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"I don't want another one I love to die before me!" cried Novinha.
"Who said anything about death?" said Valentine.
The door to the room swung open. Plikt stood in the doorway. "I room," she said. "What's happening?"
"She wants me to wake him up," said Novinha, "and tell him he can die."
"Can I watch?" said Plikt.
Novinha took the waterglass from beside her chair and flung the water at Plikt and screamed at her. "No more of you!" she cried. "He's mine now, not yours!"
Plikt, dripping with water, was too astonished to find an answer.
"It isn't Plikt who's taking him away," said Valentine softly.
"She's just like all the rest of them, reaching out for a piece of him, tearing bits of him away and devouring him, they're all cannibals."
"What," said Plikt nastily, angrily. "What, you wanted to feast on him yourself? Well, there was too much of him for you. What's worse, cannibals who nibble here and there, or a cannibal who keeps the whole man for herself when there's far more than she can ever absorb?"
"This is the most disgusting conversation I think I've ever heard," said Valentine.
"She hangs around for months, watching him like a vulture," said Novinha. "Hanging on, loitering in his life, never saying six words all at once. And now she finally speaks and listen to the poison that comes out of her."
"All I did was spit your own bile back at you," said Plikt. "You're nothing but a greedy, hateful woman and you used him and used him and never gave anything to him and the only reason he's dying now is to get away from you."
Novinha did not answer, had no words, because in her secret heart she knew at once that what Plikt had said was true.
But Valentine strode around the bed, walked to the door, and slapped Plikt mightily across the face. Plikt staggered under the blow, sank down against the doorframe until she was sitting on the floor, holding her stinging cheek, tears flowing down her face. Valentine towered over her. "You will never speak his death, do you understand me? A woman who would tell a lie like that, just to cause pain, just to lash out at someone that you envy--you're no speaker for the dead. I'm ashamed I ever let you teach my children. What if some of the lie inside you got in them? You make me sick!"
"No," said Novinha. "No, don't be angry at her. It's true, it's true."
"It feels true to you," said Valentine, "because you always want to believe the worst about yourself. But it's not true. Ender loved you freely and you stole nothing from him and the only reason that he's still alive on that bed is because of his love for you. That's the only reason he can't leave this used-up life and help lead Jane into a place where she can stay alive."
"No, no, Plikt is right, I consume the people th
at I love."
"No!" cried Plikt, weeping on the floor. "I was lying to you! I love him so much and I'm so jealous of you because you had him and you didn't even want him."
"I have never stopped loving him," said Novinha.
"You left him. You came in here without him."
"I left because I couldn't . . ."
Valentine completed her sentence for her when she faded out. "Because you couldn't bear to let him leave you. You felt it, didn't you. You felt him fading even then. You knew that he needed to go away, to end this life, and you couldn't bear to let another man leave you so you left him first."
"Maybe," said Novinha wearily. "It's all just fictions anyway. We do what we do and then we make up reasons for it afterward but they're never the true reasons, the truth is always just out of reach."
"So listen to this fiction, then," said Valentine. "What if, just this once, instead of someone that you love betraying you and sneaking off and dying against your will and without your permission--what if just this once you wake him up and tell him he can live, bid him farewell properly and let him go with your consent. Just this once?"
Novinha wept again, standing there in utter weariness. "I want it all to stop," she said. "I want to die."
"That's why he has to stay," said Valentine. "For his sake, can't you choose to live and let him go? Stay in Milagre and be the mother of your children and grandmother of your children's children, tell them stories of Os Venerados and of Pipo and Libo and of Ender Wiggin, who came to heal your family and stayed to be your husband for many, many years before he died. Not some speaking for the dead, not some funeral oration, not some public picking over the corpse like Plikt wants to do, but the stories that will keep him alive in the minds of the only family that he ever had. He'll die anyway, soon enough. Why not let him go with your love and blessing in his ears, instead of with your rage and grief tearing at him, trying to hold him here?"
"You spin a pretty story," said Novinha. "But in the end, you're asking me to give him to Jane."
"As you said," Valentine answered. "All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe."
