The Unmaking (The Last Days of Tian Di, #2)(71)

“Hello, Nell!” Ander and Charlie were walking towards her. Ander had shaved off his rough beard and looked quite transformed. They were both dressed in the brightly feathered vests and silk trousers the Faeries wore. The sight of Ander in particular dressed as a Faery made Nell laugh.

“It doesnay quite suit you, Mister Brady,” she said.

“But your dress suits you very well,” Ander said with a smile. He waved his hand at their surroundings and added, “Quite something, all this, lah! Nary thought I’d see the like.”

“Listen, I know you must be upset with me,” said Nell in a rush. “But we couldnay ask Swarn or Jalo to take us home when time is so short. You understand, nay? We’ll go back to Di Shang when Swarn goes. And lah, a chance to see the Realm of the Faeries...”

Ander shook his head. “I’ve given up trying to thwart you, Nell,” he said. “I’m beginning to see you are not like other children.”

“I’m hardly a child; I’m nearly fifteen!” Nell protested. Charlie snickered a little at that.

“Lah, sure, whatever you say. Fifteen to me sounds like a kid, aye. What I mean is that most of us lead pretty ordinary lives because, when you come down to it, we’re pretty ordinary people. The ones who have grand adventures and are at the centre of things are mostly those who have some kind of special gift or talent, like your friend Eliza. Then there are people like you, who have something else...I dinnay know what to call it, exactly, but I’ll say this, you’ve got more energy than anyone I’ve ever met.” Ander looked at her rather fondly for a moment and then continued, “You remind me of your ma, except you’ve got this energy she never had. When she was a girl, oh, by the Ancients, she had the prettiest laugh you’ve ever heard. Dinnay hear it much these days. She wouldnay say it, wouldnay know how to, but life has been a disappointment to her. There she was, all those years, thinking it was going to be beautiful and that it would just happen. But it never happened. I dinnay think you can imagine what that’s like, or how many adults are not much more than the sum of their broken dreams, all the things they wished for then just buried inside themselves somewhere.” Ander laid his big, meaty hand on her shoulder, crushing the flowers on her dress. “You’re a rare one, all right, and everything your ma should’ve been.” At this, he got a bit teary, and turned and strode off abruptly.

Nell and Charlie looked at each other.

“That was strange,” said Charlie.

“Should we follow him?” asked Nell, taken aback by his speech.

Charlie shook his head. “Let him be a bit, aye.” He reached over to tear one of the flowers off the railing, then stopped himself. “Today’s the first day of Winter Festival, nay?”

“So it is!” exclaimed Nell. “My parents are prolly out of their minds, aye. And we’re missing the Day of Regrets! Have you ever celebrated Winter Festival, Charlie?”

“Sure. I used to pose as a traveller from someplace friendly so they’d include me. I never was one for the Day of Regrets, though. I’d usually show up on the third day for the feast, aye. That’s when it starts to get good.”

“I like the idea behind the Day of Regrets, but in practice it always seems a bit false,” Nell agreed. “Nobody ever wants to talk about their real regrets, on Holburg anyway, so they make things up half the time.”

“Lah, since it’s the Day of Regrets, let’s start with you. What do you regret?”

Without agreeing to walk, they both began strolling in the opposite direction from where Ander had gone.

Nell thought hard. “Sometimes I regret giving up my memories of the first time we came to Tian Xia, but I dinnay know how else we would have gotten away, and now that I’m here I feel it’s being made up for. Praps I regret not being more patient with my parents. But that’s a bit feeble, nay? What about you?”

“I regret failing Eliza,” said Charlie solemnly. “I regret every time I’ve failed her. I regret...lah, there are a lot of things I regret.”

“I spose I’d have more if I’d been alive as long as you,” said Nell, trying to be kind. “And I dinnay think it’s fair to say you’ve failed Eliza. She wouldnay think so.”

Charlie shook his head and grinned at her. “If you lived a thousand years, I doubt you’d have a single real regret. It’s not your nature.”

“What do you know about my nature?” Nell laughed.

“I know you pretty well.”

“I spec you do. But lah, unless you’re going to tell me all the stories of all your regrets from all your thousands of years, I spose that’s the end of our Day of Regret Ceremony. Without the procession and the ashes and the Shedding of Tears. And we’ve already broken the fasting rule by having breakfast, aye. I completely forgot about it.”

“I’m sorry you’re missing it because of me,” said Charlie.

“Oh, but I’d much rather be here!” exclaimed Nell. “The Realm of the Faeries! Everything seems so perfect, more beautiful than it should be, in a way. It’s wonderful but a little disturbing at the same time, dinnay you think so? Like it’s nay real or like there’s some dark side to it all we cannay see with the naked eye. Do you feel that, too?”

Charlie nodded. “I dinnay feel exactly safe here. Praps it’s just knowing we’d never find our way out without one of them.”