Quibble, 32. Kindness
Growing tensions lead Quibble and Nish to bitter choices.
32. Kindness @Definition
As Vega promised when she brought the mirror, Quibble’s nightmares tapered off. Yet I couldn’t tell my adroitness how much it relieved me, for as she came back to herself, I fled from her.
Even now, standing before the mirror, I can’t explain that.
The moon was waning to new and rising near daybreak, putting an end to her reading of my selenery, but this shouldn’t have mattered. We made love, and we slept twined together. Where was I, though? With her only during our throes of ecstasy. Otherwise, my mind wandered: I went east, up the mountain, back to the familiar, the monastery, the Dazed. How was Cate getting along without my help? Were Ell and Nell managing the kitchen, or were they too distracted? Did Quote’s hunting go well?
Every day, shortly after lunch, I saw Chapter wheel over the northeast hill, then fly away east. Now I had no doubt Quote was sending him. I imagined what he’d say to me: “You’re not the only one who worries, Nish. Cut the rest of us some slack!”
At times, for all my love for Quibble, I wished Quote had become her adroitness instead of me. He could be obtuse and careless, but my fretting did Quibble no good. Rather, it fretted her and made her jumpy. On the fourth song, after her rendezvous with Alnasl atop the hill, she came back in a state of agitation but also a bit absent. Her mind was roving over matters she wouldn’t divulge. Much of it concerned her training in glasses, I was sure. Did any of it concern me?
At supper, the evening of the fourth study, I put that question to her.
“Nish, you’re not in my way,” she insisted with an emphatic shake of her head. “I’m just preoccupied. Tonight, Alnasl is taking me Within. He must think that’s best, but in all honesty I’m scared.”
“Of the orbs?”
Quibble took a bite, chewed, thought, swallowed. “Of the Ones,” she said.
I scoffed. “They’re only Ones.”
“You don’t understand. Learning from Alnasl means dreaming. Going Within, among Ones, dreaming there—”
“He trances you?” I said indignantly.
“How else can I learn to escape a dream?”
“You already can! You escaped Rasalased’s control.”
“Her control was light. She just wanted to see my reaction. Alnasl’s dreams are fierce.” Seeing my worry, Quibble went on: “It doesn’t hurt. He isn’t torturing me. It’s not like the nightmares. There’s no pain, just control, and kindness after.”
“I don’t like it.”
“I’m not keen myself. But he’s right, Nish, I can’t take this slow!”
I looked down at my plate, checking my tongue.
I knew the reason: Alioth, control. A swarm of unseen Zeros was abuzz all around her. The few she knew to be on her side – Aladfar, Alnasl, Rasalased, Alsephina, Vega, no more – held the others at bay for now. However vigilant it was, their watch wouldn’t last. Neither would Utopia’s intercession with Unity; in fact, I wondered how that had lasted even this long. Quibble had to defend herself.
Giving her tutelage with Alnasl the benefit of the doubt, I reflected that at least the vision had the sense to overreact.
As if hearing me, Quibble said, “At least I don’t have utter control on my tail.”
Days passed, a whole cycle. Every night, Quibble went Within. She returned the first time shaken, but she plucked up her courage. “You’re right, the Ones aren’t to be feared,” she told me. Alnasl’s trials taxed her more than horrifying encounters.
She came Without again eager for my touch. I was eager too, seeking an anchor in our adroitness for my fleeting mind. Try as I did, I sensed I failed to satisfy her. Not the slightest complaint alerted me. I touched her; she touched me. We stirred each other awake in the wee hours, night after night. My pleasure in her was such that I began to get used to having orgasms. She had her first.
Just the same, it somehow wasn’t enough for her. She wanted more, some indefinable more. Though she must have been spent beyond reckoning after a day of work with the Adroit, her lessons at glasses Within, and lovemaking with me, afterwards she rose again for a few minutes to pace the room nude. “It was good!” she said in answer to my queries, but she persisted in pacing, as if she didn’t grasp it upset me. I missed her playful spider.
Before coming back to bed, Quibble always donned her One’s shift, filched in her vest for something and pressed it into her right palm, then bound it there with a strip of linen cloth. The first time I saw her do it, I asked, “What’s that?”
“A memento,” she said.
As the days passed, her remark about utter control, meant to reassure me, began to nag instead. Its tone suggested she’d left out the word “yet.” I wasn’t aware that utter control, which seemed a long-ago, legendary figment of Meissa’s tale, was any concern of ours. Was that what really preoccupied her?
I began to grow more alert, even a bit paranoid. On occasion, I left my work planning the factory to check up on Quibble at Cord’s workshop. She and Imay now had a task more dignified than building silly bird feeders: they were helping Cord take inventory in the workshop’s shed, compiling a list of lumber needed from the sawmill and steel needed from the smithy. Once, as I rounded the back of the workshop to find her, Quibble startled at the sound of my voice, spun round, and snatched her hand away from her vest pocket as if I’d caught her in a wrong act.
“Kindness!” she yelped. “I didn’t see you, Nish!”
“Should you have?” I said. I had only just come around the corner.
When Quibble returned from her lessons with Alnasl almost at dawn on the fourth thought, I knew something was very wrong. The night before, the touching, I yearned for my adroitness, tossed and turned. I fell asleep at last beneath a plethora of stars. Then I woke to a burst of light in the room. I thought it was lightning at first, but a glance through the skylight showed no storm, only the faint gray light of coming dawn. I sat up to find Quibble pacing the room, still dressed. I realized she had just popped in alone. I hadn’t known she could do that. She didn’t come straight to bed as usual, waking me with a kiss and a touch. She paced, up and down.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Thinking. Go back to sleep.”
“Aren’t you coming?”
“Not now, Nish.”
I asked what was wrong but got no more from her. Shortly, she changed into her shift and came to bed, but she didn’t want the attentions I hungered for. She clasped my hand, pulled it away, and said, “Just hold me.” So, lacking her explanation, I did.
Thought enveloped me, consumed me with plans for laying the factory’s foundation, and danced off into another evening. The summer solstice had just passed; the moon was gone but for a sliver. At supper, Quibble was quiet. She looked wholly exhausted. She tried to show calm, but I knew it was a façade.
“Please tell me,” I urged.
“The lessons are hard,” she replied.
I saw the lie on her face, and inwardly I raged. It was the first lie between us, and she uttered it against my love.
How dare you! I thought, and though I hadn’t said it, she looked down as if she read it in my face. She kept her gaze averted and left the cottage soon after to meet Alnasl.
That night, she didn’t come to bed at all but slept by the hearth in the reclining chair, one of Graph’s resurrections. Rising past dawn to find her there, I left her asleep, went to the window at the far end of the room, and thrust it open. It was the last song in the heat, so I raised my voice to sing:
‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free,
‘Tis a gift to come down where you ought to be!
And when we find ourselves in the place that is right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight!“Nish, what in kindness?” Quibble groaned, sitting up. “I was sleeping!”
Shutters banged open up the street. A voice called: “Who’s out there singing?”
“I am!” I rejoined, then poured forth the second verse:
When a true simplicity we have gained,
To bend and to bow we will not be ashamed!
To turn and turn again will be our delight
Till be turning and turning we come out right!“How about turning it off? That’s my delight!” sang out the same voice as before, and up went a choir of Adroit in answer: “Stop singing!”
With no more song, I shut the window.
“They don’t sing,” Quibble said, her skance one of pure annoyance, “and to tell you the truth, right now I’m glad of it.”
Fine, you just be that way! I told her with my own skance, then busied myself with breakfast. I had just taken the simmering gruel off the cookstove when a knock sounded at the door. I stepped towards it, but it opened without me. Graph kicked muck off his boots, entered, sat at the table, and waited for me to set him a bowl and serve him gruel.
“All right,” he said as he lifted the first spoonful, “what was that all about?”
“It’s Sing,” I said, already feeling I stood on quicksand.
“I told you about Sing. We sleep in. Some people just came to see me—”
“A few lazybones.”
“A dozen lazybones, and that’s only the delegation!” Graph said, hurling his free hand in the air. He blew on his gruel, gulped it down, took another spoonful, and eyed me. “You always need things your way, don’t you, Nish? A fine pickle I’m in! Half the consensus scared silly of Zeros, the other half beating down my door to shut you up!”
“I tried to stop her,” Quibble said, sitting down opposite him, and with a flicker of spite – uppity little traitor! – I left off spooning gruel into her bowl.
Graph gave her a dead stare. “The least you could do, popping hither and yon all times of night, is get your Zero to pop on the other side of the hill.”
Oh! I triumphed. Serves you right!
“If the two of you think you’re here by right of your adroitness, have a second think,” Graph continued. “You’re here by my good graces. I had a hell of a time talking the rest of the consensus into it, and now they’re talking me out of it.”
I laid the crock on the table without serving myself, then sat and looked at Graph intently. “We’re grateful – don’t think we aren’t. It’s just, well, we’re us. We can’t—”
“Adapt!” he demanded.
“Adapt? What do you think I’ve been trying to do the last ten days? Yell and bicker, all the time! I swear, no Adroit has an opinion all Without doesn’t get to hear. And all the time, it’s nothing but sawing, banging, pounding, crashing, clattering, giddy-upping, and shouting to go faster! Kindness, my nerves are frazzled right to the tips! If I hear one more whip crack—”
“Adapt or get out.”
That silenced me. I looked at Quibble. She was staring at her bowl, not eating. In the quiet, Graph rose and left. I slid my bowl aside and began eating gruel straight from the crock. I ate through most of it, then pushed the rest towards Quibble and got up.
“Nish,” she said, “you have to go home.”
I glared at her. “What did you say?”
“Go home.” She forced her eyes up to meet mine. “Please take Moth and leave.”
I sat down again. “Quill, if you’re in bad trouble—”
“I’m not in trouble!” She scrambled up, knocking over her chair, and in her face burned a fire. Looking me in the eyes, she shouted, “You heard him! Get out!”
“Something’s been wrong since the other night,” I said, trying to reason with the spitfire. “You may think telling me nothing protects me, but—”
“Nothing’s wrong, Nish, except you,” Quibble said, still staring at me. “You don’t want to be here. You’re just staying out of loyalty. Now you’re causing trouble, and I don’t need it. I don’t want you, do you understand?”
Had I known then what would follow, Numberless, I would have argued, I would have stayed. I was indeed frazzled, though. Her passion convinced me: her voice and her eyes both said she really wanted me gone. She didn’t love me or believe in my love for her. Maybe she believed mine was as feigned as hers. I was too hurt in that moment to recall it all clearly now, but I remember, as her eyes bore into mine, taking her at face value. Being an Adroit and trusting in the evidence of the eyes, what else could I do?
I got unsteadily to my feet. Almost at once she came to me, but with a shove I let her know I would stand alone. Going to the bedroom, I found my pack in the closet and filled it. When I reemerged, Quibble had gone.
There was a book on the table – Cate’s gift to Graph, the collected works of Swift. Graph had read only A Tale of a Tub, then given the volume back to Quibble, saying she would like it more. That was just like him, returning gifts. I tore the last flyleaf from the back of the book, found quill and ink in the roll-top desk, and wrote:
Q—
Do you know what love is? Or even kindness?
N
I tucked the leaf under a corner of the book and left the cottage.