A Gamer's Guide 350

This is about as good as any moment to approach, so after giving Rice a look, I head towards the little group, internally considering whether the housemother is the kind of person who wants you to pretend to smile, or if she would take a pretend-smile as an insult. By the time I arrive, I have failed to reach a conclusion, and therefore also fail to smile. 

She doesn’t seem to mind. As I stalk up to her, my back hunched and my limbs dangling, she puts her hands together, rears up, and coos, “Oh, there you are!” And before I have time to reel from the absolute joy on her face, she rushes up to me, takes both of my hands in her tiny ones, and clutches them tightly. “How much I’ve heard about you! What lovely days. And you,” she turns to beam at Rice, “must be his friend! Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for Nils and Wernekke and Pil and Hilda. You know how kids are at this age, always wanting to run out into the forest without any idea of where they’re going! Have you had your hands full?”

Rice shakes her head, her fluffy hair bobbing even though she keeps it tied in a ponytail. “Not at all, they’ve been,” she searches for the word for a moment, “challenging. In a good way, of course!”

The housemother, in return, nods so hard at her that the shawl around her head almost starts coming loose. “I know what you mean, my child. And you,” she turns to me, her eyes suddenly growing melancholy, yet no less joyous, “I thank for all you do with Lett. He is a difficult boy to love.”

Something in my dead heart goes crunch. “I would have to disagree.” 

Her smile doesn’t move an inch. It’s on her face, and it’s not leaving. Yet, somehow, I can’t seem to replicate it. “Thank you,” she says. “It is good of you to think that.”

She’s still holding my hands. My cold, cold hands. I can’t even sweat to show my discomfort. Still, with what she said before, I know that there is a question I must ask. If I can’t say it, then how can I even consider myself his friend? “Housemother…”

“Please, call me Aunt Gyrdle.”

Aunt what? I shake my head. “Aunt Gyrdle, about Lett…”

Her hands squeeze mine tighter, and I fall silent. A whisper of melancholy has mellowed out her smile, and in the span of mere moments, she appears to age over a decade. Before, I hadn’t known how old she was. Now, I’m certain she’s well into her 50s at the very least. “Let’s talk inside, my child.” Still holding my hands, she glances at the other humans present, mustering a smile. “Would you please help the children unpack? It would be such a shame if any of the donations were to be hurt.”

“Of course,” Holly says. “We’d be glad to.”

“Thank you, my child,” aunt Gyrdle replies, and although the words are typically said lightly, when it comes from her, they seem to hold an odd sense of gravitas. Like she actually means it. With the safety of the donations secured, she turns to me again. “Come, now. We have much to discuss.” Though she releases the hold on one hand, she retains the other. Still holding my hand, almost like a mother trying to keep their toddler from waddling off, she guides me inside. Since there’s nothing I can do to refuse, my only option is to wave goodbye to Rice. She tips her hat at me: a silent wish for my wellbeing. 

Pulled along, she brings me all the way through the church, across the first floor, up the stairs, and into a side room I didn’t even know we had. It’s small and quaint, and if it hadn’t been for the window facing the garden, I might have assumed it to have been a closet before the refurbishment. 

Now, finally, she releases my hand. Even then, I still follow her, but instead of sitting down on one of the two armchairs as I had expected, she instead heads for the window, placing her small but well-worn hands on the windowsill. “The tree is gone.”

I jerk back. “Y—yeah, it was… I didn’t want to, of course, but the fungus…”

Her smiling face turns to me again. Earnest. “Thank you. I’ve never had the strength to do it myself.” She lets her eyes take in the garden in full. “It’s much brighter now. I’m glad.” 

Is she happy? I can’t tell. For some reason, I feel uneasy. 

She waves to one of the couches, and even though she didn’t ask me to, I obediently take a seat. I can’t help it, but she makes me want to do as she asks. Maybe it’s because she doesn’t demand it, she simply asks? When my mother wanted me to do things, it wasn’t a matter of please and thank you. Which, I imagine, is what a lot of mothers are like. At least, that’s the case in movies. 

Aunt Gyrdle doesn’t feel like a movie mother. She feels like more.

“There used to be a swing in that tree,” she says. “Nothing too ornate or expensive. Otherwise father wouldn’t have let us have it. That’s what he was like—if something was going to be used a lot, it ought to be cheap so it would be easy to replace. So the boards came from a chair my sister broke and the rope from a torn drake tether. We would swing on it almost every day, always scraping up our knees and twisting our ankles. Still, the next day, we went right back on it, and I’d push her so high she could almost fly in through the window.” She sighs longingly. “I only wish…” A shake of the head. Returning her gaze to me, she allows herself to stand tall. “What did you do with the tree?”

“I burnt it,” I answer. If I’d taken the time to think about it, I might not have been able to say it. 

But she only smiles. “Good. You’re a good child, Fennrick. I understand that I may come across as a very devout believer of the Goddess of Children, but I was raised in the church of Fire.” Her mind and eyes elsewhere, far in the past, she takes a seat across from me, lowering herself with great care to not harm her poor old knees. “It’s a very brutal belief, though it used to be more so. My father would sometimes tell me that if I was a bad girl, then the Goddess of Fire would come and purify me. That practice hasn’t been done in a thousand years, and yet he would threaten me with such a horrible thing! Oh, if he only knew the fear that he instilled in me with that little promise…”

I nod along with her, because she has said something which allows me to add to the conversation. “My own father said if I kept crossing my eyes they’d be stuck that way,” I said, “and also that if I didn’t go to sleep in time I’d turn into a moth. It had the opposite effect though, because I thought moths were awesome, so I tried staying awake all night. It did not work, and I had to be home from school the next day.”

A shrill laugh fills the room, which I’m shocked to see coming from her. It would be much more suited to some rich lady, not… “What a laugh! I must remember that one. Do you believe it might work on the kids?”

“The kids?” I rub my chin. There are quite a few kids who enjoy staying up until way too late in the evening… The image of a certain bedbound friend comes to mind, bringing a smile to my lips. “No, if I know him as well as I think I do, I doubt he’d view the prospect of turning into a moth with much terror.”

Her smile turns mellow again. “Lett, you mean?”

I nod to her. “Yes. And, regarding him…”

“I’ve been trying to find him a home or workplace for the past three years. There’s simply no place that will take him. Ignoring the fact that he’s unable to walk, most people are unable to understand his dialect. His only viable form of work might be in a library or university, but even they have some limits.”

“In—in that case…” I weave my fingers together. Cold. But the question has to be asked. Taking a deep breath, I force myself to look her square in the eye. “Do you think I could take him?”

Still smiling, her face too kind for words, she shakes her head. “It is awfully kind of you to offer this, my child. Did Lett ask you to?”

Reluctantly, I nod. Her gaze is piercing. It sees through not only me, but also everything I am, have been, or ever will be. Most terrifyingly, she’s still smiling. She knows everything about me, but she still shares the room with me with a smile. “He doesn’t know what else to do,” I add, even though I already have my answer—one that I happen to agree with. “Please.”

“I’m sorry,” she says with as much sincerity as she does ‘thank you.’ “He could not handle a life on the road, much less one pursued by all the forces of the world. I fear what is to become of him less than I do you.”

Was that concern for me? “Thank you,” I say, purely by reflex. “But, then…” My hands clench into fists. “What’s to become of him? If he isn’t adopted, and he can’t work anywhere…” The impossibility of his situation makes me want to tie a knot out of myself. When I look at her, I can’t imagine how pleading my eyes must look.

Worst of all, it seems the same question has plagued her. Though, in her case, it was weighed on her mind for three years—not a mere week. “He can’t stay here,” she says weakly. “There are too few churches of children, too many children who need us. We can fit almost half a dozen children in his room, not to mention how much it costs to give him the books he requires. It is our duty to keep him, and so we do. But eventually he will need to leave. I dread that day.”

“Where will he go?”

“I can’t say. All I can hope is that I’ll find a home or place of work for him before that day. But time is running out.”

“In that case, before he has to leave, I can return, and…” I can’t sweat. My hands are bone-dry, my back likewise. It feels so cold. All I want to do is help, and yet…

“Will you be able to?” she asks cruelly. Her face half-lit by the window, I can only see one of her eyes. There’s nothing unkind about it. “Can you swear that you will still be alive in a year? Two?”

My gaze trails down to the floor. Teeth clenched, hands clenched, I feel myself tremble. Damn it. Damn it. Am I really this useless? Lett is right in front of me, and yet… “No,” I bite out. “I can’t promise that.”

A hand stretches out into my view, small and soft. I allow myself to take it. Her hand curls around mine, unable to encapsulate it fully. But that isn’t the point. I can feel the warmth in it. Her warmth. “I will try my best,” she says, “but right now, there is nothing you can do.”

“Don’t say that,” I beg her. “Please don’t say that.”

“When you meet him later today, can you tell him the truth? That you won’t be able to bring him with you?”

A jolt of cold electricity tears through me and I twitch harshly at the mere thought. “No.” My voice is small. Can she even hear it? “I don’t think I can.”

Her hand squeezes mine. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

“Then…?”

I look up. She’s smiling, her face brimming with compassion and understanding. “Don’t worry, my child. I’ll tell him.”

I nod so hard it could be considered a bow, small though it may be. “Thank you,” I squeeze out. “It means a lot.”

“Anytime.”