“Miscria do not cut their hair.”
“Really? Why not?” He finished one long section, and ran his fingers through the rest to separate another. It felt soft and warm, but body-temperature warm rather than sunlight-heated warm.
“It is of Kanaan now. It gives me strength.”
“Like Samson?” Joshua regarded her tresses with new respect.
“Samson?” Tasmae repeated.
“From our sacred Scriptures. Samson’s hair made him strong—until Delilah convinced him to cut it off. That reminds me, though. ‘Kanaan’ sounds a lot like Canaan, which is a very special place in the Old Testament. So who named your planet and why?”
“We use words only for your benefit, Joshua. It’s quite noisy when you’re around.”
Joshua picked up her teasing tone and chuckled. “But that didn’t come from me, and while I did give Terry his name, I’d have never thought of Salgoud.”
“That is Barin. Salgoud is a kind of fighting devil?” She paused, brow knitted and shrugged at Deryl.
Deryl frowned, but this time in concentration. “It doesn’t translate well. —ud means leader, salg is the name they use for Kanaans, but it’s kind of insulting, like demon or subhuman or abomination. And the o denotes a certain amount of viciousness.”
“So, ‘leader of vicious subhumans’?” Joshua asked, amazed.
“More like ‘vicious leader of the demon-spawned subhuman abominations,’” Deryl deadpanned.
Joshua blanched. “And he’s okay with that?”
“Of course,” Tasmae replied. “To us, it is a mere arrangement of sounds without real meaning.”
Joshua nodded. It was like when someone called him “nigger.” He blew it off because the word said little about him personally but spoke volumes about the other person’s attitudes. “Oreo” Bothered him more, because it suggested that who he was on the inside was somehow wrong because of his race. “Incompetent,” however: that one really bugged him.
Tasmae was saying that Salgoud’s name was tactically useful. “The Barins fear it. Our warriors have learned when they can secure a retreat by merely chanting his name.”
“That is cool! All right, so why isn’t your planet called Salgan or something? Where’d Kanaan come from?”
“That would be my doing,” Deryl grinned sheepishly. “I think the Miscria must have pulled other things from my mind somehow.”
“Many things have their names from the Ydrel,” Tasmae chimed in. “Spot. Everyn. Bondfriend. Even Miscria.”
“Really,” Joshua said slowly. “Kanaan I get, then. ‘Bondfriend,’ makes sense, kind of descriptive. Even ‘everyn,’ since they’re not wyvern sized, though if you’d read Anne McCaffery, you might have called them fire lizards. But where’d ‘Miscria’ come from?”
“Something my mother told me.”
Deryl turned away then, again unreadable, and Tasmae turned her head just enough to look at him. Joshua suppressed a moan. Bad enough Deryl had feelings for her, but if she returned them? He set his hands on either side of her head and turned it forward again, hoping she’d think it was so he could brush her hair more easily. Regardless, she crossed her arms and let Joshua play with her hair, and he felt her try to relax into his soothing ministrations.
*
Tasmae’s attention brushed feather-soft against Deryl’s shields, but caught in the memories of his mother, he didn’t notice. “I told you my mom was psychic, right? Well, she told me that one day, a spirit would contact me—the Miscria. I was supposed to obey it. She thought it might be my guardian angel; what a joke.”
Deryl laughed, a bitter sound even to his own ears. Tasmae reached out to touch his arm. He tensed against the urge to flinch away and redoubled his shields against her.
“What happened to your mother?”
Deryl looked across the field, where a colt played under the watchful eye of its mother. “She was protecting me from a…a boarder we’d taken in. He got angry and killed her.”
Deryl didn’t look their way and tried hard to keep his tone matter-of-fact, but he still felt Joshua’s sudden pity. The unicorns ran off, and he followed them with his gaze, forcing himself to see them rather than his mother crashing against the table edge and slithering to the ground. Where was his guardian angel then?
Tasmae spoke softly. “My parents were killed protecting our training ground. I’d just come into my Miscria talent. I was not allowed to fight.”
“I didn’t even know how, then. If I could go back…” He heaved a shaky sigh, releasing his emotions and added in a more natural voice. “So that’s where Miscria came from. ‘Ydrel’ was something my mom called me now and then. I never knew why; I figured it came from my father. I don’t know about ‘Tasmae,’ however.”
“Another Barin word, given to me in the last war. A tasmae is a small but fierce animal on their planet that’s hard to catch and wreaks great damage.”
“Told you,” Joshua deadpanned.
Deryl burst out laughing. It felt good.
“On Earth, we have an animal called the Tasmanian devil,” Joshua started to explain, “and there’s a cartoon—”
“No! Let me! I loved Looney Tunes when I was a kid.” Stifling giggles, he teleped an image to her.
Tasmae gaped in astonishment. “And I gave you this impression?”
“Well…” Deryl started teasingly.
Joshua smacked him with the comb. “It’s a pun, a play on words. Tasmae. Tasmanian devil. Tasmanian she-devil. Humans have lots of fun with words and sounds. Puns. Word games. Poetry. Songs—words put to music.” Seeing Tamae’s curiosity, he started singing one of Chipotle’s songs.
Tasmae frowned. “So it’s not another of your languages? It’s not to communicate information?”
“Oh, sure,” Joshua answered, and when Deryl looked dubious, sang, “A B C D E F G. Or, if you want to get more technical…” He sang another ditty, this one a rather technical one about C-sections.
“You made that up?” Deryl asked, impressed.
Joshua gave Tasmae’s hair one last pass with the comb, then ran his hands over it, settling it into place. “Yup, for Sachiko when she was taking that Procedures for the Reproductive Systems class. But I do it all the time. Humans sing for lots of reasons, Tasmae. To memorize information, to entertain, to commemorate an event—” He sang a verse from “Battle of New Orleans.” “—to express an emotion—”
Something pulled at Deryl, something he couldn’t quite focus on. It made him lightheaded and closed his eyes against the dizziness. “To alter reality,” he murmured, though he didn’t realize he was speaking. “To bend the world to your will.”
Then, the feeling was gone. He blinked as if waking up from a dream.
Joshua was giving him an odd look.
“What?” He asked his friend.
Before Joshua could reply, Tasmae asked, “Why did you sing while confined?”
Joshua gave him a long look before answering Tasmae’s question. “Comfort. I was scared, worried, lonely; after awhile, bored. I sang whatever came into my mind at the time. Lots of them were religious songs, prayers—asking for help and comfort, mostly, but there are a lot for praise, too.” He sang the chorus from “Sing to the Mountains” to illustrate his point. “And there are love songs—for God, for others, wanting to be loved, having loved and lost—”
“But it is not a language,” Tasmae pursued. She twisted to face Joshua, her brows knit in concentration.
Deryl couldn’t help but smile. Many times, he’d been put under the same interrogation. It was nice to watch her apply it to someone else for a change.
And just to watch her, a small part of his mind insisted. Her hair, detangled and sleek, settled itself on her shoulder with an alluring curve before draping down her back. His hands curled into fists against the desire to reach out and touch it. H
er dark eyes shone with interest, her lips pursed slightly, her whole self so keenly directed on Josh that Deryl found himself mesmerized. It wasn’t beauty, per se; it was too intense, too focused. Yet it drew him.
“Yes and no,” Joshua was saying. “The language—I mean, the words themselves—are separate. There are hundreds, maybe thousands of languages on Earth, and each can be put to music. However, the music can change the language—songwriters bend some rules, like grammar, in favor of the rules of rhythm and meter. Music can also alter the emotional element. Change the tone and tempo of a song and you can change the meaning without altering the words.” To demonstrate, Joshua sang the slow, jazzy version of “Blue Moon,” then the rock-and-roll Beach Boys’ version of the same song.
“How do you humans keep track of it all?” Tasmae finally demanded in frustration. Joshua laughed, and Deryl, broken from her spell, joined him. “How do you can understand each other?”
“We don’t,” Deryl told her, “not all of us, and not always. There are a lot of wars on our planet.”
Deryl and Tasmae both fell into a broody silence.
Chapter 13
Joshua cleared his throat. “Hey, language—communication—has also prevented a lot of wars, you know. And it’s fun to play with words—and with music. It boggles my mind that you don’t have music.”
“No, we do,” Tasmae corrected. “The Bondfriends have something similar, but not as complex. I think it is more language than your music, but music, our real music, is so different from yours. I’m not sure I could explain.” Again, she took on that look of fierce concentration, but this time it pointed inside as she tried to find the right alien words. “It is…spiritual? But not as your hymns. It is of our spirits. The song is always sung; how we sing depends on what we are doing, our talents, our mood. It is sometimes audible, usually psychic—I’m not explaining well. Your words are hard!”
“Why don’t you demonstrate? Sing something.”
She hesitated, suddenly reluctant, even ready to bolt. Joshua leaned back, giving her some physical space, but Deryl took her hands.
“It’s all right. We’re not Kanaan. Sing for us, please?”
She gazed into Deryl’s eyes, and Joshua bit back the urge to groan. Had anyone else noticed? Maybe that was the real reason she was being occupied with the Remembrance.
He wanted to snatch their wrists and pull them apart, but he remembered how Rique’s trying to separate him and LaTisha just drove him to her all the more. Deryl was even more willful and stubborn than he was. Just keep it together, Josh. A few more days and we’re out of here. You can help him control himself for a few days.
Her hands still in Deryl’s, Tasmae closed her eyes. A slight grin lightened her expression. Around them, the wind rustled in the trees, and birds broke into song. Then Tasmae joined them, her voice mimicking them, then moving into some kind of harmony, low notes, almost coyote- or whale-like. Deryl relaxed, and Joshua noticed how lightly his hands clasped Tasmae’s. Maybe this music has a touch component, then? It was different, kind of interesting, but not what Joshua would call music. What he knew as music had patterns: time scales, beat and rhythm, sections that repeated. Even the healing power, which he likened to music, had pattern. Tasmae’s song more resembled the wind in the trees, or a field overrun with wildflowers and weeds—lovely, even beautiful in some places, but without clear logic. His mind struggled to find an underlying melody, then gave up. If there was one, it was too big for him to grasp.
He looked at Deryl. The young man swayed, thoroughly caught up in Tasmae’s “song,” his mouth open and smiling slightly. His pupils had contracted so that they were mere dots in a sea of blue.
So there is a heavy psychic element. Suppressing a sigh, Joshua leaned back against a tree and shut his eyes, trying to release his preconceptions about music and enjoy what he could hear. The wind seemed to have picked up slightly and with his eyes closed, he could almost imagine that its light touch against his skin was part of the song.
Abruptly, Tasmae stopped singing. The wind died down. Even the birds silenced. Joshua opened his eyes in surprise at the sudden stillness.
Deryl, too, broke from his half-trance, delight shining in his eyes. “That was magical,” he whispered, and Tasmae smiled. He turned to Joshua, a faint smile on his face, and Tasmae also turned to him expectantly.
Joshua shrugged. “It was…interesting. Really. I guess it loses something without the telepathic element.”
Tasmae nodded, but Deryl cried in disappointment, “You didn’t get any of it?”
“It was just sounds to me,” Joshua half-apologized. “Don’t worry about it.”
Deryl continued to scowl. “It’s not fair. It was so—it was just—amazing! What if I translated?”
Joshua sat up. “Tell me.”
“I mean, what if I could help you, um, experience the song like, well, like I did?”
“You can’t make me telepathic.” Or could he? Joshua suppressed a shudder at the thought. Even as a kid, he’d never thought telepathy would be cool, and after having worked with Deryl and all the problems his telepathy had caused him, he liked the idea even less.
“No, of course not, but I can get into your mind and give you the experiences. I did it with Isaac all the time, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, well, that was a pretty special case…” Isaac had been an Alzheimer’s patient at SK-Mental—a rotten place for him to be, in the opinion of Joshua and most of the staff, but his grandson was on the board of directors, and they hadn’t been able to turn him down. Isaac had survived Auschwitz, and Deryl had “protected” Isaac from reliving those horrors (and himself from sharing them) by impressing upon him the illusion that he had been rescued by the underground. In the end, had Isaac known which memories were real?
“I’m not going to mess with your head. You’ll know what’s going on all the time. You’ll just be able to understand the psychic part, that’s all. I promise.”
“Why is this so important to you?”
“Because!” Deryl almost shouted. “Come on, Josh, I dragged you halfway across the universe; and I know I didn’t intend to, but here you are, and you’re stuck until I figure out how to get you back, and you’ve been so great about it for the most part. This is probably the most incredible, alien, thing we’ve come across so far and it’s music, which you love. I just—I want to share it with you!”
Joshua’s resistance weakened under his earnest gaze. “That great, huh?”
“Better!”
“All right—but I want to be able to stop if it gets too weird.”
“Absolutely!” Deryl promised and clamped a hand on his wrist. On cue Tasmae began to sing. Joshua felt the wind pick up—
—And he was caught up in the wind, lifted and tossed gently like a fall leaf in a soft breeze. There was joy in the movement, and the joy was given to God as praise.
—He was a budding plant, opening itself to the nourishing sun, uncoiling blossom and leaves. There was beauty in the simple act of converting light into food and the beauty was a song of praise.
—A field of flowers, the wind playing over them. He was the flower and the wind and the grass and earth and song. The pattern was there, deep and complex. His human mind could never grasp it but his soul gloried in it and it was the Glory of the Lord.
—He was the wind, swirling
—Spinning
—Rotating around an axis as he described a near-circular ellipse around a brilliantly burning star. As he turned, he felt the heat of the sun and the cold of space wash over him. Around he danced, others circling him in his path. Friendly partners, the attraction between them strong, but comfortable. He felt their pulls upon him like gentle caresses. It was part of the dance, more of the song. It was good.
But another approached their path, tried to interfere with the dance. It pulled upon them. It brought discord, sh
attered the pattern, broke the verse. It yanked upon him. Something inside tore—
“Whoa! Stop!” Joshua snapped back into reality. He opened his eyes and saw Deryl and Tasmae watching him expectantly.
“What was that?” He demanded. The incredible joy had been destroyed by the final images, and with it, the peace he’d been feeling all day. His ribs ached with the memory of phantom pain, and he rubbed his side.
“A simple song of morning,” Tasmae said, though her eyes darkened as she understood his expression.
“Simple?” Now that he was out of it, the pattern was again too complex for him to comprehend, though he felt he could just catch the verse of the wind if he listened hard enough. He’d never be able to listen to the wind in the same way again. “Simple?” He repeated, still slightly breathless. “What does being a planet have to do with morning?”
Tasmae looked at him with alarm. “What do you mean?”
He felt a little alarmed himself. “I’m telling you, I felt like I was a planet—literally. I was circling a sun, I had moons, and I felt like my ribs were pulling apart.” He realized he sounded ridiculous. “It hurt!”
“That was not the song,” Tasmae whispered, her face pale. “That was Kanaan.”
Both she and Joshua turned to Deryl in askance.
He squirmed, but didn’t say anything—to Joshua, at least. He kept throwing glances at Tasmae. Joshua’s temper flared. Something bizarro had just happened, had just happened to him, and he was not going to sit idly while they discussed it telepathically. “Excuse me! You want to tell me what’s going on? In English? And don’t you start rocking—I’m not doing therapy on you!”
Deryl had wrapped his arms around himself, straitjacket style, and had begun to move back and forth. With effort, he stopped, though his arms remained wrapped around his waist. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I didn’t realize I’d…” He shut his eyes, shook his head.
Tasmae took up the explanation, though she was no more enlightening than he was. “There was an earthquake this morning.”
Mind Over Psyche Page 12
