Gregor knew his response, the answer he had to give her before she even begun her plea but could not find the strength to stop her impassioned speech. Words hung on his lips, waiting to be pushed out into the air. Not until the Nü stopped speaking, not until there was a vacuum of dialogue could he finally respond.
"I am truly sorry, but your old life is gone; that is the price of your freedom. You have seen the hidden hands that shape the world, you know of techniques practiced and studied in secret for over five decades. Your body was spared, but your life is now the Empress's."
Onion felt her heart well up and her extremities grow lifelessly cold. "Then I have not bought freedom as you say. I have bought an existence, nothing more."
"That may be true. That may be the right way of it. Perhaps. You will have as much freedom as any in the world truly. Tell me, when you traveled with your brothers, were you free to leave then? Perhaps physically you could walk away, as you could do now, but your chances of survival would be quite slim. No ability in the language, no skills that could help you survive. Do you even know how to gut a rein properly without spilling its poisonous bile and contaminating the meat? Or did you survive on the coin you brought in, as most mercenaries in these parts do?"
"That is entirely different!," Onion shouted back, "I wanted to be with my brothers. I wanted to be close! I..."
"Freedom has nothing to do with desire.", he whispered, bringing the conversation back to a manageable decibel. "That you wanted to be where you were stuck was only happy coincidence. If 'want' is all you require, then want to go to Pho-Boteth. Want to become bei'thal. Or want to work in the University. I can't know what you are most suited for, but there are opportunities for limited choice under the Empress."
How can someone you've never met lay claim to your life? Onion thought, but she was beyond explaining this to Gregor. He was right, of course, freedom was never her objective. Perhaps of any Nü she ever knew, Rejnev was the only one to have that desire. But he could not understand the power of each person's spider. He could not see the strands of the web, and how they bound the Nü close to each other. She could not feel the web of this 'Empress' and she certainly was not caught in it.
Since the annihilation of her brothers, and double and again with her encounter with bei'Anita, she had been cast adrift. No dew-kissed thread was there to guide her to her place in the world. Her life now was one in a state of constant shock. Gregor's words of ownership to her own desires had a flavor of sage advice now, considering her position, but that acknowledgment could come only through hollow rationalization now. She could not make herself "want" anything.
So the Nü suppressed the cloying helplessness sticking to her mind, and echoed the words she knew he wanted to hear, "I see. Very well, if this was the life that was to be for me, then I shall make it my life, damn this spiderless empress. Then what is our trajectory? I would know our path that I might be the one to lay my feet on it." she uttered, though a hint of futility pervaded her breath. The lips are far easier to convince than the heart.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Chapter 6 - Part V
"You cannot know this..." he muttered, "Just stay away." hoping the matter closed.
Onion did not press further. She was very aware of the ease with which he might again sink into moodiness. It was now or never, she had to make her case before they parted ways again. Gregor was perhaps the only person she might consider an ally; the only person who might allow her to slip away now. Three years on the continent had taught her little of diplomacy, but she would have to try.
"I realize I walked a knife's edge between this world and my death." she offered, choosing the path of humbleness to endear her cause in his eyes. "I was not the purpose of your actions. yet, without your help, without your bei as you call them, I'd have shared the same fate as my brothers. " she finally managed, "You did not have to send your people down there for me, that is painfully obvious. I have seen how they look at me; I have heard their tone as they talk of me. I may not understand the words but I feel the intent. To them, I am at best I am a complication in the execution of an already difficult strategy. At worst, a potential enemy."
"Even the chef, Cedric views me with suspicion, "she acknowledged. How often his beady eyes had darted through the bars of Onion's cell when she was meditating or he thought she was not looking! Perhaps he blamed her for his troubles, Onion could not say, but her isolation was not a mere tool to manipulate Gregor. She felt the distinct lack of anything on her web. "I doubt he knows why you retrieved him either."
She did not look at him, preferring to study the oak table's rich lacquer and cracks slowly forming at the edge of each plank. Vren rubbed her fingers mindlessly along the deep crevasses presented by the aged wood.
"I cannot fathom what motivations you might have had in mind with my escape." Left unsaid was an equally evident lack of curiosity in the matter. The wind elects its direction without question, why should she worry about why it takes her? Though, Onion did not lack in appreciation.
"You, Gregor, are my yejñi, my great mother bear, to put your claws into the fight and shield me from harm like a cub." A smile enveloped the pause of her words as Onion did her best to avoid begging. "But my brothers are dead. There is nothing for me here, and this country will only find more ways to kill me. I must return home, I must return to Deezhul. I must prepare the spirits of my brethren and take them up to Toch'vik. The web of the ancestors await them and I dare not make their souls wander."
Gregor felt compassion for the girl, recognizing the tradition among most ethnic Nü to send the ashes or personal items of a departed loved one to a nearby alpine mountain of local importance. The name of the mountain, Toch'vik, was unfamiliar to him, but the seriousness of the ritual was not. A spirit whose body still occupied the earth would become irrevocably confused, not sure whether the ancestors or the corporeal world called more loudly to them. And those wretches would soon lose their memories, according to Nüish myth, being so far lost, to become wandering spiders, haunting the minds and lives of loved ones with vengeful purpose.
He did not mention that these rituals did not translate to the continent outside of the Dutchy of Vem, and that her brothers, and all of their personal belongings likely had already been tossed to the sea. It was information that could serve only to hurt her and it was not worth upsetting her creative superstitions when he could not let her go anyway.
Gregor's prolonged silence did not go unnoticed by Onion and she felt a tinge of panic that she would be forced to go to Heilth afterall. "I do not know what I would do here anyway. This is not my tongue, the culture here is unfriendly and strange. I have no clear path!
"My spirit is a flood upon the grixi reed plains. With no riverbed, I am set to flow in every direction. Only Rejnev stood as our mountain, our guide, only he carved out the crevasses from the mountain cap that let our river flow.
"Please, I must return to my people. The wife sisters of my dead brothers are siblings to two young men of my age. Perhaps it is time I marry, as my aunts had always hoped." Moisture collected along the ridge of Onion's eyes and she pleaded to her spider that the word vomit she had just expelled bore any resemblance to a convincing argument. She was not sure if she even believed the life of domesticity was one she desired, but she was sure that Deezhul was her only place of refuge now. She knew Gregor possessed some level of empathy for her, but was it enough to buy her way home?
Onion did not press further. She was very aware of the ease with which he might again sink into moodiness. It was now or never, she had to make her case before they parted ways again. Gregor was perhaps the only person she might consider an ally; the only person who might allow her to slip away now. Three years on the continent had taught her little of diplomacy, but she would have to try.
"I realize I walked a knife's edge between this world and my death." she offered, choosing the path of humbleness to endear her cause in his eyes. "I was not the purpose of your actions. yet, without your help, without your bei as you call them, I'd have shared the same fate as my brothers. " she finally managed, "You did not have to send your people down there for me, that is painfully obvious. I have seen how they look at me; I have heard their tone as they talk of me. I may not understand the words but I feel the intent. To them, I am at best I am a complication in the execution of an already difficult strategy. At worst, a potential enemy."
"Even the chef, Cedric views me with suspicion, "she acknowledged. How often his beady eyes had darted through the bars of Onion's cell when she was meditating or he thought she was not looking! Perhaps he blamed her for his troubles, Onion could not say, but her isolation was not a mere tool to manipulate Gregor. She felt the distinct lack of anything on her web. "I doubt he knows why you retrieved him either."
She did not look at him, preferring to study the oak table's rich lacquer and cracks slowly forming at the edge of each plank. Vren rubbed her fingers mindlessly along the deep crevasses presented by the aged wood.
"I cannot fathom what motivations you might have had in mind with my escape." Left unsaid was an equally evident lack of curiosity in the matter. The wind elects its direction without question, why should she worry about why it takes her? Though, Onion did not lack in appreciation.
"You, Gregor, are my yejñi, my great mother bear, to put your claws into the fight and shield me from harm like a cub." A smile enveloped the pause of her words as Onion did her best to avoid begging. "But my brothers are dead. There is nothing for me here, and this country will only find more ways to kill me. I must return home, I must return to Deezhul. I must prepare the spirits of my brethren and take them up to Toch'vik. The web of the ancestors await them and I dare not make their souls wander."
Gregor felt compassion for the girl, recognizing the tradition among most ethnic Nü to send the ashes or personal items of a departed loved one to a nearby alpine mountain of local importance. The name of the mountain, Toch'vik, was unfamiliar to him, but the seriousness of the ritual was not. A spirit whose body still occupied the earth would become irrevocably confused, not sure whether the ancestors or the corporeal world called more loudly to them. And those wretches would soon lose their memories, according to Nüish myth, being so far lost, to become wandering spiders, haunting the minds and lives of loved ones with vengeful purpose.
He did not mention that these rituals did not translate to the continent outside of the Dutchy of Vem, and that her brothers, and all of their personal belongings likely had already been tossed to the sea. It was information that could serve only to hurt her and it was not worth upsetting her creative superstitions when he could not let her go anyway.
Gregor's prolonged silence did not go unnoticed by Onion and she felt a tinge of panic that she would be forced to go to Heilth afterall. "I do not know what I would do here anyway. This is not my tongue, the culture here is unfriendly and strange. I have no clear path!
"My spirit is a flood upon the grixi reed plains. With no riverbed, I am set to flow in every direction. Only Rejnev stood as our mountain, our guide, only he carved out the crevasses from the mountain cap that let our river flow.
"Please, I must return to my people. The wife sisters of my dead brothers are siblings to two young men of my age. Perhaps it is time I marry, as my aunts had always hoped." Moisture collected along the ridge of Onion's eyes and she pleaded to her spider that the word vomit she had just expelled bore any resemblance to a convincing argument. She was not sure if she even believed the life of domesticity was one she desired, but she was sure that Deezhul was her only place of refuge now. She knew Gregor possessed some level of empathy for her, but was it enough to buy her way home?
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