Whatever They Call Me

Illumina looked up as Felice came back with a wooden platter piled with bits of hare. She watched him join the group round the fire; handing the platter to the other woman. Nina had curled up on her side and appeared to be asleep. The man who looked like the Prince was sitting cross-legged on one side of her; Illumina knelt on the other side. Nina was turned towards him. He held one of her hands, or rather touched it with his. Illumina had a hand on Nina's shoulder. Illumina nodded her head towards the other woman as she smiled and laughed at some comment from the others. She asked quietly, "What's her name?"

He studied the other woman for a while, a slow smile coming over him, apparently quite unconsciously. "It's Manueline. You know, I'm not even sure if it is her name. I never heard anyone else call her that. For all I know it might mean 'youngest daughter' or some such thing. What's your name?"

"It's Illumina. Funny it's a little like Manueline." She laughed, "It is a real name and it's mine. What is your name?"

"Manueline called me Wals. I have no idea why. Again, I'm not even sure it's a real name. I wandered into her village one day and saw her at the village well, drawing water." He told her the whole story of how he met Manueline and how she taught him about the courtyard. He told about the procession. How the old woman led him out into the fields. It was not that the narrative upset him but rather he just no longer knew how to carry on. He stumbled over the words. His sentences became hard to understand.

Illumina reached across to where his hand rested on Nina's hand and touched him. "You know you don't have to tell me."

He shook his head, "It's all right. It's probably good that I speak of it. The name is such a difficult thing; its one of the things that made it so hard for me to see what to do when the old woman came. I had nothing to call myself so I was content to be called whatever they chose to call me. When I went into that hut, I had no name anymore and nearly died.

Illumina looked down at Nina as she stirred in her sleep, grateful that she did not wake, especially at that moment. Improbable as it might seem, Illumina was almost beginning to believe that there was something to Nina's idea that Wals might be her lost son. She was staring at the others round the fire with that thought in her mind when she saw both Libby and Manueline look at her. It came to her that Libby was telling Manueline her name and it made her smile in response and also made her feel warm and good about herself in a way that had not come to her for many days past.

She was not surprised, just accepting it and all the extraordinary implications it carried when Wals said quietly, looking off into the distance, "When I was a child, I lived with a woman in the forest who called me BB, it stood for Basket Boy. She always claimed she called me that because she found me in a river in a basket. The story always made me laugh, but she always insisted on it."

"Where exactly did she find you, do you know?"

"No, not exactly. I think it was somewhere north and west of where I met Manueline. I have the impression of moving south and east all my life." He spent sometime describing what he knew of the geography of the land beyond the forest.

It was hard for Illumina to relate it to the area she knew south of the forest but by the end of the conversation, she was almost sure that Wals or BB was Nina's child. She considered postponing the discussion, not telling him for a time, but contemplating the idea, suddenly it seemed like a terrible, dangerous thing to do. She knew she had to tell him. There was simply no escaping it. Whatever the consequences for her, for Nina, for him, for Manueline, for anyone else in the party; too many terrible things had happened already for her to be able to risk any more. She looked at him and spoke his name "BB, BB look at me." She waited until he saw her and his face settled into the steady light of the gaze she cast over him. "BB, Nina believes she is your mother. She wasn't sure but I think certainty came to her when she saw you. That is why she reacted as she did."

Wals leapt to his feet, his hands held up either side of his head as though someone were threatening him. He stood unsteady on his feet looking down at Illumina and Nina. She never flinched, just raising a finger to her lips, pursing her lips and shushing him as Nina stirred but did not turn over. She indicated the spot where he had been sitting; asking him to sit again. "Sit, we should talk. I think it would do you good to talk and we need to decide what to do for her when she wakes." She said no more but just looked up at him as he slowly calmed down, nodded his head and quietly sat down again. Illumina got right up on her knees, one hand resting on the ground beyond Nina, with the other she reached across and took one of BB's hands by the wrist. She drew the hand with her as she sat back, gently putting his hand down next to Nina's. She smiled to see Nina's hand shift, making contact with his in her sleep.

Wals sat quietly for a while then he spoke haltingly, unsure of where the words might be leading him. "What was my name, what did she call me?"

"I've never discussed it with her. Libby has, he may know but somehow I doubt it. She shut off the whole experience and never brought it out into the world. Come, we should let her sleep, let's go and talk to the others." Illumina got to her feet, Wals reluctantly getting up as well. He still seemed a little unsteady to her so she took his arm and walked with him across towards the circle round the fire.

To follow this thread in the story go to: The Eighth Day

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