"She spent the last month of her life in bed. She couldn't even get up to mind the children, and some of them were still on their mother's milk. Beng Shai had to find wet nurses for them. They don't even remember her now." He added, almost wistfully. "It was strange, Aba was never like that before. She was bright, serious, and dutiful. She loved her family." His eyes took on a glazed look, his mind somewhere else. "She used to make this sweetbread with butter and cinnamon and chili for us whenever we went hunting. I've never been able to make it myself, or to find anyone else who could make it. I could eat my weight in it every day. She used to stay up late, making it the night before we would leave. She was always being called on. She would go riding every day. She had so many suitors and friends. She was so happy when she had her firstborn. She didn't stop smiling for days."
"How many children did she have?" Yuze asked quietly.
"Five. Her oldest is old enough to fight, but Beng Shai refused to let him."
"A good father."
"He loved her children like they were his own."
"Some women have a hard time after childbirth." Yuze offered. "It can take a while to recover. And sometimes they just don't."
"The healers could never figure out what was wrong with her. She stopped letting them examine her."
"Why?"
Kai Low shook his head. "She never said. She stopped letting our parents see her. She stopped talking to everyone, including her children…and me. At the end, she only talked to San."
"You said they were close, before."
Kai Low nodded. "They were always close."
Something occured to Yuze. "What about her first husband?"
Kai Low huffed, then paused. It took him a second to remember the man. "He was a good man, from a small branch tribe of the Bandri. Aba met him when she was young, but he was only able to gather a bride price when they were sixteen. They got married right after. Our parents weren't pleased about it at first, but they were in love. She barely even stayed after the wedding; she left before the sun was even up the next day."
It sounded like she didn't really like her family to Yuze, but it was clear that pointing that out wouldn't go well. Whatever he and Kai Low were doing, it wasn't Yuze's place to argue with Kai Low about his own family.
"The Ran were separate from the Bandri for a long time. A squabble between brothers generations ago, but our line thrived, and theirs dwindled."
"It happens," Yuze murmured, sinking down into the water even further.
"If Aba hadn't married and brought them back to us, they would have died out in the next generation or two. She saved them."
"She loved them," Yuze pointed out. Those were Kai Low's own words.
"We're the second largest branch of the Bandri. Only Beng Shai's is larger." Yuze knew that already. The Camelia paid close attention to the bloodlines among the tribes. "She deserved more." Kai Low sounded angry and resigned and confused all at once. "I don't know why she picked him."
Yuze bit back the urge to point out that Kai Low did know. It was strange, for how confident Kai Low came across, how passionately he seemed to know Fox and his sister…the more he spoke, the more convinced Yuze was that there was something significant that Kai Low didn't know about his siblings.
"He died in a skirmish with Beng Shai's men."
Yuze sat up. "Wait, what?"
Kai Low looked confused. "What?"
"Beng Shai killed your sister's husband and then married her?" This was starting to sound like one of those dramas that Yuze never had time to watch, but the soldiers loved when the acting troops came through and put on a show.
Kai Low shrugged and sent ripples through the tub. "It happens." He paused. "I suppose it's actually rather common. It is common practice among the tribes that the winner takes possession. That often includes surviving spouses. Though sometimes they're killed or turned out with no children. Beng Shai took them in and married Aba the day after he learned her husband was dead. He made sure everyone showed her nothing but respect. Took the children as his own and even sent away the man who killed her husband. She was elevated, venerated even. She had more wealth and influence at her fingertips than ever before. She wanted for nothing."
And yet, sometimes that didn't matter at all.
"I found one of her letters once. After…I don't know who she wrote it to. Just nonsense really. It was half-burnt and smeared, but I've never been able to forget what it said." He slid down and leaned back, giving the illusion that he was floating, his hair haloed around his face.
Yuze waited for him to continue.
Kai Low's voice took on a melodic quality as he recited the letter that had apparently stayed with him for years. "What do I have if I don't have the one I love? A memory? A ghost? Is that supposed to sustain me for the rest of my days? Anyone who says it will is a liar. Nothing but my love will fill that hole, and I will spend the rest of my days trying to stuff it with whatever nonsense I can find until I take my last breath on this earth. They lied when they said I would carry pieces of you with me, that I would feel you in the wind on my skin or the sun in my eyes. That I would see you in the faces of our children or in the laughter of our friends as we share our memories of you. That I would smell you on the pillows and blankets we shared for so long. They lied. You are gone, and I feel you nowhere. The world is empty and cold without you, and I find solace in nothing. I find joy in nothing. Not even our children or the home we built. I feel empty, even when I hold them in my arms to wipe away their tears over you. I know no comfort of my own, so I have none to offer anyone else…after that, the writing was impossible to read."
Yuze stared at him and waited. He could never write something like that, but then…he'd never lost someone he loved that much. Kai Low seemed to honestly not understand who his sister was writing about, but it seemed obvious to Yuze.
Kai Low's sister had mourned her husband so much she'd fallen into melancholia. Did the tribes not understand what that was?
Why was Kai Low so determined not to see it? Had he hated her husband that much? Or was his closeness with his sister a figment of his imagination?
~ tbc