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I was pleased to see that Mother was managing a little soup, a scrap or two of bannock. She had grown so thin, the north wind might snatch her away if it took a mind to; and it had never been easy to persuade her to eat. As I watched her, I felt Iubdan’s eyes on me, and I glanced at him and quickly away again, for I could not bear his expression. That look said, this is a long good-bye, yet not time enough. I have no aptitude for this. I cannot learn this. I would hold on, and hold on, until my hands clutch at emptiness.
Tales are not lies, nor are they truths, but something in between. They can be as true or as false as the listener chooses to make them, or the teller wants him to believe.
“You see my death? This concerns you? It should not. I do not fear it. There are times when I would welcome it.” “You should fear it,” I said very softly. “To die before you know your true self, that is a terrible thing.”
The greatest tales, well told, awaken the fears and longings of the listeners. Each man hears a different story. Each is touched by it according to his inner self. The words go to the ear, but the true message travels straight to the spirit.”
“You once told me,” I said, “not to feel guilt since things would unfold as they must. That was a long time ago, right at the very start of this. Now I hear you saying that this is somehow your fault. Perhaps you’re wrong about that. Maybe the whole thing is part of some pattern, a pattern so big that we cannot see more of it than the tiny part where we belong.
His fingers had stopped and they were touching a patch of faded blue, where ancient embroidery trailed delicately across the fabric, a vine, a leaf, a tiny, winged insect. Then he turned his arm over, and there, graven with needle and inks on the inner wrist, was the selfsame creature, the very first design he had requested when he was nine years old and determined he was a man.
Oh, well done! And that is how you pull together a plot point not only from the first half of this book to the second, but a small point in the first book in a series to the second. She is an excellent planner.
