Chapter 10: Neville – Colors
Maëlle came back home from her travels and found the door open. Inside, with his back turned to her, Neville fed his father with a spoon. The papers Neville had bought two years earlier lay forgotten on a shelf, under a box with sharp pencils that had never been used. Beside them there was clay, now cracked and dry, chisel, sandpaper, raw soapstone, rotten wood. Everything whitened by dust. Two years of attempts to show his father a way back into life. And the captain sat forever at the window, his dusty eyes shouting Why...?
Maëlle came inside and closed the door. When Neville saw her, he wiped broth from his father’s chin, and stood up to help her with her backpack. He removed her shoes and washed her feet; he gave her water to drink and to wash her face. She was covered with grey dust from the road. She smelled of the outside, but it wasn’t a pleasant outside: she smelled of distant death and tiredness.
She sat down near her husband, who didn’t notice her. She had left with two aims: to find a doctor of the mind who could help her husband recover, and to find out what had actually happened to the captain. The soldiers who had brought him home on the day he lost his legs had all been sent to the Mouth of War before Maëlle could talk to them
‘Are you hungry?’ Neville asked. ‘How was the trip?’
She said:
‘First, I went to Fabec.’ Her fingers curled, her eyes hardened. Fabec was at the Mouth of War. ‘That place is an open tomb, a mass grave for soldiers from all over Franária. I asked for your father’s soldiers. They were dead, all six of them. I can’t remember the name of the man who spoke to me. I had the feeling he was also dead. Only his skin was still alive, and his mouth spoke out of habit. His eyes were dead, and so was his heart. I was afraid of spending the night in Fabec. I left the Mouth of War on the same day, slept in the open. The grass near the Mouth has very sharp blades, and it’s not as green as our grass here in Debur.
“From Fabec, I went south. There are no more doctors of the mind in Baynard. I dare say that Deran and Patire have also lost touch with the science Sátiron had left us. The war annihilated all Franish universities. But I thought, ‘There is a place in Franária where war doesn’t reach’.”
Neville frowned, trying to follow his mother’s thoughts, which poured out of her mouth like a word flood. The whole of Franária was at war. Even Deran, which rarely sent soldiers to the Mouth of War, was constantly defending the north against raids from Farheim and Inlang. There was no safe place in Baynard or Patire. Then Neville remembered something Lecoeurge had said.
Whenever Rimbaud’s Caravan visited Debur, Neville played guitar to the armless clown, and Lecoeurge told him stories about the places the caravan had been to. He told Neville about a man in Coniadra, who had accidentally found a magic artefact from the times of the empire and, without any training whatsoever — the sorcery universities had disappeared with Sátiron — tried to use the artefact.
‘I saw him,’ said somber Lecoeurge. ‘His knees were turned backwards, and his elbows had become loose so his arms flapped everywhere like a windmill. But that didn’t frighten me as much as the Frontier,’ said the clown. ‘Rimbaud says it’s the only safe place in Franária, but there’s good reason for all three kings to pretend it doesn’t exist. I couldn’t sleep, not for one night. Even when awake, I had nightmares.’
Neville related that conversation as he saw his mother’s pupils dilate with fear because Lecoeurge’s pupils had done the same when he spoke of the Frontier. War hadn’t reached the south because all kings of Franária were terrified of going there.
‘You went south,’ Neville said. It was half question, half a fright.
Maëlle nodded once.
‘But I couldn’t enter the Frontier,’ she said. ‘If grass in the north is all thorn, I don’t know what the grass in the south is made of. The colors change as you go down the Loefern, and the voices rise.’
‘What voices?’
‘Of the Loefern waters, the wind, earth itself. I reached the edge of the Frontier’s forest, where the Loefern becomes shallow and spreads into hundreds of watery fingers. I couldn’t get past that point, son, because there you can hear the Loefern’s waters flow into River Blood. You can hear the Blood’s streams, and they are cold and dark like the shadow of the moon. Their whispers invaded my very pores, and paralyzed my muscles. And there was a tree.’
‘There is a forest at the Frontier,’ said Neville.
‘I saw the forest. The Loefern runs between old roots, but this tree was unusual. It was grey, with leaves of a green so light that they must shine in the dark, like cats’ eyes. I’m sure it was looking at me.’
Neville worried. Had his mother gone mad?
‘Some people lose it at the Frontier,’ said Lecoeurge. ‘People from the caravan, who have walked the continent, people from beyond the sea, borderless people. At the Frontier, I saw their feet freeze, their eyes go wide and never blink again. I’ve seen it.’
‘I couldn’t take another step,’ said Maëlle. ‘When I finally moved, it was to flee.’
Neville reached over the table for his mother’s hand and squeezed it. She held his wrist as though she was climbing a mountain and needed support. Her skin was darker than his, for the legless captain was a white man. After a long time — perhaps only a few seconds but even so, a long time — Maëlle went on:
‘I then went to Tuen.’
‘To look for a doctor of the mind?’ asked Neville.
‘To look for Olivier, your father’s best friend. Don’t you think it’s strange that Olivier never visited after the accident?’
‘What did he say?’ asked Neville.
‘Nothing. He didn’t see me. For a whole week I knocked on his palace door, not once he came to see me.’
Why...?
‘Son, what I’m saying is that I couldn’t find an answer. I don’t know how to help your father.’
‘I do,’ said Neville.
He pointed to a medallion on his father’s neck. It was a silver eagle with its wings open wide. The medallion represented the rank of captain in the Baynardian army.
‘Why did you put the medallion on his neck?’ asked Maëlle.
‘It wasn’t I. He did it.’
He went quiet, letting his mother gather the meaning of that. His father didn’t move, not even to eat; however, he searched for his captain’s medallion.
‘Why?’ asked Maëlle.
‘You know Father better than anyone,’ said Neville. ‘How do you think he felt once he couldn’t fulfil his duties anymore? He made an oath to the king, to fight for Baynard, to fight for Henrique. A warrior’s word is the slash of a sword. He made the king a promise but couldn’t keep it. You said it yourself, that Father has more honor than blood in his veins. His word is more important than life, but he was forced to break it. That is why he died. He’s lost bushido.’
Neville held Maëlle’s wrist with strength. He said:
‘If we can restore his oath before the king, if we can find a way for him to still serve Henrique.’
‘Your father was Captain of Debur and Baynard. He can’t serve without his legs.’
‘But I can, in his place.’
Maëlle opened her mouth, but Neville went on:
‘I am going to take Father’s place, restore the family’s honor.’
‘Son, this family has never lacked honor.’
‘In Father’s eyes, it has. He has broken his oath, therefore he is broken inside. I know how he feels because I would feel the same if I were forced to break my word.’
‘Neville.’ His mother grabbed her son’s wrist. ‘There are too many questions unanswered, things unknown. We don’t know what happened, what kind of battle was that, which took away your father’s legs outside the Mouth of War. I have seen colors. Don’t you see? I saw them in Tuen and now in Debur as well. The same colors I saw near the Frontier. I have the feeling that the Frontier is making a move, that they are watching us.’
‘What does that have to do with Father?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t you see? We don’t know. You can’t make decisions and oaths without knowing what is going on. It is not shameful for a man to stop fighting if he’s been disabled in battle.’
Neville freed his wrist from his mother’s grasp and stood up. He picked up a book she had left with him so he could read to his father while she was away.
‘A warrior’s honor,’ Neville read, ‘can be restored by their family and vice-versa.’
Maëlle remembered that passage. The whole book was about the connection between a warrior and their family. She hoped her husband would remember this connection and come back to them, not that the son would take upon himself the burdens of the Father.
Neville closed the book and picked another one up.
‘This part stayed in my head,’ he said, ‘so I asked Fulion for other books on the same subject.’
She gave him a book that explained how the duties of a warrior or head of family were shared by the whole family. If, in a war, or even in peacetime, something happened to the head of the family, another member of that family should take their place and fulfil their duty.
‘You can’t do that,’ said Maëlle.
‘I can and I will.’
‘There is too much secrecy, too little truth. To make a decision like this without analyzing the facts is a mistake. And that tree! Neville, there are things out there that we can’t even imagine.’
‘I am going to bring Father back. I am going to make an oath to King Henrique today. Robert is already waiting for me at the gates of the Emerald.’ Neville took the captain’s medallion from his father’s neck. ‘Father, I will serve Baynard in your place.’
Maëlle followed Neville out to the street. He walked fast, but she was also tall, with long, strong legs, and she kept up with her son while trying to convince him not to make a mistake. No one saw the legless captain fall on the floor. No one saw the horror in his eyes as he reached out his arm to the door. His mouth opened in the shape of a shout but he had been silent for too long, and his voice didn’t remember how to make sounds. Neither the outstreched arm nor the dead voice reached Neville.
