Paran walked along the long, dusty road beneath a brutal sun. There was singing in the fields nearby. Men and women were gathering in the wheat, their voices strong beneath the cloudless sky.
He knew the songs. His lips twitched to the words one could not quite decipher at this distance, and he continued walking.
With some surprise, he saw that Karl had finally mended his fence. The Latmar house had a fresh coat of paint. Margaret sat on her porch, working with a needle. Paran would have walked past her, delaying the moment when he would have to speak into this almost-familiar world, but she looked up as he approached, so he greeted her with an uncertain pause between “Good” and “Afternoon.”
She smiled politely and returned the greeting. Then her smile widened. “Paran? Is that you?” She stood, and he saw she would soon give birth. Her face was exactly as he remembered and as foreign as any he had met in his travels.
“I can’t stay, I haven’t seen my mother yet,” he said as she hurried over.
She gazed at him in astonishment. “Such a beard!”
“I had other things to do than shave.”
Her expression closed. “Is it over?”
“Yes.” He forced a smile. “We won.”
“We heard rumors, but only a few. It seems so far away.”
He looked over her into the field, where the people sang. “It was.” He glanced at her belly. “Your first?”
“Second, actually.”
Paran said nothing, just nodded, and refused to meet her eyes.
“You’ll tell us about it, after you settle in?” Margaret asked.
“I suppose.” He forced himself to look at her. “Don’t tell anyone yet. I mean, don’t go out and tell them. I want to see mom first. She’s all right, isn’t she?”
Margaret laughed. “More than all right. She hasn’t changed a bit.”
Paran nodded. He almost said more but instead just touched Margaret’s shoulder and continued down the road.
He could see Marlslin ahead, the spire of the village church rising above the other buildings. He stopped. Along the road, a large rock stood. He remembered the boy who used to sit on top of it and stare down the long, dusty road, waiting for something to come. Where was he now?
Paran moved on. His house sat small and lonely just outside Marlslin. He felt too large for it; it was an old pair of boots long unworn, familiar but no longer comfortable. He stood outside the door, not quite able to knock. There was a patch of dirt across the road where the boy used to dig and collect rocks and line them up in patterns. Tufts of faded grass grew there now.
He did knock, and he waited, and he opened the door and walked in like a stranger. His mother was not home. She would be at the church, then. He would have to go into town.
He had fought and shed blood and held the injured. This was a different kind of sorrow.
Paran walked resolutely among the stores and homes. It was exactly as he remembered it–except it seemed an imitation, as if behind the windows and doors he would not find kitchens and conversations and lives, but the backside of facades. And the boy was not there, the boy who threw rocks and chased the birds across the roofs and diverted the rain that dripped from the eaves.
The main room of the church was a large, wood-floored room. He heard the scraping of a broom before he entered. He stood in the doorway watching her. She seemed smaller than he remembered, and older.
“Hello, Mother.”
She looked up. It was only a moment, them staring at each other, before she dropped the broom and embraced him. He held her close and looked at the ceiling, blinking. When she finally stepped back, wiping her tears, she looked upon him with hungry eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
“Why, Paran?”
“I’ve done–seen–I didn’t know anything before and I wish I didn’t now. It’s all so broken….” He swallowed. “Where is he, Mom?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“The boy–the one who used to hide in the corner there and pretend he was invisible. He used to climb the stairs to the top, up there, and look out, and you’d call for him, and he’d pretend he was king over everything, that the whole world was his, and when he came down, you scolded him and fed him and kissed him and put him to bed….”
His mother stepped close and touched his cheek.
“My boy. My dear, dear, boy. You’re home now. You’re home.”
He nodded, the tears coming, coming, and she held his too-big body in her short, solid arms.