Tarashana by Rachel Neumeier (little red riding hood ebook TXT) 📕

I sipped the sweet liquid slowly, a little at a time, until the bowl was empty. Finally I set the bowl aside and said, “The people of the starlit lands make tisane this way, with honey and mint and fruit. Their fruits are sweeter than ours. Some of them shimmer with light, as water in the moonlight.”

“Yes,” he said. “I saw that now and again when I was a young man and went into the starlit lands myself. Everything glows with its own light in that country. That is beautiful. I tasted their foods and the tisanes they make. These were not unpleasing. Nevertheless, I would not have wished to live in that country for an entire season.”

“We were not there as long as it seems. Time passed strangely in the land of the shades.” I hesitated. Then I said, “We could have returned through the pass more quickly. But not until Etta had recovered herself. Also, for a long time, I could not have endured it.”

My father said nothing. He set his own bowl aside, and looked into the coals of the brazier, not at me.

I said, “I do not understand Yaro inTasiyo. But I think I may understand some things. I think perhaps he was a man who was angry, and who clung hard to his rage until it became something more bitter than anger and poisoned his heart.”

“That may be so,” my father said, his tone neutral.

Eventually I went on. “I was so angry. When Lorellan used sorcery against me, that was different. When an enemy does something terrible, that is not the same. In some ways what Lorellan did to me was much worse. But in other ways ...” I did not know how to finish that sentence.

My father nodded.

“After many days, Hokino warned me that anger can become a bitter poison. He ordered me to kill Aras, or forgive him.”

“Hokino inKera said this?”

“Garoyo tried to tell me that there was this problem. I did not listen. Hokino did not give me any choice but to listen.”

My father nodded again. He picked up his bowl, drank some of the cooling tisane, and set the bowl aside once more.

I said, “I did not forgive Aras for doing this to me. But I forgave the act itself. Not because it was the right decision for the moment, though it was, and perhaps that might have been enough. I had to forgive the act because the bitterness had become too great. Both of us were suffering because of that. Everyone was suffering because of that. But now ... now I think ... now I am certain I made the right choice. Now I think perhaps I should set aside every trace of the anger that still lingers in my heart and forgive everything. But, no matter what my father may believe of me, I do not know whether I can manage that much generosity.”

My father grunted. Then he said, “Nothing could make my son into a man like Yaro inTasiyo. If this is his concern, I think he may lay that fear aside. It could never happen.”

“I think I came closer to that than my father believes.”

My father raised his eyebrows. “Such a thing is utterly impossible. Do not argue with me, my son. That is not proper behavior for a young man, and I expect you to set an example for your younger brothers.”

Nothing could have made me laugh, but I smiled.

“Will you tell me the tale again?” he asked, much more gently. “Not all of it, if you prefer not. Only what you wish to tell.”

I told him almost everything. Some of the tale was difficult, but my father did not react to anything I said. He listened without saying a word. After some time had passed, someone brought food. He signaled that I should stay where I was. He stood up himself, took the platter from the woman who had brought it, put the entry of the tent down again and came back to sit across from me again. Even then he did not speak to me.

I took a bite of the food. It was beef braised in milk, which meant some of the heifers had already calved. We had indeed come from winter into spring, whatever the chill in the air. I had twenty-two winters now. I felt much older than that.

This was a kind of food I had missed without realizing it, and I discovered I was very hungry. We both ate in silence for some time. Finally, I told him the last part of the story. I told him that I had demanded Aras take out the leash—that Aras ask a Lakasha sorcerer to do it because there he could not do it himself.

My father said quietly, “This is because it is not fitting for a man to hold that power over you. This is not because you no longer trust him to hold it.”

I gestured assent.

“He agreed to give up this power.”

I made the same gesture.

“I will not ask anything else regarding that matter.” The Sun had stepped from the sky long since, so within my father’s tent, the coals glowing within the brazier gave almost the only light. The darkness was deep, but comfortable. Along with the darkness, a kind of peace had come into my father’s tent that I had not felt for many, many days. Speaking of all that had happened had been hard, but telling him everything that had happened had somehow eased the weight of all those events, and my father’s silence had made the tale bearable.

After some time, my father asked, “Should I return Arayo inKera to his father?”

That surprised me. Then I understood. I asked in return, “Does the new custom seem strong enough to hold? Has anyone