Chapter 32
#32 of The Mating Season: A Life of Dreams
Chapter 32
"So . . . you and Theo had another . . . disagreement?" Kilyan said.
They had. Though Sade made a greater effort to stop skipping visits and stop passing judgment, he still fell into the habit of telling his son how to live.
Sade laughed dryly. "You could call it that.
Kilyan and Sade were sitting in the public gardens of the sun village, sharing a pipe as they watched Aralyla bouncing around. Aralyla was now six years old. Now that she was older, Roan had returned to work as a warrior. He and Theo were on patrol at the moment. Under normal circumstances, Aralyla would have spent the day with Enya and Ceara at the docks as she learned to fish, but Kilyan had come to visit with his family, as had Sade with his wife.
Lea and Ohana were strolling through the park with Avi, who had brought Aviine. Now that she was a member of the village council, Avi was allowed to wear a long skirt and matching shawl - which hid her penis from sun wolf hatred well enough. The wives were only feet away, laughing and talking excitedly with Amrosa about what pretty things they had bought at the market.
Aralyla and Aviine were playing Hide and Seek. Aralyla couldn't find Aviine, but Kilyan knew he was behind the bench he and Sade were sitting on.
"I told you to stay away when we are smoking, boy," Kilyan said over his shoulder to Aviine.
Aviine sulked. "But Ara'll find me!"
Kilyan frowned. "Backtalk? This early in the day?"
Aviine straightened up and playfully hopped back from the bench. He had grown into a skinny boy with silver fur and Kilyan's bright green eyes. He groaned when Aralyla leapt at him, shouting, "I gotcha! Now you gotta find me!"
Having lost the game, Aviine turned to face a palm tree and miserably began to count. "One . . . two . . ."
Aralyla squealed, looking at Kilyan with bright eyes. "I won! I won!"
"My clever girl," Kilyan said - knowing Aralyla wasn't clever at all. She was sweet, mischievous, and a bit dimwitted, always smacking into walls and tripping over stools. Kilyan knew the clumsiness had come from his side, but the slow mind? He glanced at Sade and held back a laugh.
"Now run off," Kilyan said. "I don't want you kids around the smoke. Shoo!"
Aralyla giggled and hopped away. Kilyan tensed when she almost walked into a stone birdbath, but she caught herself at the last moment and hopped on.
"Theo wants that girl to follow the customs here," Sade said darkly when Aralyla had gone. He looked at Kilyan incredulously. "My grandbaby - with another female!"
"If that's who Ara is, then you have to accept it, Sade," Kilyan said. "Or risk one day losing her. What are you worried about anyway?" He passed him the pipe. "We don't even know if Ara likes girls."
Sade sighed heavily and stared at the pipe in his paw. "I don't ask for much, Kilyan. A wife who can cook. A son who can give me grandchildren. A family who can respect their heritage! That boy of yours, that Roan - he respects the summer customs! He tries to uphold them in their house. Why can't Theo do it too?"
Kilyan laughed weakly. "Roan doesn't respect all the customs. Such as hiding who he is. I doubt he'll force Aralyla to hide who she is either. Ara doesn't even know what it means to be a summer wolf --"
"That's my point."
"Maybe she shouldn't know," Kilyan said. "You ever think of that?"
Sade was silent for a long time as they passed the pipe back and forth. "No," he admitted after a while. "I never thought of it that way." He sighed again. "I blamed Theo for years. I blamed him for being a tail chaser, I blamed him for everything that happened. Then that little girl was born . . . and I realized none of it would have happened if Theo didn't have to hide who he was! But I raised him in a place that told him to hide his desires . . . I realized that, and I realized it wasn't his fault."
"And you still want Ara to follow our customs?"
"I love my heritage, Kilyan. Regardless of its faults, I want her to be proud of where she comes from! Not everything we do is so terrible! Summer wolves have some decency - our females wear clothes!" he said, tossing a disgusted paw an older female who strutted by, tits high. "And we don't pierce ourselves or dye ourselves with tattoos! Females aren't warriors and they don't go out hunting. Aralyla should be learning to cook and sew - not fish and shoot a bow! Can you believe that Hris teaching her --!"
"But it's a practical skill . . ."
"So is cooking a damn meal. I bet none of these sun wolf bitches know how to cook! I want her to marry a male and have seven strong sons. And I want every damn one at my funeral!"
Kilyan laughed. "The first thing I realized when Roan was born . . . was that what I wanted didn't matter. You can't be a parent and be selfish, Sade."
"So you've said a million times . . ."
"Maybe this time it'll sink in."
". . . thirty!" Aviine bellowed. "Ready or not! Here I come!" He whirled around, his green eyes darting over the flowers and bushes. They fell on LiAnh, who was sulking under a tree and looking bored.
LiAnh was thirteen now, on the verge of reaching the dreaded stage of adolescence. He believed he was too old to play with Aralyla and Aviine and was more annoyed by them than anything else. Already, he was moody and sullen and hated visiting the sun village. He complained every time they came. This time, he complained that he wanted to be at home with his friends. But Kilyan knew better: LiAnh wanted to be at home so he could ogle some girl he liked.
Kilyan caught LiAnh spying on the girl once. He recognized his son's white backside as he hung over the wall of someone's backyard. Kilyan climbed up and joined him. He froze to see a very young girl sitting on the edge of a bathing basin, touching herself in the bright sunlight. She was gray and small, with a long flowing mane and bright brown eyes. She was LiAnh's age, so she had tiny breasts that were only beginning to bud.
"Hi, son," Kilyan had said with a mischievous smile.
Realizing his father was beside him, LiAnh had screamed and fallen off the wall. Kilyan then took his son home and lectured him about spying on females. LiAnh apologized but insisted that the girl was different.
"How is she different?" Kilyan demanded.
LiAnh drew himself up and said confidently, "Her name is Ehawae. And I'm gonna marry her!"
Present-day Kilyan puffed in amusement on his pipe. LiAnh still maintained that he was going to marry the girl even now. Ever since his fascination with her had begun, he hated being away from her and complained anytime they left the village to visit. At the moment, he was sulking under the tree, his back against it and his arms folded. Behind him, Aralyla was giggling as she hid from Aviine.
Kilyan shook his head. Poor Aralyla. The tree was ridiculously thin: there was no way Aviine would not find her.
"Ha!" Aviine cried, spotting Aralyla at once. He started forward but Kilyan grabbed him.
Kilyan gestured Aviine close, and the boy's ear pricked forward as his father muttered something in his ear. He nodded, then abruptly ran in the opposite direction and looked in a bush, shouting, "Where is Ara? She's too good at this!"
Hiding in her ridiculous hiding spot, Aralyla giggled in triumph.
"I guess you're right," Sade said heavily. "There's nothing I can do if Aralyla likes girls. Not like I could stop Theo liking boys. Theo is happy. And he's free. I thought he was going to be a fugitive, that I'd never see him again. But my boy is free . . . I never did thank Zaldon."
"Plan on doing it?"
"Maybe after I'm dead."
They laughed. Kilyan knew Sade didn't like Zaldon and only showed him a grudgingly respect - despite the fact that Zaldon had taken his fugitive son into his home and looked after him for a year. Kilyan thought it was pretty ungrateful, but he knew for the sake of the peace that it was better to just let it be. Zaldon didn't care that Sade was an ungrateful prick. Zaldon cared that Theo was safe.
"Are you going to be buried here?" Sade teased. "You like their damn customs so much."
Kilyan didn't answer. Nontikmah was buried here. In the village graveyard. The sun wolves honored her, leaving flowers on her grave in brilliant masses of color. They believed she was a great sorceress who had saved Zaldon, one of their most powerful and most valued magic wielders. They didn't understand that she was actually the renegade fox queen of Miras Eii.
After seeing the spirit of Sion at Roan and Theo's wedding, Kilyan thought often over the years about the beliefs of the summer wolves and if they were, in fact, true. The summer wolves - and the sun wolves, too - believed that souls passed into nature after death, and that if they were not buried before sunrise of the next day, they were trapped in-between.
How much of the story was true and how much of it was make-believe? Kilyan wished he could have asked Sion. Years after seeing his old friend, he asked himself if Nontikmah had rejoined with nature, if she was at peace. He could only hope she was.
"I'm here! I'm here!" Aralyla cried, leaping out of hiding.
Aviine turned around and feigned surprise. "Boy, you're really good at this!" he cried, running to Aralyla.
Aralyla jerked her chin, looking for a moment very much like Enya and Zalia. Her curly mane tossed, falling again to the small of her back.
"Let's play somethin' else," Aviine said. He looked at LiAnh, who was glaring off with his arms folded. "LiAnh! Play Sticks with us!"
"Hey!" Kilyan called. "No Sticks!"
Aviine tossed back his head and moaned. "Awwwwww!"
Sticks was a game where the children grabbed sticks, then pretended to spank each other -- as they had seen the adults switching the teens. The last time they played, Aralyla got poked in the face. Yuri healed the cut and the scar in her fur disappeared with it - but she was furious for days afterward that Kilyan had allowed them to hit each other with sharp objects.
"Hey, I gotta game for you," LiAnh said.
The younger children looked at him eagerly.
"Go and find," LiAnh said slowly, "a yellow flower with red thorns. The first one to find it gets a prize!"
"A prize? Really?"
LiAnh smiled slowly. "Really."
"Yaayyyyyy!"
The children fled at once in to the vast garden.
"LiAnh, that was mean," laughed Kilyan.
LiAnh shrugged unapologetically and poked a stick in the dirt.
Sade looked at Kilyan curiously. "How's that?"
Kilyan smiled at him: "There are no such flowers in this garden."