by Jane Kindred
Jak ignored it. “Why don’t you answer these absurd suspicions, Ra? Tell them they have nothing to fear.”
“Renaissance prevaricates.” Ra returned to playing with her hair. “Someone told me that once.” The others shifted uncomfortably.
“I must hear it from Ra.” Rem’s expression was grim. “Are you truly one of them?”
Ra spread out her hands as if to show they held no weapons. Though for Ra, of course, none would be needed. “One of them?” she repeated. “Maísch ahnahttas.”
The moundholders exchanged looks.
“And what did she just say?” asked Rem.
“I don’t know.” Jak laid a hand on Ra’s arm. “Ra, you spoke in Deltan.”
“Did I?” Her focus seemed vague. “I am one of you. I am Ra.”
“But are you Meer?” insisted Peta.
“Of course.”
It was so permanent. So final. So matter-of-fact. They were stricken into silence for a moment.
Rem drew in a breath and spoke. “Then you’re not one of us,” he decreed. “We have never harbored any of that breed. We stay out of Deltan politics.”
Jak jumped up from the bench, ears almost deafened by the blood pounding in them. “This is not politics, Oldman. This is one of your daughters. Her name is in the moundhold.”
“Not anymore,” said Rem. “I’m sorry. It was a mistake.”
Dumbfounded, Jak looked at Geffn, but Geffn was silent, complicit. Why had they brought her here from Rhyman and her temple? Why had they even bothered?
“If you had consulted us,” said Rem as if in answer to Jak’s thoughts, “we would have voted against your going to the Delta. Yet you involved Geffn in this. You endangered both Geffn and yourself in pursuit of a recreant. She left. You should have let her go.”
Jak stared at them, the silent, collective mind in agreement. They were the family that had been for Jak what Fyn and Kol had never been. They had accepted every awkward circumstance Jak had presented: the handfasting to Geffn, two years Jak’s junior, when he was only eighteen; the gradual change in Jak from female to ungendered; the divorce, unspoken but obvious; the insinuation of Ahr into the fringes of the community. And once, Ra.
But now they stood against Jak, immovable, unfamilial. A mound of strangers. Jak took Ra’s arm above the elbow and held it out in its narrow kerum-brown sleeve. Ra smiled.
“Look at her,” Jak insisted, pained. “Don’t you see she has wasted? Don’t you see she’s not well?” Geffn lowered his eyes. At least he was ashamed.
Peta looked steadily at Jak. “I see madness.”
Jak swung Ra into a circle of protectiveness, arms shielding her. She seemed to float with Jak as in a dance.
“RemPetaJakGeffnMellKeiren,” said Rem solemnly.
“No,” said Jak. “RemPetaGeffnMellKeiren.”
Ra watched as Jak packed the small assortment of dungarees, work shirts and sweaters. A dress hung solitary in the empty wardrobe, fawn lace. It must have belonged to the other Jak, the wife. It was a wedding dress.
Ra had nothing to bring away. She stood in the doorway, watching Jak dismantle the trappings of home, of belonging.
She leaned against the post. How sad Jak looked. Ra seemed to do that to people. “I can go back to the Delta. Your people are here.”
Jak looked up. “No. No, Ra. How can you talk of leaving me?”
“I only want you to have an option. It isn’t your fault I’m what I am. Why should you suffer for it?” For Jak was suffering. It was palpable.
Jak straightened and slung the duffel of clothes and personal effects over one shoulder, crossing to Ra beneath the lintel to take her face in both rough hands and kiss her. “I would suffer a thousand times this if you left me.”
Ra put her hand over Jak’s heart, cupping the small mound beneath the shirt. Her secret. Hers. Jak flinched, made a sound. But the sound wasn’t one of discomfort. Ra commanded Jak. If Jak had a cock, it would be standing at attention. Hers. She was selfish, always had been. It came of being dressed and bathed and anointed by right for years without number.
They wrapped themselves for the outdoors once more and climbed the curved stairs out of Mound RemPetaGeffnMellKeiren. Jak made no acknowledgment of their former moundmates as they went, and so there were no good-byes. Geffn, in any case, had shut himself in his room.
A nearly perfect moon hung cold and silver above the moor.
“Where are we going?” asked Ra brightly.
“Mound Ahr,” said Jak. “It’s empty.”
Of course it was, for Ahr had… What had Ahr done? She was absent. She hid in her societal virginity somewhere, round in the belly from the inspiration of a god.
A shadow crossed the moon, and Ra stumbled, a bit of nothing in Jak’s arms as Jak caught her. The mound wasn’t far. It should have been; it had been a good distance in the snow on that first evening of her renaissance. But she’d been thinking of nothing, and somehow they’d crossed a great deal of terrain.
Inside, the mound was fresh and clean. Like a Meeric temple, the window had no pane. Only the blanket, stretched across the empty casement, kept out the elements. It was cold, but Ra conjured a fire. Jak shivered despite the warm flare as the blaze sprang up. It was so like that other night when Ra had uncovered a dead daughter in the melting snow of memory. She didn’t seem to mind the association of this place. Perhaps it was nothing to the stain of her past life on everything in Rhyman. Perhaps this, in comparison, was virgin territory.
Ra crossed the room to where Jak stood dubiously by the table, having set down the duffel. She took off Jak’s wrap. “I want to fuck you,” she said again, and Jak laughed, but Ra was deadly serious.
She lifted Jak to the table—it was startling, being lifted off the ground by a reed of a woman—and leapt over Jak’s body with the nimbleness of a cat. Jak was stunned, flooded with an instant, insistent need for her. With Geffn, Jak had always been the instigator, retaining control, but Ra made it seem an honor to be possessed.
While Ra tore the buttons from Jak’s shirt, Jak reached up to pull the sleek sweater over Ra’s head, but it was tight and intractable, as though she’d poured it over herself. Perhaps she had.
“Rip it open.” Ra’s voice and eyes were intense with desire. “I can make another.” Jak didn’t pause to consider, just obeyed, gripping the fabric at the center in both fists and tearing it into a V to free Ra from the garment. Though not as full as they’d been when she’d stood unabashedly naked in Jak’s room on that first day, still, Ra’s breasts were extraordinary. So Jak had noticed them that day, despite sophistic inward assurances that Ra’s parts were inconsequential. Of course Jak had. What a liar Jak was.
Ra sat back on her heels and drew Jak’s hands to her, placing them against the pale curves of her breasts. “Touch me,” she whispered. “I have never been touched.” Of course it was true. Ra’s body was newly renaissanced from the ashes of her self-conjured immolation.
Jak cupped the smooth skin, thumbs tracing over the garnet peaks, and when Ra closed her eyes with a soft sigh, Jak dared to slip one arm around her waist and draw her down to taste the pristine skin. She seemed to melt against Jak’s tongue like a delicately sweetened confection of butter mint or marzipan.
But Jak’s brief taste was taken away without warning. Ra was moving downward, prowling. She ripped the laces from Jak’s pants, and Jak felt a sharp tremor, brief, and gone in an instant, like a preliminary climax.
“Ai, but you’re beautiful.” Ra traced Jak’s sex with her finger as she revealed it. She kissed the fine hair at the top of the mound, plying her fingers against the heat of Jak’s flesh. Jak tensed, waiting for them to penetrate, but Ra stopped and brushed the back of her hand against Jak’s cheek.
“Mené Jak,” whispered Ra. “Mené lif. What is it? What have I done?”
“What do yo
u mean?” Jak’s brow wrinkled. “Why did you stop?”
Ra lifted a thread of hair from Jak’s warm cheek. “Mené midtlif. How can you lie to me?”
“Lie?” Jak pulled away, putting a subtle space of inches between them, adopting the protective stance: the neutral Jak, the unaffected. “What are you talking about?”
“How can I take pleasure in what clearly torments you? How can you expect me to invade you as though I were some unfeeling thing?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jak snapped, sitting up. “Why are you doing this? Stop it!”
“Mené midtlif—”
“What is that?” Jak demanded. “What are you saying?”
Ra reached out to Jak and grasped one bristling shoulder despite resistance. “It means my love,” said Ra. “My love.”
Jak’s heart twisted with conflict, suspended on the corkscrew of this word. Jak hadn’t asked for this. It was a burden passed between them, too tremendous to lift. Never mind that Jak had said to Ahr, “I do love Ra.” It wasn’t the same. That was not this. That was much safer.
Jak withdrew with resolve. Here it was again: presumption. Ra was no better than Ahr, no better than Geffn. She thought she owned Jak because of a touch between them. More than a touch, Jak. The thought was quashed. Ra had demeaned their affection.
Jak felt clammy, exposed. The gradual slip, the reluctant allowances, the concessions Jak made to those whom it might be said Jak loved—they were idiotic mistakes, eroding the identity Jak had built with difficulty. No more and no less than the idiotic mistake of Geffn, corrupted at Jak’s hands, for which Jak had paid with the bond of matrimony. A terrible feeling was stealing over Jak again, the feeling of being caught, and caught up, in doing something shameful and debased.
Fyn had caught Jak once, hiding under a blanket, waiting for something—probably for Fyn and Kol to stop fighting. They were always at it, but would invariably make up with an overly loud round of lovemaking. So it was actually this Jak was hiding from, the unpleasant sound of Fyn’s dubious pleasure.
As a distraction from the shrieking in the other room, Jak had idly indulged in self-exploration. The sensations in that uncharted territory were strange at first, but oddly thrilling. Jak began to rub the spot that tingled, to relieve it, make it die down as one did with an itch, and discovered more of this feeling instead of less. Rubbing the flesh almost raw, Jak at last felt extraordinarily light and heavy at once, the entire surface of Jak’s skin exploding in minute bursts of electricity as though pricked all over with delicate pins.
And then Fyn was yanking the blanket off (oh gods, they saw), cheeks pink with outrage for some unfathomable reason, slapping Jak and calling Jak a dirty little pervert. Jak had cried, because it was something Jak used to do, and the worst part was (theworstpart, theworstpart) not being discovered by Fyn, but that Kol stood watching, invasive, staring unapologetically at Jak’s exposed sex.
Jak had gone somewhere else. Ra put a hand on her lover’s arm and Jak recoiled. “Jak.” Ra tried to keep her voice soft and unthreatening. “I am Meer. If you don’t want me to know your thoughts, don’t think so loudly. I think it’s fair I warn you.”
Jak sat with knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, hidden things kept hidden. “You’re spying on me?” The dusting of freckles was stark against skin white with shock and anger. “You read my mind?”
“No, not that, lif, not exactly.” Ra tried to comfort and was rebuffed. “The Meer…our heads are teeming with pictures.” She had never explained this to anyone. It was beyond explanation. “Most are meaningless. We learn to ignore. But when someone nearby is entranced like that, lost in thought—dreams, reverie—those pictures are loud. Vivid. I wanted you to know you were doing it, because of course you couldn’t know. No one but the Meer have ever known.”
Jak was silent, chin against the drawn-up knees. Ra brought one of the hand-woven blankets from the duffel, but Jak ignored it, and Ra slipped it over the cool shoulders. There was a block of lead in Ra’s chest—Jak’s pain. It was hard to breathe.
“I’m sorry, Jak. I never meant anything to cause you shame. I’ve been too presumptive with you, of your nature. I didn’t mean to.” The lead was squeezing her. She couldn’t stand it. Her eyes were filling with red. She would not do this, would not cry. She was older now than the Ra who had first stumbled into Haethfalt with her naked emotions.
Jak was watching her. “‘Meer’s tears.’ Do you know that saying?”
One shocked tear escaped, and Ra slashed it away, aware of the healing marks on her face from MeerShiva’s wrath after she’d made the mistake of thinking Shiva weak. The words were an insult, a cold and terrible one from Jak. Meer’s tears: blood conjured for effect, when their tears were just saltwater like everyone else’s. But Jak knew that wasn’t true. It had been cruel.
“I’ll sleep by the window.” She stepped back, her words toneless. “You have the hearth. Meer don’t feel the cold like you. We don’t feel anything like you.”
Ra climbed beneath a blanket by the window and closed her eyes. Her head hurt so. There was a reason, but she couldn’t think of it. Her conjured sweater was torn down the center. She should conjure another. When had she conjured this one? It was too difficult to recall. She was so tired.
Several hours into the night, Ra woke briefly, her head fuzzy. Jak had crept from the hearth, warm with Ra’s fire, and climbed under the blanket, slipping hot arms around her and pulling her next to the fervid body.
Jak nuzzled against her neck. “I’m sorry.”
“Jak,” murmured Ra, profoundly comforted, like someone dragged back from the brink of death. They slept, Jak’s hands warming her uncovered breasts.
In the morning, awakening with the silk and pearl of Ra’s breasts in hand, Jak roused Ra from sleep by anointing them with kisses. Ra was the possessed for a change, and Jak’s mouth moved from breasts to ribs to abdomen to belly, nipped at her thighs, buried in the rich curls below her hips. But Ra’s hand stopped Jak from kissing the wine-tinted blush between her thighs.
“Why?” Jak looked up into Ra’s ebony eyes. “I want to please you.”
Ra shook her head. “If yours is off limits, then mine is too. Don’t look like that. I’m not punishing you. It would be unfair. I cannot take from you what you won’t take from me. And you have no idea how badly I want it.”
Jak climbed up the length of Ra’s smooth body, laid bare in Jak’s descent but for the tattered sweater, and lay against her, head on the pillow of her breasts. The room was purple with light diffused through the blanket window. In the kitchen, the pendulum of the clock swung, weights ticking as gravity worked upon them. Jak didn’t remember Ahr having a clock.
“We forgot to eat yesterday,” mused Ra after a bit.
Jak sat up in dismay.
“Sooth, Ra. No, lie down. You’re going to be fed.” Jak jumped up and surveyed the kitchen fluttering with light through the makeshift windowpane. Empty. This was the same kitchen in which they’d been snowbound, picked clean by Jak and Ahr before setting out for Rhyman. There was nothing here to make.
“Come back to bed,” Ra said with a laugh, arms outstretched. “Let me eat you.”
“It’s not funny,” Jak protested. “You need to eat. I’ll go to RemPeta. They’ll lend me something.”
Ra laughed again. “A Meer is in your bed, and still you worry about lack. You want to feed me? What, lif, oranges? Berries? Flat cakes? Ham?” They were tumbling from her words and into reality, appearing on a generous mother-of-pearl tray in Ra’s lap. “Come back to bed. I’ll be good. I’ll eat what you tell me.”
They slept again after they’d eaten their fill, drifting off by the fire and not waking until after dark. Both were uncomfortable from having forgotten to relieve themselves, and Ahr had no indoor privy, only a wooden outhouse behind the mound, unless they wanted to use the p
iss-pot. They raced outside in the chilly dark, naked and laughing, and Ra nearly wet herself when Jak beat her to the outhouse.
Leaning back against the closed door, Ra waited outside, noting Ahr had chosen to carve the feminine moon rather than the masculine sun for the door’s ventilation. Stars soared overhead as well, with a real moon to pale the cutout—full tonight and lighting the glen below Mound Ahr over a cluster of silver-etched trees.
Her mind was full again too. Were those pieces of diamond pressed into the dome at Ludtaht Ra? That piece like a moon-cake—she must put them in the oven for the Heart of Winter. But was it winter?
Someone’s coming. There was someone coming through the darkness she didn’t want to know—perhaps her mother, Shiva, remote and gliding through the jade glass of her temple like a ruby swan on a pearl lake, while Ra learned the lessons of stillness, waiting. Waiting…
Yes, she was waiting. Standing without moving. Waiting for something to happen. Something terrible. Trying not to be heard. Oh god, would he come in here? Would he find her? Please don’t let him come in.
This was not one of her unanchored memories; it belonged to someone else. She was dimly aware of that, had never been in this room, this indoor privy chamber where she now pressed flat against the cold wall, heart beating too loudly. Kol will hear, and Fyn isn’t home.
The memory belonged to a child.
The door to the privy opens, blinding light from the passageway flooding the room—a lamp held in Kol’s hand. He brings it in and closes the door, and she’s exposed again: a rabbit under the white glare of a bright owl’s eye. The owl comes closer, saying nothing, staring intently with the raptor’s split attention, an ear out for Fyn’s return. She tries to press deeper into the wall, but there’s nowhere to go.
Where only his gaze exposed her before, he takes it further, exposing her body without consent while she stands helpless, staring into the light, trying not to be there, trying not to feel.
Satisfied at last with his exploration, Kol washes up in the basin and goes out, taking his owl-eye light with him. Too terrified to move, she wets herself without making it to the pot two feet away. Warmth spills down to the floor.
