Words were never his gift. He could not express the pride and calm in his aging bones when he held her small hand so much like his when he was a boy, with fingers long and palm thick. He would laugh that his six-year-old granddaughter was better medicine than the pills the French doctors gave him for a heart that some would argue he didn’t have. With Alma, he was simply “Poppa.” He was not a former governor, not the successful industrialist with foreign connections, and not the warlord that once haunted his small hometown.
He did not see what his son first saw—how Alma, beautiful Alma, with her chestnut hair and deep green eyes, would bring her shoulders in, close her eyes tightly, and moan quietly as she passed certain people. Walking, he would see the joy that would spread across her face when passing a new mother or when he took her hand. He had first assumed she was as delighted to see him as he was her. Later, they all understood, it was an uneven mixture—a reflection of their inner emotions and her own quieter feelings. She could be chosen. She could volunteer.
Because he loved her, because he could afford to, and because he now saw her with a tinge of dread for which he was ashamed, he sent her to the best schools, the finest dance academies, the most exclusive language institutes. He encouraged her intellectual interests, hoping her brain and loyalty would trump her nascent gift. They would go for walks every Sunday. But by the time she was fourteen, she stopped holding his hand. Soon, he could no longer hear the pain or pleasure of others through her deepening voice. Once again, he assumed—this time that she was losing her capacity to share others’ emotions and seal his fate. Once again he was happy, as happy as his history would let him be. And once again he was wrong.
When she was twenty-five, she fell in love. She glowed; her lover glowed. Her grandfather relaxed. He did not think she would leave the capital. He did not understand when she chose a home so remote. He assumed once again—this time that it was her lover who was stealing his only joy. She promised to come back for Sunday walks, though these days he hardly walked and more puttered between rooms. She sweetened these promises by holding his hand, calling him Poppa, and looking at him with eyes that showed she loved him as much as he loved her.
Only his son and daughter-in-law and Alma’s lover knew she had left the capital, shaved her hair, and taken a vow of silence. He would never know that the night before she had made love with the passion and sadness of knowing she would never be the same person, never feel this way again. She had entered the convent with her lover’s scent on her still, inhaling the memory, stifling the tears. He did know how she was scrubbed fresh by the welcomers—two round, kind women in soft robes of muted orange who held her gently, until she felt her body give up its resistance and its suffering, and the soap and salt scraped her clean.
Here Alma met others like herself—some who had volunteered, others who had been chosen, all who would cleanse the country of the sins of their families. Years ago, soon after her grandfather’s rebellion, the tribunals decided that rather than encouraging continuous eruptions of vengeance for acts unspeakable, empaths—ideally, offspring of perpetrators—would mete the justice to maintain peace.
In highlands cold and thick with the echo of fir and cedar, she learned to hone her empathy, to let go of thought, to feel only the emotions of others. She mastered how to channel that pain into action. She trained in traditional fighting techniques and herbs. She ran through the mountains until she could follow a deer soundlessly.
And most critically for him, she learned the history of her people—the history overlooked in textbooks, the history she felt in the pain of survivors when she walked with her grandfather. She learned how he, when younger and hungrier, led four hundred of his townspeople to the river, bound their arms, and made them walk into the rising water and to their deaths. She learned to see both the man who made her feel strong and loved, and the man who reduced the population of his town by one-third.
It was on the day of the final ceremony that he stopped assuming. He watched with the rest of the country as this year’s empaths walked the long aisle carpeted with bay and birch leaves and knelt before the nation, eyes cast down to receive their wreaths and take their vows.
He could not believe the truth. He counted how many weeks it had been since he last saw her, reached twenty-three before forgetting what he’d been counting, and once again was struck by the images on his screen. His Alma in the purple robes of the chosen. His son in the audience. His son who was always reserved and seemingly a bit dull. His son stood before the world with the cunning of a clever card player. His Alma, his love, the means to his end.
He finally understood. She would come down to the capital and start with his cousins perhaps. She would be quick and kind. Then she would find his closest friends, who were once hard and hurtful, but who had grown soft and spoiled like he. Here she might induce some suffering, though it was against her nature. Finally she would find him. Perhaps, he hoped, he would be alone that day, could invite her in and avoid the indignity of stealth. And he wanted to believe that she would pour him a small glass of his favorite wine, hold his hand, call him Poppa once more, and with her eyes reflect all his love for her before the poison stole his breath.