Ald hoed the land under the tepid spring sun, but his soul wasn’t in the task. Third day of the year, third day of clear skies. It wouldn’t be this year either, he knew it. And there was the matter of the letter, too. As he loosened the dirt, he thought about it. Council member Gleur was calling for volunteers among those Felsians that had undertook the military service. That included him, but Kali didn’t know. Now and then, he supported his weight with the hoe, watching his empty field and wondering if he would answer the calling. Gleur was an ass, he had always been since Ald had memory. Yet, by his hand, law had always been enforced nigh-flawlessly, and when action was needed to keep the exiled ones at bay, he never hesitated to do whatever was necessary to safeguard the order and people of Felsia. Gluer was an ass, as he needed to be. Yet, as long as he didn’t disrespect the sage, Gleur would remain cooperative, or so Ald expected.
He shook his head and kept on hoeing. Kali was not old enough to take care of the farm yet, not alone. Besides, she needed guidance in life, and while he could trust the plethora of his siblings with such a task, there would be nothing like doing it himself. Once his caretaker, a long retired seamstress, had told him that he would understand when, and if he ever, caught a child. And understand he did: A sibling bequeathed upon oneself by The Mother was not like all the others: it was, somehow, more his sibling than anyone else.
Yet, Kali would suffer if it never rained again. And everyone else too. Society could not stand without youngsters, he thought. Without new apprentices and workers, they would soon run out of the necessary workforce to manage the city. Soldiers died in their patrols, some prodigious brothers and sisters got terminally sick, and even if that stopped, if reality suddenly became a comfortable and careful place that refused to break its toys, time cared not about the lack of heirs to anyone’s wisdom, techniques or tools.
The soil needed him, Kali needed him, Felsia needed him. Yet someone else could save Felsia — he would not mind that. Someone else could sow this year’s crops, and his back would be grateful. And someone else could care for Kali.
Except that was a lie. Someone else could clothe, feed and educate her, sure; but they would need to learn about her favorite foods; they’d need to learn how some words had, in her lips, new, exciting meanings; they’d need to learn and listen to the silences she made that communicated as much as the words; they’d need to decipher the card games both of them had confectioned over time; they’d need to unravel the crazy stories she liked to tell him before bed, and never ask about the fearsome Green Diskledoro, because that made her angry, as that was his power according to Kali: making her angry when she had to explain what it was.
He wondered if Kali knew, if Kali had an idea of how he saw her.
He wondered if he truly knew how Kali saw him. Wise, big, hard-working, honest, he hoped.
And… how would she see him if he refused the calling? Like a coward, or like a responsible caretaker? Would he be the man that stayed by her side when everything began to crumble, or would he be the rat that hid in his lair behind a scared, confused child?
He couldn’t risk earning her hatred. Not due to stillness. He had promised her the rains, and the least he could do was hear the plan of the sage to figure out what had happened to the rains.
And so he plunged the hoe in the ground one last time, went home and, when he got past the golden wood of the door frame, he lied to Kali, who was playing a sort of solitaire over the dinner table.
“I have to get out and run some errands. Take care of the farm while I am away, okay? I will pass by the house of Elvisat and give her word of my absence, so she can come here to check on you now and then, understood?”
“Understood,” she conceded absentmindedly, engrossed in the intricacies of her card game. Where to place the next card? That seemed more important to her than whatever Ald was going out to do.
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Ald walked the paths of Felsia, passing by endless buildings that from the outside looked like strangled wooden cylinders. On the days of exceptional heat—with one or two generally occurring every several years, during the peak of summer, on the months of twenty-three or twenty-two days—the wood gave in a little, and slouched slightly. Due to this, the oldest and tallest buildings seemed to go limp, sometimes leaning on neighboring structures. Some builders made a living setting houses straight. Ald always thought they needed to reinforce the forgewood with something else. Maybe proper metals.
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The house he looked for, however, had been slightly tipped to the left for so long one would think they had designed it that way. In the past, he had called that place home. Such that the wool of his own cocoon was probably stashed somewhere in a closet or a drawer.
Most visits would call at the door, but he had never handed in, nor lost, the keys to the main door. They proved useful in the occasions where Elvisat asked for a delivery of fruits, vegetables, or some personalized knives or scissors. She liked to sleep in, and Ald preferred to do these things in the morning. Now, with noon approaching, however, she was likely to be knitting in the living room or fixing herself a meal.
So he opened the door and called before stepping in.
“Elv, I am home!” he announced before hanging his poncho on the rack at the end of the entrance hall.
“Ald? I didn’t expect a visit from you today!” she yelled back, from upstairs.
He took the left flight of stairs, that faced in the direction of the entrance door, because Elvisat hated when people came from the outside and dragged their lousy dirty sandals up the right flight.
Elvisat was in the living room, sitting at ornamented square table, peeling a tuber with a knife whose sole sight brought a smile to Ald’s face.
“One would think that relic would be in a museum already,” he teased.
“I could never do that to the first knife my little boy gifted me, could I?” she said, smiling back at him with all her wrinkles. “Go on, what brings you here today? If you just wanted to pester me, you’d have taken the right path. What is your worry today, my dear?”
“You can't help but read right through me, Elv. I need help with Kali.”
She inspected him with eagle eyes. This troublesome boy, he had never found the audacity to ask her directly for the important things. Sure, he would ask for a glass of water or something to eat, but have you talking for a whole hour if he needed help to pay a debt or similar.
“Advice, you mean? Regarding what?”
“No, I am going to be outside home for some hours and I wondered if you could look after her.”
“I am old to be taking care of a three-year-old, Ald. But I can always find time for sweet Kali.”
He didn’t take a seat. Just stood in front of the staircase, looking at his former caretaker with weary eyes.
“So you can take care of her today?”
“Sure, I will pick her up in a while, if you are too busy.”
He swallowed “What about tomorrow, again?”
She left the tuber and knife in a bowl and crossed her fingers over her lap, “For my favorite little sister, I could warp my old-rascal agenda.”
“What about next week?” he asked, averting his gaze.
“Ald, what do you need all this free time for?”
“Blacksmith’s matters. Things to learn.”
She raised a dark, solid eyebrow “In specific? An apprenticeship?”
“Yes.”
She pointed at her former child-in-care “Don’t lie to me. You do that thing with your hands when you lie.”
“I can leave nobody else in her care, Elv. Please,” he said, and he meant it. She could not be him, but if someone knew Ald even more than Kali did, that was Elvisat. Who else better for the task than the one woman who could almost rebuild his thought processes from the context clues Kali could give. There had to be little bits of Ald scattered and making up part of Kali, as many as the splinters of Kali that had dug into Ald’s soul. “Could you care for her next month? Even next year, maybe?
She stood from her seat with great difficulty, waddled her way up to the farmer, and held him a serious stare, “You are going to volunteer to go past the wall because it doesn’t rain, you fool?”
“My promises to Kali bind me to do so if it were the only way to aid the sages in solving this issue. But I will look for alternatives, I promise you.”
She turned and went back to her seat. This was not something she would accept before having breakfast. “Do you want something to eat before you run off knowing it could lead to dying for the greater good? Or even worse, for no good at all…”
“I’ll try to convince Gleur to look for other ways I could help, I don’t even know why he is asking for volunteers for a patrol. Maybe I can forge for the cause. Maybe I can provide them food. He’s seeking answers, and I’d like to partake in finding them.”
It was not an explanation, but a plea, and Elvisat knew. Tell me not to go, Elv, tell me it’s okay if I run and hide.
“Gleur uses seasoned soldiers when he needs a crucial task done. But he spares them even the minimal risk otherwise: too valuable of a resource to be sent on a scout mission. If you are going to be ambushed, he will be fine, and you, cannon fodder, going ahead, behind, or to his sides, will take the hit. Like an armor of easily replaceable scrap, that’s what you are for him.”
Ald took the reprimand in silence, as he had always done when he didn’t want to grant she was in the right. Elvisat sighed. This man. This boy.
“Do whatever, dear, I am not your babysitter anymore. But remember this: I did not raise a scrap, and I did not raise a coward. But if it’s okay for Gleur to consider you scrap, it’s also okay for you to be a coward now and then. If push comes to shove, the world can provide us with another sage for the military, but it cannot grant me another Ald.”
They fell into a slow, tight embrace.
“Thank you. I will try to come back. Tell Kali I went away to bring her a bit of rain.”
“Make sure the r doesn´t become a p,” was the last thing she said before she let him go and he hurried to get away, part in shame, part because, the earlier he started, the earlier it all would end.