Chapter 1993: An About Turn – Part 8
If anything, she wondered why she had not expected it sooner. He was a ball of magic, a creature of the purest sort. A boy with white hair that she occasionally dreamed about. If his life had been a happy thing, he would have done remarkably well, no matter where he was placed.
But the world had seen him cut, and harmed beyond measure. That same boy, special as he was, had suffered to such a degree that even Claudia loved him. That same boy had been given reason to fight – a terrifying thing to behold.
How could he be as fragile as the boy that Nila held before her, as still capable of changing the fate of a country, seemingly by accident, on a whim, if the story was as Verdant and Blackthorn told her?
He was hardly one person, but several. A great swirling mass of different things. She saw through him, and he saw through her.
“Nila,” he said, as she held him. “Promise me you won’t disappear.”
She flinched. They had hardly said a world to each other, and already she guessed at that which troubled her.
“It will be difficult, definitely,” he said. “You will likely suffer for it… and I know it’s selfish to ask. I know it’s not what you want. It’s not quiet, it’s too much of the world… But maybe there will come times where we can disappear together again. It’s just…”
She held her hand out to him and wound her little finger around his. “Stupid,” she said, knowing now that he was in front of her far more strongly than when she had pondered it alone that which she ought to do. She knew, no matter what happened, she loved Oliver Patrick. “I promise. I won’t ever disappear. So you promise too, okay?”
“I promise,” Oliver said.
She smiled a triumphant smile. “And that means you need to finally start looking after yourself!” She said. “Now you’ve promised to.”
“I said I wouldn’t disappear, that isn’t the same…” Oliver said with a twist of his lips.
“It is. If you don’t look after yourself, you’ll disappear too,” Nila said. “So you had better.”
“I suppose…” Oliver murmured. Somehow, that was the worst thing that she could ask of him. He never knew what to do as far as looking after himself. Always was he looking outwards, at other people, and at other things. Always, was he going forwards. He glanced up again, his startling eyes animated by something or other, proving Nila’s evaluation of him immediately true.
“You know, you should go and see Mrs Felder,” he said. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You’ve stuck by me for a good time, and you’ve been helping Greeves keep Ernest in check, but obviously we haven’t been able to move people back as quickly as we would like, since things have changed… So you should take some time for yourself, and go and see her.”
“I would like to,” Nila said.
Oliver nodded. “Good, then go in the morning.”
“But I can’t.”
Oliver frowned. “Why not? We’ll get you a horse, you’ll get that quickly enough. And if you’re worried about trouble on the road, then we can send some men with you, but to be honest, you’d be fine by yourself. There’s no gang of bandits in the country that could do anything to you.”
She brought down her hand in a chop on his head. “Stupid. Do you think I’m going to disappear whilst you’re planning to take on the High King? Last time I let you go away without me, you came back with a crown on your head. I’m never letting you go off on your own again.”
“…Do you think I was wrong to do it?” He asked quietly, showing her that rare doubt that others would struggle to believe existed in him, for how passionately he would declare their forward course.
“Obviously, idiot,” Nila said. “You’re miserable. You can’t even sleep. It’s painful to watch you. You definitely made the worst choice.”
Oliver hung his head. “Sorry. You’re the one that has to put up with it. I shouldn’t have put that burden on you.”
“That’s right, you shouldn’t,” Nila said. “It’s you that I want to see happy, Oliver. The rest of the country, I don’t care. As long as the people closest to us are okay, we’d get by somehow. We could have been fine, avoiding it all…”
“You’re the only one who’s said that to me,” Oliver said.
“Well, obviously, I’m an idiot too. No one else is dumb enough to say that outloud. Too much has happened, and it’s a cruel thing to say, especially with Asabel… but crowns, and riches, and land, that’s not what makes people happy. Anything could happen at any moment, so we should do what actually makes us happy, right Oliver? Though, I guess things aren’t that simple…”
“You think we could?” Oliver asked.
“Obviously. The peasant villages like Solgrim manage, don’t they? They only need a tiny little bit of help, and everyone can be really happy. The winters are hard, as long as we get through those, everyone is okay. That’s what living means, I think, far more than the city. I don’t understand the city – the main thing is that a village has enough food to go around, right? But a city has the food, and still there’s somehow a problem. It’s stupid.”
“It is…” Oliver said. “It’s definitely strange. A city is a different, more human game, full of problems that we’ve invented.”
“Exactly! So we should just run away from all that, and do things our way… Except, I guess, we can’t.”
“Your perspective is such a strange thing,” Oliver said. “Talking to you, after spending the day talking to everyone else, of governance, and of how we might ensure stability once we have the High King captured, they’re remarkably different things.”
“Well, I suppose we’re all different,” Nila said. “We were raised differently. Greeves would say something different to me.”
“I spoke to him earlier, and he definitely had something interesting to say… It’s strange to find myself relying on him to the degree that I am. A man that, fundamentally, is really hard to like… and yet I rely upon him so much without entirely trusting him,” Oliver said.