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

This time Tano did not answer at once. Only after a small space of time, he said, “Aras would have warned you. He knows there is nothing of the kind in my mind.”

I said impatiently, “I know you do not intend such a thing now. Of course Aras would have said something to warn me if that were so. But if your intention in the beginning had been something of the kind, he would not tell me that. If that were so, I do not want him to tell me. I want you to tell me.”

Silence again. I waited, letting the quiet grow. For a long time, neither of us spoke. A finger of time crept past. Two fingers. A hand. Longer than that. For all that time, Tano looked past me, at nothing. He gazed out at the endless steppe, the grasses silver-gray and then silver-green in the moonlight as all the blades bent one way and then another in answer to the winds. Far, far in the distance, a single wolf sang. Farther still, another answered. This was the first night I had heard wolves since we had come onto the steppe. They sing less in the warm season than they do after the snows begin to fall. I listened to these wolves now, singing to each other and to the Moon, and composed myself to wait for as long as I must.

Finally Tano breathed out and bowed his head. He said in a low voice, “Everything you say is true. When I left inTasiyo lands, that was in my mind. I knew it would be difficult, but I thought I might be able to do it. I thought ...” his voice trailed off. He was quiet for the space of three long breaths. Six. Twelve. Then he said, “I thought I could pretend to be someone from a different tribe. I thought the inGara might be generous to an inRasiko and that I might come near the lord of the inGara in that way. I could kill him and get away again and everyone would set the fault for my act against the inRasiko. It was all exactly as you said.”

To plan so coldly to do murder and put the act on a tribe that had nothing to do with the quarrel between inTasiyo and inGara ... that was much worse than anything I had thought of. I said nothing.

Tano was not looking at me, but at the earth between us. “Long before I came near inGara lands, I knew I had been completely stupid. Entirely stupid. I knew I could never do it. I heard people talking, inRasiko people, and I learned that the lord of the inGara was far, far north. From that time I was trying to go west. But one tribe after another forced me east instead. So I came to inSorako and then inGara lands after all.” He looked at me and said again, “That part happened as I told you.”

“You say you had given up this plan?” I asked. “Yet you still told me you were inRasiko.”

He nodded. “Yes. I mean, I had given it up. I hoped only that you would show mercy to an inRasiko boy. I hoped you would not beat me too severely. By that day, in that moment, that was all I hoped for.” His tone had taken on a biting contempt. This was not directed at me, but at himself. “I should have realized an inGara might know me. I knew inGara warriors always look hard at my father when their paths cross during the Convocation. My plan was completely stupid from the beginning. Stupid in at least two different ways.”

It had been much worse than stupid. I did not know what to say.

Tano finally knelt. He said, “I told you the truth about why I came past the boundary markers and into inGara lands. At the time I crossed the border, that was true. I thought it was true enough, even though I did not say anything about what I meant to do in the beginning. If you say it was a lie, I will not protest. I will try to endure any punishment you give me. If you put me to death, I ask you to leave my head for the animals.”

Some days ago, that request might have surprised me. Now it did not. I looked at him for some time. Finally I said, “You declare you will not protest if I say you lied. I do not say that. I ask you to judge that yourself, Tano inTasiyo. Considering everything you did not tell me, was what you told me a lie?”

A breath. Another breath. At last he began, “I think ...”

I waited.

He looked up at me. “I think I may not know exactly what the truth is and what a lie is. Not the way you do. I thought it was not wrong to be silent about some things. Or not very wrong. Probably I was mistaken to think so. If you say it was wrong and that I lied to you, I will accept that.”

That was not a bad answer. It was better than I had feared. I sat down facing him. I said, “From someone I trust, from a cousin or a friend, from anyone who was not inTasiyo, I would say that was not exactly a lie and I would forgive it. From you, I say it was not exactly the truth and I am not certain whether I wish to forgive it. In the future, I ask you to be very, very strict with yourself when you tell me things that are true.”

He bowed wordlessly to the ground.

“I will not put you to death. I do not wish to punish you for anything,” I told him. “I wish