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Alia was not prepared to lose her brother, despite what she would say on the matter. She stood at the edge of the sietch watching him go into the desert, a husk of the man he had been and yet that much greater than anybody else. Trust Paul Atreides to be a blind man who sees, she thought to herself.
She felt empty, a cavernous lack into which she could scream for hours, just to hear the echoes bounce back. The idea of carrying on felt daunting, too.
Yet, who else was there to do it if not herself?
Her mother had gone home to Caladan and did not yet know what happened. A letter worth writing herself, sure, if the thought of picking the pen up didn’t feel so bizarre. Paul’s dead, she would write, fold it and send.
As if the knowledge that her mother’s pain would cut through their connection like a laceration, that the wound would throb for months even if she didn’t let it show did not halt her hand.
Perhaps Irulan would know what to say, beyond that he was a dead man. Perhaps she would leave, which would not be too great a loss and yet a betrayal all at once. Alia thought of the wife carrying the concubine’s children in her arms, the determination she spied in the thin line of her lips. No, Irulan would stay, she could count on that.
Hayt would stay. Stilgar would stay. Harah, too.
She knew her mother would probably ask if she would like to go to Caladan for the first time; the ivy covered castle, the ever present seabrine of her father’s childhood, something she can access more than anything else from him. The impossibly vast forests; the depths of green, the watercurrents. The seagulls calling for each other.
How she could ever fit into that alien picture, the girl would never know. No, in the desert she must remain.
The desert would not go anywhere else, it couldn’t.
Alia, fremen to the bone, was bound to this arid land, too.
In her overactive mind’s eye, Alia saw the wind corroding her brother’s skin, a worm coming up the ground with an open mouth to capture him, a stray crysknife taking him out of his misery. Her hands shook and she busied them with the cloth of her garment, which she tightened over her head and around her nose and mouth, feeling the tube press against her cheeks and capture the tear.
*
Irulan was too stubborn to stay and too loyal to go. Hours of watching the twins sleep, wake, be fed and fall asleep again passed under her vigil. The babies were barely even crying, too busy watching the world with a comprehension of old souls born again. They did not need her, not then. And what Irulan needed the most, in times of crisis, were people who needed her, so she would have something to do with her hands — so she stood, as if moved by some magnet, and walked away.
Past the quiet, round-eyed servants, whose chatter fell into silence whenever she approached and rose as walked past, a rhythmic lull that ended with its return to form again behind her, indistinctly, barely changed by her interruption.
Her head felt too heavy to attempt to understand what was being said; all those changes in one day, only one afternoon.
A week before, the idea of Chani’s passing in childbirth was absurd. Even while watching her hobble around with a belly too big for her lithe frame, Irulan never dared to think of her as fragile. Perhaps the children would not live, but such was the turn of fate of mothers everywhere.
You could only hold onto hope.
You could only pray.
For years, the bene gesserit cried, wishing that she would be the emperor’s bride in more than name. That she would bear his children even when motherhood felt like more an idea, a faraway thing.
The maids would see to the rearing, of course, and her aristocratic duty would be done; her assignment to the sisterhood complete. Her heart’s desire seen to— that Paul would recognize her as a woman, if only once.
While the penny turned in the air, she never imagined that it would fall like this. Not for a pair of eyes, no less, such a simple thing. Yet endless wealth could not shift the messiah’s resolve. A sea of eyes could not stand between him and the desert. Knowing that did not make the whole thing seem any less uncivilized. Anger, confusion and grief swirled inside her like a hurricane she could neither understand nor stop.
No Chani, no Paul, no chance for children of her own. Only a pair of twins who needed someone and the woman who had promised all that she had to them.
Only guilt so rotten it might just kill her, too.
She pushed through the opening of the sietch with her breath caught in her throat as the dry desert air started taking her body’s humidity away.
And then she saw Alia, concealed from the rough wind, peering curiously at the princess, impassive. Wisps of red hair escaping the dark cloth, lulling at the wind’s behest. The only thing that still made sense.
There were too many things to say, Irulan found, but all of them fell at her feet like dust. She shrugged, feeling the sting at the corner of her eyes and crossed her arms over her torso, her hand pressed open against her chest. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, at last, and regretted it because it made her mouth go dry. Regretted it because it was her loss, too.
Because it was too simple a statement for such a momentous occasion.
Alia nodded slowly, as if something had occurred to her that she hadn’t yet thought of, and Irulan recognized the feeling in herself.
And then there were two.
And it did not feel like enough.
Alia looked away for a moment and then back to her, seemingly considering all too many things at once, and a little annoyed at being interrupted.
“You don’t have a stillsuit on,” she pointed out, but her voice sounded small, different.
Irulan nodded and turned on her heels. Of course. The girl needed some peace and quiet. Back at the entrance to the sietch, she stopped for a beat. Said “call on me if you need anything,” and stepped back inside.