Ishmael lay in bed that night, thinking. Nothing had gone well since he had arrived at the Commons. He tried to tell himself that it didn’t matter, but it did matter. Not only was he no closer to bringing Luc home, the guilt he felt from Papa’s death was compounded with the guilt he felt at leaving Mam. On top of that, he found himself more deeply entrenched here, part of a spectrum. He’d never felt part of anything so complete, and worse yet, it made him want to stay.
He wiggled out of his covers and tiptoed down the stairs into the night. Ishmael headed toward the fountain in the middle of the Great Courtyard and sat on its edge. The water splashed down in tinkling arcs, and he held his hand to the mist—a ghostly water that he felt but couldn’t see.
Three days ago, he didn’t even know this place existed. Now, it was as if the very stones owned him, as if the colors that were here had wrapped themselves around him, binding him to a future made of color. He belonged here. But he belonged back home, too. The sheep owned him as much as anything else did, and the needs of Mam and Jerusha and Simon had wrapped themselves around him first. He was being strangled, but he wasn’t sure who was strangling him. He put his head in his hands and groaned.
“Ishmael?”
Ishmael jumped. Hannah stood halfway between the entrance to the Hall of Hue and the fountain.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Can’t sleep.”
“Same.” She walked over and sat down next to him. “When I couldn’t sleep, my mother used to tell me stories,” Hannah said, her voice low. “Do you miss home?”
Did he miss home? Funny how he had been thinking about home, but it hadn’t occurred to him to miss it. The place in his memory was not the home that existed. The sagging laundry line, the broken door latch, the slumping stone wall, and the weedy kitchen garden were no longer tempered by Papa’s sturdy presence, no longer lessened by Luc’s cheer. The thought of home as it was now—with Mam and her tired eyes and rough hands, Jerusha with her twists of yarn, and Simon underfoot—seemed less like a safe haven and more like a sad habitat. There was work and there was responsibility and there were empty bellies. And there was guilt.
“That’s a hard question to answer,” he said. “Home isn’t really home anymore.”
“Because your father’s gone?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that.” He told Hannah the full story about digging the well, about leaving Papa to look at the glass in the barn and the well’s collapse, about the colors and the sheep, about the work and the want. “Papa’s gone, yes, but everything else has changed, too, and it’s my fault. The only thing I can do to fix it is to bring Luc back. But I’m not certain he’ll come.” He twisted the fabric of his nightclothes around his fingers, remembering what Color Master had said about apprentices entering their posticum.
Hannah put her hand gently on his shoulder. “Would his presence really make that big of a difference? He can’t bring your father back. He might take a share of the work, but would things really change?”
Hannah’s words ruffled Ishmael. “You don’t understand,” he said.
“No,” she said, “I don’t. I can’t, because I haven’t been there, but it’s possible that Luc might not make as big an impact as you think he would. I’m afraid you expect him to come home and save everything. I don’t think he can.”
Ishmael stood up, indignant. “You don’t know Luc.”
“Of course I don’t—not like you do. But neither of you can make things go back to the way they were.”
Ishmael sank back down onto the edge of the fountain. “It’s not that I want to go back to the way things were. It’s just that I feel responsible … if I had been there—”
Hannah interrupted him. “If you had been there, what would you have done? What could you have done?”
“I could have dug Papa out. I could have gone for help. I could have—”
“Maybe. But so often we only see what we might have done in hindsight. It’s just as possible that you couldn’t have changed the end result at all. Luc might not be able to change the end result, either.” She looked back toward the Hall of Hue archway and yawned.
“You go ahead. I’ll be on my way in a minute,” he said.
“All right. You’re sure?”
He nodded, so she stood and left him sitting by the fountain.