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The dreams always come the night he returns to the barracks after a visit back to Oswell’s Estate. Something about each first step through the doorway brings back the foul memories, the festering attachment wound that had never healed.
Tonight, in his barracks surrounded by the men of his contingent, Hubert dreamed of Raymond.
Hubert, at barely ten years old, had felt uncomfortable in the Strahtan clothing, but he tried so hard to fit in and be brave. They slept not in soft cotton underclothes but in gauzy robes, scratchy against his tender skin. His were a deep rich golden yellow that Lady Oswell - Mother - said complemented his complexion, but really made Hubert deeply miss the goldenrods and dandelions of the grasses back home. The flowers here were brilliant, strange things accustomed to the sand and sun.
Raymond - Cousin, he had learned to say - was supposed to be using the pull-out bed in the room that was now Hubert’s. They had come to visit for the holiday, and Raymond was sitting on Hubert’s bed.
Hubert still couldn’t think of it as his bed. There was no hand-stitched quilt, no soft cotton sheets. Crisp linen was cool to sleep in but scratchy in a maddeningly different way than the nightclothes.
“I used to sleep here when we’d come to visit,” Raymond said. “It’s not fair that you get the bed now and I have to use the cot.”
Hubert had no idea what to say. He’d made so many mistakes, but he knew he had to be deferent to his new family or else they would be upset with him for taking advantage of their generosity. “You can sleep in the bed, I don’t mind,” Hubert said. “I’ll just sleep on the cot.”
A long silence stretched between them. Hubert thought Raymond was his friend, the way he had slipped him an extra apricot pastry under the table after dinner. But Hubert had also become increasingly aware that everybody seemed to want something from him here; the problem was that he hadn’t figured out what that something was yet.
Maybe Raymond just wanted his bed? Hubert thought it was a small price to pay, really.
“You know, this bed is big enough, we could each have a side,” Raymond said, moving over to the edge of the bed. “And maybe you can tell me about what it was like to ride on the boat here.”
“Haven’t you ever been on a boat?” Hubert asked.
Raymond shook his head. “That’s why I want to join the military when I grow up, so I can sail on the boats.”
Hubert tentatively sat down on the bed next to Raymond. In Hubert’s sleep, he could almost feel the warmth of Raymond next to him, in those innocent days when it was enough to have the comfort of having someone who just wanted to talk about boats, without any ulterior motive.
“We rode on boats all the time back home,” Hubert said.
Raymond put a hand on Hubert’s arm. “Don’t say that,” he said gently. “You know your dad wants you to think of this as home now.”
Tears had welled in his eyes; the homesick feeling surged in his chest. Hubert knew it well; he had worked hard to push it back, needed to suppress it if he was going to be the boy his new Father wanted. He felt no such thing in the barracks, happy to be away from the Estate.
As Hubert tried very hard not to cry, Raymond moved over and put his arm around Hubert’s shoulders. “You’re sad?” he asked, all innocence.
Hubert sniffled and nodded. “I miss my brother,” he admitted.
“What did you and your brother do together?” Raymond asked.
Hubert looked over at his new Cousin. He would regret opening up later, but at that moment, it was exactly what he needed. “We’d hide under the blankets and read Sunscreen Rangers comics.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s um--” Hubert hadn’t been able to bring any with him. The copies were all Asbel’s, not his, and even though he had asked, he hadn’t been able to get any here in Yu Liberte. Maybe there was no such thing as comic books here. That made Hubert sadder than ever. Just one more joy stripped away . “--it’s a book with a good story, with lots of pictures.”
Raymond’s face brightened. “I love drawing pictures,” he said to Hubert. “Maybe we can make one of our own?”
“Really?” Hubert had wiped his nose. “I can make the story.”
Raymond got up and rooted around in the desk in Hubert’s room. Hubert knew there was paper in there and lots of pencils, intended for his studies, but soon put to use as Hubert explained how the page was divided up into boxes, and each box had a conversation or a piece of action and words were in round bubbles and actions in squares--
He and Raymond had stayed up most of the night drawing their first comic, Red Ranger Saves a Boat . (They’d had to make it about the Red Ranger because they only had gray and black pencils and one red pencil.) They’d fallen asleep at some point, covers half-over their bodies and the pencils and papers spread out on the bed.
In Hubert’s dream, the feeling of warmth and friendship with Raymond morphed as they grew taller. Raymond would hide different colored pencils in his pack when he came to visit; soon, they could draw all of the Sunscreen Rangers and make up all new stories about them. Hubert’s favorites had always been about the Red and Blue Rangers saving kittens or stopping giant sea monsters. They were always going on adventures together, saving each other from certain peril and celebrating their victories with ice pops.
They didn’t get in trouble until Hubert was 12 and had just signed up for the first year of military academy training. While looking through Hubert’s schoolwork to evaluate his fitness for the academy, his father discovered all of the hand-drawn comics hidden away in the bottom drawer of the desk under piles of graphing paper.
Hubert’s dream just had to remind him of the horrible conversation at dinner, when his father had slammed the pile of comics down on his plate, a substitute for whatever had been prepared for them to eat that night. “Is this what you’re doing with my generosity instead of studying for your entrance exams?” he’d demanded.
Hubert’s memories didn’t contain what he said in response. He always wanted to think that it was something witty but he knew it was probably something like No, I made them with Raymond, because the next thing his father did shamed him.
With Raymond’s mother and father right there at the table -- fortunately for Hubert, perhaps, Raymond was absent, being a few months older than Hubert and away at the academy already -- Garrett Oswell accused Hubert of drawing “fantasies” of him and Raymond together. The words don’t happen Hubert’s dreams, only the feelings of shame, regret, betrayal, and most of all, not understanding .
12 year old Hubert felt that he had made a mistake, that he probably should have known that such a pastime would have angered his adoptive father. He apologized over and over again, thinking that he was apologizing for using precious paper and pencils to make something silly, or for staying up too late working on this when he should have been studying.
He didn’t realize at the time that Garrett Oswell was making him apologize for fantasizing about his cousin. His dream fast forwarded in time until the day he had realized it -- when he arrived at the military academy and was met by his cousin humiliating him in front of the older boys.
“He used to insist we draw pictures of our adventures,” Raymond said with a sneer. “Now look at him, pretending to be all grown up.”
Hubert had felt so much shame, and it all returned to him in his dream so intensely that he woke up there in the dark in his bunk at the barracks. Hubert had thrown his blanket off of himself as though he could throw off the happy tainted memories of him and Raymond drawing comics by flashlight under the covers; now he was cold in the desert night.
Hubert took three long, slow breaths to calm his racing heart and quiet his mind, something that Instructor Lu had taught him in his martial arts classes. Hubert had been learning to quiet his mind to focus on his movements, to be able to target his enemy’s weak points and see clearly in battle. It meant banishing his insecurities and focusing on something that he was really good at . He used the technique now to focus on the here and now.
He lay on his back trying to will himself back to the present. He was not a scared lost boy. He was Hubert Oswell, the youngest Lieutenant ever to be appointed in the Strahta Military; even though that was the lowest officer rank, he had to follow the precise order of things and this was where officers started. He had aced all of his exams and was now trusted with men in the field. Raymond, who had tried to use their family connection and their past to hide his own slow learning, was now technically and bureaucratically Hubert’s subordinate. The ranks and achievement tests had a way of laying everything out in stark detail, avoiding the hidden connections and politics that had so plagued Hubert’s youth.
His heart was still racing. Hubert quietly got up out of bed, leaving his blanket crumpled behind, and walked barefoot into the sand outside of the barracks walls. Light was just appearing at the horizon, meaning that he would have had to rise for morning drill soon anyway. Hubert sank his feet into the sand, cool and welcoming against his skin, and closed his eyes and breathed. He was uniquely talented with the dualblade, with aiming his guns, with selecting just the right technique to debilitate enemies. Hubert lifted his arms above his head, stretching his muscles to the sky. He had studied battle movements and tactics from the books and proved himself in the war games simulations. Hubert lowered his arms slowly into crane pose, shifting his weight to his back foot in the sand. He had commanded small squads to take out thieves who had been harassing the merchants on the roads from Oul Raye. Hubert shifted forward, arms in firing position, eyes still closed to feel his balance shift as he moved. He had risen above Raymond, above his adoptive father, above his black history at Lhant, and his future was going to be his to control. Hubert shifted his weight from foot to foot, turning shuffle into leap, weaving and dodging his enemies strikes as he cut them to shreds with his blades. He took one last powerful push from his left leg and propelled himself into the air to make the strike, triggering the electric shock of his blade--
Hubert landed his flip, imaginary blades out in front of him, two bare feet firmly in the sand and his sleeping pants settling back in around his ankles. He opened his eyes to see the sun peek out above the horizon.
One day, he would execute this move in battle, but it depended on him being able to focus and zero in on his target. Nothing else mattered.
“Lieutenant Oswell,” came a voice from near the barracks; one of the Commanders. “Urgent orders. Fendel aggression at the border of Windor. Report to the Command Tent at 0600.”
“Yes sir,” Hubert said, shaking the sand from his toes and turning back into the barracks. He would need to dress quickly, and he was suddenly glad for his dreams waking him early before this meeting. He silently thanked Raymond for everything -- the kindness that had made him feel welcome in Strahta, and the childish petulance that had hardened Hubert into the soldier and officer that he had become.
Maybe, Hubert thought, today would be the start of his grand, glorious future.