Through the Darkness

Vanai washed the supper dishes, then returned to her books. She was reading a tale of adventure and exploration in the jungles of equatorial Siaulia. Back when she was living in Oyngestun, she would have turned up her nose at such fare. But when her world was limited to a cramped flat and what she could see out a window--provided she didn’t get too close to the glass--a story of exploration set on the tropical continent made her feel she was traveling even when she really couldn’t. Leopards and gorgeous, glittering butterflies and hanging vines covered with ants seemed real enough for her to reach out and touch them. And when she read about the enormous fungus the natives would boil in the stomach of a buffalo . . .

When she read about that fungus, she started to cry. She thought she was being quiet about it, but Ealstan looked up from the news sheet he was reading and asked, “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

She turned a stricken face to him. “When fall comes, I won’t be able to go out hunting mushrooms!”

He came over and put his arm around her. “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to, except maybe in a park or something. This is a big city, without a whole lot of open country around it. But I’ll bring back the best ones I can buy, I promise you that.”

“It won’t be the same.” Vanai spoke with doleful certainty. She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose. Tears were still sliding down her cheeks. “I’ve gone out hunting mushrooms every fall since... since my mother and father were still alive.” She couldn’t think of any stronger way to say for a very long time.

“I’m sorry,” Ealstan said. “If you were shut up inside the Kaunian quarter here or back in Gromheort, do you think you could go mushroom hunting then?”

In one way, it was a perfectly reasonable question. In another, it was infuriating. Vanai stuck her nose in her book and left it there. “When Ealstan said something else to her a few minutes later, she ignored him. She made a point of ignoring him, and kept right on doing it till they went to bed that night.

When he leaned over to kiss her good night, she let him, but she didn’t kiss him back. He said, “I can’t help it, you know. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

Vanai started to ignore that, too. She found she couldn’t. Finding she couldn’t, she wished she could, for tears stung her eyes. “I can’t help it, either,” she said, choking a little on the words. “I can’t help what the Algarvians have done to us, and I wish so much I could. That just makes all--this--that much harder to take.”

“I know,” he said. “I wish I could do something about the redheads, too, but I just can’t, curse it.” He slammed a fist down onto the mattress, hard enough to make Vanai bounce up a little.

He was a Forthwegian, not a Kaunian. The Algarvians’ yoke lay less heavily on his folk than on Vanai’s. But he’d fled his family, fled Gromheort, on account of her. And his brother was dead because his cousin had joined the puppet brigade the conquerors had created. She could hardly say he and his hadn’t suffered on account of the occupation.

Instead of saying anything, she reached for him. He was reaching for her, too. Before long, they were making love. As her pleasure built, she could forget the miserable little flat in which she was caged. She knew the escape wouldn’t last long, but cherished it while it did.

Afterwards, drifting toward sleep, Ealstan said, “One day, by the powers above, I’ll bring you back to Gromheort. You see if I don’t.”

That did make her burst into tears. She so much wanted to believe it, and so much doubted she could. And even if she did ... “People there don’t like mixed couples. They didn’t like them before the war. They’ll like them even less now.”

“People are fools,” Ealstan said. “Who cares what they like and don’t like?”

“If more Forthwegians liked Kaunians, the redheads couldn’t do what they’re doing here,” Vanai said. She felt Ealstan’s nod rather than seeing it. People of her own blood--her grandfather, for instance--despised Forthwegians, too, but she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about anything. She ground her face into her pillow. After a while, she slept.

Eight

Don’t just stand there!” Major Spinello shouted. Somehow, he managed to stay dapper when all the Algarvians he commanded looked like a pack of tramps. “You’d bloody well better not just stand there. We’ve got to keep moving. If we aren’t moving forward, you can bet your last copper the cursed Unkerlanters will be.”

Trasone waved a hand. Spinello swept off his hat and bowed, as if he were recognizing a duke, not an ordinary trooper. Trasone said, “Nothing to worry about, sir. I mean, with the Yaninans guarding our flank, we’re safe as can be, right?”