by Aaron Crash
Stars glittered through the patches of clouds above. Wind blew up the stairs, giving him a chill. At least his damn Flow robes served as another layer to keep him warm.
His alley was free from seawater. He walked to Lillee’s cell and knocked.
“Come in, Ymir.”
He cranked the handle to the side and stepped inside. “How did you know it was me?”
“I have no other friends.” She sat on her bed. Her room was a bit nicer than his, though they had the same furniture: a basin, a bed, a desk. Two silver candlesticks burned actual candles. She didn’t get those from Old Ironbound; no, she must’ve brought them from home. A sweet smoke rose from the flames. Her Knowing mirror, her parchment, pens, and inkwells lay organized on the desk next to her grimoire. Extra tunics, recently washed, hung on racks.
Ymir pulled out the desk chair and sat down. “Have you had dinner?”
Lillee shook her head. Her platinum hair was unbound and fell across her blue cape. Her pointed ears were lost in the fall. Eyes red from crying, her skin was pale as she caressed the gold spiral of her forearm cuff with her right hand.
She seemed in a bad way.
He asked another question. “Have you left your cell since your talk with Issa Leel?”
Another slow shake of her head.
The day before, she’d promised to trust him at some point with her story. Now was the time. She was in pain, needed to heal, and he thought he knew what would help.
He left her room, throwing the rusted iron door so it clanged against the wall. He wanted her to know he was frustrated with her. He might not like magic, but he loathed weakness, and she was being weak. She didn’t need to be. He left the door open so she’d know he’d be back.
He returned and slammed her door. He set his food pouch in front of her. “The dried seesee berries will give you the energy you need for your battle.” He set his wineskin next to it. “That will help dull some of the pain. Lastly, I bring you a gift that is very dear to me.”
He unfolded a leather square marked by grease and salt.
“What gift?” she asked in a dull voice.
“We call them naynay, smoked ground nuts in elk fat and salt. For the tundra clans, they are worth more than all the shecks in the Undergem Guild.” He said it confidently because shecks could buy you most anything on Raxid, but they couldn’t take you to the tundra or force a clan to make naynay for you. “Those are the last I will probably ever eat. The naynay are yours. Don’t insult me by refusing them.”
She didn’t move. He hadn’t heard her sing or hum a tune, and she was always singing.
He snapped his fingers. “You will eat. You will drink. You will talk.”
“What battle?” she whispered. “You mentioned a battle.”
“The battle you are so obviously fighting with yourself. I have very little patience for such things. You know what you have to do, and I am here. If you tarry, I will leave. My friends must be strong, especially when I find myself in such a wretched fucking place as this.”
There—a smile, the first arrow taking flight in Lillee’s battle. “Because for some things, there is no better salve than words.”
Ymir couldn’t help but laugh. “And I told Gharam that words are just words. Lucky he isn’t familiar with the Sacred Mysteries of the Ax, or I would’ve lost my argument with him. Today I have been victorious in all my endeavors. I will not fail in this battle.”
“Words aren’t just words. Words can cut flesh better than any knife. The Ohlyrra are poets and storytellers. We know. We know.” Lillee lifted a single naynay and put it to her lips. She crunched down, her eyes fluttering. “Delicious. I haven’t had anything like them in my life.”
“They taste of the tundra.”
She offered him one.
He declined. “No, I’ve eaten my fill. The wine only makes them better. I want to watch you while you eat. Tell me more about the Ohlyrra and words.”
“A story can lift you up when nothing else can. A poem can capture a single moment better than our eyes. There is power in words. Why else would the four magics require a verbal component?” She sipped the wine and swayed forward. “The naynay and the wine, together, very good.”
“We don’t have seesee wine, only the berries,” he said. “It won’t be the same but eat them all together.”
She did as she was told, her delicate white fingers stained by the purplish red of the dried seesee. Mixing the berries with the naynay had her sighing with pleasure.
“A steaming elk steak off the fire, along with naynay, is the perfect meal,” he said.
“Did you get in trouble for hitting that man?” Lillee asked.
Ymir huffed. “He’s a poor excuse for a man. I was spoken sternly to, but it seems to me, if words matter, he needed to understand that his words toward me should be kind. Cruelty will not be tolerated.” Ymir snapped his fingers again. “We are not here to talk about me. We are here for your battle.”
“A battle that will heal me?” she asked
“Any sickness can be healed. Even the dimmest clan knows that. Which are the Sea Cow Clan. Very dim.” He had to chuckle. The Sea Cow Clan didn’t really exist. They were a joke. When you needed to refer to stupidity, you would tell a story about the made-up clan. Again, he saw the power of words.
“I don’t even know where to begin.” She ate the last of the naynay. His heart hurt a bit at their loss. Gifts, however, were important. And it was only food.
He motioned to her face and her arm. “What is the tattoo? No other elf at Old Ironbound has one but you. All you Ohlyrra have the cuff. Tell me about both.”
Lillee held the wineskin in motionless fingers. “You’ll hate me if I tell you.”
“I’ll hate you more if you don’t. And I’m not your only friend. Kacky and Gluck like you all right.”
Lillee put the cork stopper in the neck of the skin. “They are not very bright. Though they are surly with others, they try to be kind to me. And kindness is better than cleverness. Professor Leel hates me.”
“She hates me as well. We will fight her together until we can find better enemies.” He frowned at her. “You’re avoiding the question. Tattoo. Jewelry. Tell me now.”
Lillee dropped her head. “Professor Leel warned me that I have already dishonored my people. She knew my parents, the king of Greenhome and my mothers. That’s in the eastern forests. We are a very strong, lawful people, and we adore the king and his queens.”
“Do you have harems like the orcs?” Ymir asked.
“We are somewhat like them. They have the pits, their arenas, where Gruul women fight for their choice of husbands and families. For the Ohlyrra, husbands are chosen for you, and you join vast families where you are but one wife of many. It doesn’t matter, however. For you see, the Ohlyrra have conquered jealousy just as we have conquered our sexual desire.” She swallowed hard and toyed with her cuff. “Because of the essess.”
Ymir saw the leather square, lifted it, and licked the last of the grease and salt from it. They collected the salt from mines spread about the tundra. It was as valuable as it was delicious. “So, that piece of arm jewelry controls your lust. It’s fucking magic, isn’t it?”
She nodded. A shadowy grin appeared on her lips. “It’s not fucking magic. The essess enchantment is the opposite.”
That made him laugh. “So when you and I were on the beach, it slipped a bit, and that is why we could enjoy each other. That is why you changed.”
She didn’t respond. She sat, holding the cuff, gripping it.
“And you can lock it closed, can’t you?” he asked.
Head down, face covered by her hair, tears dripped onto her tunic. “Only the weak lock their essess. When we meet other elves, we look to see if they are locked. I was locked for a time, and I was teased for it. Everyone can control themselves, it seems, except for me. I want to. I can’t.”
This was complete idiocy to him. “You want to control your desire? Why not let it out and
enjoy it, like you do a meal, like you enjoy the wind, or the thrill of the hunt, or the joy of battle?”
“The Ohlyrran ideal is work,” she said in a voice edged by anger. “The art we make, the civilization we create, is important. Our music, right now, is making so many people happy in the Throne Auditorium. And if one of those musicians left to make love with an admirer? The music would suffer. We live to work. Sex gets in the way of work.”
Ymir set the leather naynay square on the desk. “You are a sad people. You give others happiness, but you do not take any for yourselves. And you call us barbarians.” He shook his head, not understanding such madness.
Lillee shook her hair back, her face bright red with rage. He was seeing her fury for the first time, and he liked it. “Our art has uplifted kingdoms and given untold souls hope. What has your little wolf clan done except fuck elk and howl at the moon. You are at the top of the world, struggling to exist, when you could come south and not have to eat frozen fat in the middle of winter while your babies freeze to death.”
Ymir wanted to laugh, loud and long, at her words. In fact, he did enjoy frozen fat and he’d never fucked an elk, though he’d sung songs about such things. As for the babies, they kept them warm. Everyone was kept warm in the clan, except the weak, but they went willingly to the storms for the good of their kin. Those were the chains of their service to one another, and why the three questions about sex were so critical.
Instead of laughing, he looked her right in her green, platinum-flecked eyes. “Then remove your essess and celebrate your desire. You can’t, though. You said it yourself. So perhaps you elves like being dead inside, and the world is better for it, and whatever other nonsense you said.”
“It’s not nonsense!” She leapt to her feet. “It is the way things should be. You revel in your animal instincts, when you should control them.”
He rose to his feet. He kept his voice even. “I’ve controlled them plenty. I didn’t kill that Daris Cujan asshole. I haven’t buried my ax in Gurla’s skull for making me clean floors. When you answered no to the three question, I didn’t rape you.”
“But you’ve raped others.”
That accusation was laughable, and it angered him. “No. I’ve killed those who did. The three questions are important.” He leaned down into her face. “What is the tattoo?”
“My shame. It’s my shame. I was a princess of Greenhome. I was going to go to a good family, and I would have ruled. I would have played my music, and written my songs, told stories, and drawn the sunrise on the Green Water Sea. My songs would’ve been sung a thousand years from now, ten thousand years, a million, until the ages ended as the new Tree of Life took root.”
Ymir hissed at her. “This is growing tiresome. If you are good with words, tell me your story and make me understand.”
She shook the cuff on her arm. “This thing—I hate it. I shouldn’t, but I do. I want to feel my pleasure. I want to feel everything I can, and though the Ohlyrra live a thousand years, there is so much pleasure to explore. Others can forget they even have an oheesy. I can’t. Ever. I feel my sex and my desire, and when I wear the essess, they don’t mean anything to me. Until I take it off. And then all I feel is shame. Don’t you see? I’m caught. I can’t forget, and I can’t fling it aside, and so I live tortured.”
“But you did take it off.” He said the words softly and touched his left temple. The time for shouting was over. He’d woken her warrior spirit, and she was fighting now, as truly as if she’d been his shieldmaiden in a war against the White Osprey Clan.
“I did take off the essess,” she said softly. “I had friends, free spirits, who weren’t satisfied with their magic, their studies, or their art. We would sneak off into the forests. We called ourselves the Cult of Chaos and Desire. We would cast off our essess, and dance naked, and drink wine, and fuck until we were sore. Until the men dribbled empty, and the women couldn’t walk. Then we would sneak back to our lives. We thought we could control it. We thought no one would discover our rebellion.”
She was cursing, not a very Ohlyrran thing to do, but she was clearly not a typical elf. She had a temper, she had desire, and though she was an artist, she was a warrior as well.
Lillee was trembling. Tears streamed down her face, twin tracks caught in the candlelight. The sun was gone, a wind had picked up, and the ocean was thrashing the coast. Water leaked down from seams around the glass window. Now was the time to soothe her as she said these final words that would heal her.
He took her hand. “You were caught. They branded you. You lost everything.”
Eyes squeezed shut, she nodded. “The first of us who were caught were marked with the Sullied symbol. In my language, sola. The ones already marked were made celibate permanently. S for Sullied. K for kenarra. The kenarra would never desire sex, or families, or children. Those who are celibate don’t wear the forearm cuff, and even if they do, they are marked with a K through the S, and so everyone knows who they are and what they have done.”
Lillee fell into Ymir’s arms, and he held her. The entire Ohlyrra culture seemed evil and asinine to him. They destroyed the souls of their people. They kept their people enslaved, sexless, working, always working. The clans spoke of how deranged Therans were, and here he was, very good friends with such a wounded woman.
Lillee wasn’t sobbing, not like she’d been on the beach. She was quiet, and heartbroken. She pushed her face into the chest of his leather shirt.
He caressed her soft, straight hair. “I don’t fuck elk, though I have been known to howl at the moon. We are the Black Wolf Clan, after all.”
She laughed a little. “You must hate me for being weak. You said you hated weakness, and now you know my shame. I couldn’t control myself. I still can’t. I still slip off the essess to pleasure myself at night.” She swallowed hard. “Like last night, when I drank you in, I slept for a time, but I slipped back to my room. There, I took off the cuff, and rubbed myself, thinking of how good you smelled, how sweet you tasted.”
“I’m glad you think so highly of me,” he joked.
That made her laugh. “I’ve thought of a few other women I’ve met here, like that Jenny girl. But none of the other men interest me. I only want you. But you can’t want me.”
“Why not? I don’t buy into your crazy elkshit ideas.”
Wrong thing to say. She thrust herself off him. “We can’t be together. You’ll never understand me.” She stood with her back to him.
“And I could say the same. We come from two different races, from two different parts of the world, and yet we are friends. The sex will bind us together, and we both want that. And we both want each other. Tell me I’m wrong.”
She turned slowly around. “When I told my father that I wanted to come here instead of an Ohlyrran college, he said he wouldn’t give me a single sheck. He wouldn’t even let me bring my lute. I was dead to him. And of course, he was sad, because while he doesn’t feel desire, he still has emotions. My mother, all my mothers, tried to talk me out of it, but in the end, I knew I’d never have a home there.”
“Take off the essess,” Ymir urged. “And when people ask about it, tell them it’s none of their business. If anyone says anything further, I will hurt them. I will break them.” His blood was up, and he was curious and turned on, wondering how violent Ohlyrran desires were when unleashed.
More than that, he knew, he was angry because, like him, she was an outcast. Both had been exiled from their families and friends and were now living half underwater in freezing rooms of bare rock.
She smiled, and it was the most wounded thing he’d ever seen. “For the rest of my life, I will fight with myself, and I will feel shame. I know this. How can I be with anyone when I’m so conflicted? It seems your salve has failed to heal me.”
“You need to be with someone who doesn’t care about your conflict. Yes, maybe words are just words, and the salve has failed. I have another kind of medicine for you.”
A wave stru
ck the window. Water dripped down the already stained wall.
He locked eyes with her. “Take off the cuff. Answer the three questions. And then, let us celebrate life like you did with the Cult of Chaos and Desire. Let us be chaos and desire.”
Her whisper seemed louder than the storm outside. “If I did that, I would be walking away from the ways of my people.”
“You have no people to walk away from,” he said. “And neither do I.”
The leather square from the naynay lay on the desk, empty.
Lillee slipped off the essess. The cuff clattered to the stone floor.
Chapter Seventeen
YMIR WAITED FOR SOMETHING to happen. Would Lillee’s skin burst into flames? Would she grow horns? Before, on the beach, she’d only had the cuff half off. Now that the essess rolled slightly on the smooth stone floor, something more dramatic might happen.
Lillee pulled her hair into a ponytail. She tied her platinum locks with a gold ribbon.
The whole air vibrated, and Ymir felt the hair on his arms lift. Would he float? Would he have a vision? He hoped not—there was no place else he’d rather be.
The Ohlyrran woman stared into his eyes. “I can’t get pregnant. Not because humans and elves can’t make children. It’s from the Withering. That’s one of your questions, correct?”
Ymir nodded. “Will what we do disrespect your family?”
“No. Like you said, I have no family, and very little money. It’s why I’m down here in the sea cells with you.”
A wave crashed, bringing fresh mist and the scent of salt. He barely smelled it. The elf’s scent filled his senses.
“And so the first question becomes the last,” Ymir said. “I’m sure you remember it. Before you answer, think of yourself as my Lillee and not a princess of Greenhome.”
“Greenhome. My city. My people.” She covered her eyes with her left hand. Her right rested on her belly. “Will I disrespect myself? That is the question. As an Ohlyrran princess, yes, yes, I will by giving into my desires. As your Lillee? No, never.”
