Other than that happening, it was just a day. It was the first day Rillibee had ever heard about pledged acolytes, but it was just a day.
When he got home, Miriam was in the kitchen, as usual at that time of afternoon. There were a lot of good smells in there with her, and Rillibee threw his arms around her, for once not caring what anybody else thought. She was his mom and if he wanted to hug her, so what.
So what happened was she gasped and pulled away. “Ouch,” she said, smiling so he’d know it wasn’t his fault. “I’ve got a sore place on my arm, Rilli. You kind of whacked it when you grabbed me.”
He had been sorry, insisting on examining the sore place, which looked terrible, all gray and puffy. Joshua came in behind him and looked at it, too.
“Miriam, you’d better go to the Health Office about that. It looks infected.”
“I thought it was getting better.”
“Worse, if anything. You’ve probably got a splinter of something in there. Have it seen to.” Then Joshua kissed her and the parrot said, “Oh, hell,” which set everyone off, and that was all.
The next afternoon when Rillibee got home, Songbird was there but Miriam wasn’t. Song was looking for the cake Miriam had baked the night before and hidden from them.
“Where’s Mom?” he wanted to know.
“She went to the Health,” his sister reminded him, burrowing in the cold cupboards.
He nodded, remembering. “When’ll she be home?” He wanted to tell her about Wurn March and what the teacher said and ask her about pledged acolytes.
“When she’s finished, dummo,” Song said. “You ask the dumbest questions.” She opened the side door and went outside to peer down the road.
Rillibee followed her. “You wanna hear a dumb question? When are you going to grow up? That’s a dumb question, ‘cause the answer is never.”
“Brat,” she said. “Dumb little brat. Still suck your thumb.”
“Stop it,” Joshua said, coming across the yard from his workshop. “The two of you! Song, there’s no excuse for talking like that I don’t want to hear another word out of either of you. Song, go in and set the table. Rillibee, go pick up that junk you left scattered all over the common room last night. Put the rug back down, too. I’m going to start supper so your mother won’t have to do it when she comes home.”
There was quiet then, quiet for several hours. Rillibee remembered the quiet as a prelude to what happened later. Much later that quiet came to stand for tragedy, so that he would be uncomfortable with too much tranquility, too much silence. The evening sun slanting into the living room through the tall windows made pools of gold on Dad’s wide-planked floor and on the castle Rillibee had built the night before. He destroyed it and all its battlements, picked up the pieces, packed up his warriors, and put the rug back down, taking time to comb out the fringes with his fingers so they laid straight, like soldiers. Above him, on the perch, the parrot shifted. Rillibee looked up at it, and it whispered, “Oh, damn. Damn. Oh, God. Oh, no.” It sounded almost like Miriam’s voice.
Time went on until the sunlight vanished and his stomach gave an unmistakable signal. He went to the kitchen to find his father and Song waiting and Mom not home. “It’s time to eat,” he complained.
“So, we’ll eat,” his father said in a worried voice. “Your mom wouldn’t want us to wait for her. She’s been held up or something.” They were just sitting down at the table when the door-signal went. Somebody coming through the gate. Dad got up and went to the door, a smile on his face. Rillibee relaxed. She probably had stopped to buy groceries. Or sometimes she took a sample of her pottery to someone she thought might like to buy it. It was probably something like that that had kept her so long. But the voice at the front door wasn’t Mom’s voice. Somebody loud, a man, demanding to know where she was.