It was nice to spend time in one place for a change and Guinevere enjoyed their visits to the Legends' HQ. More a house than the officious building the letters suggested, it was warm and comfortable and Guin could curl up happily on the carpets until they had to leave. Often her indyadin was asked why she curled up on the floor instead of the plush chairs, but he would only shrug his shoulders and hood his eyes enigmatically. "She likes that," he'd say, and fold his arms across his chest in a way that suggested he was closed to further conversation. He did not accept any sort of inquiries into his and Guinevere's life. When in public, people called n'Barit "private." When they were in the company of those they trusted, they called him rude. After all, wasn't asking how someone was doing being polite?
Guinevere knew what those conscientious individuals, with their "how do you dos" and "how are yous," did not. Her guardian lived with a shame.
It was something with which Guinevere was acutely familiar. His shame had become a fact of her life. Part of her did not think it was a shame at all, but even at her very young age Guinevere understood that this was a shame she could mention to no one.
There were so many times she could have said it offhandly, even in the most rudimentary babyspeak, and it would have been cute and adorable and horribly disturbing, like a toddler telling you he had seen his mother die bleeding on the kitchen floor. "Mommy got cut by the bad man," he would say brightly, "and she didn't get up." The adults would all turn their heads and close their eyes to rid themselves of the grisly image, even though it had been on their minds for weeks now and a topic of many conversations. They would pretend they were simply too delicate, too polite to have commented on the dead mother in any but the most endearing terms. They would pretend they had not turned to their spouses late at night and said
Martha always left the doors unlocked, she practically invited it on herself in disapproving tones. Instead, they would turn their heads and cringe dramatically, not realizing that they were acting lies when the child spoke only the truth. "Now now, Bobby," one would say, "let's not talk about that." Then that adult would lead Bobby to the toybox and treat him condescendingly until he learned never to mention his dead mother in anything but the most grief-stricken terms. He, too, would become a liar. He would grow up, as Guinevere had grown up.
For her father's sake, she kept the secret. She let it burrow down into her like a little brown turd until it curled up in the space between her lungs and her intestines and she felt like she might burst from the strain of not telling it. That was how she pictured it, a turd in the middle of her chest, at the top of the indentation made by the joining of her ribcage. If she put her finger there and pressed, she could feel it pressing back. Because she feared that it might grow bigger she would whisper it into the cloth ear of her Ïda every night before she went to bed.
Ïda was her one belonging, and even then her indyadin did not approve. But Guinevere needed Ïda to keep the shame from growing inside her and would not tolerate separation. Without Ïda the shame would turn her skin the color of mud and then she would not be able to hide it and the truth would hurt her indyadin, who lived in fear of the idea that anyone would learn the truth behind the reason why his daughter liked curling up on the rug and not the sofa.
Today she huddled with Ïda underneath the edge of the table, a roof inside a roofed building, and brushed out the knotted yarn hair on Ïda's head with her fingers. Ïda's hair was always picking up twigs and dirt when Guinevere was not careful. She tried to be careful, but it was hard to pay attention all the time. If she watched Ïda while she was walking she might trip and fall, or if she watched Ïda while she was eating she might drop the food and then indyadin would have to eat it and give her his portion. That he hated most of all, but he tolerated it out of necessity. He had learned long ago that certain religious conventions could not be observed in various situations. In his younger days, he would have prayed for absolution as he taught Guinevere to do, but he no longer prayed for himself and he told Guinevere never to waste her prayers. She should only pray for people who could be saved from their sins, not him.
Secretly, she would pray for indyadin, and she taught Ïda to pray as well, kneeling with her feet tucked under her. She had to move the little rag doll's legs for her, but soon Ïda's stuffing had worn thin in just the right places and now the doll prayed with ease.
Every so often, one of the other children who saw her at the HQ would ask what she was doing, and Guinevere would tell them she was praying. Sometimes they stared at her, other times they walked off. She tried to teach one of the others to pray with her, but his mother had not approved of the unfamiliar religion, especially when n'Barit was so reticent to explain it, except to say it was the only religion, and all other were lies. People didn't like it when n'Barit said things like that, especially with that dark look on his face. Guinevere, ever sensitive to her indyadin's state of mind, would run over and smile and pat him on the hand in reassurance. She would see his eyes light up just a fraction and the beginnings of a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. He said once, while they were sky-watching, that they had a communication, and when Guinevere asked what that meant, he said when they talked they knew what the other was meaning. Normal people didn't have that. The subject was dropped, but Guinevere knew she would always remember that moment.
That was why she had to protect him, because in all the world indyadin had no one else, accepted no one else, and keeping him safe filled Guinevere with such a pride that the stain of their shame was totally forgotten.
She finished her prayers under the table and was careful not to raise her head too much lest she bump it on the table's underside. She looked over to see if Ïda had finished her prayers; she usually gave the doll a bit of extra time since Ïda prayed for her father.
Ïda was not there. Guinevere blinked, for she knew Ïda was merely a doll, and dolls did not move themselves. She crawled out from under the table and looked around.
Indyadin was sleeping on the couch, his chest rising and falling. It was good that he had fallen asleep somewhere soft for a change, but he would probably chastise himself for the laziness later. Guinevere chewed her lip as she looked around, searching for a sign as to Ïda's whereabouts. She was not with n'Barit up on the couch, nor was she under the blue chair with the skirt that hid its short wooden legs, nor was she up on top of the coffee table, which Guinevere had only recently grown tall enough to see over without pointing her toes. She was gone.
Guinevere went to tug on her father's pants leg, only to realize she was tugging on the wrong one, so she switched to the other. He stirred and a moment later shot straight up with a crazed look on his face, his left hand curling on nothing. His breath caught in his throat.
A moment later it was gone, his eyes relaxed into their usual wan disinterest, and his hand unfurled. He looked at Guinevere patiently, resting the hand on his good knee.
"Ïda is gone," she said, soft as a kitten's mew, but without any trace of a plea. N'Barit rubbed at his eyes and Guinevere could already tell he was mad at himself for sleeping. When his hand came back down she grabbed it with a little hop, envious of his long fingers, and pulled him out of his seat. It took him a moment to get his balance, but she was always patient, just as he was patient with her.
They proceeded to double-check every spot until they heard the noise of a child yelling. Worse, it was a familiar yell.
About every other visit to the HQ, Guinevere would meet someone new. Usually they were older, but a few were roughly her age, and one boy had quickly become a thorn in her side. He was, as n'Barit put it, "a brat." When n'Barit said it he infused the word with such vehemence and anger that Guinevere repeated it to learn that anger for herself. She conjured it now, a righteous indignation, and furrowed her brow in preparation for Ïda's rescue.
N'Barit was powerless to stop her because when she took off at full speed, he could only hobble after calling her name and growling under his breath. His top speed was about half hers. It was a difference that grew daily; Guinevere's muscles and legs developed and each day she grew faster. N'Barit had only a lifetime of slowing down to look forward to, when he eventually came to old age.
Ignoring his call, Guinevere barreled past the chairs arrayed around the dining room table and into the kitchen. It was there she found him. The smug, slimy, spoilt little b*****d, with a cookie in his hand and his guardian holding the plate. Guinevere totally ignored the guardian's offer of a cookie, not even registering it as she had n'Barit's call, and ran straight towards the other toddler. She knocked the cookie out of his hand. It hit the kitchen cabinet and broke into half a dozen pieces. "MOMMY," came the boy's scream, not because he was scared but because he was upset at losing his cookie.
The boy's guardian shrieked in answer to her child and n'Barit finally made it into the room, leaning against the doorway for support. The guardian grabbed Guinevere roughly (not that Guinevere cared) to pull her from the boy. "Your child!" the woman screeched, and later Guinevere and n'Barit would agree her voice had the timber of a rail car brake. The boy demanded another cookie, but his guardian was momentarily distracted by the squirming Guinevere, who lunged towards the boy.
N'Barit looked disapprovingly at Guinevere, but what the woman mistook as punishment for the treatment of her boy was actually dismay at being left behind. N'Barit made his way towards the trio one hobbling step at a time, until he was standing within arm's reach of the boy and Guinevere both.
Whatever the guardian expected, n'Barit was in some ways considerably more immature than Guinevere, and reached out and grabbed the boy by the collar. His grip was strong and when he twisted his fist, it pulled the fabric of the boy's shirt tight and choked him. "
Where's the doll," he demanded hoarsely, to the guardian's high-pitched gasp of shock that anyone would lay hands on her child in such a manner. (Had she known the sort of abuses suffered by n'Barit in his childhood, she would have realized her son had gotten off lightly.)
When the woman, in her surprise, loosened her grip on Guinevere, Guin wriggled free and the woman tried to lunge for n'Barit to pull him off her son as she had Guinevere, but Guinevere was able to delay her by grabbing onto the woman's knee-high socks and nearly tripping her. It was momentary. The woman pulled free and grabbed n'Barit by his arm, only to have it come off in her hand. She screamed, but she had succeeded: when she pulled the prosthetic out of position, it dug painfully into n'Barit's skin and his eyes watered. He released the boy to grab for the prosthetic before it fell out of his sleeve completely.
Guinevere, mouth open in shock, kicked at the woman's shoe. "Brat!" she shouted.
But her indyadin had succeeded, too, and the boy, though free, backed up against the wall fearfully and said, trembling, "it's in the pot with the blue flowers!" Guinevere forgot about assaulting his guardian and ran to the giant pot in the dining room, inside which were arrayed a fan of long-stalked dried blue flowers. On her tiptoes she was able to reach in and find the yarn of Ïda's hair.
She heard a yell from the kitchen: n'Barit violently refusing help with his prosthetics or the act of standing, which was difficult. She tensed, worried a moment, but then he appeared in the doorway and stumbled to the dining room table, using the chairs as supports on his way back to the main room. Guinevere wordlessly followed, hugging Ïda to the spot of her shame. N'Barit paused only to collect his long white coat, embroidered with the pale marks of his former status, and then they left the HQ.
N'Barit retrieved his crutch from beside the door before he went down the stairs, taking each carefully. Guinevere stepped down as he did, waiting patiently at each level for her indyadin to proceed. At the bottom n'Barit said, "I don't think we can go back there," and Guinevere felt her chest tighten. They had committed another shame. Yet as she hugged Ïda, she was sure it had been the right shame to commit.
