honey oaks, black ash, slippery elm and a dozen sycamores. They walked past sea pines and silver walnuts, shrieking spruces and a hundred fir trees. They got as far as their great-great-great-great-grandfather Lyall-the-Large (who had elected to return as a pebble the size of a thumbnail)before they were forced to stop. The moment Arris and Yvlle turned around, they found themselves once more at the entrance of the Grove, the distance they had covered vanished in a single blink.
“Everyone tries to reach Enzo at least once or twice in their first life,” Eustis had said to them that night.
Yzara had wanted to cover her children in ointments and salves, to give them warm seawater baths and soothe their aching limbs, but Eustis forbade it. It was one of the few times Arris ever remembered his father denying his mother anything.
“Futility is a horrible feeling,” he told his children. “But know it now so that you never waste a moment of your life.”
When Arris first heard this, he was distressed. What did his father mean by “waste”? Not wasting any moments was in and of itself a waste, for then how did one find the necessary rest to appreciate life to recognize what was worthwhile and what was, well, a waste? For a few months after this, Arris had gotten so anxious that every moment spent not doing something was a disservice to existing that he had asked Yvlle to make him a draught that would remove the need for sleep.
For a month straight, Arris would run around wide-eyed and talk far too fast about the music of the planets, which one could hear quite clearly just before dawn, and doesn’t sunlight seem to scald anyone else and he had started ten books but finished none of them and, really, he was doing fine and how many hours of one’s life were spent onblinking and maybe Yvlle could find a way to do away with that too…
This was not a good time for the family.
“Each life is an individual scale, Arris,” his father had later told him. Arris remembered that it was the same day he had woken up after being knocked unconscious and forced to sleep an entire week. “Only we can determine what holds value in our lives. Sometimes it takes the whole of our lives to figure out what that means. That is not a bad thing. Futility is different. Futility is trying to wring a boulder for milk. It is asking the impossible of a situation rather than opening yourself to other wonders. That is what I meant to impart to you and your sister.”
Arris felt that he understood his father, but his greatest fear was that even now, he could not tell what was futile. This tournament that he had subjected the entire kingdom to… was it all just a last scrabble for wonders?
The evening’s dinner was held in the caverns and Arris had been relieved not to find Demelza seated at the table. His mother had nodded in understanding when he explained he was too exhausted for conversation and thus excused himself. And although Arris had been enjoying the contestants’ attentions, he was also relieved to find himself above the ground and beneath the moon.
In the distance, the contestants’ residences gleamed and Arris felt the inexorable press of the days ahead.
“Let this not be futile,” he said, closing his eyes.
He was not sure if he was praying or shoring up his owncourage, but whatever it was, he felt lighter. Hopeful that the next step he took would bring him closer to peace.
What he did not expect was that his next step would be followed by a loud, irate grunt that was coming straight from the ground.
“Wrate above!”
Arris jumped and looked down. Beside the cobblestone path, a figure threw off a sylke cloak that appeared to be one of camouflage. One moment there was nothing beside the moonlit cobblestone pathway but a couple of rocks, wildflowers and dirt. The next, it was as if someone had peeled back the air. That someone was Eustis.
“Father?” said Arris, frowning. “What are you doing here?”
Eustis blinked and looked around. He always seemed pleasantly surprised by his own surroundings, as if he was just seeing them for the first time.
“The moon is exquisite tonight,” said Eustis. “Good for steeping in clarified thoughts, don’t you agree?”
