Atsuki Nightwhisper's Arc

Chapter 16 of 17

Matthias was gone down the path. His family was safe under law. But Atsuki still did not know who his parents were, only that they had died for him. That night he sat with his grandmother inside the monastery. She had given him her half of the pendant. She had wept over him. But every time he asked about his mother and father, she looked away and spoke of something else. "You knew them," Atsuki said. "You raised my father. I have a name and two seals and a closed debt. I still don't have them." The old woman folded her hands. "Some doors are better left shut." "Not for me." He set the whole pendant on the table between them. "I climbed a cliff on a burning bird to keep you alive. I earned the rest." She was quiet a long time. Then she rose, went to a chest against the wall, and drew out a cloth bundle. Inside lay a cluster of blue roses, dried but still faintly shining, each petal flecked like a tiny star. "Your mother grew these," she said. "On her wedding day she carried them. Your father called her his star garden." Her voice broke. "I could not say it before. Speaking their names made them dead again." She told him the rest. His mother's laugh. His father's stubborn temper, the same as Atsuki's own. The night they refused the priest and hid their baby with a stranger. How they died holding to each other. Atsuki listened without moving. When she finished, the last empty space in him had a shape at last. At dawn he walked down to the old oak. Aelindor sat in the groove worn into the root, a page on his knee. The white-haired elf had sent him to the warden. He had given him the marker to find this family. He had never once said what he felt. "I know them now," Atsuki said. "All of it. My grandmother told me." Aelindor set down his pen. "Good." Atsuki held out one of the star-flecked roses. "My mother grew these. I thought you should have one. You carried me to the truth." Aelindor took the flower. He turned it in his fingers. For a moment he seemed to search for something and not find it. "I watched a tree fall once," he said. "I wrote it down so it would not be lost." He looked up. "Your family is not lost now. You did that." "You helped." "I did." Aelindor's hand closed around the rose. He almost spoke again, then stopped. Atsuki walked back toward the cliffs. His lineage was whole in his memory. The blood debt was closed. But his grandmother and uncle still lived in a sealed monastery they could never leave, fugitives without a home of their own. Safe was not the same as free. That was the next thing he had to fix.