Sullha could only imagine how exhausting that must have been.
Her mother was still young, somewhere in her mid-thirties, but she'd always seemed old beyond her years.
"Dead one walking," one of the older women had murmured once during dinner while Sullha was close enough to hear. The woman hadn't said it to be unkind. She'd just said it as she'd seen it.
For years, her mother had been drifting through her days like a leaf in the wind. She ate what she was given. She slept when she was tired. She did not speak unless she was spoken to, and often not even then.
She had never held Tomek.
She'd seen him. She'd even sat on one of the benches and watched him play when he was about two years old, but she'd never acknowledged him as her grandson.
When Sullha had given birth to him, her mother wasn't there to help her. The midwife and two other women helped with the delivery, and when she'd brought him to see her a week later, her mother had looked at the baby and then looked away. "What do you want me to do with it? It's a boy. One more for the war machine."
Sullha had carried him back to her room and had not taken him to her mother again.
And yet.
She was still her mother. There was a duty there, stitched into Sullha whether she wanted it or not. An old knot in the fabric that she kept pulling at and could not undo. The woman had carried her for nine months and pushed her into the world and fed her, at least in the beginning, when there had still been some motherly instinct inside her.
That had to count for something.
If the chance came to leave this place, and Yaaf claimed that it was coming, then the question of her mother would have to be answered.
She could not pretend that it would answer itself.
Perhaps in a new place with new air and no one to be afraid of, whatever was left of her would wake up.
She was not that old. It was not impossible.
But when Sullha tried to picture her mother holding Tomek and pressing her cheek against the top of his head, the picture just wouldn't form.
The soil anchoring her mother had gone dry a long time ago, and she could water the ground around a plant like that for a year, and it would still not come back.
Sullha closed her eyes and let the shame settle.
She was ashamed of herself for not wanting to save her mother as much as she wanted to save others. Ashamed of the small voice in her head that said it would be a waste to squander one of the few spaces on the list of escapees on someone who'd turned into a husk a long time ago. It should go to someone who still had life in them.
"Can I sit with you?"
She opened her eyes.
Asira was standing next to the bench, the strap of a handmade canvas bag slung over her shoulder.
"Of course." Sullha scooted overto make room.
Asira sat down and set the bag between her feet.
"I brought my drawing supplies," she said. "I thought it would be nice to draw the kids playing. Tomek gave me the idea."
"He did?"
The girl smiled. "I meant, I got the idea after drawing him. He was such a good subject. And he said that he was going to show the portrait I drew of him to all his friends, so I figured they would want their portraits doneas well. I also promised him to draw you. So I'll start with that."
Asira was speaking quickly, the words just tumbling out, and despite her enthusiasm about drawing Tomek's friends, Sullhahad a feeling that wasn't the whole reason for her showing up in the play yard when she'd never come there before.
She'd come because she wanted to talk.
"I would love for you to draw my portrait," Sullha said. "But you have to promise to make me look prettier than I actually am."
