I was nervous. Of course I was nervous. Who wouldn’t be nervous when the whole of their existence, in spite of their best efforts, rested neatly in the hands of strangers --particularly strangers who claim the throne of authority? I found some small consolation in the fact that they had not sought to contest my own claim to anonymity, but I wondered how long that would last? When they discovered that I still refused to speak, I was certain that their nerves would get the better of them too. Everyone gets curious eventually.
They had given me a bowl of rice soup complete with a spoon and, amusingly, a straw. It proved to me that even though they were inevitably afraid of me, still they determined to play at the kindness and hospitality of gracious hosts. It was an endeavor that skipped no one, it seemed. I cupped my hands around the sides of the bowl and rested it neatly on top of my knees. The warmth of it seeped through my gloves in a way that was peculiar, but not unpleasant. I reminded myself not to be distracted by it.
In front of me, seated behind his desk, Leaf-Eyes looked quite as if he were the one under investigation. His strong fingers wrestled at a ballpoint pen, turning it over and over and twisting the lid and hitching his nail under the clip until one or the other surely was going to break. He had a folder open in front of him, but he didn’t look at it. Too many blank spaces to be useful, I assumed. He also had me in front of him, but he didn’t look at me either.
He did glance over at the other presence in the room, however. She had eyes the color of a flame distilled in amber, mottled oranges and reds that seemed to glint in the light, or in the absence of it. She leaned back against a cabinet off to my left with her arms crossed in a casual way, but the straightness of her shoulders betrayed that she would have been more comfortable being the one at the desk. I was inclined to believe that it was, after all, her desk. She had introduced herself as Solstice.
“Look, man,” Leaf-Eyes sighed, “we’re sorry to keep you in here, but for us to believe that you mean no harm, you have to meet us halfway.”
“What’s the best way for us to communicate with you?” Solstice cut right in, pretending she wasn’t steamrolling right over her partner by rolling her shoulders and tilting her head casually.
I shifted the bowl of soup to one hand and with the other pointed to where my mouth was beneath my mask, shrugging. Really, they could communicate with me however they wanted. The idea that someone might intentionally use something other than their mouth to communicate with me was one that I found fascinating, but I had yet to find anyone with the courage to oblige.
Leaf-Eyes tilted his head in confusion, but Solstice’s expression promptly soured. She didn’t mean for it to be so apparent, but her lips twitched in a way that betrayed how they wanted to curl. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Leaf-Eyes opened his mouth with a question on his tongue, but Solstice cut right in: “But you’re not talking to us. So how is this going to work?”
Ah, yes. Still on square one. Surprising how many people never got past that point. I fanned my fingers against my chest and turned to point at the door.
I could hear Leaf-Eyes sighing even before I turned forward again. “Now--”
“The less you talk to us, the less we trust you,” Solstice cut in. “We’ve been trying very hard to keep out of the war, so when some stranger comes in dressed all in costume and refusing to answer any questions, we’re getting worried. Do you see our perspective?”
I didn’t reply right away. In fact, my thoughts swirled immediately inward. ...War? I felt my posture straightening up of its own accord, head falling to one side in the closest approximation of a question mark that I could manage. As far as I had seen, the roads were green and the biggest disputes involved disillusioned lovers or stolen merchandise. As far as my memory could stretch, I had seen no weapons more pronounced than a kitchen knife or children playing at sticks. Where was there war…?
“He doesn’t understand,” Solstice sighed and pinched at her brow. “You do speak English?”
I nodded quickly, but hastened to set the bowl of soup on my lap. As soon as my hands were free, I skipped them back a hop --right to left, because that last point had snagged my attention like a snarl of brambles.
“Go back?” Leaf-Eyes ventured, and scrunched his eyebrows together when I nodded. Solstice raised her eyebrows at him and looked at me with renewed interest and barely-reigned impatience.
“Uh… costume?”
No.
“Communicating?”
No, no, no! Where normally the shortcomings of being nonverbal bothered me as much as a leaf falling in my path, here I felt it urgent that they understand, so that I could understand. The possibility of war felt as ominous as the rumble of approaching thunder, the first peck of ice pellets on the ground. I shaped my hands into fingerguns and let off a series of soundless shots into the air. They had to understand.
“Fighting--”
“The war,” Leaf-Eyes said with a certainty that made my shoulders sag with relief. Just a little relief.
“You don’t know about the war?” Now Solstice looked baffled too. It was a strange look for her fiery eyes. The look only deepened when I shook my head. “Where have you been, that you don’t know about the war?”
Wrestling with the nerves suddenly coiling in my stomach, the humor of the situation began to elude me. The possibility of war had never crossed my mind as I traveled the rocky road between towns. With it rose so many implications, so many questions, that I very nearly missed the desk when I sat forward to set the bowl of soup on it. I was halfway to my feet before stopping to peer uncertainly from one to the other. Could I stand up? Was I allowed to move about the room?
Solstice narrowed her eyes and frowned, but a curiosity flared which she tried to hide behind the dignity of a small lift of the chin. Go on, said that gesture, Let’s see what you’re up to.
With that permission bolstering me, I gathered myself up to my feet, tripped on the edge of the chair on my way over to the window. I cupped a hand over my eyes to look out. Mid-morning. People were going about their daily business all up and down the road just as I had found them the day before. This was no war zone. Look at those people --see how the children laughed and played! That was the laughter of no worries, that the younguns’ dance of freedom. Looking away from them, I found the sun and, stepping back from the window, used it to point due east. That was the direction of the mountain village. I had left with the sun at my back, thinking of how the village behind would be waking perhaps an hour before the village ahead.
Both heads swiveled as one to look at the wall in question. It was Leaf-Eyes who huffed thoughtfully and set down his pen. “From the east. The mountains?”
“Of course,” Solstice looked thoughtful. “Nobody wants to fight in the mountains. ’n we must be a buffer too.”
Leaf-Eyes rubbed his chin and studied me with some amount of concern, the way an artist might examine a mistake in a block of marble that might yet turn it into something else --although better or worse was yet to be decided. “Are you...going to where the fighting’s at?”
I hesitated there, with both pairs of eyes awaiting my answer. My reflex had been to say yes, but I caught myself before nodding. By their description, if I continued heading west, I’d surely encounter this war they spoke of --a promise of danger and turmoil such as I knew I couldn’t even imagine right then. And yet...why did this question feel much the same as an invitation to sit at the dinner table? There was the natural clutch of apprehension and wariness, but also a curiosity so profound that I couldn’t decipher whether the hitch in my breath was from one or the other. I wanted to stay as far away from it as I possibly could.
I also, desperately, wanted to see it.
I looked to the room’s western wall, where hung a painting of a crowd standing in front of a building. In that painting, each held the hand of the person next to them, until the last person, standing front and center, bent down to reach for the hand of one who had fallen. Written neatly at the bottom were the words, Mittislava Peacekeepers. I thought it a window at first, but only because my attention was in reality fastened on some middle distance both in front of it and far out beyond it. What was happening miles out in that direction?
“You alright, man?”
With a start, I looked down at Leaf-Eyes, over at Fire-Eyes, and shook myself. I needed to see. I pressed a hand to my chest and nodded as earnestly as I could manage, so earnestly that it was very nearly a bow. I wanted to see it. Heels drawing together, shoulders squaring backward, I unfurled my arm from my chest and pointed due west with a nod. Yes. I would go further west from there. I had to see it for myself.
Solstice squinted further and tilted her head at me in a moment of scrutiny that very nearly buckled my resolve on the spot. Then something released between her shoulders, and she sighed, the sharpness of her eyes becoming a softer warmth. “You really are just a performer, aren’t you?”
I shrugged my shoulders and fanned my hands a little helplessly, nodding. “Performer” was far from the label I would have liked. I thought of myself as more complex than that, and far from the whimsical notions the word breathed into the air. But I understood their need to stamp something on my forehead. Perhaps there would be fewer blank lines in my file then.
“We...apologize for keeping you here. We’re just trying to keep our town safe. But,” she snapped a scathing look at Leaf-Eyes, “we might have let our paranoia get the better of us. We’ll pay for any supplies that you need and a bed for the night that isn’t a jail cell, so you can be on your way when you’re ready. How does that sound?”
Again the nod was more reflex than answer --I had no intentions of staying at an inn-- but she took it for the latter and nodded. She pushed up from the cabinet and clapped a hand to the corner of the desk. “There, Torvan. Case closed.”
The man at the desk looked to disagree. Confusion marked his face in the twist of his brows and the startled way he looked from Solstice to me, and back and forth. “That’s it? Just like that?”
“Yeah. Just like that. Show this… clown? to the Corner Inn and give him fifty silver coins for supplies. And you, sir.” She stopped in front of me and jabbed a finger at my chest sharp enough to make me recoil. “Stay out of trouble, you hear? We have peacekeepers all over who will bring you right back here if you break the trust I’m giving you now.”
I nodded quickly and crossed my hands over my heart --that jab had hurt, even through the layers of fabric. Trust was a fickle thing, and I knew better than to give her any reason to take it back. I was enough of an anomaly that even stubbing my toe might be enough to shatter everything and get shoved back behind bars.
She smirked, eyes dancing. “Good. I’d like to see you perform some time. I’m curious.” One more glance back at Leaf-Eyes, and she swept from the room.
The door clicked shut on silence. The weight of it immediately made Leaf-Eyes squirm and sigh. He pushed back his chair and rose, stepped around the desk to hold his hand out to me. “Look, man. I’m sorry. No ill will, yeah? Just doing my best.”
The green in his eyes was so sincere that I looked down at his hand, and flexed my fingers at the memory of his bone-crushing grip. My hand still felt bruised and bent out of shape. Strange how he meant to apologize with the gesture that had caused the damage in the first place. Strange how he seemed to feel that a clasping of hands could absolve him of his guilt for putting me in jail. I looked back up at his face and obliged. Bruises heal, after all.
His smile was relieved. “Right then. Let’s...show you the Corner Inn. I’ll show you the market on the way.”
I let him lead me from the room and blinking out into the sunlight.
I was gone by midnight.
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