Treason by Orson Scott Card

Author:Orson Scott Card
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Technology & Engineering, Exiles, Human beings - Origin, Revolutions, Regeneration (Biology), Science fiction, General, Science Fiction, American, Space vehicles, Astronautics, Iron, Life on other planets, Human beings, Fiction, Aeronautics & Astronautics
ISBN: 9780765309044
Publisher: New York : Tor ; 2006.
Published: 2006-02-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8 — Ku Kuei

It could have been a holiday in one of the Sweet River woods. Father walking briskly along (he isn’t old at all, I realized) and I following only a little behind, watching as his hands reached up to touch leaves and branches, down to pluck grass or flowers, out in wild gestures as he talked. Once I had thought those gestures were flamboyance, showing off— or worse, a way of striking out, reaching out to control me and everyone else around him, to beat us into submission. That was when I was a child, though. Now I saw that the waving, slashing, jabbing of his arms was a sign of exuberance. His body wasn’t large enough, didn’t move swiftly enough to contain all his life and joy.

Ironic, then, that I realized this only now, when his joy was so out of place. It should have been contagious, but to me it seemed forced. Now instead of wanting to laugh and move and shout along with him, I wanted to weep for him. I would have, too, except that it would shame him. There were things that could be wept for, like long-lost sons come home, but for the losses a Mueller didn’t weep. Didn’t even give grief for the loss of a kingdom. My father was still alive, but already I mourned for him, because his true self was the Mueller, the ruler, the man so large that only a kingdom could contain him; and now here he was, confined into the space of his body, his kingdom a strange forest and a few men who loved, the memory of what he was, and so continued to serve this shrunken remnant of himself. Ensel the Mueller was dead. But Ensel Mueller insisted on being alive, on carrying a kind of greatness with him even in defeat.

I had always expected to inherit the kingdom from him. To step into his place when he died; to become him. I thought I was capable of it. But now, following behind him through the forest, I realized that while I might have become the Mueller, had things worked out differently, I was not yet large enough to take his place, because when he died he would leave so many places empty, places that I barely knew existed, roles that I would never be large, enough to fill.

We left the lake soon enough, without event. I was begiining to wonder if what I felt before, when I passed through Ku Kuei mad with weariness, was mere illusion. But then it began again, just as it had happened when I passed through Ku Kuei before. We walked and walked, and still the sun was high in the sky, hardly seeming to move; Father got hungry and we ate, and the sun had not moved, and we walked on until we were tired, and the sun had moved only a little, and at last we had walked until we were utterly exhausted and couldn’t walk anymore, and it might have been noon.

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