Page 37 of Prima
Tears well in her eyes even as pleasure overtakes her. She will never forget this. She will never forget him.
ChapterEleven
The present
Who are you? How do we know each other?
Ren’s questions still echo in the air when a new realization slams into him: The vambraces and the Old Sinoscript character on the inside, whatever their significance, must be linked to the fate of his family.
Lady Sun sets aside the glass of guava juice still in her hand. “Go ahead, ask me the new question that has just occurred to you.”
A question along the lines ofDo you know what happened to my mother and my sister?—is that what she means?
The ?pendant has half disappeared behind the neckline of her dress. He stares, barely caring that it’s rude. He has drawn and fixated upon the circled logogram thousands of times during the past four years. And burned all those scraps of paper bearing the mysterious symbol in inchoate prayers to the universe, and scattered the ash on Five’s little island, at the roots of young jackfruit trees.
She leans to the side, against the paneling behind the bench. Belatedly he realizes that the pendant too has shifted and now rests upon the rise of her breast.
He looks up. “Why do you not answer the questions I already asked?”
She grips the pendant, her knuckles white. He sucks in a breath at the tightness of her hold, anxious that she would snap the pendant in half. And hurt herself.
She exhales and drops her hand to her lap. “You already know who I am. I am Sun Yi, until recently a member of the Secretariat, the Prima Inter Pares during my final year.
“As for how we know each other—I would say we do not know each other in the present tense.”
His heart thuds. "And in the past sense?”
She smooths a wrinkle on the skirt of her malachite-green dress—green, his favorite color. “Ten years ago, near the end of my Grand Tour, we stumbled upon each other. But we spent very little time together and by any standard—or at least the standards that I’m accustomed to—we’d be considered to have been barely acquainted.”
Barely acquainted.
He believes her, because she does not look at him, as if she too does not wish to face the scarcity of their history, the thinness of their association.
Yet…
“Did I—did I grill those scallops for you?”
I wanted to be nineteen again—and falling in love for the first time.
She lifts her head slowly, her gaze coming to rest on his face as if with great reluctance. “Yes.”
And what happened to that love? What happened in those ten long years?
She rises abruptly, disappears into the cabin, and returns with an envelope. She hands the envelope to him. “Questions about your mother and sister are easier to answer.”
Because they are still his beloved family, the separation and his loss of memory notwithstanding?
He stood up when she did and remains standing after he accepts the envelope, as she is still on her feet.
Tell me more about us, he wants to say.
But how is she to do that? She cannot reminisce with him because he recalls nothing, nor can she recount events as if he, a central participant, was merely a curious bystander.
That he does not know who she is to him makes it impossible for her to gauge who he is to her, in the present tense.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
And realizes immediately that he has said the worst possible thing.
