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?