Voices in Crystal

by Mary R Woldering

  Tears? Are those tears? Have you been crying? What’s wrong, MaMa? Naibe’s thoughts asked. In none of her memories had she seen Ariennu cry, except during the worst of her painful agony from the sickness that nearly killed her right before Marai had found them. She never grieved. She never wept in rage.

  Could this be joy? Naibe-Ellit wondered.

  Marai arrived a moment later, going straight past the three of them to Etum Addi with an apology for his delayed return. He explained that he had been beseiged with a murderous headache and that his eldest wife had been able to ease him after an entire afternoon of diligent care. For a moment the sojourner stood behind Ariennu, his hands firmly and warmly on her shoulders. In a moment, he moved to his own seat beside her.

  You know I’ve wanted you from the moment I fell on your feet when you saw us in the wilderness...no, before...when I watched you going up against N’Ahab and them like the light of heaven...do you remember that day?

  Naibe-Ellit heard the woman telling Marai the way she felt about him when she had seen his nakedness as he emerged from the water hole back at the thieves encampment. She, even though desperately ill at the time had reacted as if she had just stumbled over a cache of rubies the size of dates.

  You’re just so delicious all over! Naibe heard Ariennu remind the big man.

  She knew Ariennu had finally gotten her wish and been with Marai this afternoon, but now, instead of shouting and bragging about it, she wanted to bury all that had happened between them in deepest secrecy the way she buried all of those strange little trysts along the journey and at the waterfront with persons unknown. Naibe reflected, instantly wondering why there hadn’t been any commotion noticed from the upper room.

  But why a secret, Ari? Why when because of what we have become, we already know it? There had been nothing but calmness and quiet, like a secret shared by two.

  “Oh no...you don’t even dare...” Naibe-Ellit heard the woman’s low whisper. She saw Ari shut her eyes and draw into herself. “Do not look into me…not you too...” then “Psst....” She whistled at a pretty young thing who had been hesitating near their shaded booth. She offered a little pot of “the perfect thing” for love.

  Naibe didn’t have to try. Ariennu’s memory was already flowing into the younger woman quite clearly, despite Ari’s attempt to keep the afternoon private. Naibe-Ellit saw her elder sitting calmly astride Marai, proud but absent of any true passion. So controlled, at first, she waited for some magical rush of ecstasy to begin. About to become impatient, she suddenly paused, a guttural and knowing little cackle of pleasure escaping her throat. She almost sighed something like “Nice, Huh?” but a shuddering chill rushed through her instead.

  Oh...what is this? How can this be, he doesn’t even shake me...So... gentle... There...that quiet cry...how different than what I...Her eyes closed and head bowed to his chest as if all of the energy had suddenly gone out of her body.

  “Oh No...No, you damned bastard...what are you? Don’t you work me with a spell...” she suddenly started to her senses.

  Marai touched her lips with his fingertips, kissing them gently; hushing her.

  I won’t let you work me...He whispered into her thoughts quite tenderly. This isn’t just another game in the alley, no random bachelor’s tent...

  Ariennu had frozen for a moment when she heard him say that.

  “If you had a problem with what I do, you should have come to me sooner…taken the edge off...” She felt him kiss her eyes and the stone in her brow.

  That kiss was becoming his special way of saluting all of them and the Child Stone within each of them...When he kissed hers, Naibe-Ellit always felt a little like fainting and soaring high at the same time. Now her thoughts blended with her sister-wife’s memory.

  “This isn’t just another game where you outsmart them and leave them suffering and begging, then cover it up...this is between us…This is what we will do This is for real.” he had whispered, looking steadily into her eyes and gliding gently.

  No game? Stupid man...it is a game. Count on me to be bored with this shkeid in a minute! She had scoffed internally. Men are just foolish enough to think it means something to us, the sex. her heart said.

  The game was just that...just sex, in healthy amounts, covered by a woman’s wiles and brassy ways and sometimes the ability to show some kind of neediness. Even when she had been young and later ill, she could play it like a champion...always, dancing, drinking, tempting, even putting on a pious face if she needed to. Through every chance meeting or longer and even torrid affair, she was always calculating, always knowing the right moves that could make men crazy.

  Naibe understood that game too well herself, even though everything for her had been instinct in those days. Marai had changed that. The young woman saw Ariennu try to whisper his name and find herself unable to say a thing. She demanded for him to stop the sweet touches and get to the business of pleasure. She hadn’t counted on tenderness from him.

  He stopped short of a kiss, taking in her breathing and cooling her with his own sigh.

  The too-pretty love talk that swept Naibe up each time she was was with him just made Ariennu dizzy. None of her long-studied tricks, used to evoke a man’s secret need for degradation or his desire to punish a woman, worked on the former shepherd. She started to spin out of control with so much giddy joy that it frightened her. Ariennu raised her hands to claw at his face, at one point, but her fingers softened at the last moment. She wanted to screech curses at him for his insolence; for bringing her so much unwarranted pleasure, but the words emerged as sobs of trembling ecstasy.

  Naibe-Ellit reflected for just a short moment on what she had with Marai. It was love of course, but it had become increasingly and almost evilly gentle over time, paired with even greater intensity than they had shared on their first night together.

  With only the one room to share between the four of them, the dark drape put between their sleep area and his bedding, hid few secrets. The great open window, even though covered by a drape much of the time had a way of informing any passers by below the apartment of anything other than their silence.

  Where had that been this afternoon, she wondered as she saw the memory? Every gentle caress he gave her became an act of worship...a recognition of the goddess within her, even if she denied its existence. He showed her his ultimate respect that assured her that she was safe...that it was alright to laugh, or sigh aloud, and very wrong to hide behind a hard and callous heart.

  Ariennu had lived far too long to let any mere man get to her soul that way. She learned early that sex, though quite a delight for her, was best used as a tool to get a good meal, some strong drink, or a soft bed, and a chance to take her advantage. So many countless times, as she traveled with N’ahab-Atall, when times had been rowdy and good, she was the predator. She was sent out to seduce the wealthy victim, drugging him if she needed to. She would waken after a brief rest and let her friends into the storehouse while she collected or stole anything of value within her grasp that had been in the man’s bedchamber. Now, Ari had the “Child-Stone enhanced skill” to make men forget that they had ever been with her, if she wished. She could transform the act between herself and strangers into a lascivious dream.

  Naibe reflected deeply through Ariennu’s memory of the afternoon with Marai. The odd glowing of softness and light extending from his face had enveloped them. She remembered how her own glowing self had entered him the first night and through all of the times with him. Her lips trembled, aching to feel that sensation for the thousandth time. Was it created by the calm silver blue light colored over his jet black eyes? He stilled her, gently asking.

  “Did you even get to name him?”

  “Who?” she paused, scoffing “Name who? Act like I don’t even move you...” She started to pout, unsatisfied.

  “Your son...the first one...” He gently answered, pausing because he knew she would be furious at his discovery.

  “Stop it!” She froz
e, all pleasure instantly fleeing. “Do not ask me…you stupid...”

  His eyes had shut as he sighed into her mouth, followed by a caress and gentle gliding. She very nearly quit him at that moment.

  Ariennu knew no man cared about a child unless a woman said it was his, even if it was a lie. Why did he want to ask her a question like that?

  Because it’s why you started running, isn’t it? his thoughts breathed through her.

  Her head bowed in a deepening storm of protest. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want anyone else finding that memory.

  Long ago, at barely fourteen years of age, when she had been a wealthy mans concubine, she became pregnant. She called the child “little bump” before he was born. Somehow, at the same time, the man she was with began to lose his fortune through a lot of bad luck, poor business ventures, and overly lavish trading. He was certain to lose all.

  Little Bump turned out to be a boy, which enraged the man’s chief wife. She was certain Ariennu had cast a spell on them to starve them until she could have him for herself. Within a day of thechild’s birth, servants in the house told Ari that the woman had pressed her husband into “Passing the child through the Flame” and giving him back to the god and goddess so that the wealth of the house would increase again and the obvious curse she had put on them could be dissolved.

  Still weak from a hard birth, she took that unamed child and fled the house in the night. Knowing she was destitute once again, she felt the child would starve and die along with her. That thought nearly killed young Ariennu and she vowed there would be no more children. A woman nearby whose own newborn son had just died, was grateful to nurse another. The wealth from it was good.

  Ariennu always wanted to come back to check on him, to see if he had survived, but it never happened. Even though she promised herself she wouldn’t get pregnant again, there had been four more pregnancies and births in the following years. Maldithu, the goddess of pregnancy and birth had been overly-generous with her.

  Each time, she found someone to take the child, then she moved on because a wretched free kuna, or “woman on her own making her way” was tied down or held back by the birthing of a child. She eventually when she wandered to the northern islands, she discovered the herbs and seeds that ended the problem before it began. Ultimately, “heart-seeds” as the giant fennel was called, gave her the tumors and the yellows that nearly killed her. All of that was long ago. She had buried it deep in the forgotten grave of bad memories until Marai had found it.

  Naibe grew puzzled at this stream of memory coming through the bliss of their lovemaking.

  Why is Marai doing this to her? Is this the same thing I did to him when I asked about his wife? Did he learn that from me? Her hand crept to Ariennu’s h hand and the latter sighed again, quite tired, as if she didn’t even care about her thoughts surfacing so clearly. She felt shipwrecked...and totally overwhelmed but in such a loving way that she couldn’t be angry for more than an instant.

  Naibe had never had a child. Perhaps she might have been pregnant once, she thought, but maybe it was just a tardy moon in her twisted and bloated little frame. Recently she had wanted to bear Marai a child and had wondered what it would be like to do that...to feel a little heart beating beneath hers.

  “I understand, sweet lady...” Naibe felt Marai saying in Ari’s memory. “and I know that’s where your heart grew hard. It was from those little ones that had to be let go...” he whispered. “But your heart never was that hard...I already knew you were the one who helped my sister Houra get away.” His smile warmed the room with a different way. Ariennu nodded a little, still misty.

  “Oh, I’ve helped people plenty of times over my years, but only when I see there’s some point to it for me.” Her smile became resolute, then softened as pleasure swept through her again. She struggled to tell the last of the secrets to him. For a moment, she touched his arm that was wrapped around her back as they sat facing each other. She needed him to listen.

  “You know…He wanted to keep your sister, N’Ahab did...” She smoothed Marai’s shoulder, then placed her head on it returning the curious embrace. She traced the curve of it with her fingers, dreamily remembering those days in the wilderness. “He was tired of me...going to kill me, because I was getting sick drunk too often and the illness had begun to take me over. It had always been that way with him...something new and different from what I was giving him. I didn’t care in those days as much as he thought I did. There were others in the camp who would do me in heartbeat. The women he took would get sick or die, because he was such a bastard. He would always come crawling back to me. What we had together was blazing good for the body...not good for much else tho.”. Ariennu’s eyes blinked once.

  “I was one of them when they came to the water-hole to talk to the young man, even though I stayed back at the camp. I was there when they brought the families while they slept. I had been the one who mixed the herb for my men to put in their beer. I just didn’t want you to know that about me when I knew you were talking about the same people, so I hid the truth.” She paused, waiting to be slapped ot pushed away in disgust.

  Marai merely blinked, growing momentarily sad, then kissed her mouth gently.

  “What became of Naim and the others?” he asked, remembering his vision of the pot with the bloody handprint on it and Sheb’s rant at his sons and wife at the young man’s empty tent.

  “Oh, they weren’t for us. There was a trading party following us, but they didn’t have the balls for the heavy work. We traded them right away for a fine profit...but no one died. One of the young men took a knife to the face and shoulder. Messy and a mark for life, but nothing to die of.” Ariennu couldn’t bring herself to look into Marai’s still compassionate eyes.

  “I..I don’t know what became of them. Wasn’t the point. He should have taken and traded all of them, but I heard the bastard bragging about how he lied to the trading party and said he’d turned all of them. He never intended to give your sister up. I saw when they brought her husband and the boys. I know what they did to break her spirit, too. She begged to do all of them, all of them if they would spare them...got through a few but they were making her men watch the whole time. It was getting too hard to keep them still, even with us beating on them. The bastards were getting too drunk to climb on her. I knew they would get tired of this and kill the males afterward anyway just to put out any fire she still had left.” The woman sniffed in momentary calm, smoothing the two damp tendrils of Marai’s shining hair away from his brow. Ariennu saw the same thing Naibe had seen.

  They look a little bit like horns, when they’re smoothed back along your head. Oh mercy me...would you look...I’ve drawn up a young Moloch to take me in the form of a gold and silver bull, but not one who would want the life of my child...Is that why he was asking about the babies? Ariennu thought to herself in a mixture of horror and delight.

  Marai paused again, saddened yet enchanted.

  “The dark figure who made her eat something, then helped them get away? It was still you, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded slowly, shadowing his face with hers so she could look at it more carefully. The golden and silver bull-man she thought she had seen for just a moment had faded into a merely pensive man

  “I knew I had to...to show N’Ahab I could still be the one for him. I knew if he didn’t end up killing her, he’d choose her instead of me for good and then, my life would be done. I got him drunk and rid him like a fiend to do it, too. I gave her the heart seeds, to clean their misery out of her womb. Last thing she needed was to swell up with the memories of what she did, especially if her men died anyway. She didn’t want it, but I made her swallow it. All I got out of it the whole thing was N’Ahab breaking my nose and my jaw and knocking out the teeth in the front that weren’t gone already. From then on I was counting the days until he gave the order to one of his men to put me out of both of our miseries.

  Deka came to us the next year after that. And
in another two came Naibe. Between them, he forgot about killing me.” she sighed.

  “There…thank you, sweet one, thank you…” He consoled her and kissed her with more passion than even she had thought possible.

  How can he be so tender after he’s learned how I helped destroy his family? How can he forgive me like this? It makes no sense. How can he desire me? she wondered.

  You know why...his thoughts answered very quickly. Because you, underneath it all knew the right thing to do, to ease them.

  I was trying to save my place and my neck! She snapped, starting to quit him; to dress and go back to the market alone.

  But that’s something, then, isn’t it? His thoughts called her back into his embrace And it stirred your sense of duty. You might have also poisoned them or stabbed them in the dark, but you gave them half a chance to run... and showed them to the hills to hide from your men.

  Yeah...Ariennu sighed. I suppose, I suppose...

  The rest of that afternoon, as they drifted in and out of passion, the laughter and jokes returned. They teased and talked about their lives, the Children of Stone, the future, and what all of it meant as they glided in purest friendship. They talked and spoke to each other’s hearts.

  Naibe sensed Ariennu’s hardness melting in Marai’s touch…So often she collapsed against his chest, sighing… Once she wiped his own tears from his face. She saw them start when he looked into her eyes and into her heart again, just as the sensuality of the moment became unbearable.

  “Why, Marai? Why this?” she gasped, kissing his mouth almost wildly between her words.

  “For your pain, all your life of misery, because your heart has forgotten how to weep...I can’t hate you... I can only love you, woman.” Naibe felt him whispering. That much the young woman understood. She knew how that plain little word “love” kept catching in the sojourner’s throat.