Sapiens

2. The Woman’s Voice

“You skipped breakfast again.”

Sapiens smiled to the faithful old butler. “I wasn’t hungry.”

He held his stomach to stop its rumbling. Harold’s eyebrows rose a little. “His Majesty was inquiring,” he persisted.

Sapiens didn’t answer that. He tried to remember his conversation with Percy, retain some of the peace he’d come out with. The truth was, the King had done something unforgivable the day before, and Sapiens was still angry. He didn’t have breakfast that morning because he didn’t want to join his uncle. He still couldn’t shake off the sight of the library with all those books scattered on the floor like corpses in a battlefield.

An anger fit, one of the servants had explained, the rest hunched over to collect the helpless victims.

An anger fit,Sapiens knew the King couldn’t always help those anger fits, but … one couldn’t just take out their feelings on books. Books were sacred.

But it was a new day today, and Sapiens had a lot on his plate without nourishing anger too. He promised himself to be kind when he saw his uncle.

“I wasn’t hungry then,” Sapiens said, “but I am now.”

“I’ll have it sent up to your room,” Harold bowed. “May I be of help with anything else?”

“In fact, yes,” Sapiens said, looking around, then leaning over and whispering, “I’m going out today.”

“Hmm, I see. Any chance I can talk you out of it?”

“Fabian will keep me company.”

“Then, I shall do my best to cover that up.”

“What would I do without you?” Sapiens put a hand on Harold’s shoulder.

“You were sparring again. Shall I ready the bath for you?”

Sapiens nodded with a grateful smile. “Where’s the Professor?”

“In the library since the early morning. I anticipate a … discord, if I may say.”

“Kumar fill this place with peace,” he said halfheartedly. His uncle had that discord coming.

Sapiens let Harold see to his work. He was heading upstairs to the library when he saw Professor Quimby, his tutor, struggling with a mountain of books and scrolls he was holding. He rushed to help.

“Oh, Sapiens, thank you, my boy,” the Professor panted. “You just saved me from breaking my neck on this long, long staircase!”

“Research?” he struggled with the weight in his arms.

“Oh, these? No, no. I took the books to save them from a dreadful fate!” Professor Quimby said more loudly. “I took them so no one can ever throw them on the floor again! By accident, of course!”

Sapiens saw a passerby servant stifle a laugh and did the same. “He didn’t mean to, Professor,” he said.

“Books are sacred! Sacred!” Professor Quimby said. “Anger fit,” he murmured, making Sapiens snort and hide his face behind the tower of books in his arms because of another servant walking past them.

SacredProfessor Quimby was a hero to the domestics; he was the only one in the palace who stood up to the King when he was at fault. Sapiens made it up to them through other means, but Professor Quimby stood and fought for their rights and always had their backs whenever the King had an anger fit—and those weren’t scarce. He listened to their complaints and delivered them to the King. The King disliked him, anyway. And yet the King never could hold a thing against him even though the Professor treated him as an equal, perhaps even more than Sapiens, the crown prince, did.

Sapiens followed the hero to the study and shut the door, stretching his arms after placing the huge weight on the table. He looked around the room to see more towers resting gracefully on different parts of the table, floor, and bookshelves.

“You’ve been doing this all morning?” he exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Ah, you were with Fabian,” the Professor waved a hand, reaching to his heart as he panted. He walked to the closest chair and collapsed with a groan.

Sapiens walked over to a pile of books on the mantelpiece, trying to pick one for Fabian.

“You seem tired,” Professor Quimby’s voice startled him. “Still can’t get any sleep?”

Sapiens shook his head, reaching out for a small maroon book.

“This is, what, the third, fourth night in a row?”

“Sixth,” Sapiens said quietly, inspecting the title. Another book on ethics. Fabian would hate that.

“I see,” the Professor said and lost himself in thought. “Have you written your assignment?” he finally said.

“Yes. It’s in my room.”

“Good, good,” he scratched his gray beard. “We can discuss it tomorrow. Fetch it and go get some sleep.”

Sapiens walked away without a word. If the Professor let him take a day off, then Sapiens must look worse than he thought. Or perhaps his tutor was simply trying to prepare him for a life with no daily lessons. No king was bound by assignment submission dates.

As always, the first thing his eyes fell on when he entered his room was the oil portrait of his parents hanging above the fireplace. Sapiens smiled to his mother, although he looked away from his father’s face.

A woman’s voice filled the place. For a glimpse, Sapiens was hopeful that perhaps it was his mother’s, but the dead did not speak to the living. He knew; he’d been praying for it for fifteen years now.

I’m almost there, the voice echoed in his head. I’m coming.

I’m almost there,I’m coming.What are you? Sapiens hit his fist to his desk. That voice had been tormenting him for days, like the lack of sleep wasn’t enough. Or perhaps it was the lack of sleep that caused it. People imagined things when they were tired, right?

What are you?As he made his way downstairs to the study with the essay in his hand, he thought to finally tell his tutor about the voice; he made peace with being called crazy as long as someone provided an explanation. But he changed his mind at Professor’s Quimby pursed lips of dissatisfaction. It was true that this essay wasn’t Sapiens’s best work. He quietly took leave, picking up a random book on his way out for Fabian. He didn’t even look at its title; he just dragged his weary limbs, his body growing heavier with the prospect of earned rest.

Sapiens didn’t go to sleep right away, though; he chose to take a long bath. He hoped the hot water would wash away the past week’s worries. But between the tormenting memories of the night of his father’s death, the anticipation of the woman’s voice arising, and the dread of having another “wake-dream,” the hot water was easily condemned to fail.

Sapiens hadn’t told Fabian everything. He’d told him about the dreams he had of his parents in his sleep, but he’d kept to himself the dreams he had wide awake.

For days now, he would randomly glimpse into what seemed to be someone else’s past: fleeting moving images of his mother far younger than he ever remembered her, of his father when he’d been yet without a beard, of some stranger who looked so much like Sapiens they could be twins if the man didn’t look older, of a mirror reflecting a woman with long, braided brown hair, and light brown eyes, holding her belly with a beaming smile.

He could tell himself he was imagining it all he wanted, but he knew it was all real. That voice, those wake-dreams, as he called them. And he didn’t know how to explain it, so he did what he did best: he ignored it.

Despite the restlessness, Sapiens enjoyed the water. He was trying to put off sleep, in any case. Sleep used to be his getaway; now it was a dreadful experience. He’d never been one to remember dreams, but for almost a week now, sleep meant waking up in cold sweat on seeing his father.

But the moment he went back out to his room, the bed seemed like such a welcoming place. The chill in the air encouraged the nice feel of a soft blanket. The fresh clothes, cool hair, and sleepiness that came with hot skin. Knowing he had no lessons that day and no responsibilities till five.

His defenses fell.

He didn’t even touch the breakfast waiting for him on the table. Perhaps I’ll have no dreams this time, he hoped before closing his eyes and falling into a deep sleep.

Perhaps I’ll have no dreams this time, * * *

Sapiens saw a woman. He’d seen her before, in those inexplicable glimpses. She was the expectant woman in the mirror. Something was different about her this time, though. Instead of a fair youth, she was an old woman in her eighties or even nineties—no longer with a child, either. Her hair was silver instead of brown, but the braid was unmistakable. Her sharp brown eyes did not change either. It was her.

She was riding a white mare. He was sure he’d seen the mare in another dream too; her pregnancy was quite a prominent detail.

Sapiens was astounded to see the woman wearing trousers, like a man. The shirt—although it wasn’t a shirt, exactly, as it had no collar—that she wore underneath her pink jacket flowed with the wind as she rode, embracing a body that seemed beautiful and strong for her age, like a drawn bow. She rode for a few more minutes until she reached … were those the Gates of Alstroemeria?

The sentinels at the Gates stopped her to ask who she was and what business she had in the capital. She said one word and then collapsed.

“Sapiens.”

That was the first time he could hear her voice in any of his dreams. Now as she spoke his name, her old voice snapped him out of his sleep.

It was the same voice he’d been hearing in his head for days.