“They’ll want to leave soon,” I said.
“It will be good to be at home,” said Lutha. It was a statement, but it sounded like a question.
“I have no home,” said Snark.
“Nor I,” I said, as softly. “In any case, that is not why the ship was allowed to come. It did not come merely to take us home. Remember what Behemoth said when it spoke to us first.”
“What did it say?” asked the ex-king. “I don’t remember.”
“You wouldn’t remember,” said Lutha in an expressionless voice. “You were … dead. It was after it tore … tore Leely into bits. It asked if we would live by truth. It told us to reflect.”
“Such violence,” he said distastefully, as though it had happened to someone else.
I broke the long silence that followed. “The violence wasn’t arbitrary. The question wasn’t rhetorical.”
Lutha did not look at me. I knew she had heard me, but she didn’t meet my eyes. She was watching Leelson, who had broken away from a small group near the ship and was striding up the slope toward us.
He put his arms around Lutha, hugging her joyously.
“We can go home,” he said. “We can take … our son and go home.”
She turned toward me, her eyes spilling tears. I knew what she was thinking. She had wanted him to say that, something like that.
“He’ll be of great value in Fastiga,” Leelson assured her, stroking her hair. “For his healing power alone.”
My throat was dry. I cleared it, painfully. “Yes, he’ll be of great value. For his healing power alone.”
The ex-king looked off toward the horizon. “Fastigats should be able to live almost forever, with all the Leelies around.”
Leelson frowned, shook his head, stepped away from Lutha. “But … I hadn’t … I thought we’d only take … just the one, Lutha.”
“But they’re all …” she cried, her hand to her mouth, not finishing the sentence. She was right, however. They were all.
“As you say, they’ll be enormously valued,” repeated the ex-king, “for their healing power alone. Not to speak of raising the recently dead. Extending human life spans for how long? Increasing human population by how much? All Firsters will be delighted, of course. It shouldn’t take long for there to be a profitable market in Leelies.”
Leelson recoiled as though he’d been slapped.
“Later,” Lutha said in a voice that was almost a scream. “We’ll discuss it later.”
“But the ship’s leaving….”
“They’ve sent men to get the Procurator’s body. The ship won’t leave until they return. Leelson! If you love me, let me be. Give me a moment!”
He backed away, uncertainly. Poracious called his name, and he went off toward her, glancing at us doubtfully over his shoulder, unable to decide whether to be hurt or angry. Poor Fastigat. Even he could not read this tangle!
Lutha turned away from us, her shoulders shaking, wiping her face with the backs of her hands. She shuddered, drew a deep breath, then wept again. In a moment she stopped trying to control herself and simply walked away toward the sea.
Snark said to me, “Go after her, Saluez. She talks to you.”
The ex-king nodded, nudging me, so I went after her. By now it was starlit evening, with just enough light to see by. She wound her way among glistening pools with me trailing after, and when we came to the beach, I wasn’t surprised to find Leely already there, perched on a rock. He was her destination, after all.
“Lutha mother love,” he called in his small voice, sliding off the rock to hug her leg and look happily up at us. “Saluez of the shadow.”
She lifted him, hugged him gently, then sat on the rock where he’d been perched.
He settled into her lap. I leaned against a boulder, being invisible, watching the stars come out.
“Tell me about home,” he said.
I saw her throat tighten, as though she choked. She swallowed deeply. “Isn’t this home, Leely?”
“No. Home home I remember. Alliance Central home.”
Who would have thought he would remember Alliance Central? And yet, why would he have forgotten.
“What do you remember?” Lutha asked, looking helplessly at me.
“Everything! My room. My paints. All the nice places you put on my window scene.”
“Do you miss those things?”
He leaned back against her with a little squirm of pleasure and comfort. “I like it here. Window scenes are nice, but you can’t touch them. You can’t be in them. I like real fish. But you want to go back and I want to be with you.”
There were tears in my throat. Stars fragmented in my sight. I blinked my eyes clear.
She asked, “How do the other Leelies feel?”
“Most of us don’t remember. I’m the only one who really remembers. You know.”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
His little voice was matter-of-fact as he said, “It depends on how big a piece we got made from or maybe which piece we got made from. I got made from Leely head. That’s why I remember. The other ones, they were made from Leely legs or Leely blood or Leely guts. They’ve got good brains, but they don’t remember some old things like I do.”
He turned to hug her, then went on. “I remember lots of things, Lutha Lutha Tallstaff sister mother love. I remember Trompe. I remember when we met Saluez of the shadow, and how we got here. I remember Behemoth.”
She took a deep breath. “You’d probably be fine here, all you Leelies, whether I was here or not.”
His face clouded. I had never seen him wear that expression before, though it was one common to other children. The look of a child fearing loneliness. The look of a child afraid.
He put his hands to her face, whispering, “I’d be lonesome. I need somebody to talk to. I want to be with you.”
After a time she rose and walked back to the camp, Leely riding on her shoulders, his arms wrapped around her head. Snark and the ex-king were standing outside the
