“I feel like a complete failure,” I mutter. “It still makes no sense to me.” I bend down to the penjing pot, to inspect the little tree. “Why do this to Quennel? And to his unemanated brothers as well?”
“I don’t know,” says Tara. “Maybe it’s selfish, but I’m glad they did, though.”
I look up at her, surprised. “Why?”
She smiles wistfully. “Because wherever there’s an Ashtree, it’s my home.”
I slap my forehead. “I’m so stupid,” I groan. “It’s so obvious, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. The remorse that Suibhne felt – that they all felt – was over leaving you alone while they grew Yggdrasil and Ashvattha. But Canopus is capable of naturally communicating with Atlas. That means it doesn’t have to be rooted in one place. It’s mobile. From now on, we won’t have to grow a new tree to be free to travel.”
“That’s it? Then why hide it from me?”
“I don’t think they intended to. But the emanations responsible for it are ones that are singularly inarticulate – Suibhne and Davy.”
“And Jamey. He did the real work of shaping the penjing. But don’t think for a minute it wasn’t intentional. They were the ones chosen to emanate because they were inarticulate.”
“They were hiding something,” I say slowly, “but not that. It’s whatever Wynne was afraid you would find out when you took the amrita on the night of the Combine Gala.”
“Maybe that’s…” Tara stops suddenly. She looks sad and tired. “Maybe that’s why they won’t let me back into the pleroma.”
“Let you what?” My heart skips a beat. If it means what I think it means – and given what happened to Tara, it’s theoretically possible – it would take something terrible to want to stop her from doing something so desirable. “Do you mean when you woke up inside, right after your death?”
“Yes, and one other time, shortly after. It was the night Sloane was there, and we left dinner early because I was angry with Clive. I wanted to stay with Sloane. I’ve spent so little time with him, and he seemed to be reaching a turning point. The problem was that Lens needed to emanate to give Clive his treatment. We decided that Sloane could just take me inside of the pleroma with him. They haven’t let me back since then.”
“Did anything bad happen?”
“No! In fact, it was wonderful. It was…” She grins; her eyes look like they’re sharing a secret, but it’s a secret I don’t know. “Here. I’ll let you read about it.”