Until Again (2 page)

“Everything is going to be fine, Beck. You’d know it if I didn’t believe that, right?”

There was a pause of at least five seconds before Becky answered. “Yeah, I would, Dad.” If she was trying to sound convincing, she wasn’t doing a good job of it. Did his own attempt at reassurance sound as weak?

He tightened his hold around her shoulders. “So let’s tell a story, okay? The king and queen have some serious planning to do.”

Becky expelled a deep breath, but she didn’t say anything. He thought she was going to force him to confront this issue, and he wasn’t sure how long he’d be able to be evasive.

Finally, though, she started the story, and Chris relaxed.

At least to the degree he ever relaxed anymore.

Miea sat in front of the elaborately framed screen on her dorm-room desk. Her father had given it to her before she left for university this semester, and it was easily the most ornate thing she had with her. When she protested that she was perfectly happy with the phone the school provided, he offered one of his signature understanding smiles and said, “I want to look my best when I’m talking to you.” The first time they spoke on the phone, Miea dropped the pen she’d been absent-mindedly playing with, and when she leaned forward to get it, her forehead touched the screen. When she leaned back, she saw that her father had touched his forehead to his side of the screen as well, and they laughed for a good minute about it and subsequently started all of their talks that way.

Neither were laughing now, though. For the past ten minutes, Dad been telling Miea about the council meeting that had led to the decision to send a Tamariskian diplomatic delegation – led by her father and mother -to the land of the Thorns. Tamarisk and Gunnthorn, the kingdom to the south, had experienced nonstop tensions for so long that no one could remember how they began. Occasionally, the tensions erupted into something hotter, and this was one of those times. There had been moments in the past few years where it seemed that relations might actually improve. Now, though, this bitter turn made the circumstances between the kingdoms seem as dire as Miea had ever known.

“Do you really think this is the best idea?” she said, wishing her father couldn’t see her face so he wouldn’t have any idea how concerned she was. “Diplomacy seems so futile with them.”

He moved a bit closer to the screen. “Diplomacy with the Thorns is an option we need to exhaust,” he said, sounding much more like the person the rest of Tamarisk knew as the king and much less like the man who used to sing her to sleep and could chortle in her presence at the silliest thing.

Miea gestured with her left hand. “Why can’t you send
diplomats,
then? Why do the king and queen need make this trip – and why by car?”

Her father closed his eyes and then opened them slowly, the action he always used to indicate she was getting overly exercised. “The prime minister has expressed some willingness to discuss a treaty, and you know very well that he won’t do anything of the sort with anyone other than your mother and me. As far as the motorcade is concerned, we decided that this was a good time to show our faces in the southern territories. You know that the people there feel less connected to Tamarisk City than I would like them to feel. We need to remind them that they’re valued and cherished citizens of our kingdom.”

Miea frowned. “Well, at least you 11 accomplish
something
on this trip.”

Her father seemed genuinely confused by this statement. “That’s awfully pessimistic, Miea.”

The air felt heavier to Miea. “I’m not saying it to be pessimistic. I’m saying it because I don’t want to pretend that I think the Thorns are capable of compromising. And because I’m worried. It’s been a long time since Tamarisk was involved in a war.”

Her father allowed himself several seconds before answering. “I’m trying to avoid a war, Miea.”

“I know you are, but -”

“ – and the Thorns have ample reason to avoid war as well. In modern times, their aggression has never resulted in anything other than skirmishes because they know they can’t replace what they get from us.”

Miea leaned forward in her chair. “What if they’ve figured it out? You know how brilliant their scientists are. What if they’ve learned how to feed everyone within their borders. If that were the case, then they’d have no reason to maintain a truce with us.
If that were the case,
they’d have an advantage over us that we couldn’t counter.”

Her father steepled his fingers, looking as professorial as the university lecturers Miea would be spending the rest of the day with. “There’s nothing to suggest what you’re saying. We still enjoy a healthy trade surplus with them, and there has been no decline in our agricultural shipments to them. Yes, their scientists
are
brilliant. However, one doesn’t simply invent food out of one’s imagination. Growing conditions are greener there. Science isn’t going to be able to change that. Not in my lifetime, your lifetime, or the lifetimes of your great grandchildren.”

Miea knew she wasn’t going to win this argument. She wasn’t even entirely sure why she was engaging in it. If she were willing to be even moderately generous, she would acknowledge that there had been occasional improvements in Tamarisk-Gunnthorn relations over the past few years. The current prime minister was as moderate as any in the recent history of the Thorns. If they were going to make diplomatic progress, now was as good a time as any. She just had so many misgivings about this trip, though. So many.

“Enough about these matters,” her father said, shaking her from her reverie. “When are you bringing that man of yours to dinner?”

Miea’s smile came unprompted. “Bringing a boy home for dinner is a little more complicated when ’home’ is the royal palace.”

“We’ll make it very cozy for him. No more than forty-five or fifty people in attendance at the reception. We’ll make it a quiet event.”

“I’m sure that will completely ease his mind. He was thinking that if he ever showed up, you might make a big deal about it.”

Her father chuckled. “Your sarcasm isn’t going to deter me here. I need to look this young man in the eye. I need to know that he’s worthy of my only child.”

“Right, Dad, you don’t know anything about him,” Miea said, continuing with the sarcasm anyway. “I’m sure you haven’t gotten a report from my bodyguards after every date Dyson and I have ever gone on. How many generations back did you go on the profile of his family, three or four?”

He looked back at her sheepishly. “I’ve done no such thing.”

Miea leaned toward the screen. “You do realize I can see your face, right?”

Her father cast his eyes downward. “I only went back to his grandparents. It appears they’re relatively clean. Did he tell you that one of his great uncles was once cited for picking a flower during the Rainbow Fair?”

“Yes, Dad, Dyson confessed this to me tearfully just a few nights ago,” she said with a smirk. “It’s his family’s greatest shame.”

Her father pointed a finger at her. “You’re not usually this wry with me, Miea,” he said, smiling. “I’m not sure I like what this relationship with Dyson portends.”

“Dyson is not having a bad influence on me, Dad, don’t worry.”

“But he
is
having an influence on you.”

“Well ... sure.” She couldn’t keep the grin off her face when she said this, and of course her father picked up on it.

“Maybe I need to make a complete overhaul to your security detail,” he said. “Your guards have already let this man abscond with your heart.”

Miea laughed boisterously. “That’s a terrible pun,
Dad.”

“You’ll have to excuse me for that. I’m not accustomed to seeing my daughter smitten.”

Miea felt her face warming. “I think we might be better off talking about the Thorns.”

Her father scoffed. “The Thorns I can handle. This Dyson, however, might be too formidable a foe.”

Miea saw an off-screen hand lightly touch her father’s shoulder. He turned, exchanged a few words, and then looked back at her. “I’m needed back in the conference room. It’s amazing how much work goes into a little car trip.”

“I’ll talk to you again before you leave, right?”

“Yes, of course. Until again, my dear.”

“Until again, Dad.”

A moment later the screen softened to indigo. Miea knew she needed to get to class. For some reason, though, she couldn’t stop staring at it.

“The motorcade will proceed in an optimal security manner, with the king and queen in the third car among the five, and a team of guards flanking them from both sides.”

Dad had been describing the details of the trip to Gunnthorn for something like half an hour now. He really got into the little points, something Becky was always happy to have him take care of when they were telling Tamarisk stories. Becky loved imagining stuff, especially when it was time to make up new animals, but Dad was just crazy about the details.

It was pretty funny that he was so into these details when he absolutely refused to give her even a single detail about what was happening in
real life.
She sometimes wondered if Dad realized that she was ten now, because with some things he treated her like she was still five. It was always that way when she asked him something like why he was angry with Mom or why he came home from work looking so tired. He’d never give her a real answer, just something about his needing some ice cream or a hug.

Now, though, it wasn’t just a little argument that Becky was concerned about. Something serious was going on. Becky often got the sense that Dad and Mom weren’t crazy about each other, but these days they looked like they wanted to
kill
each other. Didn’t exactly make home a fun place. Mom was at least willing to admit that things were a little tense. She did that thing where she said,
“Your father,”
like she was saying,
“Your ogre”
instead. Dad, though, didn’t do anything like this. He would just talk about “rough patches” and the need to “shake it off.” He talked like a bad TV show.

She looked up at him now. He was
so
into the story. Becky wasn’t listening to what he was saying, but she could tell from his expressions that he was on a roll. He was probably describing how each car in the royal motorcade was going to look and how each member of the guard would dress. It was kind of ridiculous for a grown man to be as into this as he was, right?

Becky felt bad about that thought as soon as she had it. She’d always felt lucky that her dad was willing to do this with her, especially since he’d suggested it years ago as a way to make her feel better. Becky had been really sick when she was five, and Dad had come up with the idea of telling stories to get her mind off of how tough things were back then. They came up with Tamarisk together, and neither wanted to stop telling the stories after Becky got better. One of the best things about Becky’s remission, right up there with no more chemotherapy, was that Tamarisk got to keep going. It wasn’t only a get-well-soon kind of thing.

And as much as she rolled her eyes over Dad’s going into crazy detail, she had to admit that she’d taken this thing pretty far herself. Her eyes flashed over to the journal on her bookshelf that she’d filled with drawings of Tamariskian flowers and creatures. She’d dedicated a whole section of the book to the names for things in Tamarisk, and she’d developed an official naming system just in the past year. She’d even started a diary which she kept under lock and key where she wrote entries about Miea’s romance with Dyson. She’d put some of that stuff into the stories she told with her dad, but some of it remained her secret ... and Miea’s.

At some point, she realized Dad wasn’t speaking anymore. She looked up and saw him staring back at her. How long had he been doing so?

“What?” she said.

He gave her an understanding smile. “You in there?”

“Yeah,” she said, a little annoyed. “What’s up?”

“The story is back to you.”

“It is?”

“This is where you were going to put that thing about the queen briefing her staff.”

“Hmm.”

“Yeah, I just set it up for you.”

Becky would have known this, of course, if she’d been paying attention to what he’d been saying. She sat up a little taller and tried to think about what she’d been planning for this briefing. She’d thought about it a lot as she was falling asleep last night and then again when she got home from school this afternoon.

She thought about this a little more and then started. “The queen gathered her staff together in her office. She didn’t call everyone in her office at once very often, so some people were nervous about this.

“’I’m going to be going on a trip that will take me away from Tamarisk City for three days,’ she said -”

“They just decided in the last scene that the trip is going to last four days,” Dad said, interrupting.

Becky nodded. “’I’m going to be on a trip that will take me away from Tamarisk City for four days. While I’m away Adian will be in charge of running my office – ’”

“I just mentioned in the last scene that Adian was going to be coming on the trip. It seemed important to have her there since they were going to be meeting with so many local officials. Since you didn’t object, I figured you were okay with that.”

Becky sighed and thought quickly about where to go with things. ’"Since Adian will be with me, I’m going to ask each of you to take responsibility for your work over the next few days. Fortunately, it should be a quiet time -”

“There’s the thing about preparations for Jonrae’s five-hundredth anniversary. That group is coming -”

“I thought
I 
was telling the story now.” Becky threw an angry look at her father. This seemed to hurt his feelings.

“But you always tell me it’s important to be consistent,” he said. “I’m just making sure. Hey, babe, is everything all right? You seem really distracted.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t be distracted if you told me what was going on around here!”

Dad looked like she’d slapped him. “Babe, everything is going to be okay.”

“That’s what you keep saying, but.... Look, I think I just want to cut things short tonight, okay?”