A Mystery

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Follow this back to: He's Gone

Although Illumina felt she was helping Nina, the help was of such a nature that it merely served to prop her up where she was, rather than helping her to move somewhere else and escape from whatever it was that tormented her. Illumina found it frustrating; the end of the day left her with the feeling that Nina was comforted but just as desperate as she had been at the beginning of the day.

Illumina decided she would try asking Libby. Perhaps the Prince could help, and it was the Prince rather than Libby who could use the obvious connection Nina felt to him to persuade her to open herself up to the world around her and seek help. The idea that anyone might be beyond help was utterly foreign to Illumina, so she persisted. The idea that anyone might be given help at all was something entirely new to Libby; he approached it with a certain bemused confusion. He had a general idea of the role Illumina expected him to play but no experience that could help him to imagine the specifics or what exactly he might do or say on a particular occasion.

Illumina broached the subject with him late one evening well into the winter. She asked him, "Have you ever wondered what makes Nina as she is?"

Libby looked confused for a moment and then asked, "No, how is she?"

Illumina took a deep breath realizing how far she would have to go to get anything useful out of him. "How do you think she is? Is she well? Is she happy? Is she at peace with herself and the people around her?"

Libby looked anxious, realizing he was out of his depth. "I wouldn't know, I've never asked her." Even as he spoke, Illumina could see he understood the response was inadequate. She just waited letting him work some of the inadequacy out for himself. "This may sound strange, but I have never found her easy to talk to. Of course I am grateful for the care she gave me at the beginning of the journey to Loro." This last was said after some hesitation and Illumina could see what a step it was for him; how far he had come.

"Did you know she used to be your nurse?" Libby looked at her crinkling up his eyes, putting his head back and to one side with an incredulous look on his face.

"What did you say? She used to be my nurse. When?"

Illumina realized that he had not been told about his parents taking refuge in Loro when he was a baby. She was not surprised to discover he did not even know the story. She told him as much as she knew about his father's difficulties when he first came to the throne; about the King and Queen taking refuge in Loro, bringing the infant Prince with them.

"So I've been to Loro before? I never realized."

Illumina was worried that she had already gone too far in sharing what she knew about Nina. 'But', she reflected, 'I cannot just leave matters as they are; expecting him to help her out of ignorance is asking too much.' She answered him, even though the question was rhetorical, "You've not only been to Loro before, you've been here, to this village. Nina had some connection with the King and Queen the nature of which I don't quite understand. She was certainly with them immediately after they came to Loro and may have been even before then. I think you were brought here for safekeeping. The King and Queen had to be elsewhere. Nina had you in her sole care." She told him the whole story of the threatened raid, of the local people taking refuge deep in the forest and of Nina losing her child. The Queen returning, complaining of him looking sickly, discovering the loss of Nina's child and casting Nina out with no thought to the impact it might have on her.

She saw some of the old Prince back again as he laughed cynically, "That sounds like mother. I'm surprised she noticed I looked sick but I'm not at all surprised that she threw someone out without a thought."

Illumina sat looking at him, seeing something of what had made him as she had found him in the King's City. "Do you think she was always like that?"

He looked confused and asked, "Who, Nina?"

Illumina shook her head, "No your mother?"

She saw his face change, Libby coming back, as he looked at the ground, shaking his head in his turn, "I don't know. I don't know that I want to know. Are you telling me mother may be like Nina, driven to what she is?"

Illumina really smiled at him, "No I wasn't, though you may well be right."

Libby looked again at the floor shaking his head. He looked up again, "What do you want me to do for Nina?"

Illumina grimaced and said she was not sure. "The difficult thing is that she has hidden so much of this from both of us that to bring it up will seem awkward indeed. I don't know how best to approach it. Maybe the only way is to just come right out and tell her that someone told you she used to be your nurse. If she accepts that, it will be natural enough for you to ask her about yourself as a child and the circumstances under which she cared for you."

Libby looked at her and asked, "Shall I tell her I heard it from you? She won't like it, you're too close to her and if she's hiding something she will feel like you are trying to take her privacy away."

Illumina smiled at him again wondering at the way the Libby in him ebbed and flowed, seeing it wax strong in him in his perception of her at least. "Wait here a minute." She ran off coming back sometime later with the woman who had first told her the story of Nina losing her child. She introduced them and asked the woman to tell the story again so the Prince could hear it. The woman looked a little unsure of herself.

The Prince laughed quietly at her discomfort and told her, "It's alright you can say whatever you like about my mother, I won't mind at all."

The woman looked by turns shocked and then amused. She told the whole story. The Prince listened, completely absorbed by the experience of hearing it again but from someone who remembered it as it happened.

He left the matter for some days. Not especially going out of his way to encounter or avoid Nina. Illumina watched them wondering what he would do. Three days after the Prince heard the story, first from Illumina and then from the old woman, he and Nina went on a walk. They disappeared for a long time and he heard the story again. He told Illumina about it afterwards. It seemed that he got no further than she did. Nina told him essentially the same story as the old woman. Nina evidently found the tale difficult to tell. Libby felt she was holding something back. Like Illumina, he felt he had helped by listening to her and getting her to talk but at the end of the day, she seemed no better off than she did at the beginning. There was no sense of a burden shared, of her being in a different place.

Illumina saw that the encounter with Nina had one surprising result in that it had obviously opened Libby's eyes, enabling him to see someone as a mystery for the first time. He expressed to Illumina how much he failed to understand about Nina and he looked to Illumina for some kind of explanation. At first, she thought he was seeking an explanation of Nina herself but then she realized, it ran deeper than that. What he sought was an explanation of what made people how they are. How it was even possible to know what drove someone or how they felt about something.

He realized, he even said as much, "I have been walking round with my eyes tight shut. I never saw her before. I don't think I ever saw anyone before." He laughed, "Anyone except you perhaps. But you're different." Illumina shied away from the familiarity and instead pursued his understanding of Nina. They discussed it for some time but came to no useful conclusion.

Illumina finally remarked, "Well at least you can have a casual conversation with her about what she knew of you as a child. Much may come of that."

To follow this thread in the story go to: Slip Away

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