Page 112 of The Queens and the Kings
“Is he still alive?”
“I don’t know.”
He nodded, setting that aside to think about later.
Selma held up both hands, gesturing to him with open disbelief. “How?” she whispered.
“As soon as I could, I sought you. We found you in the records, but didn’t know where you went. Arvid told me, and then Malcolm wrote a scribe and then there’s Britt, who snuck onto this ship and . . .” He laughed, running a hand over his head. “I’m making a mess of this. Anyway, all roads led us here. If you look at it from the right angle, it’s all a little miraculous.”
Greater confusion appeared in her expression. “But . . . soldats can’t leave.”
Henrik chuckled. “I think both of us have a lot to catch up on.”
She gave a watery smile.
“Yes, we do. Before we start, are you hungry? I have only fish and potatoes, a mainland staple, but there is enough for both of us. Allow me the pleasure of feeding my son once again?”
Henrik finished his recounting of meeting Britt, uncovering Selma’s name, and the soldat rebellion that led him to the mainland. It took nearly an hour with all the nuance a stranger required. By the time he finished, Selma stared at him, mouth slack, eyes wide, a piece of potato forgotten in her hands.
“This is better than a storybook, Erik. I mean?—”
He snorted, but not without amusement, and held up a hand. “It’s fine.”
Selma had a child-like depth. Everything about her small living space, her responses, spoke to a gentle simplicity in the brutish world of the mainland.
They sat at a wooden table near the back of the home, two candles as their only light. The ceiling groaned when someone walked across it on the floor above. Every now and then, the murmur of muted voices could be heard. Selma didn’t seem to notice.
She set her potato chunk on her plate and straightened, stretching her back. Her eyes glazed with deepening thoughts. With a shake of her head, she said, “I cannot fathom the entire lifetime of experiences that lies between you and myself, Erik.”
Somehow, the latent sorrow, laced with amazement, communicated all the words she didn’t say. So muchtimehad been taken from them.
“What has it been like for you?” he asked, grateful to shuck the attention. He watched her closely. Too closely. She might feel uncomfortable under his scrutiny, but he couldn’t take his eyesoff of her. He thought he saw himself in her sloped nose and lip shape, perhaps.
Selma.
His mother.
The woman he’d secretly thought of every day of his life, committed to tracking her down, now sat before him. The disappointment, the fear, of their initial meeting had washed away. He marveled that sheexisted.
When Selma fell into thought and didn’t return, he quietly said, “They took you away?”
Blinking into the moment, she nodded. All the muscles in her hands tensed. “Yes. They were livid that I would make such a scene. We had no idea they were coming.”
That word.
We.
His voice was a rasp when he asked, “Did my father try to stop them?”
Selma closed her eyes, nodded. She spoke as if reliving a distant memory when she said, “Yes,we. Your father and I. I don’t know what happened to him immediately after they sent me here, but I presume he did everything he could. I don’t know what happened to him, nor what punishment His Glory gave. Was he banished? Killed? Kept? I don’t know. For years, I attempted to write, to return, to figure outsomething, but it all came to vain.”
“What’s his name?”
“Cristan.”
The same from the papers in Stenberg. He heard it with little surprise, but a steep sense of understanding he’d never truly comprehended before. It was his father. He had one. Until she confirmed it, all seemed nebulous.
She chuckled humorlessly. “Your father, he argued with the soldats. While he argued, two soldats stepped forward and tookyou both. After His Glory sent me to the mainland as a lesson for other mothers and punishment for embarrassing him, I lost . . . everything. To add insult to injury,” she added, “they took you and Noah at the same time. Noah was just like a son to me.”
