For Kip, who hadn’t heard a word spoken in days, the euphonious rise and fall of foreign syllables unencumbered with translation were a perfect, gentle transition from the raw terrors of the jungle into the sparse, hard-earned comforts of this frontier farm.
“So you’re it,” she said, voice low and calm, moving slowly as if he were a wild animal, speaking softly as her song faded, settling into Kip’s heart. She smiled. “Was thinking I heard wrong. ‘Clad in light’?” she asked, addressing the sky. She laughed heartily and that perfectly human sound made Kip wake as if from a dream.
But not all at once.
He realized he was still naked. He draped the cloth in front of him, but without urgency, without embarrassment. He had a thought and knew it was strange at the same time: the locals have a custom, this clothing custom, though here there are no thorns to snatch and tear your skin; I should go along.
The locals? You mean humans, Kip?
Ah, there he was. He himself, Kip the Lip. Some part of him was glad that that Kip wasn’t gone for good.
She studied his eyes, seeing him come to himself, and her leathery, freckled skin wrinkled merrily. “He told me to expect something today. Been on tenterhooks through all my washing and weaving. Had that little phrase, ‘clad in light,’ pop in my head.” She shook her head. “Convinced myself it was ‘lightly clad.’ Well, you are that, aren’t you? Good thing the Good One sent you now, young sir. I fainted the first time I saw my husband naked. No wyrthig, swear. Took the shine right off the rose for him, I tell you, and I didn’t do much better for years. The Lord of Light loves to give me a gentle elbow about all that from time to time. But come. Let’s take care of you.”
And so she did. She took Kip in, fed him from the soup she’d already had on, though she only gave him the broth, then she bathed him, tended his wounds, and put him to bed. When he woke, two days later, she fed him again. Coreen was a widow, but several of her sons and daughters lived within easy walking distance and one at least visited each day, so when Kip told her he needed to go to the Chromeria, she found out that a trader was due to leave in two days and would make room for Kip—for free. Kip spent one more day abed, and then was up.
They developed an easy rapport, joking and teasing as if they’d known each other for years. She reminded him of Sanson’s mother back in Rekton. The woman had always made extra cakes or sweetmeats or pastries, and they’d played an informal game of Kip trying to steal one or two without her noticing. He almost never got away clean, and when he did, she’d ask him some question that he would try to answer around a mouthful of whatever.
She took care of me, knowing my mother wasn’t doing so, and she did it in a way that never made me ashamed. She made it a game, for me. Kip had seen the fun in it before, but he’d never seen the kindness of it until now.
And she’s dead. Like all of them.
Maybe Coreen’s jokes and laughter were a kindness, too. She’d seen that Kip was barely sane; she’d heard him wake sweating and screaming from another of the dreams, and she treated him like a mother would treat an incorrigible friend of her son. Kip found out that her late husband had been a renowned veteran of the Prisms’ War, though she never said on which side and Kip didn’t ask, and that made more sense of it. She had some of a warrior’s sense of humor: black and light, irreverent to death as death was irreverent to all else.
But she had a warmth, too, that was hugely appealing, and part of Kip wanted to stay here forever.
On his last full day, dressed in the widow’s husband’s clothes, which fit well due to Coreen’s labors with a needle and thread, Kip fixed what he could around her cabin. He drafted a few yellow lux torches, made some fire rocks to help start a blaze easily, tried his hand at drafting green to fertilize the vegetable gardens of her two daughters, and fixed a broken axle on a haycart by sheathing it in solid yellow luxin—something useful he’d actually learned during his lectures. Imagine that.
The morning he left, Coreen said, “I can’t let you go without saying my piece. Have I earned that?”
“Of course.”
She took a deep breath. “Kip, the Lord doesn’t want you to think you’re worthless, but he may want you to think you’re worth less than you presently think. He wants your eyes to be whole, so you have an accurate view of you. It’s done in love, you understand? When you surrender what isn’t under your control, you’re not giving up a crown, you’re giving up a yoke. I told you about my prudery in my youth. I was a beautiful girl, and though I never would have said it, I thought I was more virtuous than Orholam. My false virtue—not modesty, pride—took the joy out of my marriage bed. I’d fought to maintain a virtue, and I thought that because I’d had to fight so hard, it must be the highest good. Giving up my claim to look down on those I didn’t approve of was like losing a limb. But do you know what it’s like to try to walk with three legs?”