The Silenced Tale, стр. 30

Of course, no game of “pick the toy” will really predict or determine my daughter’s future. It is fun, but no more real magic than the made-up Words children use in play, or “spells” cast by young men in taverns looking to trick maidens out of their virtue. Still, I mentally urge my daughter toward the seal-stamp, which represents a life in government office. It would be pleasant if she found her calling in serving others, as I did.

Before Alis has made her choice, Pip’s fingers tighten on my hand. The pain of it is intense and sudden, but the concern that flares up in me is worse.

Another seizure that is not? I wonder as Pip leans more heavily against my side, sucking in a deep breath between her teeth, eyes screwing shut. I shake my hand free of her rigor mortis grip and wrap my arms around her waist and shoulders to keep her upright, tucking in behind her like a big spoon and trying to make it look casually affectionate.

Pip is hiding this fit. Why? What could make her want to conceal the pain? She shifts away from my hand at the small of her back and I move it off the scars, holding her hip instead.

“Pip,” I whisper.

She shakes her head against a clear message to stay silent on the matter. I look up and around. Everyone is focused on our child, not us. Pip fists her hands in my shirtsleeves and bites down hard on the noises I can feel vibrating in her chest.

A cheer goes up in the room at the same time that Pip exhales a low, deep breath and goes limp. I am able to hold her up for the moment it takes her to get her own feet under her again. She smiles up at me, and whispers: “Hurt more, but didn’t take me so much by surprise this time.”

“What happened?”

She doesn’t have the time to answer, though, for Alis has finished reveling in the cheers of those around her and is looking for the approval of her parents. She toddles over, fists her free hand in my jeans, and holds the other up to me, beaming. Her plump cheeks are pink with joy, gray eyes slitted with sparkling pleasure.

What she has picked is not the stamp. It’s also none of the other shiny, plastic toys.

“Show us, sweeting,” I say, projecting a calmness I do not feel.

“Da!” she cheers, as she holds up a tendril of ivy.

“I . . . I didn’t put that in there,” Pip says, face going gray, her pulse fluttering hard enough in her throat that I can see it jumping. She stumbles, torn between batting the branch out of Alis’s hand or backing out of the room. She covers her mouth with her palm, puffing hard.

“Honey?” Martin says, voice dropping into the “concerned father” tone that I occasionally hear in my own words. Martin scoops up Alis, but this brings the ivy closer to my wife.

Pip flinches. Martin pauses. I reach out and pluck the foliage away from my daughter. She snivels at me and says, “bu!” One of the other guests, trying to break the tension they don’t understand, declares, “Gardener!”

The room cheers again, and if they do so too loudly, and with the bright falseness of desperation, then no one cares to comment on it. The ivy clenched in my fist, I grab Pip by the wrist and head straight through the kitchen, out into the backyard.

“Syth?” Martin calls after us.

Pip calls back: “Be right back! Stay inside.” Martin pauses halfway to the door, confused. In his arms, Alis jerks and whines, fist opening and clenching, reaching for us.

For us? Or for it?

I pull Pip swiftly around the corner of the house, where I know none of the windows offer a view of us, and raise the ivy between us.

“I didn’t put that in the bundle,” Pip insists, hands shaking where she grips my free one between us. “You have to—I would never be that cruel. Why would I—I would have remembered—”

“I believe you,” I interrupt her.

Pip looks up at me with wide, dark eyes that are white all-around with fear.

“And I am so profusely sorry that I doubted you, or gainsaid you, for even a moment,” I say. “You’re right. There is magic here. Though I do not understand how, or why.”

“Did I do this?” Pip asks, staring at the tendril. “Is this my fault? God, Forsyth, what if I brought it with me? What if, just by existing here, I . . .” She breaks off miserably. “We should have stayed in Hain. You said so, but I wanted to go home, and I . . . we, we should have stayed.”

“No,” I say. “No, this was the correct choice. This is where I want Alis to grow and live. Do not second-guess yourself in that. I chose this just as much as you did. I chose it twice.”

Pip nods, and rolls up on her toes to press a swift kiss to my mouth, but otherwise does not look any more relieved. We both look to the ivy in my hand. It is freshly torn from its vine, that much is clear. The leaves are still vibrant green, the end of the thin branch still sticky with sap.

“What do we do now?” she asks. “I could ask Mom if she put it in. I mean, maybe we’re freaking out for no reason?”

“Do you really believe that she did?” I ask her, arching an eyebrow.

She licks her lips. “I want to.”

“As do I.”

“But?”

“Yes. But.”

Pip peers back into the kitchen, and I follow her line of sight, craning around the corner of the house. Through the patio door, I can see Martin juggling Alis in his grasp while she sniffles and sobs great crocodile tears for being denied her treasure. Mei Fan and wai po are speaking with him, their gestures indicating that their concern is growing larger the longer we’re absent from the