“I didn’t want to say this, but I think you’d be disappointed if you met them. Bani’s parents were lazy fools, always sponging off the townsfolk. They often picked fights and raised trouble. And I can’t prove it, but I think they were thieves, too.”
“What?”
“They tended to beat Bani as well,” Matassi said apologetically. “And maybe they saw his intelligence as being snotty, because they also tore up the books I lent him. To say they were a no-good bunch is the kindest way of putting it.”
As she listened to the chief speak, Tessa felt as if the clear blue sky were turning gray. “Then... does he have a grave?”
“He does. It’s a little ways to the east of the village. There’s a graveyard along the road.”
Bani Morauta’s grave was in a graveyard on a hill that overlooked the sea. His name and life span were written on the simple gravestone in both English and the local language. It was even simpler than the other gravestones. That fact alone spoke volumes of the character of the family that had run off with his inheritance.
“There’s the grave. You wanna be alone?” Ronnie asked curiously after leading her there.
“Yes,” she replied. “Could you give me some time?”
“Sure thing. I think I’ll go back to the village. I’ll come get you in thirty minutes.” With that, he walked back to the bike he’d parked outside of the graveyard.
“Ronnie.”
“What?”
“Thanks.” Tessa smiled with all her gratitude. He really is a good boy. He’s being so considerate of me, she thought.
But Ronnie just gave her an exaggerated shrug. “Don’t go killing yourself to join him, okay?” With that last sassy remark, he left. She heard his motorcycle drive away, which left Tessa alone in the graveyard.
The grass swayed in a passing breeze, and the strong sunlight felt hot on her skin.
After a while, she said, “Bani... I’m sorry I’m late. I finally made it out to see you.” Tessa removed a bouquet of flowers and a small model of her submarine, the Tuatha de Danaan, from her bag, and laid them in front of the grave. “I wanted to take my submarine here,” she told him, “but it was destroyed. Nevertheless, it performed very well right to the end. As for Al, your son... he’s fine. He’s no longer in the body you gave him, but I’ll bring him by later.”
Tessa then squatted down and began to tell him everything that was in her heart: Her present circumstances. The events of the past few years. The people she’d saved. The people she hadn’t. Shared memories of their past. Her own feelings towards him.
“I couldn’t tell you then, but I loved you,” she whispered. Tessa hesitated over whether or not to tell him about Sousuke, but decided she might as well. “After you died, I fell in love with someone else. Nothing happened between us. That is... that love was unrequited, too. He didn’t want anything to do with me.” She laughed as she said it. It felt like a strange confession, since she assumed Bani had never seen her as anything more than a friend.
“The girl he loved was another one like us,” Tessa went on. “She can be a bit flighty and impulsive, but she’s also very brave and strong. She did so many things I never could... I think she just had something I lacked. I admired her, envied her, felt inferior to her. Yes... in a different way than I felt inferior to you. I don’t think it’s any surprise that my brother fell for her too.”
Tessa spoke the words on her mind freely and easily. It was strange. It might have been her first time sharing her emotions like this.
“But Bani,” she said, “I’m grateful to all of you. You and my brother and even her... You all took me down a peg, but you also helped me to grow more honest in the process. I had an awful way of thanking you when we first met, about that essay... I’d never do that again. The next time someone points out my mistakes, I’ll be able to thank them with genuine gratitude. I know that’s something every human should be capable of, but back then, I simply wasn’t.”
Tessa fell silent for a little while after that. She heard the birds calling in the mountain behind her. Voices like song, like lamentation.
I wish we’d talked more often like this, she reflected. I was just so busy with my work back then, still haunted by the loss of my parents, by my brother leaving the way he did. I didn’t have the time. I was so focused on growing stronger and smarter, and not needing any help from anyone...
“That’s why it feels so strange to me now,” she told him. “Even back then, how could you be so kind to others? How could you have made a work of art like Al?”
I’m not jealous, of course. I’ve just always wondered. Bani didn’t try to crush his rivals or develop weapons to annihilate his enemies. He just... smiled. If he’d been raised by a kind and loving family in some simple South Seas paradise, I might understand. But having seen this place, it’s hard to call it a blessed existence. Had I been raised in a place like this, I don’t think I’d have turned out as well. At the very least, my parents didn’t try to stop me from learning things. They didn’t abuse me.
Who taught him the right way? Was it that village chief? No, I doubt it... He seems kind, but the way he talked about Bani gave the vaguest suggestion of indifference. He saw Bani as a poor child, mistreated by the community he was supposed to lead, and born to a troublesome family. That was the nuance she’d picked up. Who, then? Tessa wondered. She just couldn’t figure it out.
The gravestone remained silent, offering no answers. It was simply a stone mirror that reflected her heart.
“I’m sorry. I should find that answer myself, shouldn’t I?” said Tessa, changing the subject. “We should talk about the future, too. I’ve been taking it easy lately, but maybe it’s time I got started on something. A friend of mine is having a baby, so I’ll have to do it while I help with that. And then there’s the question of... us. I’m not sure I can rest easy just yet, but at least things seem much better than before.”
By “us,” she meant the Whispered. Tessa hadn’t heard the whispers even once since the final battle on Merida Island, nor had she experienced even the occasional bout of déjà vu. From what she’d heard, it was the same for others in her situation. They likely wouldn’t have to be afraid of the whispers and their allure any longer.
They hadn’t lost their intelligence or the knowledge they’d already possessed, but now they could just be ordinary humans. Still, people might still come after us, Tessa thought. Awful things might still happen. But someday, I think, we’ll be safe.
The signs of it were already out there. With the settling of the military crisis that had begun the past year, the hard-line factions on both sides of the Cold War were rapidly losing their influence. Many had already been driven from power, and for others, it seemed to be only a matter of time. Reformist and democratic factions in the Eastern Bloc were starting to take over, and the aftershocks from that were rocking the Soviet Union. The Communist powers were already becoming shells of themselves, and would soon fall.
The Cold War, locked in a stalemate for ten straight years, might finally come to a true end.
Once that happened, countries would slash their budgets for defense and intelligence. They’d pivot to rebuilding their flagging and panicked economies and dicey political situations, and slowly ramp down new weapons development. No one would give a second thought to those strange occult children and their ideas about super-technology.