An Abyss of Light (The Light Trilogy) (37 page)

“Don’t yell at my mommy.”

Jeremiel and her mother turned to stare at her and Sybil felt like melting into the rocks to hide. Her mother’s mouth tightened disapprovingly.

“Sweetheart? Why don’t you go down to the botanical gardens to play.”

“I can’t. Avel is supposed to come here to teach me today.”

Her mother ran a hand through her long black hair and sighed, “That’s right. I’d forgotten. Well, maybe you could—”

“She could come over here and help us,” Jeremiel suggested mildly. “Sybil, would you like to come and put pins in for us?”

A flicker of hope and happiness flashed in her. She got to her feet and ran across the room, climbing to stand on a chair and lean over the maps. “Where do you need one?”

Jeremiel smiled and leaned over, pointing to a bunch of tight squiggly lines. “Right about here. This is a cliff face.”

Sybil’s eyes darted over the pile of different colored pins. “Which color?”

“That should be a red one.”

“What does that mean? Red?”

Jeremiel frowned and hesitated, lifting his brows uncomfortably. “It’s … well …”

Sybil put the pins back into their pile. “I can keep a secret, Mr. Baruch.”

“Can you?”

“Yes, my mommy taught me. Didn’t you, Mommy?”

“I certainly did.”

He shot her mother a soft look. “I’ve no doubt of that,” he said and bent to separate out the pins. “Okay, you listening?”

“Yes.” Sybil studied him intently, noticing that he looked tired. Dark circles smudged his eyes, lines deeply graven into his forehead.

He picked up a pin, “This is a blue pin and it stands—”

“Mr. Baruch, I may be just a kid, but I’m not a stupid one. I know my colors.”

The corners of his mouth tucked in a suppressed smile and he nodded. “I apologize. Let me try again. Red are cannon emplacements. Blue are troop locations. Green are communications points. White are medical facilities.”

Sybil nodded hurriedly, excited by being included in this grown-up affair. She touched a finger to several patches of blue on the maps. “So people will be here fighting when you go after the Mashiah?”

“That’s right.”

Quietly, she tried hard to memorize all the other markings, so she could talk to her mother about them later. “And where will my mommy be?”

Jeremiel waved a hand for her mother to take over. Sybil turned to her. “Where, Mommy?”

“I’ll be in the palace, Sybil. See this purple dot on the map?”

Fear raced like acid through Sybil’s veins. Why hadn’t her mother told her that? Her heart thundered so that she could barely think.
“With the Mashiah?”

“Yes, but don’t worry, baby. Jeremiel will be there with me and we’ll—”

“I don’t want you to go!” She flung her arms around her mother’s neck, holding Rachel as though she’d never let go. “Mommy, he hates you! He’ll kill you like he did Daddy!”

Her mother picked her up and walked a short distance away from the table, stroking her back soothingly. It didn’t help. The horrifying sensation of doom continued. Through the veil of her mother’s hair, she saw Jeremiel fold his arms and lean tiredly against the table.

“Mommy, I don’t want you to!”

“I know, sweetheart, but I have to. There’s nobody else who can do what has to be done.”

“What do you have to do? Blow up his palace like we did the temple?”

“Yes … yes, something just like that. But don’t you worry about it. Jeremiel and I will take care of things as soon as we can and then I’ll come back for you.”

Sybil’s heart slowed a little as she pressed her cheek against her mother’s. “And where will we go then?” She’d been dreaming for days about going back to their old house, living together in the warm little rooms she loved.

“Then it’ll be safe for us to go home to Seir.”

“Back to our old house?”

“If it hasn’t been destroyed, yes.”

Sweet memories flooded back. She leaned her chin on her mother’s shoulder and saw herself playing in the red dirt in the yard, building corrals for her toy mules and horses, creating roads from one side of the fence to the other. The rich smell of her mommy’s cookies baking carried on the warm wind.

“Will my doll still be there?” she asked with sudden foreboding. Her grandfather had given her that doll. People, soldiers, would be running all over the city. Maybe they’d steal all her toys, or maybe they’d get blown up by cannons in the war. Just the thought made her stomach ache. “Will Jennie still be there, Mom?”

“I think so. But if she’s not?” Her mother pulled back a little and lifted Sybil’s chin to gaze into her eyes. She smiled. “We’ll get you another doll, all right?”

“A new one won’t be the same as Jennie.”

“I know. It’s hard to lose good friends like that, isn’t it? I had a doll I loved when I was four, too.”

“Did Grandpa give her to you, too?

“Yes, her name was Randa. She had blonde curls and—”

“Blonde? Like Mr. Baruch’s hair?”

Her mother turned to look at Jeremiel and smiled faintly. He rested his chin on his hand and watched them patiently. “Randa’s hair didn’t have as much red. It was almost a white blonde.”

“Like the Mashiah’s hair.”

“Yes,” her mother whispered and swallowed hard. “Just like his.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh, she died.”

“Dolls don’t die, Mommy,” Sybil reprimanded. “They just break.”

“Well, okay. Actually her head fell off, but I buried her just as if she’d died. Now, don’t you worry about Jennie. I’ll bet she’s fine.”

“I love you, Mom.”

“I love you too, baby.”

A whoosh of air set the fire to crackling wildly as Avel Harper threw back the curtain and entered the room. His mahogany skin gleamed with a sheen of perspiration in the uncertain flames, as though he’d raced to get there on time. Light filtered through his kinky hair, making it look as though he wore a diamond studded black halo. “I’m terribly sorry I’m late.”

“You’re perfectly on time, Avel,” Jeremiel corrected sternly.

“Am I? Good. The Reverend Father had me so busy time just seemed to slip away.” He turned, calling, “Sybil?” in his deep smooth voice. “Are you ready for your lesson?”

She nodded and reluctantly slid down her mother’s hip to the floor. Her mother knelt and kissed her forehead, smoothing brown curls away from her face.

“You learn as much as you can, all right?”

“I will.” Sybil watched pensively as her mother went back to stand beside Jeremiel and Avel came forward to take her hand and lead her to the table and chairs sitting next to the fireplace.

Father Harper put two books on the table and handed her a pen and paper. She took them and held them solemnly in front of her. Glancing over his shoulder at Jeremiel and her mother, Avel leaned down and whispered, “What’s wrong? You look sad.”

Sybil’s mouth turned down in a pout. “I’m okay.”

He scratched behind his ear and braced an elbow on the table, leaning his temple to his fist as he studied her. Sybil didn’t look at him, but took deep breaths of his scent. He always smelled of sweet spices and smoke from the fireplaces.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“You worried about your mother?”

She nodded.

“I don’t blame you. I’m worried about her, too.”

She searched his face and saw warm concern there, but sometimes people could look like that when they wanted to and didn’t really mean it. “Why are you?” she asked suspiciously.

He leaned back in his chair and thought about it before answering softly, “Because she has the hardest job of anybody in the war. She has to face the Mashiah every day. And I’m not sure she can do it.”

“My mommy can do anything,” Sybil defended, but her eyes fell. Could her mom stand it? It would be very hard.

“Come here,” Avel said softly, spreading his arms. Sybil reluctantly climbed down from her chair and up into his lap. He cradled her in his arms, kissing her brown curls.

“Well, he whispered. “If your mother can just stand the Mashiah for a few weeks, nobody will ever have to suffer because of him again.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, because if she kills him, then people will be free again, like when I was little and he used to wander the streets in rags, preaching like a crazy man.”

“You remember that long ago?’’

“Not very well. I was only five then, but my mommy’s told me a lot about it.”

He hugged her close to his chest. “Life was pretty good then, wasn’t it?”

She ran a hand under her running nose. “It was good just a year ago. My daddy … my daddy used to play with me a lot. He helped me build sand castles with wet sand. We used weeds for roofs and pillars. And my mommy used to make us come in and take baths before we could eat dinner.”

“Things will be just like that again. Only—”

“Only my daddy’s dead.”
She gazed up at him harshly. Perspiration still glistened across his flat nose, but his eyes had grown calm. “The Mashiah killed him.”

“Your mother told me. That’s one of the reasons she’s going back into the palace,” he whispered. “Did you know that?”

She glanced around his arm at her mother. She stood pointing to a bunch of blue pins on the map. Sybil concentrated on listening and heard her mother say, “This face is too steep for troops. They’ll never be able to climb it in time.”

Jeremiel frowned thoughtfully and pointed to a different place. “Well, what about over here?”

“That won’t work either. There’s a massive field of small boulders not shown on the map. It’ll take twice as long to maneuver …”

Sybil snuggled back against Harper’s strong arm. What if her mother died, too? She’d seen a dozen little girls’ mommies die that day in the square when the sun blistered her face and her throat ached for water. And she’d seen funerals. She’d hung onto her daddy’s leg as they watched men in prayer shawls carrying black caskets down the streets of Seir and heard her little friends sobbing in fear. She loved her mother so much that the thought of her dying was like a huge black blanket coming down to smother her.

“Avel,” she breathed in torment, twisting the fabric of his robe in tiny fists. “My mommy won’t die, will she?”

Silence descended over the room, the long table where her mother and Jeremiel worked going starkly quiet. Had she spoken so loudly? She wanted to look, but was afraid to. Instead she kept her eyes glued to Avel’s smooth mahogany face.

He rocked her slowly back and forth, brow furrowed for a time, before he murmured confidentially, “No, Sybil. I don’t think she will. Your mother—”

“Your mother,”
Jeremiel blustered, “is too mean to die.”

She jerked up to glare at him, but her anger faded as she saw her mother laugh and swat him with a piece of paper. A glow warmed her chest. It had been a long time since she’d heard her mother laugh. A soft tremor of relief went through her. Maybe everything would be all right, after all.

“My mommy,” she murmured positively, “is going to stay alive so she can pay the Mashiah back for what he did to Daddy.”

“Yes,” Avel answered, “and to make sure no other little girls have to lose their fathers, like you did. She loves you more than anything in the world.”

Sybil leaned her cheek against the warm wool over his chest and contemplatively pleated the fabric between her fingers. ‘“She’s my best friend.”

“I know she is.”

As Sybil thought how sad the Mashiah had made her, her mommy, and all her friends, sudden anger welled hot within her. She gritted her teeth. “My mommy can do anything. You just wait, she’ll blow up the Mashiah’s palace.”

“After talking to you, I think you’re right. Maybe she can do it.”

Sybil felt better. She smiled at Avel and heaved a relieved sigh. If he believed it, it seemed easier for her. Maybe, since she understood it all better, she could stand being away from her mother for two months. She squinted up at Harper. “Avel? Will you take care of me when my mommy’s gone?”

“Sure, I will. And maybe we won’t study as hard as I’d thought at first, either.”

“We won’t?”

“No, I don’t think so. Like today. Maybe, instead of doing mathematics, we’ll go to the aviary and watch the birds. Or maybe you can teach me how to make sand castles? How would you like that?”

A little spot of relief swelled in her heart. “We’ll need lots of water and at least a handful of weeds.”

“Okay, let’s go find them.”

As he started to lift her to the floor, she patted his chest affectionately. “Avel, you understand little girls, don’t you?”

His eyes took on a faraway look. “Yes, I do. I used to have one—a long time ago.”

“You did?” Where is she?”

His dark face fell into hard lines and his lips pressed tightly together. “She died.”

Sybil’s heart ached for him, for she knew deep down how he must feel—like she did about her daddy. “Did the Mashiah kill her, too?”