by kubasik
Placing my back against the headboard, I pulled her close. This startled her, and then she was afraid of me. But when I did not pull her, she slowly, hesitantly, lowered her head against my chest. I waited until she was comfortable with it. Her hand pressed against my chest, as if ready to push herself away from me, ready for trouble.
I put my hand on hers, just heavily enough to let her know I had done it. Nothing dramatic. Flair was for the stories. Here, with our damaged lives, a slower pace was required. Finally she let her weight press against mine. After a moment of tension, she sighed. Comfortable. With the words of her narrative in my minds I wrapped my arms around her flesh. I tightened just enough for her to know my arms were around her. Her father may have imprisoned her touch, but around that prison, I offered a siege of affection. She sighed again, snuggled against me.
Strange. I felt strange. Good, but strange. Different. No motion. No frantic need to escape affection or prove it. Simply present with someone. Offering something simple, and receiving something simple. Yet so— so—There are no words for it, I suppose, which is why we share part of our stories with touch.
10
We rested like that for a very long time. Fell asleep. When we woke, we were still in each other's arms. I went to get the liquid from the fountain. We drank. Then she pulled me close, and we held each other again. Outside, through the window, the stars shone clearly over the red, glowing sea. I remembered all my star maps, my attempts to correlate events in my life with the patterns of the stars. At no time had I ever conceived of circumstances so strange and so gentle in my life.
After a while I found myself becoming fidgety. But Kyrethe seemed content to hold me tight. Thoughts of my mother returned, panicked me. Made me tighten my grip. Kyrethe simply cuddled closer. I relaxed again. A ridiculously obvious revelation flashed across my thoughts—Kyrethe was not my mother. Would never be.
I relaxed.
Days passed. Massages and cuddling. Kyrethe wanted to dance. Dances from her childhood, close and intimate. I was completely unprepared. Since Garlthik had initiated me in the ways of the thief adept so many years before, motion was a very private thing.
Secretive and silent. Her dance—danced to a tune she hummed so badly it made me laugh with pleasure at her earnestness—made us dance together. Closely. Slowly. With care and respect for the other person. It took me time. I kept moving away from her, embarrassed. She was patient. She taught me to wait. Hand in the hand. Hand around the waist, each touch, mattered.
Dancing. Massages. Hugs. I did not kiss her, for I still did not want to take from her lips what her lips could not receive.
She startled me awake one night with abrupt motion. I tried to calm her down, but she jerked her arms away from me, sitting back. In the starlight I saw her touch her face. A smile appeared, which quickly dissolved as tears filled her eyes. She touched them, the tears, and pressed her hands together. She smiled again. Placed her fingertips against her lips. Rubbed the moisture against them. I only had time to realize what was happening when she put her hands out blindly toward me, found my face, and pressed it as she had so many times before. Exploring. But this time the touch was light. She could feel.
Her breathing became surprised and labored as her body wracked with sobs. She laughed as tears streamed down her face. "I can touch!" she exclaimed. "I can touch!" Laughter and tears came to me as well, and in all of my life, as a witness to many strange events, I had never seen anything so miraculous. We embraced, our tears mingling on our cheeks, and more tears came to me as I realized how wonderful it was that she could feel my tears.
Our faces became slick from our tears, and we laughed and pulled away from each other.
Over and over again she told me she could feel. She touched my face again, then the fabric of my ragged clothes. "Torn!" she shouted with glee. She grabbed the fabric of the sheets, clutched it in her hand. Drove her face into the material. She stumbled out of bed, still blind, but too excited to care about careful movement. She froze on the smooth stone floor, smiling, letting the soles of her feet enjoy the sensation of stepping out of bed, a sensation so long lost to her. She then scraped her feet against the floor, sliding, twirling.
Then she dropped to the floor, pressed her face to the stone.
A breeze came in through the window, warm and dry. Instantly alert, she raised herself from the floor. She started for the window. I was out of the bed in a flash, hand on her elbow, making sure she didn't plunge to her death in her haste. "Air! I can feel the air. A wind!" We reached the window. The breeze caught up her hair, made it blow around her head. She smiled so happily—not a day over six, suddenly aware of the beauty of the world. She raised her arms wide, laughing. She turned to me. "Take me outside! Take me outside!”
And so I did. With care I walked her over the rough stones. "It hurts!" she said happily, for our feet were bare, and the stones did scrape a bit. "I love it! And the air! There is air everywhere"
We reached the top of a small hill and she spread her arms wide. Laughing, laughing, laughing, turning every once in a while, lost in her perceptions. Never in my life had I seen anyone so beautiful. I had thought beauty was something that sat on the flesh. It is not. Beauty is the ability to perceive more beauty.
A new impulse of excitement clutched her wildly, and she blindly sent her arms out to find me. Our hands met, and she pulled me close to her. Softly, like a child with a careful secret, she said, "I can feel." The laughter had subsided now, and the weight of the miracle filled her voice. I touched her lips with my fingers. She pressed her fingers against my lips. Tentatively, we touched each other's faces, exploring cheeks, forehead.
The curve of the ear. Our hands slid around the back of each other's head. We drew closer.
We kissed.
The air around us, warmed by the sea, swirled in light breezes. Sweat began to form, smooth our skin, sliding. Kyrethe's breathing increased in pace. She kissed my neck. I pulled her closer. Her hands fumbled for my clothes and with unexpected energy she ripped my shirt open.
The time of patience had come to an end.
I scooped her up in my arms. All the while I carried her she kissed my chest. Pressed her tongue against my flesh and tasted my sweat. Dragged her fingertips down my back. I felt the Passion of Astendar around us, encouraging our frantic abandon into lust. Without noticing the steps of the journey, we arrived at the bed. Our clothes on the floor. I kissed her shoulder. She ran her hands over my head. Both of us sighing— gasping—with pleasure. All of her was a delight to touch. To discover. She seemed to enjoy exploring me as well. Each of us finding each spot that made the other laugh with the joy of touching. Being touched.
Frantic in energy, but slow in time, we delighted each other for hours. When finally I entered her, the coupling spread out to all our flesh, now shared, our stories intertwining, not as an incident, but as a shared narrative.
Time passed, thrusting. Nips and licks, laughter, sighs and gasps. She began giggling uncontrollably. Her laughter, her belly shaking wildly against mine, was infectious. We laughed and laughed, our laughter transforming into shrieks of ecstasy, bodies quivering wildly, arms and legs wrapped tightly against each other for love and safety. Our bodies froze, tense, Astendar with us, discreetly, somewhere, I know, the moment extended by the Passion's presence, the world outside no longer a concern. We had, damaged though we both were, met, connected. Shared.
Long gasps rushed from us as we exhaled, time starting again. We did not unravel our limbs, but stayed tangled, flesh against flesh. Content. Sweaty and wet. We kissed. Again and again. A long time, until sleep came over—well, me at least. And perhaps for the first time since I was a boy, I slept well.
11
She woke me with her touch. Trying to get me in shape. "Let's do it again," she said, when she realized I was finally awake. She smiled coyly, biting her lip. I had my doubts about such a feat so soon after the previous night's activities. But we took our time, slower now. Even more ca
re. And after several hours we were once more in each other's arms.
She said, "You hold me the way my mother did."
A warm gladness spread through my chest, for I knew how much her mother meant to her. Then an idea slammed through my skull. Pulling her closer to me, I said the words that her mother had said to her many, many years earlier:
"You are my love. You matter to me because you are you. Everything about you is what I love, the good and the bad, because without both you would not be what I love."
She did not respond in any way. But I realized that I had said the words as if by rote. But now, after my encounter with Death, I also realized their power. I said them again, this time thinking how meaningful it would be to me if someone said them to me. I spoke the words again. She lifted her head, as you might listen for the buzzing of an insect you cannot see.
I got up, sitting across from her on the bed. "What is it?" she asked. I took her hand in mine. Looked into her face. "You are my love. You matter to me because you are you.
Everything about you is what I love, the good and the bad, because without both you would not be what I love."
She looked around, certain this time that something had happened.
"My name is J'role. You, Kyrethe, are my love. You matter to me because you are you.
Everything about you is what I love, the good and the bad, because without both you would not be what I love."
Hesitantly she said, "J'role?"
I repeated the words again and again. So many times my voice became sore and creaked.
But each time Kyrethe could hear a bit more. Until finally a smile of shock possessed her face, and she stood up on the bed and jumped up and down shouting, "I can hear! I can hear!" Almost immediately she dropped to her knees and took my face in her hands.
"You are J'role? J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role.
J'role. J'role. J'role. J'role." She tried my name out countless ways, learning how to hear how she spoke all over again. At one point she looked overcome with sudden disappointment. "I can't talk. I sound terrible."
"You sound like you," I replied. "And that is more than enough for me." She smiled, and I did too. It seemed the more I gave her, the more comfortable I was with myself. I felt like me more and more.
"Tell me—" she demanded, childlike again, impatient. "Everything."
"About what?"
"You, the world. Let me hear words again."
And so I told her my story, as she had told me her story with her writing on the tower wall. For hours and hours we spoke about ourselves, and what our lives had been like, the stories bound in our flesh now released through words. Into the night. Through the night.
Into the morning. Toward noon. We collapsed with yawns and laughter into each other's arms, surrendering to sleep.
Later that night I awoke, and wondered how I could bring her sight back. The secret to ending the curse seemed to be helping Kyrethe relive what it had been like to be loved by her mother. But how could I show her, her mother? I could never know what the woman looked like. I had no magic to create the illusion even if I had known. I felt as if I had failed her. For a long time I stared out at the stars.
The next day she once again woke me. No sex this time. More talking. And talk we did, hours and hours more. At one point she said, "It is our pain, you know, that is the source of our love."
"That sounds very sad," I replied and meant it.
"Not at all. In fact, more's the joy for it. For from our shared sadness came this unexpected happiness. Who would have thought?"
And her words made me so happy.
I told her about her brother, and Neden, and my desire to save the boy. This made her very silent. I did not know what she was thinking, but I held her close, and let her have her thoughts. Then, finally I said, "Kyrethe. I think I am the one who broke your father's curse." I explained to her how I had held her, and how I had repeated her mother's words.
And she smiled and touched my lips with her fingers. Then I said, "But I don't know how to return your sight. I can't show you your mother. I don't know what she looks like."
She said, "I do not need to see my mother. For she is you.”
The cloudiness in her eyes faded. A new spark of awareness appeared in her face, and she focused her gaze on me. She gasped, looking at me full with sight. A broad smile appeared on her face.
But immediately I felt uncomfortable, and I realized how I had enjoyed being hidden in her darkness. "And how do I fare in your sight?" I asked with mopey tones.
She took my face once more in her hands. "Are you still so foolish," she said with soft tones, "that you do not know that the kindness and love you give comes back to you in equal form?"
She held me close, and now I cried, for I had not known. Had, in fact, braced every muscle of my body against betrayal and pain all of my life, for I had never expected love.
The image of the star castle came to me, my fortress against pain. It was not merely a shelter, I realized, but an assumed way of life. I hadn't considered the way my mother had treated me to be anything but normal. I had nothing to judge it against, I had been a little boy. Life was simply pain. Rather than working from the premise that my mother had done something horrible to me I had assumed that I had done something wrong. That I deserved what she had done to me. All my life had been spent forging pain for others on the order that my mother had forged pain for me. Not just to cause pain. But because I had to justify my mother's actions, had to make her actions true—the way the Universe really worked. To admit that love could exist would have meant my mother was wrong.
Such a conclusion is not easily reached.
So now I pulled Kyrethe close, and let all my shock at my mother's actions finally pour out. Six decades near death, and I was finally ready to let go and face the world honestly, not in an attempt to protect my mother.
Kyrethe and I were, I realized, changed. Free.
A cool, gratifying wind rushed into the room, whipping the sheets around us with tremendous force. Just past Kyrethe's large hands, massive baby's hands with stubby fingers reached down for us. Picked us up, one in each hand, and suddenly we were airborne. A miracle of the Passions.
Death's Sea passed below us so quickly that it looked like a mere blur of red. I glanced at Kyrethe, held in the palm of Lochost's hand. Her body was fearful, clutching tightly at the Passion's thumb. But on her face she wore a wild smile of excitement. She could not believe she was flying—freed not only of her sensory prison, but of the prison of the island. She laughed out loud.
I turned up to look at Lochost. The child's face did not remind me of me any longer.
Instead, his features shifted between those of all people of all races—so quickly I had to turn my head to avoid dizziness. I heard him laughing, though, the laughter of far too much pleasure in the possibility of life. I knew that if I tried to contain all of the Passion's hope I would burst.
Suddenly we stood on the shore of Death's Sea. Lochost gone. The land around us was barren—rocky and dry and cracked. But we were far from the island and safe. The two of us looked to each other then out toward the sea. What words could we use?
I extended my hand to Kyrethe. She took it. Silently we turned and walked away from Death's Sea. There was a boy to be rescued, a broken boy to be found and healed.
PART FOUR
The Corrupted Heart
1
Lochost had deposited us somewhere on the northern shore of Death's Sea. We could see that the Scarlet Sea was further north and to the west of us, so we had only to walk west to reach the Badlands. I had overheard the two Theran sailors say that was where they were taking Neden, and so it was there we would go.
We did not speak much at this time. Without the magical fountain of the island, we would need food. We needed to make good time to get out of the dry wastes surrounding the sea and that would require speed of our old legs. So we walked on briskly until early
evening, when we came to a jungle. Sparse at first, it thickened quickly. Soon we found all the fruit we needed to replenish ourselves. A large stream gave us water. We settled under a tree, preparing to rest up for the rest of the journey.
I had built a fire, and we sat together, staring into it. The fire created a hut of light carved out of the darkness around us. Against the fire's bright glare, we could see nothing beyond the flames. I felt cozy and safe.
When Kyrethe spoke now, it was with more caution. She wanted to master her pronunciation. Her efforts were succeeding terrifically. "I'm going to kill him."
I laughed, thinking her comment a grim joke. She stared at me as if I were insane. "Your brother? Mordom?"
"Yes. You know what he did to me."
"He accepted your father's murder of your mother."
"I guess I didn't write everything down. It was so difficult chipping away the stone. He did more. My father died before I left for the island. At the funeral they made me touch his face. Lifeless. But I recognized the shape. I started scratching at it, and people dragged me away. It was Mordom who had the island built. He probably hired a questor of Upandal. A powerful one. There are many of them in Thera."
