A Place To Bloom

Elder of Elders

I laid down in the barracks, watching a small, green spider weave its web across the soggy window frame. Apparently, Faren brought Indictment with him to the tower. He wasn't supposed to, and that was the only copy. He left a small canvas pouch beside his bunk, his stash of happy cabbage along with the Orca pipe. He'd kept it there as a thing to look forward to after surviving this war.

If I hadn't let Davod out, he would still be alive. None of this would have happened.

Renou and I had spent some time in the library earlier. We were taking turns making up stories about that mysterious book in the Forbidden section when this cute Goloagi runaway slave came up. She was in charge of making sure all the books were put back in the correct place and came to give him a good talking-to because he'd insisted on reshelving them upside-down. He confessed that he was merely trying to get her attention, and just like that I was alone again.

I borrowed a book, A Chronicle of the Daenma Schism, supposedly an analysis of the rift between the Imperial Goloagi and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Instead of reading it, I propped up on one elbow and stared at the cover.

I thought about going back to the empty church.

I couldn't.

Even that gave me a pang of guilt in my gut—I should have sought God's presence.

Miyani was busy doing her thing at the Lake of Doom. So she was there, and I was here.

Peyumi, the hundred-and-something-year-old woman, had told me I could come by at any time. So, I got up and made my way past the mud apartments, past the vita'o yard, to that back corner between the inner sanctum and the outer wall.

When I got there, Ta'o was talking with two Na'uhui women when I came up, one of whom twisted a lock of white hair around her finger while the other giggled at everything he said. When he saw me, he maneuvered his muscular frame before me and rested one arm on the stone wall. "What's up?"

Images of him bare-handed wrestling that four-hundred-pound throat-ripping lizard with three-inch talons to the ground to where she chirped out for mercy flashed through my mind. Yet his glistening dark-green skin bore few, if any scars. "I wanted to see Peyumi."

He shook his head and clenched his jaw. "Not a good time, bro."

"Oh." I lowered my eyes. "I don't know if you know what happened..."

He slapped my shoulder, and his yellow eyes smiled with the rest of his dark-green face. "You survived, bro! Jungle tested you, and you survived. You don't know what that means to these people! But seriously, another time."

"When's a good time?"

A shrivelly voice came from around the corner. "Is that Caleb of Gath?"

With it, sounds of children chatting hushed, and slow footfalls shuffled through the grass. Ta'o turned to her and answered. "Yes, ma'am."

As short as I remembered, she scarcely came up to my chest, but that permanent smile etched into her wrinkled face filled the world. "I'm so happy that you came by!"

I glanced at Ta'o and back to her. "You are?"

She took my hand in hers and led me around the corner, walking slower than I did on my wounded leg. "I need your help!"

"OK?"

Six children gathered around a short table filled with blocks of wood scraps of all sizes. Five of them had the dark, straight hair of their Herali fathers and the dark green skin of their Na'uhui mothers. The other, a girl of around five, was pure-blooded Na'uhui like Ta'o and the old woman. The youngest couldn't have been more than three, and the oldest looked around seven.