Harvest Dance

---

The harvest was only three monens away, but he wouldn't live to see it. He could feel the approaching change in seasons under his skin, like any other cycle, any other harvest. There was a tightness to the air, an excitement, anticipation. Soon there would be work for all hands, from the strongest backs to the smallest hands who ran along behind their fathers and tied quick, precise knots around the gathered chilnet sheaves. And there would be long days and short nights and a cool taste that lingered at the back end of a warm breeze. And then, when the harvest was done, there would be celebrations, and feasts. The children would run their races, and the young people would have their dances, and when the music slowed, the older folk would stir themselves to move carefully around the floor, a graceful and dignified gesture to their memories, when they were the young people, when their faces flushed with shy attraction and hope and their dances were wild.

Cerric let his eyes drift down over the settlement, over swells and valleys that his eyes had memorized long ago, a landscape that he knew like he knew his own heartbeat. In the fields, pieca beans and saabinth were ripening; in the manet grove, vines twisted and curled, the leaves already turning silver-copper in the late afternoon sun. On the far hill were the orchards, neatly lined trees weighted down with sweet, tangy niarwons, or the vi'atass, small and hard and green, which would darken to black within the next four weekens and fall to the ground in a rain of shells. Beyond the hill, he could see the path curving up into the Sugar bushes, a road he'd taken many times. Not this cycle, though. The sugar harvest would be tended to by younger men, men who had their strength.

The village was quiet; most people were out in the fields, but there were a few dwellings where smoke could be seen rising in lazy curls from the chimneys, where wives were preparing the evening meals.

He remembered, suddenly, the taste of Laran's chilnet bread and Chai-co stew, a memory so clear he could smell the spices, could feel the weight of it on his tongue. She'd been a wonderful cook, Laran. Aeryn had done well, and had proved that no matter what the skill, she would at least prove adequate, but his Laran had been in a class by herself. Hers had been a gift.

It was so beautiful here, and to say that he loved this place was insufficient. It was more than love, more than belonging. He was this place, and this place was him. Laran had understood, had been the same.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Aeryn appeared through the trees, her face set.

He watched her approach calmly. She was still beautiful, her slender form bending gracefully, her hair pulled back in a loose braid, so that the strands that had pulled free of it wisped and curled around her face. Her hair was more silver than black now, and as much as he had loved that darkness, as dark as a ripened yi'atass nut, he didn't mourn its loss. The silver suited her, he thought. Bright and hard and beautiful.

She stepped close, and he tilted his head to look up at her. And smiled. "You're angry."

It didn't take much to see that Aeryn was angry. She'd never been one for subtlety, had never hidden anything.

"I spoke with Keetah."

"Ah." The healer would have told her, then. Just as well. It hadn't been a conversation he was looking forward to having.

"Is that all you have to say? Ah?"

He reached up, ran his fingers lightly across the back of her hand, and she shuddered. For a moment, it looked as if she would run, and he could see in her again the same woman who had fallen into their lives so many cycles before. Brittle, angry. Frightened.

"It's all right, Aeryn."

She took a deep breath, and sat next to him. He smiled in amusement; she sat quickly, her back unbending, her shoulders set. So contained. For a long moment, neither of them spoke, merely looked down at the settlement.

But they'd have to say something eventually, Cerric knew, and so he took a breath and began. "How much did she tell you?"

"Well, I would hope that she told me everything." Aeryn's voice was tart, like unripe arbin fruit. "What kind of a name is 'wasting sickness,' anyway?"

Cerric chuckled. "It is a name, Aeryn, nothing more. And as a description, it is rather accurate."

She stabbed a branch into the soft earth, glared at him. She looked like her children, Cerric thought. Laran had longed for children, and died childless. Aeryn had been terrified at the prospect. She hadn't taken to motherhood easily, or naturally, but she'd done well, and he could see them now, in her beautiful face. She looked like the boys did when they were much younger, when they'd been rebuked, when faced with something unfair. Outrage and pain and... insult. As if his death were an affront to her.

"It is what it is, Aeryn. And we can't change it. There is little to be gained by being angry." He felt the urge to apologize to her, but instead shook his head ruefully.

"I am angry," she admitted. "And I can't help it. This shouldn't happen. There should be a way to stop it."

"There isn't."

She hesitated, then pushed on. "My people - where I came from, there's no disease. No sickness that can't be treated. If I had been prepared, if I had brought more with me when I came here..."

If she had brought such things with her, they would never have married. Laran had lasted two monens against the wasting sickness. If Aeryn had been gifted with such foresight, Laran never would have died.

"You brought enough, Aeryn."

She had, after all, brought herself.

Her eyes were bright with tears, and she curled into him, and his hand came up, automatically, to smooth the hair away from her forehead. After so many cycles, their actions unthinking, natural, her body finding the perfect place against his side, her head in the hollow under his shoulder.

"Do you have regrets, Aeryn? At spending the last 130 cycles here with me?"

When she spoke, her voice was calm. "I don't like to think of what this would have been like without you. I don't think I could have lived here alone."

She could have. She was stronger than she gave herself credit for. Always had been. But neither of them had wanted to be alone. His proposal to her hadn't been the most romantic of invitations, but they'd both understood. Both knew that honesty was best, and that it was better to be with a friend than to mourn a lost lover for the rest of their days. They both could have lived alone, but neither wanted to. And they'd fit, in a strange and unexpected way.

It had been good, between them. If, given her fondest wish, she would escape to the stars, and given his, he would give breath back to the dead, they were both far too practical to surrender their lives to impossible wishes, and it had been good. He pressed the lightest of kisses against her hair, looked down again, to the chilnet, where the grain was darkening even now, his eyes lingering on the small indentation on the far side of the field, where there once had been an abandoned well, where his son had died. John.

He let his fingers run over shoulder, to her collarbone, under the chain of the locket that she wore, still. He'd touched it many times, it had been many cycles since she had flinched when he did so. Today, however, he went further, letting his fingers glide over the locket itself, triggering the clasp, opening it.

He gazed at it for a moment, the empty space in the hollow of metal that she wore above her heart. So loyal, Aeryn was, so scrupulously honest. No other man's image there, but never his.

Slender fingers covered his, closing the locket, and he smiled, gently, and kissed her hair again. There was no bitterness, no blame. How did Aeryn think that he wouldn't understand?

Both of his wives had shed tears when he asked them to marry him. He had spoken to Aeryn of friendship and companionship, and she had wept silent tears of sorrow and loss and resignation. With Laran, he had been breathless, nervous, and she had laughed through her tears and hugged him close with pure joy at having him, at keeping him.

His tiny, soft Laran. So different from Aeryn, yet with the same stubborn core of strength. Laran, who had seen her death coming and prepared, prepared herself, prepared him as best she could. Who had invited a beautiful, fierce stranger to their home, and encouraged her husband to spend time with her. Wondered about her, so that Cerric pressed close in order to satisfy his wife's curiosity, and found more than he expected. Already dying, Laran had requested that he plant this grove of trees, and that he ask Aeryn to help him.

He didn't resent Crichton, couldn't. There was a hollow space above Aeryn's heart that belonged to Crichton, but it was a twin to the one in Cerric's own heart, where Laran still lived. And he'd had things that Crichton never had, never would. He'd had this woman by his side and in his bed, had grown old next to her, had seen her smiles and dried her tears and given her children. He'd gulped down her early attempts at plovik stew under a frosty glare that dared him to say something, anything. He'd laughed with her at their sons' antics and stood with her at their son's wedding. And when he died, she would be there, next to him, and she would hold his hand and speak to him in soft words. It wasn't so bad, knowing that he wouldn't be alone, that he hadn't been. To know that his body would return to the earth that he loved so much, that he would finally be a part of it, and it would mingle with him.

She hadn't exactly answered his question. It was all right, though. He knew that she had regrets. But he only had one. He would have liked to have danced with Aeryn at the harvest festival.

********


huzzlewhat

---

Author's Afterword, Harvest Dance

Return to Aeryn Years Index