Yaris 62, 2720
A. Borna Rare Books, shortly before midday.
Yaris had come faster than Antranig had expected. It felt as though Intas had only been yesterday, and there had still been time to come to terms with the fact that his little boy was almost ten years old. Almost old enough to be tested. The idea of it still left a deep, freezing pit of anxiety in his stomach every time it crossed his mind. The chances of Taniel testing passive were slim, but never zero. It wasn't passivity that scared him, though. He knew he would love the boy the same whether he was capable of magic or not. The thought that scared him the most was the effect it would have on Taniel. The pain. The shame. The fact that society would look upon him as a danger, an invalid, a threat. That it would rob him of any hope of having a normal life, before his life had hardly even begun.
Antra had done his best to keep from dwelling on such a small (but never non-existent, sang the voice of anxiety ever-present in the back of his mind) possibility. He had taken to distracting himself with clients and books and making the boy happy. The first of Yaris came and went, and then the tenth, the twentieth, and so on. Taniel began to grow more and more excited around the thirty-fifth, and began counting down the days. Every day, a reminder that it was only so many days until his tenth birthday. Slow down, Antra wanted to say, stop growing up so fast.
Only yesterday, it seemed, the boy was just a tiny, pale bundle in his mother’s arms. Small and frail. In the blink of an eye he was tottering around on his own, and Antranig grew wary of every table corner and cupboard door. Taniel had been six before the lock holding the pantry shut had finally been done away with. That was only a few moments ago, and now here he was. Excited for the test, excited to get to go to the university. Antra was excited for him, and truly happy, but still that pit was there, gnawing away as it had been for years. Perhaps it would finally go away after Taniel was tested, but Antranig felt rather certain it would just find something else to get riled up about.
It was a quiet day in the shop, about a week before the big day. Taniel was out playing at the home of one of his friends, the child of a professor who lived nearby. Antra was keeping himself busy, wrapping and organizing orders that had been delivered that morning, noting which he would need to send letters about and which belonged to customers who were regular enough that they would likely be in within the week. He shortly found himself out of ink, and went to retrieve more. No sooner had he left his post when the bell on the door jangled cheerily, announcing the arrival of a customer.
“Welcome,” Antra called from behind one of the shelves, “Feel free to browse, I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Hello, Antranig,” came a woman’s voice.
It was a voice he knew well. A voice that stopped him dead in his tracks and drove an icy spike into his chest. One that he had thought he would never hear again. He stuck his head out from around the shelf, and there she was. His heart hit the floor and tried to soar all at the same time. The pain of it surely showed on his face as he studied hers. She looked almost as he remembered her, aside from a few small details that came from nearly ten years passing. Raven hair as dark as the day they had met, save for a small, fashionable wisp of silver carefully maintained and woven into the Bastian braid draped over her shoulder. Clever grey eyes looking out at him from under heavy lashes, a small scattering of freckles over her nose and cheeks. She was dressed well, in a dress of rich burgundy embroidered around the cuffs with delicate flowers done in black. It set off her features in a way that was certainly deliberate. Everything about her looked deliberate, as though she had stepped straight out of a scene in a book.
He was dumbstruck, but managed to croak her name. “Morena.”
A faint smile curled the corners of her lips. “Antra,” she replied. “How are you?”
The preposterousness of the question knocked him out of his daze. How was he? It had been eight years since they had seen each other face to face. She had abandoned him and their son in the dead of the night and left him in the ruins of the life they had built together, and here she was, in what he had scraped and clawed and fought to rebuild on those ashes, asking him how he was like they were friends who parted only yesterday. He was dumbfounded. Dumbfounded, and angry.
She continued speaking. “It was rather hard to find you again.”
“I imagine,” he muttered, making his way back to the counter and sitting down once more. “Did you need something?”
“Is that all you have to say?” she asked, “It’s been nearly eight years—”
“I am acutely aware,” he snapped, interrupting her, “of how long it has been. Did you forget? You must have, as this is the first time we’ve seen each other in those eight years. The first time I’ve even heard from you since you mailed divorce papers to my door.”
She seemed taken aback as he fixed her with his gaze, a red tinge on his usually calm and serene field. “Why are you here, Morena? Why now.”
Morena drew herself up, standing with as much dignity as she could muster. “Taniel is turning ten this year.”
“Your math skills are simply astounding,” Antra sniped. “That does not answer my question. Why does ten matter? Where were you for nine? Or eight? Or three? I’ll ask you again: why. Are you. Here.”
It hit him, then. Before Morana could speak again, he continued. “Ah, wait, I think I know. You want to be sure you didn’t give birth to a passive. What a black mark that would be on your family’s name! A passive child! So much worse than a daughter who left her husband and two-year-old son in the middle of the night.”
“I was suffocating, Antranig!” Morena snapped.
“Oh!” Antra said, feigning concern, “suffocating? Was it truly so bad having a husband who adored you? A beautiful family? A good life? I would have pulled down the moon for you, Morena.”
“You wanted me to stay cooped up in that house with a child forever!” she replied.
“I wanted you to be a mother instead of galavanting off to a new party every night!” Antranig snapped. “I wanted you to be there for your son!”
“Have you had him tested yet?” she demanded.
“Why should I tell you?” Antranig asked.
“I have a right to know!” Morena said, stamping her heel on the wooden floor with a pronounced clack.
“You do not.” Antranig replied. “You have no rights to him at all, Morena. Or did you forget that, too? You signed those away. Explicitly, in fact. I remember reading those words like it was yesterday.”
“I am his mother, Antranig!” Morena seethed, her own field, usually smooth as glass, a shattered and broken red. “I brought him into this world!”
“And abandoned him in it!” Antranig shouted, snapping to his feet. His stool skittered back and toppled over, clattering to the ground as he stood to his full, impressive height, towering over the woman he once loved. She shrank back, all her ire going out of her like the air out of a balloon. It was the first time he had ever raised his voice to her. Even when they were married, even when they argued about her being out all night, he had never yelled before now. He had rarely even lost his temper. Anger swirled around him now, slicing crimson through his field, turning the calm lake into a maelstrom. Antra balled his fists on the counter as he stared her down.
“What sort of mother leaves her child and returns only when it serves her reputation? What sort of mother only shows concern about her child when he could be a threat to her family’s name? Do you have any idea what it was like, how it felt, when he was four years old and asked me if you left because of him? If it was something he did?” Antra asked. He thought he saw the faintest glint of shame in her eyes as he spoke. He continued, “He was a baby, Morena. A baby, and you abandoned him. You abandoned me. I have spent the last eight years giving him everything he needs and more, trying so hard to make sure he knows he is loved, and safe, and that your decision had nothing to do with him.”
He turned away, bending down to right the stool again, the red in his field calming. “I will not let you waltz back into his life to soothe your own conscience, if you even have one. If he ever wants anything to do with you, it will be his decision. Not yours. Not even mine. His.”
He levelled his gaze at her once more. “And if he does decide he wants you to be a part of his life, then he is a better person than both of us, and I will be proud of the job I have done raising my son.”
He sat down once more. “I wish you all the happiness in the world with your new life, Morena. Now kindly leave my shop, and never come here uninvited again.”
“Antra—”
“Good day, Ms. Sauvageot,” Antra replied, cutting her off.
He was uninterested in anything else she had to say. He uncapped his new ink bottle, filled his pen, and went back to the letter he had been writing without even looking up to see her leave. She did so without another word. The bell jangled, and the door clicked shut, and Antra was left alone in the book store once more. He kept up his stoic facade for a few moments, just to be sure that she had actually left, and was not watching him from the street. Once he dared to glance up and saw that there was no one outside save for the usual hustle and bustle of Brunnhold, the cracks began to show. His heart was fluttering in his chest, rattling across his ribcage like a possessed xylophone, panic creeping in and clouding the edges of his vision. He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. Slowly in through his nose, and then out through his mouth, until his heart rate began to settle into a normal rhythm once more.
He opened his eyes when the bell on the door chimed once more, and was greeted with the familiar and much beloved sight of his boy walking into the shop. There was a feeling of everything sliding back to its proper place. Taniel smiled at him. He was rosy from the walk and the warm weather, and his knees were dusty with dirt from playing.
“Hi dad, I’m home,” he said.
Antra smiled back. He got to his feet, walking around the counter to pull Taniel into a tight hug. Taniel grunted from being squeezed, wrapping his arms around his father in kind.
“Dad, are you okay?” he asked, a hit of confusion in his voice.
“I’m fine,” Antra replied, “I just missed you.”
Taniel laughed. “That’s silly,” he said, “I wasn’t gone that long!”
Antra pulled back, brushing a curl away from Taniel’s face and smiling warmly down at him. “No, you’re right. It is a bit silly. Still, I’m glad you’re home.”
Taniel tilted his head, looking up at his father. “Are you sure you’re okay, dad?”
“Of course, seede,” Antra said, “Are you hungry? It’s almost time for lunch.”
“Starving!” Taniel replied, making his way towards the door behind the counter that connected the shop and the house. “I could eat a whole entire chrove, horns and all!”
Antra laughed, stopping to lock the front door of the shop and flip the sign to “closed” before following after him. He paused at the door to the house, looking over his shoulder out the front window of the shop. He saw no one he recognized. He didn’t think Morena would be back, not after what he had said to her. He moved through the door, calling after Taniel to wash his hands before lunch, and letting it shut behind him.
