Chapter 177 Chapter 178
Chapter 177 Chapter 178
Amara's POV
He tells me on a Wednesday, which is nothing special about Wednesdays except that it is the day he tells me.
We are in the garden after the morning lesson. The young wolf and Esna have gone in. It is the particular quiet of a garden after people have left it, still holding the warmth of recent activity.
He says: I want to go back.
I say: to the village.
He says: yes.
I say: for how long.
He says: I do not know yet. As long as it takes.
I say: as long as what takes.
He says: telling them.
I say: the village.
He says: the people who have known me for thirty-five years as someone I was not. They know a man who is quiet and good with weather and does not talk about himself. They do not know what I actually am.
I say: you are going to tell them.
He says: yes.
I say: what do you expect from that.
He thinks about this.
He says: I do not know. I have thought about it a great deal and I cannot predict it. Some of them will think I have lost my mind. Some will adjust. Some might surprise me.
He says: I am not going back for their reaction. I am going back because I cannot be who I am now and also be the person they know. Those two things are incompatible. The person they know does not exist anymore. Someone needs to tell them.
I say: and then.
He says: and then I come back here. For the winter, as Essa comes for the winters.
I say: you have been thinking about this as a permanent arrangement.
He says: I have been thinking about it as the arrangement that makes sense for who I am. The fishing village is my life. Thirty-five years is a long time. I do not want to abandon it — I want to be in it honestly.
I say: and the Kelvar work here.
He says: does not require my permanent presence, does it. The work is what I bring when I come. The connection to the covenant, the training, what Essa is building in me — that is not diminished by my absence.
I say: no.
He says: then the arrangement holds.
I say: yes.
He is quiet for a moment.
He says: I want to ask you something.
I say: yes.
He says: is there a word. For what I am, in the covenant’s formal structure. Not just Kelvar line. A title. Something I can use.
I say: in the original documents, the secondary bloodlines were called covenant affiliates. Practitioners who held specific functions within the covenant’s field but operated from their own territory rather than from the covenant’s centre.
He says: covenant affiliate.
I say: yes.
He says: Kelvar line. Covenant affiliate.
He says it with the quality of someone trying a name.
He says: that is what I will tell them.
I say: they may not know what it means.
He says: I will explain it. That is part of the telling.
I say: what do you need from us before you go.
He says: nothing. Essa has given me the exercises to continue alone. I have the founding documents’ sections that are relevant to the Kelvar function. I have enough to work with.
I say: and if you need something.
He says: I will write.
I say: write often. Not just when you need something.
He says: that is a different habit than I have.
I say: I know. Build it.
He almost smiles.
He leaves the following morning.
Not ceremony. Not a formal departure. His pack, the same pack he arrived with, on his shoulder. The same travelling clothes.
The young wolf is at the gate to see him off. She does not say much. She says: write when you get there.
He says: I will.
She says: and write again when it goes badly.
He says: optimistic.
She says: practical.
He looks at her for a moment.
He says: you are going to be very good at this.
She says: at what.
He says: at whatever you become.
She nods.
He comes to me.
He says: I have spent forty years being someone I am not.
He says: I would like to spend whatever comes next being who I am.
I say: yes.
He says: thank you.
He says it in the way you say thank you when you mean a specific thing and the specific thing is significant.
I say: come back before the first frost.
He says: I will.
He walks through the gate.
The gate closes behind him.
The young wolf says: he will be all right.
I say: yes.
She says: he might even be better than all right.
I say: I think so too.
We go back inside.