Preserving Hope (31 page)

“Don’t hope for it, Joseph,” Will replied. “Hope without action means nothing; it’s just words and an idea. You have to make the decision on how you’ll behave, and simply not accept any excuse or difficulty as a reason to act in any other way.”

Joseph looked thoughtful, and then nodded. “Then I’ll look for the strength to do the right thing. Thank you, Will.” And the carpenter walked off.

Will headed to the right out of his room, and then turned left, heading toward the gate, toward Elizabeth’s room. As he neared, he saw Arthur standing outside her room, as if undecided about something. When he saw Will approaching, the man frowned. “What are you doing here, Will?”

“I’ve come to talk to Elizabeth,” Will replied. “She needs to know about Eva.”

Arthur’s face flickered with fear, but he composed himself. “What… what are you planning to tell her?”

“The truth. I doubt it will surprise her, but she will still be upset.”

Arthur looked at the ground. “Can you… put in a good word for me?”

Will stared at him. “Why would I do that? More to the point, why do you
care
what she thinks? Her feelings — and her health — have never been a priority for you, or even a consideration. Why, now, should it matter?”

Arthur’s face was like stone. “I don’t expect you to believe this, Will, but I do love my daughter. She is going to be very angry at whomever she believes killed Eva, or anyone who even had a hand in it. I can’t bear the thought of her looking at me like that.”

Will glared at him. “Where was this parental conscience for the past dozen years when she needed it, Arthur? You can’t say ‘sorry’ now because the community has turned on you, and
you
need
her
to have some semblance of control. Your behavior and choices put you here. I can’t talk her out of what she’s going to feel, and she has every right to whatever feelings she experiences. Don’t ask me to tell her that you meant well when you thought you’d be getting away with stabbing in the back the best friend she’s had — and the only parent and role model she’s had since her mother was mur—her mother died.”

Arthur looked at him, a pleading look on his face, but Will’s stony expression made it clear Arthur would get no words of assistance from him. The man turned without another word and entered his own home, his face clouded in concentration, a man still determined to turn this tragedy to his own advantage.

Will knocked lightly on the door. “Elizabeth? It’s Will.”

The door opened immediately. Her eyes were red, and her face was stained with tears, marred further by a look of pure anguish and desperation. She said nothing, but threw herself into his arms, sobbing without tears.

It’s true, then, isn’t it? Eva is gone.

Yes.
Will replied, sensing the irony, and feeling the anguish at the lie he allowed her to believe.
She is gone.

I don’t want to live any more, Will. They’ve taken my childhood. They’ve taken my real mother. They’ve taken my freedom. They’ve taken the woman who became my role model, a second mother. I don’t have any hope left to keep me going; they’re all beyond repair, no matter what they say. Help me die, Will. It’s too painful to live any more.

Will squeezed her tighter.
When my wife and son died, I felt as you did. I had nothing to live for. Yet I found my purpose in coming here and trying to make this community the special place its residents believed it could be. It’s what you’ve always said has kept you here, that belief that something great will happen. That is your purpose. Eva would not want you to give up hope. Stay strong.

Her body shuddered.
I can’t do this alone, Will. I need your help.

He smiled.
And you’ll always have that. Forever.

XXII

Party

The community returned to a degree of normalcy following Will’s dismantling of Arthur’s lies regarding the murder of Eva. The first day was one of silence and shock, but the days after brought forth tears of grief over Eva’s death, and the circumstances that brought it about.

Arthur found himself shunned, at least to a degree. He wasn’t denied food or water, or prevented from working, or excluded from the community bathing time, in a manner reminiscent of the shunning of the Traders. However, no one sought out his guidance, or listened to his commands. All who walked near him were wary, concerned that they, too, might be the victim of an order to Maynard or others to execute them in cold blood. Maynard suffered a similar treatment, but as a skilled metal worker, he at least had an activity to occupy his time.

Arthur had nothing, and no one, for he had isolated himself onto a pedestal now cracked at its very foundation. The villagers realized that he’d never had any power over them. By silent consensus, the villagers all stopped paying into the lottery, realizing it was merely a mechanism for control of their most valuable resource, and Roland publicly severed his agreement with Arthur. The farmers tending the zirple crop were given the freedom to sell the zirple at whatever price and quantity they could fetch from the villagers — though they were forbidden from selling it to outsiders — and simply paid a percentage of their profits back to Roland. With that transition, Arthur lost his last source of income.

He didn’t want to tap into the savings he’d accumulated over the years, and Arthur eventually found work, handling the cleaning of the barns and paddocks for the farmers. It was grueling, smelly work, of a type he had long avoided through his various schemes and manipulations. He’d long ago ceased to work directly for his income, having received sufficient monies from Elizabeth’s work and the lottery to keep himself well-fed and well-coifed since the earliest days of the village. The obvious shame he felt made Will want to feel pity, except that the shame he felt was over the work he was doing, rather than the circumstances forcing it.

Elizabeth had been invited to join a group of weavers traveling to a nearby city to sell their creations. The group wanted to try selling directly to others, but recognized that having an experienced Trader along would be beneficial, and Elizabeth was the obvious choice. She had a tremendous eye for fashion and, when not in a despondent mood, she had proved to be an excellent Trader. Will got nightly telepathic updates from her on the situation in the remote city, and he kept her up-to-date on the events back home. It was clear from these discussions that Elizabeth was still emotionally devastated over Eva’s murder, for her purpose — trying to rehabilitate her father and the others — had so utterly failed that the woman she most admired and most tried to emulate in the world was dead. Elizabeth believed it was her failure to meet her goal that enabled Eva’s death, and no amount of counterarguments from Will would change her mind. With each such discussion, Will’s doubt over his lack of truth-telling around Eva’s current condition deepened, and he knew he’d need to tell her the truth before long.

Elizabeth wanted to know what Arthur was doing, and Will provided her with updates. Yes, Arthur was still slopping the pigs. No, he’d not expressed any remorse over Eva’s loss. Yes, he still seemed to want Elizabeth’s forgiveness, though he seemed incapable of voicing what he thought
required
forgiveness.

The man continued taking his zirple, chewing the powdered form with great concentration, seeming to want to will the root to work more quickly. He became proficient in its preparation, and like Elizabeth before him, he began earning a few coppers a week preparing the concoction for others, funds he used to purchase his meals. He also began to work with the bakers in preparing the daily bread the villagers consumed, and was eventually granted entry into their profession, thus becoming entitled to a share of their income. Will refused to buy anything from the man out of principle, though he heard from others that he showed some promise as a baker.

When the weavers returned with Elizabeth, it was clear that the young woman was still struggling to recover emotionally. Her traveling companions raved at her skill, and Elizabeth let Will know that she’d made about twenty gold coins in profit, after she’d purchased another new dress. Her hair had been recently brushed, likely as part of her work in Trading, but her eyes were still red and sunken. She’d clearly spent most nights in her bed crying, a fact confirmed by several of the weavers who had accompanied her.

When Elizabeth entered the gate wearing her new dress, surrounded by weavers chattering about the success of the mission, Arthur, standing in the manure he was shoveling in one of the paddocks, glared at her. When she looked his way, though, his face softened, perhaps as a means to earn some sympathy. But Elizabeth merely looked at him with her dead eyes and walked to her room, shutting the door behind her. Will watched Arthur, watched as his face got the look he wore when scheming, and became quite worried. Whatever thoughts he had, however, he buried quickly. Outside his moral issues with probing someone’s thoughts, Will was concerned with exposing his own abilities; many, including Arthur, had progressed enough in that area that they’d notice someone else picking through their minds.

After dark every night, Will climbed out onto his roof, in the manner he’d described during his verbal take down of Arthur, jumped down outside the walls, and walked a few hundred yards into the forest. He’d move in a different direction each night, building his Energy and building up the plant life in the forest. The trees, in their fashion, seemed to know him, and he’d often feel the flow of Energy start toward him before he was able to initiate the process. There were other benefits as well; the foragers began to report that there was an unusually large crop of larger-than-usual fruits, berries, and other plant produce in the forest.

After his private meditation with the trees and other wildlife, Will would expand his senses to ensure he was alone, and then teleport to the cave to visit with Eva. She’d progressed remarkably well, and just the day before, Will had felt comfortable recalling the healing nanos that had helped save her life following the sword attack by Maynard and Arthur.

“How is she?” Eva asked. It was the first thing she asked each day when he arrived.

“She’s still very sad, and her primary thought is that her life isn’t worth living anymore,” Will said, his head low, his voice dull and full of pain. “I’ve asked her to consider if you would want her to give up and quit, with the hope that it would motivate her to find a new purpose in life, or even ask me to help her leave this village for good. She just says that it’s no longer possible to ask you your opinion, because her father ordered you murdered.” He glanced up at Eva. “She believes that she’s destined to be just like him, and if that’s her destiny, to be one so full of evil and hate, that she doesn’t deserve to live, that someone — specifically, me — should kill her now and prevent the unleashing of another monster upon the world.”

Eva sighed. “She needs to get away from him, Will. I know she went on the trip with the weavers a few weeks ago, but it’s not the same thing. She doesn’t even have the spirit to run, and certainly not enough to try to figure out how to survive on her own. She doesn’t see her own worth, her own capabilities… and she doesn’t seem to want to consider that you might well be joining her when she leaves.”

Will nodded. “I know, and that’s my concern. I’m always trying to find a way to get her to leave, now that Arthur’s lost the ability to order her to stay, but I can’t
force
her to want to live and survive. She has to regain that desire on her own, and once she does she’ll thrive. I know she has much to mourn, and has had far too much to mourn in her life. There needs to be a spark to relight that fire we both know is inside her… and I’m not talking about her Energy.”

“You could tell her. About me.”

Will sighed. “I’d like to do that, because I know it would make all of the difference in the world. It’s just that…”

“You’re afraid of how she’ll react after all of this time.”

Will nodded. “I’m a coward, and I know it.”

Eva laughed. “You’re not a coward, Will, any more than Elizabeth is. You’ve spent three years in a strange new world doing what you thought best to help a young girl enslaved become a free and independent woman. I still don’t quite understand
why
that’s been your purpose, but you’ve done an admirable job. You’ve bettered the entire community in the process, as stubborn as the lot of us have been in accepting that help.”

Will sighed. “I’ll tell her tomorrow. I owe her the truth, regardless of her level of disappointment in me.”

Eva nodded. “And on that note, I’ll tell you my own news. I’m heading out tonight.”

Will stared at her. “You’re leaving at night? Isn’t that…”

“Dangerous? Of course.” She smiled. “But I’m already dead, so what’s the risk? At night, there’s no chance I’ll run into anyone from the community who might ask difficult questions about how a dead woman is walking around. My Energy skills are reasonably strong thanks to your tutelage these past few weeks, which should help me. And I do have my share of our profits from the last Richland trip.”

“Take mine,” Will said. “I doubt I’ll need it anymore, and you’ll certainly want as much in reserve as you can. I can always make more if I need it, but with the current state of the community I don’t think I’ll need to worry about fleeing any time soon.”

Will countered Eva’s protests, and in the end they agreed that she’d take half his gold; the remainder would be for use by Elizabeth should she ever decide to leave as well. Eva embraced him, and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you, Will, for everything. Now, go and take care of our favorite redhead.”