Theres more than one reason that Book Two of THE CHILDREN OF EVOHE is called ANNAHS EXILE. **** * * * I cannot let this go on, Annah thought, pulling a sweetglobe from a small tree that grew near the border of their campsite, and looking back at Holder, who still sat staring into the slowly-dying campfire. She felt the children—one boy, and one girl, as had only come clear to her in Vision in the most recent measures of time—watching inside her, sensing her distress. It disturbed their rest, as it disturbed her own—and, she knew from watching him toss and turn by their fire some nights, Holder’s as well. Goodman had gone to the homeground he shared with Irie and Calla; the one that had once belonged to Irie’s and Calla’s parents, who had never returned from their rest. Annah missed Calla’s bright laughter and cheerful voice. “Do you miss him?” Holder asked her, turning from the fire to meet her eyes. “It does not matter,” Annah said. “You are the one I love. You are my dearest, and I choose to be here with you. I have always loved you, even when you were not here.” “But you didn’t always choose me.” Holder remembered the brief glimpse he’d gotten from Annah’s own thoughts, of her and Goodman making love, by the light of a campfire like the one they sat by now. “You were not here,” she said, her voice cracking with the last emphatic syllable. “And I did not know if you would ever be here again.” Holder saw the tears welling in her eyes and shining on her cheeks like streaks of silver moonlight against snow. He saw the white swell of her stomach, where the children—their children—swam and slept, and waited to be born. He could put his arms around her, he knew, and tell her to forget everything he’d said, and he knew she would. “So you chose him. He was here, and I was gone—and you left me for dead. Left me.” “I did not want to leave you, Holder!” It was the loudest he had ever heard Annah’s voice raised, and the sound of it hurt Holder like a lasgun burn to the gut. But still he didn’t reach out to her; couldn’t tell her none of it mattered. “Then why’d you do it?” “I was hurting, Holder. I thought that you were lost to me—that you were dead, or at the least, that you no longer wanted me. I could hear your thoughts—and at, first, I did not know what they had done to you—I only heard your anger. And so I let myself become lost, too. And I—I made a choice I should not have made.” “Damn right.” I’m tired of carrying this around, he thought. I’m tired of being the one whose feelings don’t matter. He tried to shield his thoughts, but he still hadn’t had much practice with it. He missed the days when he didn’t need to hide his mind—or anything else—from Annah. But I’ve done that before, too. I’ve made mistakes, too. “You made that choice, and you kept making it. You stayed with him for months. You told him you loved him.” Annah turned away from him. “How do you know that? Can you see that in my thoughts?” “I could if I wanted to, I guess. But no. He told me. Did you say that to him?” The words were almost a whisper. “I did.” “But,” she added, “I also told him it was not what I feel for you. He knows I will never feel that for him. I do not want to be with Kale, Holder. I—I suppose I was with him, for a time. I was. Have you never wanted desperately to be somewhere else, and seen no way to get there?” Annah’s words pierced the wall Holder was trying to keep locked around the hurt he felt. He remembered the room of shadows he’d been kept in aboard Holdfast Station; remembered the suit made of another man’s skin and memories where he’d been trapped so long. Annah had been trapped in memories, too, he knew. And they’ll stay memories if we don’t make good choices to balance out the bad ones. “I have,” he said. “I have, beloved. I shouldn’t have left with Goodman. My place was at home on Evohe, with you. I won’t leave you like that again.” “And I will never leave you again.” As she said the words, Annah felt the bloomlings inside her slow their frenzied movement, and settle into rest, as if satisfied. “I have never stopped loving you, Holder.” “I believe you. It’s still not easy. But I love you. And I’m here.”
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 18:50:52 +0000
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