Rather than Resenting: Ch. 10

Contact

Notes:

Okay. Time to see how making contact goes....

p.s. I am making a tiny edit to the previous chapter, not in the text itself because then it would have to get re-approved and it's so small....but Janner had his sword with him when he and Kalmar began walking towards the port. Standard Throne Warden Procedure or something (STWP).

*****

On reaching the docks a few minutes later, they quickly spotted Greston who proceeded to bow respectfully (thankfully it was only with the upper part of his body and he didn’t lower himself to the ground), and Kalmar asked him to stop. Again. Please. 

He did so with a wink and the words, “My King, to not pay homage to you and your Throne Warden would be disrespectful and shameful on my part as your loyal subject.”

Janner was incredibly and inexplicably relieved when Kalmar chose not to roll his eyes and instead sighed in frustration, doing so at the same time a wave crashed against the docks. “Doesn’t mean I like it,” he muttered under his breath, but it was so quiet Janner was certain only he could hear it.

Clearing his throat to cover up Kalmar’s complaint (though the wind and waves were doing a decent job of that) Janner smiled at Greston. “Good afternoon. How are things coming along?”

“Splendidly,” Greston replied with a grin. “As you can see, we’re ready for the ship.” He gestured toward the docks, indicating the many open spaces the Enramere could choose from. For some reason Gammon persisted in using the same ship over and over and over again to travel to Anniera. “Tradition,” he called it. 

“And how are you and Sara doing?” Greston asked kindly. “It’s almost time, isn’t it?” 

Janner winced at the words and hoped the older man didn’t notice. He felt Kalmar’s hand subtly placed on his back in reassurance, but that only made his throat burn, for multiple reasons. He swallowed before answering. “She’s alright. Wonderful, actually,” he hastily corrected himself, his stomach churning as the waves did. “She’s wonderful.”

“That’s great,” Greston nodded, still proceeding to keep the broad smile plastered on his face. Just as Greston continued smiling, Kalmar began moving his hand in comforting concentric circles this time. Smiling just a little bit, Janner wondered whether his brother would ever know how much the gesture meant to him.

Greston opened his mouth to say something, and rather than risking that it could be another question about Sara that he wasn’t ready to answer, Janner quickly asked, “What was it you wanted to see me for?”

“Oh, yes. I was meaning to get to that,” Greston said, slightly apologetically. “Ah, King Kalmar—”

“Just Kalmar, please,” Kalmar said, sounding almost like he was begging. 

Greston fixed him in his gaze for a moment before sighing. “My apologies, your Majesty. Kalmar,” Kal groaned even more now, but this time Greston ignored it and Janner cracked a real, true smile. “Your audience has not been requested. Only Janner’s has.” A wave crashed against some rocks along the beach in emphasis.

Janner raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “Really? I must say, I’m intrigued. Who is it?”

Greston shrugged. “Come with me and I’ll show you.”

Glancing at Kalmar for “permission” — he was his brother’s Throne Warden and preferred to have Kalmar's approval to leave and meet an unknown person —  he began following Greston as soon as he received it.

He furrowed his brow quizzically as their path led down to the beach and across the sand, then towards a small cave he knew well.

“Why are we going this way?” He asked, the waves only partially drowning out his words.

Greston fell back a bit so they could walk together. “I was just doing normal things here, making sure sails are tight enough, making sure planks and shingles are nailed down — that sort of thing — when I see this person walking down the beach. They have a walking stick and they're stumbling a little bit, so the first thing I do is drop everything and go to help.”

Janner nodded, understanding. Chivalry was always the right thing to do.

“So I ask her — I can tell the person is a woman as soon as I put my arm around her to steady her — what she's doing and why no one is helping her. She's carrying this satchel, too, and I'd love to take care of that for her. Her response is this croaking, ‘I don't deserve help,’ and I obviously ask her if there’s anything I can do to help her.”

Janner laughed a little, not because the elderly woman's plight was funny, but because of Greston’s response to her. The waves responded with laughter of their own.

“She looks at me in this sad, earnest way,” he resumed. “And says, ‘There’s just one thing. Can you send for Janner Wingfeather? I need to talk to him.’ I gladly obliged and offered to bring her to the dock house, but she said she preferred to wait in the cave with another, ‘It’s all I deserve.’ She's a bit odd, Janner,” Greston said unexpectedly. “I'm not exactly sure why, but she's odd.” 

That was the last thing that came from his mouth before he became silent, since they had come into the vicinity of the cave and was the point at which speaking about her would be considered rude.

They stopped just before they passed in front of the entrance, to where Janner couldn’t see the woman at all. 

“Would you like me to stay?” Greston asked quietly. “She only called for you, but if she needs real help, someone will have to run and get it. I’d rather not leave her here alone.”

Janner nodded, though his stomach clenched strangely out of worry. There was no reason to be concerned. It was only an odd, elderly woman who had for some unknown reason been walking along the shoreline alone. Nothing was going to happen that was worse or crazier than having to force his son to begin breathing again and getting drugged by his wife. 

He took a few steps to where he was standing in the mouth of the shallow cave, then another two so he could be closer to the woman. She was looking away from him so he couldn’t see her face, but he could see her gray hair falling down her back in stringy knots and the state of her dark cloak, worn, battered, and time-tested. Based on the way she hunched over, Janner guessed she and her cloak were kin in that sense. 

“Hello,” he said pleasantly, glancing down briefly to make sure his sheath was covered by his cloak. He didn't want to frighten her unnecessarily. “I’m Janner. The man who found you said you asked for me. What’s your name?”

She shook her head. “Not yet,” she said slowly, her voice creaking with age. Something was familiar about it, but Janner just couldn’t place it. “You need to know how I came here.”

He nodded, but on remembering that she had yet to look at him and likely could not see the nod, he instead responded, “Alright. But once you are through with your story, please, allow me to help you. I truly do.” Physically helping her was something he was capable of (or at least employing others to do so), even if everything was going haywire. 

“By the time this is over, I doubt that will be the case,” the woman murmured, the waves in the background echoing her quiet words. She switched back to her normal tones quickly, though, almost as if she had never uttered the saddened words. “I have been wandering, for a while,” she said softly. “I have been wandering and thinking and searching and hoping and praying for some sort of answer or judgment. It came in the form of a Hollish ship heading for Anniera several days ago. After arriving, I wandered more, walking around the beach for a while.” Janner was amazed that she had walked for so many days considering her age, but said nothing. “Today that man found me, and when he asked if there was anything he could do, I asked him to send for you. I could see the castle from the beach and knew you were somewhere close by.”

“But why?” Janner asked curiously, even though someting about the situation still felt strange and wrong, even. “Why do you want to talk with me?  I don’t even think I know you.”

The woman sighed wearily as if she was completely and utterly exhausted. “Because I must apologize to you and explain how much I truly mean it, even if it kills me. I doubt I will be forgiven, but I have to apologize. I have repented as best I can, but without an apology it appears to be void.”

Even more puzzled now than he had been before, Janner looked at the woman more closely. “Who are you?” he asked suspiciously. The knot in his stomach tightened and he fingered his sword hilt with his right hand. “And why would you need to apologize?”

“Because I’ve destroyed you,” she whispered. “By hurting your brother so terribly, I’ve destroyed you.”

Janner stopped breathing at those words. Maker, no, he said silently. Please, please, just no. “Show me your face,” he choked out.

She slowly turned to look at him, her pale, wrinkled skin coming into view, her strange, empty eyes that tried and failed to cling to some sort of emotion, her thin-lipped mouth.

Janner wanted to scream, wanting to weep, wanted to charge, but found he could not. A stifling silence in which not even the waves filled in the emptiness with their crashing filled the air, making it seem as though time has stopped.

Such anger and fury and confusion and grief roiled within him that he heard and saw nothing other than the roaring in his ears conjured up by his mind and the sight of Amrah the Stonekeeper sitting before him, apologizing to him. He wasn’t the person who needed to be apologized to. He wasn’t the person missing an arm. He wasn’t the person who had had to re-learn how to write and draw over the past six years. He wasn’t the person who had almost died because of a castle collapse.

Kalmar was the one she needed to apologize to. Kalmar was the one she had hurt, Kalmar was the one she had almost killed, Kalmar was the one who had shed tears over it, Kalmar was the one who had feared the love of his life would not marry him if he had only one arm. 

Janner didn’t realize he was clenching his right hand tightly until the feeling of something warm and slippery on his fingers drew his attention. He glanced down, pulled his right hand out from underneath his cloak, and saw blood. It reminded him of the blood on his hands as the shards of glass had cut them and the blood on Kalmar’s arm that had made the limb nearly impossible to recognize. 

He looked back up at her, his left hand moving to the hilt of his sword automatically and grasping it. “No,” he choked out, the words a warning to himself even as fury strangling him and begged him to just go through with it. He felt something in his heart, something that he had never felt before, something that he loved and hated with a burning passion that terrified him. The waves pounded now, again and again and again, keeping in time with his heart. He wrenched his hand away from his sword. “I can’t just—”

He didn’t bother to finish and instead turned around and ran outside blindly, veering right as fast as he could. He ignored the sound of Greston’s voice as he called him back and he ignored the ache in his throat and the burn in his legs and the wind in his face and the tears on his cheeks. He ran along the beach, slipping in the sand every once in a while and nearly falling, steadying himself again and continuing to run, no matter how hard his body begged him to stop. 

He couldn’t stop, though. If he stopped, the feeling that had utterly consumed him in the cave might catch up to him and fight him, and he knew it would win. He just knew it would. He tried his best not to think about the sword sheath that clanged against his thigh as he ran, about the the temptation that had flooded over him, about how close he had been.

Finally his legs and body gave out and he crashed into the sand, falling to his knees, his sword sheath sinking into the wet sand beside him. Through strangled sobs and breaths that barely drew in any air, Janner begged the Maker to take away the feeling in his heart, to whisk it away and banish it, never allowing it to return. 

The feeling was one of a hatred so powerful, it was willing to kill. And it had a victim other than Amrah.

Him.

*****

Notes:

Again...just pretend like I mentioned Janner having his sword in the last chapter.

How do you think it was? Was it not in-character enough? Do you think he would have reacted more violently? And the final question that will be answered once/if I receive comments: will this get approved?