The Heir Without a Blessing

Mika Varen realized only after some time that the attendants were unpicking the gold thread from his blessing robe. At first he thought it was just tidying up after the ceremony.

The attendants' hands moved quickly as always, but unlike always, they said nothing. When they usually unpicked gold thread, they would mention pressing it for the next ceremony. Today no one said that.

When told to take off his shoes first, Mika didn't pull his feet back. Taking off his shoes would mean the ceremony was over, and he wanted to believe his ceremony hadn't even started yet.

"It's been postponed, right?"

Mika asked. He'd wanted to ask in the formal sentences adults used, but a short question came out of his mouth first.

The attendant didn't answer and finished unpicking the thread. The loosened gold thread was wound into a small coil and set on a tray.

That gold thread was coiled as neatly as if it would never return to Mika's clothes again.

Mika stood in front of the mirror. Everywhere the gold thread had been removed, the fabric bore marks where it had been pressed.

They were marks worn in by days of wearing. He pressed his fingers against those marks.

The robe had grown lighter, but his body had grown heavier. He didn't know what to call this feeling.

He thought the adults probably knew a word for it. That he didn't know that word felt like proof he was still a child, and that made it worse.

Rea came in. Mika thought his mother had come to comfort him.

His mother did not comfort him.

Her hands held nothing. Usually when his mother came having decided something, she held papers or a ledger in her hands.

Coming empty handed meant she had already made up her mind and had come only to say it aloud. Mika looked first at his mother's empty hands, then at her face.

"Your heir's blessing will not take place today."

Rea said.

"The white wheat meant for the blessing, and the priest who was to conduct that rite, are going to the ration station. People are starving, and the granaries are short."

"Because the march comes first?"

Mika asked. It was a sentence he'd learned from somewhere.

A sentence adults would praise him for. Rea was not fooled by it.

"Not because the march comes first. Because that is what's right, right now."

Rea said.

"And there's something you need to know. If we delay the blessing, there will be talk about your right of succession. The royal house and the collateral line will see the opening. I know that risk, and I'm delaying anyway. I won't hide it from you."

Mika realized this was the first time his mother had used the word "risk" toward him. The word frightened him, but at the same time, it was also a word that didn't treat him as a child.

He didn't say he was scared.

Instead he asked, "How long will it be delayed?"

Rea answered, "I don't know."

Not knowing was more honest than comfort would have been.

"Then what am I, in the meantime?"

Mika asked. He had no word for the position he occupied, neither called heir nor declared not to be one.

Rea looked at Mika for a moment.

"In the meantime, you are my son."

She said.

"That isn't decided by a blessing, so it can't be postponed either."

Mika couldn't tell whether those words were comfort or fact. His mother always spoke fact, so it felt strange that this should sound like comfort.

In the cathedral's side aisle, a clerk had the succession document spread out. Mika went to look at it.

There was a space where his name was to be written. It needed to hold the date of the blessing and the priest's signature.

The clerk had left that space blank. A single empty line ran long across the middle of the document.

Mika felt as if that blank line were some part of his own body left empty.

The clerk had not even put a provisional mark on the blank line.

When Mika asked why nothing had been written at all, the clerk answered, "If provisional letters are written on a line meant to be filled later, they can later be used as proof that it was already filled."

Mika understood only half the weight of those words. That being empty was safer than being wrongly filled.

He realized for the first time that the world of adults was careful even about a single blank space. And that this carefulness existed to protect him.

The clerk rolled the document back up and slid it into its envelope, then said quietly to Mika.

"Young master, this blank line is no flaw. An empty line also means no lie has been written on it yet."

A boy from the collateral line came into the side aisle. He was two years older than Mika, and always mimicked Mika's clothes and manner of speaking before mocking him for it.

He looked at the blank line and said.

"A temporary son. One who couldn't even get his blessing. Won't the real son show up separately at this rate?"

Mika's fist trembled first. Instead of clenching it, he quietly picked up one of the buttons from his loosened ceremonial robe, sitting on the tray, and slipped it into his pocket.

That button was woven from gold thread. He didn't even know himself why he was hiding it.

He only needed, standing before the blank line, to have at least one thing left that was his.

The collateral boy wanted to say more, but the clerk cleared his throat. The boy shut his mouth and instead tapped the blank blessing line with his finger before walking out.

That gesture stayed in Mika's mind longer than the words had. Mika thought about how the blank line might be filled.

What would happen if he wrote something there himself. He soon let go of that thought.

The blank line wasn't something he could fill on his own. That seemed to be what adults meant by "qualification."

A line that could only be filled by someone else.

At the ration station, Mika saw how his ceremonial white wheat was being used. It was boiling into porridge in a great cauldron.

The priest himself held the ladle and served the children. Among those standing in line were many children younger than Mika.

Mika was not moved. What rose in him first, instead of being moved, was loss.

That porridge had once carried the name "Mika's Blessing." Now the porridge had no name.

His name had been struck from the sack.

Mika looked at the ledger written beside the ration counter. It was in Sabin's handwriting.

It read, "White wheat for the heir's blessing, converted to rations." In the space where his name had been erased, the four words "converted to rations" had taken its place.

Mika understood, still only in his chest and not yet in his head, that those four words weighed more than his own name. An old woman recognized Mika and tried to bow.

Mika stopped her. To be bowed to in the very place where his name had been erased didn't sit right with him.

He was ashamed of that loss. Ashamed that he begrudged his own name in front of starving children.

But shame did not erase the loss. Mika stood before the porridge cauldron holding both feelings at once.

A child recognized Mika and asked, "Can I eat yours, young master?"

Mika answered, "Sure."

Giving that short answer took half of everything he had.

The priest held out a bowl of porridge to Mika as well.

"Your share is here too, young master."

Mika took the bowl. He was receiving, as the share of one nameless person, the porridge from which his own name had been erased.

The porridge was warm and thin. He took a bite.

The taste was nothing special. Whatever childish belief he'd held that ceremonial white wheat would taste better vanished with that one bite.

Grain was the same grain no matter whose mouth it went into. That ordinariness was, for Mika, a lesson of another kind.

At the dinner table, the royal seal arrived. A letter stamped with a red seal was set down on the table where the family sat gathered.

Doan opened it first. It said the collateral line had petitioned the royal house to review Mika's eligibility for succession.

The blank blessing line was cited as grounds for the petition.

Doan set the letter down and proposed sending Mika to the capital for a while as refuge. He said that being in the capital would put Mika beyond the collateral line's reach, and let him prove his standing directly before the eyes of the royal house.

He spoke as if he'd already worked out the shape of the travel papers. Rea did not answer.

She looked back and forth between the blank blessing line and the seal on the table.

"If we send him to the capital, the child would be safe."

Rea finally spoke.

"But it would look like an admission that the collateral line is right. A fleeing heir has his standing doubted, as a rule."

Doan said, "Safety comes first."

Rea answered, "Which comes first, safety or standing, isn't something to decide today."

Their words collided but did not turn into a quarrel. It was the first time Mika had seen his parents hold different answers about him.

That felt more like the world of adults than even the blank blessing line had.

Mika didn't understand all of what the adults said. But he understood one thing.

What he had lost today was not just a single ceremony. He touched the button in his pocket with his fingers.

The knot of gold thread caught at his fingertips. At the center of the table, the royal house's red seal sat above the empty blessing line.

Mika looked for a long time at how those two things existed together on the same paper.

That night, before falling asleep, Mika took the button from his pocket and set it on his palm. A small knot woven of gold thread.

It was a fragment that had come off his blessing robe, and at the same time, the only thing he had held on to today. He started to put it under his pillow, then put it back in his pocket instead.

Carrying it was better than hiding it away. Until the day the blank line was filled, he decided to keep one thing of his own within reach.

Outside the door, his parents' low voices went on. He caught fragments of words like capital, travel papers, review, standing.

Mika couldn't tell which of those words would decide his future. But one thing was clear.

Today his mother had not chosen the safer path for his sake. She had chosen the right path, and danger came attached to it.

Rather than being frightened by that fact, Mika somehow felt he too would have to become someone like that. With that thought, he fell asleep.

His fist had opened, and the button in his pocket remained where it was.