Kiromir-21

I never thought of my brother anymore. At least, it had been a long time since. Revik had been filled with potential for great things, not the warrior my father wanted, even more apparent when his fires came. He manifested healer’s fires, and it cemented his status. Revik is—was—had been---scholastically brilliant. Hell, he had been the only one of us that went through human school and liked it. We all dropped out in our teens and homeschooled as much as we could. I homeschooled Niala, but not to her detriment. Intelligence isn’t something any of us lacked, especially her—literate, well-spoken, well written, but terrible penmanship.

Revik, though…

Revik had a mind that people got lost in. He spoke above your head, and everything that excited him also excited you. His joy became contagious.

When his fires came and proved to my father that Revik served well, not as the warrior but the healer, they finally relented and allowed him to pursue an education outside of the mortal 12 years. He went to college, then medical school—determined to become a doctor to help the flocks. In his stead, they gave me his status as next under my father, the flock leader. Revik happily passed that title to me.

Despite my lack of scholarly interest, my math skills were pretty impressive, as all things went. But while I had zero interest in history and reading, I had a knack for business, people, and organization. As good as he had been with individual people and medicine, I excelled in business and crowds. People listened when I spoke. But, Revik never had a knack for it, and that hurt things between us.

I missed him every day.

He went missing over thirty years ago, there one day and gone the next. His office in town sat empty, untouched like nothing had happened.

I heard a rumor that he had met a woman, back then, several people citing how strange she had looked, and an eventual admission from my mother that, indeed, he had fallen in love with a human.

I saw her once, and I couldn’t smell anything over the scent of his ault thick on her. That woman bore no markings on her to tie her to a tribe nor clan, no evidence of hair’s weaving. She wore clothes that covered her body, and her bare shoulders bore no peeking tips of her ikris. Her eyes, soft silvery things, looked at me with such curiosity. Revik refused to let us speak and drove a wedge between us as brothers.

I wondered if she could have been like Niala, but she had curtains of thick coppery red hair like I had never seen, trailing past her waist in thick rivulets and soft waves. Yet, despite it all, even then, I knew something had been different about her. I had never seen a human woman built that sturdily. I’d looked for an aura, but Revik’s one of quiet calm always seemed to tamp others’ down.

I tried talking to him about her, asking her name. But he always became cagey and coy about questions over her. “Felice, why does it matter?” He said, and I knew the name could not be Wildling. The name held no meaning to me of Anil, like all our names did.

He refused to answer any more questions, to introduce her to us, to me. Revik had a harder time finding a mate for himself than I did. At least I could try. A healer’s fire is a terrible thing when it doesn’t match your flames. Sharing for him at a touch felt painful most of the time. The only thing I cared about when Niala got her fires is whether or not they were green. If I saw green that night, I would have cried for her.

He was the best healer I’d ever met, better than Letti, and better than any of the elders. His medicines and herbs were superior to any. I missed him, even if he betrayed our kind. Who would I be to fault him for his love? The heart wants what it wants, and even if he wanted something wrong, he should have been comfortable to tell me! I might not have understood, but I wouldn’t have faulted him. Because I saw the terrible things his fires did when he tried to meld, I would have tried. They forbid him from even trying for years after a girl lost a finger. It haunted him ever since.

When we found his empty clinic one morning, we searched his office and barracks. We even sent word across the country to all the Wildlings and their splintered clans. But, nobody had seen or heard from Revik. Though he was called far and wide to heal and teach our kind: they never found him again.

My mother and father were enraged at what had happened, bitter. She had that same revulsion that she had when she looked at Niala.

She, Revik, Lowak, and I were some of the last speakers who held their leaders' legacy. I had not come by his position with honesty. Revik should have inherited Lowak’s call. Lowak had taken over for his father, and his mother had only one son. Rolyn had been born an only child, herself, and her own legacy came from the first of the Wildlings. Her grandfather before her had been an influential leader and chieftain of the Sentinels. My father’s father had been a chieftain in his own right, too. The lines were dead with me, and Rolyn couldn’t forgive me. When I adopted Niala, I made it very likely that the only legacy for my line would be foreign blood.

When Niala first joined our tribe, Rolyn was furious to find that I had taken her in. So after that first migration, when dad died, I adopted her. My mom had been furious. Somewhere in my grieving heart, as I processed his death and Niala called me ‘ada,’ I filled his void with her. I didn’t think my heart could ever be big enough to hold all the love for her. I’d say that’s why I never found anyone, but my problems were around long before Niala came. Thinking back, maybe I’d been a swan for a long time? Certainly, there had been a fair few swan couples that had begged for children, but Lowak stood his ground for me, for Niala.

Maybe dad knew something I didn’t.

Rolyn made it her mission to see just how fast she could rid me of Niala. She had been rude, antagonistic, cruel, and bitter. Niala barely had a grasp of English on her second migration when Rolyn unleashed upon her the litany of disgust she had for her as a child—having ruined me. Instead, Niala saved me from my own loneliness and confusion all the time. Once I had her to care for, everything seemed right. But it had been wishful thinking that Rolyn would stop there.

From then on, every migration, Niala had offers from other flocks for her to come live with them, to learn and do. Rolyn told me the songbirds would buy her from us for service, and the Grells wanted her for blood. Niala had so much mana potential in her, and now that she had her fires, I thought about letting her stay there a while to learn. But, Rolyn didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. So, every year, I humored her offers to barter and sell her for blood and power.

Rolyn wanted me to disown her, give her to another couple, and find someone with the Horizon clan or the Grells. The desperation to separate us had become a frenzy that stagnated into harsh bitterness.

They threw numbers at me and offered more money than the flocks would see in years. Still, I exercised my new right as flock leader to hold steady to her. Most of this talk stayed behind closed doors and out of Niala’s ears. I entertained Rolyn’s offers in appearance only as a stopgap to keep the peace, hoping that by the time that Niala was old enough, she’d snag one of our boys to stay close.

Anyone but fucking Gaffriel…

Rolyn was invested in the money changing hands. Lowak, my father, knew that, and it was a fight that had been conducted through third parties. Rolyn made promises on my behalf for Niala and didn’t follow through with her words. Niala had been a bartering piece since the day she arrived, and as my flock’s leader and her rescuer, I exercised my right to adopt her. But, I refused to let her be a pawn until she was old enough to participate with me.

Sometimes, I hoped to give the Grells their chance, to push her that way if I could. I know they could offer her a better and more opulent life. But, despite our impressive income for our group, most of our clan held menial labor jobs or didn’t work at all. We supported them all on our income: we were not a powerhouse in the Flocks.

We were just the wanderers. I repeated to myself the line of our people’s saga, “Cursed are they who do not wander.” Niala, I knew in my heart of hearts, had been born to wander.