Echoes of the Past

Chapter Fifteen

"I just had to get some air," he told her, swallowing a lump in his throat.

She smiled and looked out over the rooftop. "I love it here, especially this time of day. So many people out there, so many lives moving. I like standing on the outside, looking in." Her foreign accent gave her words a thick, throaty tone.

James found himself smiling. "I do too." He searched for a better response. "There's something soothing about being high up. Like, being free."

"It reminds me of my old home, in Victory City. We had big house in the centre, and I would look out the window as a child, see the world go by."

James resisted the urge to ask more about her past. To learn more about her. As close as he felt with Tabetha, he thought it was best not to get too personal with her. He was aware that it was a reflex he had developed while living in Tyken Town–don't get personal with people and they won't respond with too many questions about himself.

As if sensing his thoughts, she turned to him full on. "My father worked there for the government. He was a human. My mother's marriage to him was frowned upon by other Canarrians in her village, both because his job was to reshape Medropon's small towns into big cities, and because he was a foreigner."

Tabetha paused, her eyes tensing with thought. She swallowed and continued. "Sometime after they married, my mother became ill. A terrible illness that slowly ate away at her. The Canarrians called it punishment for marrying my father. I remember... I was very young, but I remember my mother could see things. Things she could not possibly know. My amma–my grandmother–said mother could see visions of the future. No one believed her, of course. When my amma died, my parents lost the only family member that still supported them. The rest of the family wanted nothing to do with the cursed woman who married a foreigner.

"But it was an airship accident that took both my mother and father from me. My mother's sister, Hethenae, had eventually agreed to take me, and I moved to her home here, in Toolin." She smiled to herself. A sad smile with a tense brow. "They say that family are the people who cannot turn you away when you show up at their door."

"It can't have been easy," James said. "Being away from your family like that."

"It has been more than eleven years now. I do not know if they are still to be found in the same towns. I have lost touch with my Canarrian heritage, and it is a loss I hold dearly."

James realised he was frowning. The only family he was aware of was a father who's whereabouts were currently unknown. He had no memory of what it was like to be loved by family. By anyone. He had an idea, and his own opinions, of what family really meant, but it was another one of those things that alluded him.

Tabetha straightened, her expression brightening as her tone lightened. "And so, James, I am glad you have come today. I wish to perform a ceremonial dance. A traditional Canarrian ritual that is believed to calm the winds and wish people safe travels. Something I have been practising again lately. I would like to perform if for you, and for my mother and father."

James held her look for a moment. "Did you say a dance?" He realised how stupid he sounded.

Tabetha smiled, flashing her upper teeth. She blinked very slowly as she turned away. "Just stay here."

She stepped down onto the centre of the flat roof section. When she turned back to James she stood straight and rigid, feet together and shoulders back. The lights of the town behind her bathed her in a rimmed glow. She held her gaze on him for a few heartbeats, before looking ahead and focussing.

James felt his heart flutter as he watched her, although was still unsure of what was happening.

Tabetha's arms moved first, wrists curling as her hands moved up along her body, rising in wide arcs. She side-stepped, lowering her body and rising, while continuing to curl her arms in smaller arcs. Her light steps barely imprinted on the gravelled rooftop, the thin, cream-coloured slippers she wore giving her a barefoot impression.