100 - One revelation follows another

Excerpted from “What is a Yeoli to think?” by Anasenga Karetai, Terera Pages, etesora 54, 1556

The Chevengani Mental State Assessment Committee decided early on to set its mandate broad—to investigate everything related to Chevenga’s mental state—perhaps without realizing what it was getting into. One Servant on it has already tried, unsuccessfully, to have Assembly permit all of its proceedings to be conducted in confidence; more recently, another member appealed to the Committee itself to narrow its mandate just to the question of whether Chevenga is mentally capable of functioning as semanakraseye, again, unsuccessfully.

Meanwhile on streets and over back fences, Yeolis argue, some contending that we are owed an accounting of everything, others that every aspect of the inner workings of the semanakraseye’s mind are simply not public business and we invade his privacy. Still others follow every twist and turn of the investigation with prurient interest. One spawn-press house in Terera began printing as many copies as it could sell of the Committee proceedings about a half-moon ago, and now looks as if it will make its name.

The other person who has made his name, of course, is Surya Chaelaecha, the vastly-talented and unflappably-calm aura-seeing healer whose help Chevenga sought while still in Arko. He has taken only a very few other clients since coming to Vae Arahi, and says publicly that he is accepting none, but word is that he has a waiting list of hundreds.

Anyone who understands both Yeolis, and presses, could have predicted these things. (No doubt Chevenga himself did.) What was less foreseeable was the degree to which public discourse on the nature and properties of the human mind would result.

What means insanity? Darosera Kinisil’s frustration with this question was at least part of why she proposed that the Committee limit itself to examining Chevenga’s fitness for his duties, as that is easily measured. As Linasika Aramichiya pointed out earlier, we all have our own mostly unspoken definition on which we judge each other. Point out someone who is clearly insane—who has fits, who speaks gibberish, who attacks friends—and most Yeolis will agree that they are insane. But with far more people, the line is more blurred. A consensus seems to be forming among the members of the Committee that, in their final report, they should follow the lead of the healers Surya and Tamenat of Haiuroru, the appointed Haian expert witness on suicide, and not declare Chevenga sane or insane unless they can agree upon a meaning. And that is probably impossible.

Is it insanity to think you are going to die young? Or to think that death is somehow your obligation? Does a person deserve what the name of madness earns—to never be trusted, taken seriously or allowed full entry into the everyday discourse of humanity, let alone allowed great responsibility—if he’s tried or considered killing himself almost ten times, even if he has spectacularly excelled at his work and is dearly loved by family and a vast number of friends? Was Chevenga deluded to consider his life worth little, and therefore mad—or did he simply interpret what was instilled into him as a child with the same intensity as he answers the demands of his position, which is likely the very source of his excellence?

Is it insanity to have been raised strictly, as we are now finding out Chevenga was? If madness can be traced back through generations, as the psyche-healers hold, does it come by blood or learning—and should a person instilled with it as a child, either way, be faulted with it?

†

We sat in utter silence for a while. A guttering candle spat and hissed like a cat.

I said, “Esora-e, get a cup of water. I’ll see if I can get it into her.” She’d hate us less in the morning if her head wasn’t in utter agony. She fought a little, semi-conscious, but once I’d trickled a few drops on her tongue and she knew it was water and nothing else, she swallowed two cups worth. And even in fighting me, she didn’t push away, but curled in even closer, pressing her face into my chest.

I held her, waiting for her to drift into true sleep. Doubting Esora-e would want to be in his old room, I asked him. “To be honest, shadow-son... no.” Tyirya didn’t want to sleep there either. “I could—I did before, but don’t want to take a bed when I’m the youngest.”

“We had some good in her room,” Tyirya said.

“You want to sleep with her?” I hadn’t thought any more surprises were possible, tonight.

“I will.” His face was unreadable, odd for him. “I think she hasn’t had enough arms around her.” I thought of her half-lidded eyes again, and remembered he was alone but for his shadow-spouses, having lost his second close wife. Who can fathom the tides of the heart? Better I say nothing, I decided.

“Then I’ll take your old room and you get the couch, shadow-father.” Esora-e signed chalk.

“I never knew,” Tyirya said, making us all softly freeze again. “I knew she looked after the old man after he had the brain-burst… everyone knew that… but…” The will to say more failed him.

“We are the first people she’s ever told this,” I whispered, not wanting to disturb her. “She might deny the whole thing in the morning, if we mention it.”

“Yes, she will,” said Tyirya. “That’s a secret of more than fifty years…”

“A long time to be silent,” I whispered. “There have been too many long silences in her life.”

By the way she felt in my arms, now, she was safe to lay in bed, so I carried her into her room, Tyirya opening the door and turning the covers for me, and gently laid her down. I undressed her like a sleeping child and got her nightshirt, which both Tyirya and Esora-e knew she kept under the pillow on the shield-side, onto her. “Sleep well, shadow-grandma, and know you are loved,” I said with one last hug and kiss, and tucked her in. She mumbled her love in return, and settled very deep.

The next words, as the three of us sat and again stared at each other, seemed as if they should be Esora-e’s. “I... never thought she’d have a reason for being a layer-forged bitch,” he said.

“If there’s one thing Surya has taught me, it’s that there’s a reason for everything,” I said. “If you don’t know it, it’s because it’s hidden. We really did come here for that, even if we didn’t know it. To find out why.”

“I feel like I’ve had my guts ripped out with a fork,” said Tyirya.

“I bet,” I said. “I didn’t think anyone but Lakans and Arkans did this sort of kyash to their own flesh and blood. Do we want to deal with it for the rest of the night in sobriety or further drunkenness?”

“She’ll be a bear with two sore heads tomorrow... Sobriety for me,” said Esora-e, putting a hand over his cup.

“Do you need company drunk or sober, lad?” Tyirya asked me.

“Either way is fine with me.” I felt as if no amount of drink would make any difference to the way I felt; perhaps the wine shouldn’t be wasted on me. I was ringing like a bell. “Why don’t you kill—I mean, finish, the bottle? Except for this much.” I poured a little into my cup just to keep him company, and the rest into his.

“Thanks, love. I’m curious: why did you ask her if he used his wristlets?”

Esora-e dropped his head into his hands, his fingers curling a little to press into his brow. “It… just reminded me of something,” I said.

“I told you,” Esora-e said in a half-strangled voice from under his hands, “not to protect me by making light of it. I hit Chevenga that way, Papa.”

I could see Tyirya staring at him, wanting to say, You didn’t!, but swallowing it; there’d been enough anger, horror and pain here tonight. Esora-e spared himself seeing that look, keeping his face hidden. “I’ve forgiven him,” I said. “Shadow-father, did she hit you that way?”

“No, she only smacked me with the flat of her sword. She’d forbid me meals when I messed up.” Another answer to a long-standing question. No wonder he couldn’t eat when something was wrong. It’s as Surya says, I thought; one revelation follows another, when you seek them.

“That’s amazing,” I said. “You didn’t know he did that to her, and she didn’t do it to you, but you did it to me. Wanting to drive defiance out of the eyes and everything.” I added fast, “But without killing me.”

A bit too much truth, perhaps. He looked as if I’d hit him with my wristlet. “Thank All-Spirit,” he whispered. He needed my arms around him, I saw, so I gave him them. He dropped his head on my shoulder, and was suddenly letting out long gasping sobs, jamming his fist into his mouth to keep from waking her.

His father and I held him between us, and with us telling him “Let it out,” and “It had to happen, here, and with all this,” he went for a good long time. They were the tears, I knew, from crying them myself at Surya’s hands, that wash one very clean and very deep, reaching a long way back, and it would be best for him to cry them to exhaustion. Tyirya knew it too, I could tell. We said hardly any more words before we all had our own two cups of water and went to bed.

†

My shadow-father and I are early-risers in the way of warriors, and Tyirya is in the way of elderly people. In the way of elderly warriors, Krasila is a very early riser, but I didn’t expect to see her come out of her room at the usual time. We might have to give her students her regrets for lateness. When we let them know who we were, they’d get an idea why.

Tyirya was already making tea in the kitchen when I stumbled in. Rumpled and red-eyed, Esora-e rolled off the couch.

“I have to ask the two of you,” I said quietly, “because I’m having trouble believing it. Did she really tell us last night that her father killed her mother? Or is it just a very bizarre and sick dream I had?”

“Kyash,” Esora-e spat, thickly. “I was going to ask you the same thing.”

“We can’t all have had the same very bizarre and sick dream,” rasped Tyirya.

“I think that if we ask her, she’ll deny it, as I said last night,” I said.

“Definitely, she’ll deny it,” said Esora-e, while Tyirya signed chalk.

“Then let’s not mention it. She is an honest person; we’re most merciful if we don’t raise something about which she feels she must lie.” They agreed to that.

“Chevenga…” Esora-e looked at me almost begging. “You aren’t going to tell… the Committee, are you?”

“If they ask me something for which it would part of a true, clear and complete answer, I’ll have no choice. But I think they’re done with my upbringing, with me—it’ll be my mothers getting it right now—so I doubt they will.” I sent out a prayer, let this be true.

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