Ander - Part 2: Subchapter 21
21
"That was how I met Kadai, your father, Ander," Sarah said. Her hands had stopped twisting her dress, but they were clenched so tightly they were almost vibrating.
Ander sneaked a peek over her shoulder at Mateo. Like him, the Fox hasn't said a word since Sarah began her tale. He just sat there, frozen, looking at his mother with a frown on his face and his mouth slightly open, as if she was telling him an exceptionally off-colour joke.
Either Sarah didn't notice, or she didn't care, because she simply went on with her story, the words rushing out of her like a fountain.
*
"I... I..." By the gods, this thing can talk!? Sarah didn't know what to do. Her heart was beating so fast she feared it would tear itself apart in her chest. A part of her even wished for this mercy, to drop dead so she wouldn't have to feel so... so...
Scared? Yes, there was that, of course. Lots of it. But there was something else, too... She felt...
Exhilarated? As impossible as that sounded even to herself, there was no denying it. She was standing here, talking to a creature that could chomp her head off in the blink of an eye, and she felt excited! This was, without a doubt, the most amazing thing that has ever happened to her.
She took a deep breathe and said, "M- My name is Sarah." She considered adding one of the conventional pleasantries like 'Pleased to meet you,' or 'How do you do?' but that sounded so stupid in her head she just left her introduction as is.
The Wolf cocked his head first one way, then the other, looking her over from different angles, making her feel slightly self-conscious. Then, without warning, it crouched down and pinched the hem of her dress between its fingers.
"W- What are you...?" she began, but the words caught in her throat as the Wolf started to lift her dress up to its face, examining the fabric with that same look of curiosity in its eyes.
"Hey!" Sarah said and yanked her dress back before the brute could get any more of an eyeful. "That is no way to greet a lady!"
The Wolf stood back up, somehow looking even taller than before, and Sarah immediately regretted her little outburst. If it intended to kill her, then it would. And nothing could stop it. Not her parents, not her suitors, not the gods up in heaven. She was all alone, and whatever was about to happen, chances were she wouldn't have any say in the matter.
That's why she was so surprised when the Wolf took a step back and said, "I am Kadai."
That was all. No more than that. Just those three words.
Well, it's not like you said anything more than that, either.
That's true. Well, might as well get the obvious question out of the way. "Are you... going to hurt me?"
Oh, that sounds so stupid!
"That depends," Kadai said. "What exactly are you?"
Sarah took the neckline of her dress in hand and squeezed it compulsively, something she always did when she was nervous, much to her mother's chagrin. "You're stretching it out!" she would scold, and that would make Sarah want to stretch it out even more, just to spite her.
"I'm a Fox," she said.
Kadai raised his eyebrows, but didn't say anything. It looked like he recognized the word, but was that good or bad? She couldn't tell. He was just staring at her, not saying a word.
Oh, you've done it now...
Thoughts of flight were beginning to creep back into her mind, but then, "I have never seen a Fox before."
"And I've never seen a Wolf before," Sarah replied, relieved. Whatever this 'Kadai' was doing out here, it didn't look like it intended to kill her.
What was it doing out here, then? Where did it - no, where did he come from? Were there others like him? There were so many questions tumbling around in her head she didn't know which to ask first.
As she would soon find out, he felt the same way.
*
"We were both so curious about each other," Sarah said, lost in her ruminations, "we kept asking questions of each other before we could even finish answering the previous ones."
Ander listened to all this while trying to do some quick math in his head. Because Wolves didn't keep time as precisely as the Foxes did, it was difficult for him to pinpoint exactly when all this took place, but if he had to estimate, he'd guess that his father had to have been around thirty years of age. That would mean he would have been Chieftain for ten years by then, and would have been mated to Shekka for at least five of those years.
Banno would have been barely more than a pup.
"The sun went down so much faster than it normally did on that day, I'm sure of that. We'd been talking for hours, me about my life on the farm with my parents, him about his life as a hunter for his tribe. What was boring and trivial to one was fascinating to the other -"
"Wait, 'hunter'?" Ander said.
"Oh, yes." Sarah said, nodding her head knowingly. "Your father was the cautious type, all right. He wouldn't reveal to me that he was actually the Chieftain of his people for quite some time. Or that he had a... wife."
That last word came out so bitter Ander had to resist the urge to scoot away from her. He risked another quick peek Mateo's way, but his facial expression was still exactly the same as it was before: shocked disgust.
"Anyway..." Sarah continued, "By the time the sun began to set, we had become fast friends. We both needed to get back to our families before dark, but we promised to meet each other again at that very same spot by the river the next day. The river marked the halfway point between our homes, you see, so that worked out perfectly. We both decided not to tell anyone of each other. Me, because my parents would go berserk, of course, and him because, well, he was more vague about his reasons, as I'm sure you'll understand..."
Ander was finding this story hard to believe. He just couldn't envision his father, a cold, hard, calculating Wolf, secretly befriending a Fox in the woods. But the way Sarah told it; the pass, the river, his father's description, it had to be true. This all happened over twenty years ago, apparently, but hearing how different his father must have been back then was still a very bizarre experience, and Ander couldn't help but wonder what could have caused such a change.
"We figured out a system that made sense to us, but wouldn't arouse any suspicion with an obvious pattern. Five days, then four days, then nine, then eight. Five, four, nine, eight. Those were the days we waited between visits. We didn't have any way to communicate with each other outside of our meetings, though, so sometimes he would go to the river while I was stuck at home, doing some unexpected chore or entertaining a new suitor. Conversely, sometimes I would arrive and wait for him all day long, only to make my way back in disappointment. But on the days we did meet up, those were some of the happiest times of my young life."
"I cannot believe what I'm hearing..." Mateo mumbled, just loud enough to ensure he would be heard.
Unmindful of her son's comment, Sarah went on with her story. "We managed to keep to that schedule for quite a while, but the more we saw of each other, the more we wanted to be together. We kept shortening the gaps between visits until we were seeing each other at least twice a week. We were both taking huge risks, and we knew it, but it didn't seem to matter so much back then. This went on for almost a full year, and we had come to know each other rather well by that time -"
"A whole year?" Ander couldn't stop himself. "You and my father had these secret rendezvous for a whole year?"
Sarah thought for a little while before answering, staring down at the floorboards. "Looking back now, I believe the joy we got from each other's company was only half of what kept us together. I wanted desperately to escape the life I saw looming before my eyes, of becoming some farmer's wife whose only job was to clean house and pop out kids -"
"By the gods, Mother!" Mateo said and buried his face in his hands.
"- and Kadai... well, it was difficult to read him. What little understanding I have of him was only obtained through hard work, one tiny piece at a time. He didn't even tell me he was really Chieftain until two months after we first met. And he never told me about that witchdoctor wife of his, not until the very end. Not a very trusting Wolf, was your father."
"No, he's not," Ander agreed.
"But I came to believe he was doing the exact same thing I was. Even if only for a few hours a week, he wanted to get away from the life that was forced on him. He resented being Chieftain, this I know for a fact, and I suspect he wasn't very keen on that 'Shekka' either -"
"Whoa, wait!" Ander said, his head suddenly reeling. That last sentence had too much information. "My father didn't resent being Chieftain. I mean, he doesn't. And I know he and Mother didn't always get along, but in that tribe nobody ever gets along all the time, and he -"
"We all wear masks, Ander, all the time. Even the ones we love never see our real faces, because we hide them away. Perhaps it is because we love them so much that we can't allow them to see who we really are. Because no matter how hard we try, who we are on the inside can never live up to what we see on the masks of those around us. So we hide the way we feel, we hide who we really are, until, one day, we don't even realize we're wearing masks anymore. The masks become real. The masks become our true faces. You, of all people, should know what I'm talking about."
Sarah didn't look up even once, but her words were no less forceful. These were the words of a vixen who had been bitten hard by the truth of her own life, hard enough to draw blood, and they struck Ander one after another like bolts of ice through his heart.
Masks.
Banno wore masks. For years he wore the mask of the strong, older brother, the mask of the eldest son, the mask of the next Chieftain of the Wolves, all to hide his true face; the face of a monster.
Sarah wore masks. She had to hide her happiness from her own people for fear of it being taken away, and after all was said and done, she now had to wear a mask to hide her sadness.
But what of his father? Did he wear any masks? And if so, what would the lifting of that mask reveal? Ander had no idea. It occurred to him that he really didn't know much about his father at all. In many ways, Kadai was just a personification of the entire tribe throughout Ander's life: walled, isolated, closed off.
Ander couldn't help thinking of himself next. Did he wear any masks? All the times he had noticed something amazing and kept it to himself, like the way certain seeds were made to catch the wind, or how a drop of dew in just the right spot could focus the sunlight strong enough to warm your hand. All the times he had built weapons for his people, pretending he was glad to smelt countless arrows and spearheads, hiding his disgust all the while. Yes, he used to wear masks.
But not anymore. Not since he met Kiana. Maybe that's what finding true happiness really is. Finding that one person who can see through your masks, through to the true self you would keep hidden from the world, and still love what she sees there.
"I knew things would have to end eventually," Sarah said, pulling Ander out of his thoughts. "I knew we couldn't keep it a secret forever, but the day it happened... everything just came crashing down all at once..."
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