The Sound of Broken Absolutes by Peter Orullian (fun to read .txt) 📗

“He’ll never be alone, Tahn,” she said, interrupting his calculations. “Not as long as the cradle is here.”

Tahn nodded grimly. The Forgotten Cradle. It served as a big damn reminder of abandonment to all the wards of the Scar. And it was how most of them came to this place. Every cycle of the first moon a babe was placed in the hollow of a dead bristlecone pine. Orphans. Foundlings. And sometimes children whose parents just didn’t want them anymore. Grant retrieved each child, tried to find it a proper home outside the Scar. Those for whom no arrangements could be made came to live with them inside the Scar. Not knowing their actual day of birth, wards celebrated their “cradleday”—the day they were rescued from the tree. Like he and Alemdra were doing for her today.

“I don’t know why you feel any loyalty to stay, either.” She looked away to where the sun would crest the mountains to the east. “Not after what he’s done to you.”

His father put more pressure on him. Tahn’s lessons were less predictable. Harder. One might wonder if being his son, he bore the brunt of his father’s exile here. A sentence he’d earned for defying the regent. And his father could never leave; otherwise who would fetch the babes from the cradle?

Their special morning had struck a somber note. But he couldn’t let her comment lie, even though in his heart he agreed. “He just has a different way of teaching.”

Alemdra seemed to realize she’d touched too close to private insecurities. “If you go, will you take me with you?”

Tahn smiled, grateful for a change in the direction of their morning chat. “You think you can keep up? I mean, I have been off to college and all.”

This time she hit him in the shoulder, soft enough to let him know she wasn’t offended, hard enough to let him know she was no rube. Then they fell into another companionable silence. The sun was near to rising. They wouldn’t speak again until its rays glimmered in their eyes. This was Tahn’s favorite time in the Scar. Morning had a kind of wonder in it. As if the day might end differently than the one before it. That moment of sun first lighting the sky was something he made time every day to witness. And he liked these sunrise moments best when Alemdra was with him.

He wanted to kiss her when the sun began to break. Sentimental, maybe, but it felt right anyway. As the time drew closer, his left leg began to shimmy all on its own.

What if he’d misread their growing friendship? What if she rejected his kiss? He’d be ruining future chances to run with her on morning patrol.

When the sun’s first rays broke over the horizon, he turned to her, his mind racing to find some words, debating if he should just grasp her by the shoulders and do it.

He neither spoke nor grasped. In the second he turned, Alemdra inclined with a swift grace and put her mouth on his. Her eyes were open, and she left her lips there for a long time before closing them and uttering a sigh of innocent delight.

The sound brought Tahn’s heart to a pounding thump, and he knew he loved her. The other wards would tease him; maybe try to convince him he was just a boy and couldn’t know such feelings. Let them. Because even if he and Alemdra never knew a more intimate moment than this, he would always remember her kiss, her sigh.

Sometime later, she pulled away, her eyes opening again. She smiled—not with embarrassment, but happily. And together they watched the sun finish its rise into the sky.

Then an urgent rhythm interrupted the morning stillness. Distant footfalls. Someone running. Together they turned toward the sound. A hundred strides to the east, from behind a copse of dead trees, a figure emerged at a dead run toward the cliff. They watched in horror as their friend Devin leapt from the edge. Her arms and legs pinwheeled briefly, before she gave in to the fall, her body pulled earthward toward the jag of rocks far below.

Alemdra screamed. The shrill sound echoed across the deep, rocky ravine as their friend fell down. And down. Tahn stood up on impulse, but could only watch as Devin stared skyward, letting the force of attraction do its awful work. Initial velocity, acceleration due to gravity . . .

A few moments later, Devin struck the hardpan below with a sharp cry. And lay instantly still.

“Devin!” Tahn wailed, wanting his friend to take it back. Angry, frustrated tears filled his eyes.

Alemdra turned to him. They shared a long, painful look. They’d failed their third purpose. They’d been so caught up in Alemdra’s cradleday, in the peace of sunrise, in their first kiss, that they’d missed any signs of Devin. One of their closest friends.

Alemdra sank to her knees, sobs wracking her body. Tahn put his arms around her and together they wept for Devin. At Gutter Ridge, in the first rays of day, with Katia Shonay still rising in the east, they wept for another ward who’d lost her battle with the Scar.

The third purpose. Tahn understood the feeling that got into those who made this choice. Every ward had some kind of defense against it. Or tried. His defense was the sky, morning and sunrise. Those moments gave him something to look forward to, to find hope in.

Sometime later, they started down to gather the body, keeping a griever’s silence as they went. The sun had grown hot by the time they got to Devin. They stood a while before Alemdra broke the silence. “She turned fifteen last week.”

Wards who found their way out of the Scar often did so soon after their cradleday.

Alemdra sniffed, wiping away tears. There was a familiar worry in her voice when she whispered, “She was strong. Stronger than most.”

Tahn knew she meant in spirit. He nodded.