Annie was in camp. She had Nanda’s platform bed in her claws and was slowly rising away from our tent. Nanda, delirious from the five-sun fever, could do no more than scream at the creature. She dared not strike at it for fear that letting go of the edges of the platform would send her tumbling to the earth. I dared do little myself. I dropped the pitcher at the sight and ran for my sword, but I couldn’t force it to set Nanda down without the risk of it dropping her. The dragon turned and flew away with Nanda to the Tearslake and I could only run after the low flying pair. My legs were inefficient on the terrain and they were soon out of sight.
I ran on, up and over dragonbacks, heedless for once of their breathing. My own breath was labored and the stitch in my side pounded the same rhythm as my skull as I reached the crest of the great dragon’s back.
The bed lay abandoned at the side of the clearing in a shallow dry moat that now ringed the area. Nanda was at the center of the clearing on the mound we’d seen the dragon building earlier. It was not as shiny and peaked as when we had seen it before. The dirt had become a kind of sand and the low mound was flattened. Annie sat crouched beyond this plateau, leaning forward against it for balance. Nanda crouched naked in the center of the plateau holding onto Annie’s extended claws for support, almost hanging from them.
I slipped and slid down the great dragon’s scaly side into the moat. It was easy enough to climb out of the ditch and up onto the edge of the mound. But when I stepped from the packed dirt onto the glassy sand, my foot burned through my shoe. I pulled back so quickly that I almost fell back into the moat. I circled the mound along that thin strip of dirt, looking for a way to cross in to where Nanda was crouched in bare feet, screaming through her contractions.
About twenty steps from where I started, I found a path of stones leading up to Nanda. Each stone was wide enough for only one foot. I took the path slowly, tortured by Nanda’s screams and Annie’s echoing cries, but knowing how little good I would be to Nanda if I added burned flesh to my concussed skull and minimal birthing skills. The last of the stones was a good five paces from where Nanda was straining, her knuckles white around Annie’s dark claws. Neither of them took notice of me.
I stood there, not knowing how to reach her, afraid to burn myself, for longer than it does my consciencegood to recall. But then Nanda stopped straining. Her head lolled back, her mouth open, sweat dripping from her face. A wet sheen covered her chest and her thighs. She hung from Annie’s claws, exhausted. Her whole body swung towards me as her left arm gave up its strength. Then I could see something bald between her legs. With no more thought to my petty burned soles, I leaped from the last stone onto the sand and caught Nanda as her muscles gave out and her hands lost their grip. She lay limp in my arms as I crouched behind her, letting her lean all of her weight back into me. I felt Annie tuck her nose down behind my back, giving me support, but her claws stayed where they were, where Nanda could reach them.
I don’t remember what I said. I whispered in her ear and tried to wipe her hair off her face with my chin. I couldn’t take either of my arms from their grip around her chest because I didn’t think her legs could hold her and although I couldn’t see past her stomach from this angle, I had seen something coming out and I thought she would crush it if I let go. So I held her and whispered encouragement and kissed her cheek and her hair and her neck.
I felt the next ripple before I saw it. Her whole body shuddered, her eyes opened, and she flailed her arms up to grab Annie’s claws. Her weight was off me, but I didn’t dare move with Annie behind me and every muscle in Nanda’s legs shaking with effort. I just held on and screamed with her. And when she collapsed again, I knew she was done. Annie had moved her head and was staring intently over Nanda, so when her arms and legs gave out, I fell backwards and Nanda landed in my lap.
She had her eyes shut, exhausted. But I could see the object lying between her legs in a mess of thick fluid and blood. I begged nature to let Nanda be okay, to not let her die as women sometimes do from hard labor. But I also willed her to remain unconscious so she wouldn’t open her eyes and see that her baby was fully encased in a soft egg.
Twenty-three
∞ Nanda Junior’s journal ∞
Dormounts, Kaveg
I got out of bed last night for the second time since the fever. Well, the second time that I remember. I know Geoffrey has taken me out of bed a few times to help me pee in the pot, which I despise, but I really didn’t have much choice. It was the lousy pot or my bed. And my bed was soaked already. I’ve been sweating non-stop and sleeping. He’s been with me as much as he can and I often wake up at night to find him fallen asleep while kneeling beside the bed to check on me.
But most of his time is spent hunting, killing, growing, and preparing food for Annie and I. She won’t leave the lake mound. She was looking so weak when Geoffrey woke on the second morning, that he brought her the rest of the deer and hawk stew that he’d been feeding me. She appeared to enjoy it. Since then he’s been feeding both of us.
I went up on the mound this morning. To see Annie. To see the egg. Part of me still believed that I imagined it all in my fever dreams despite my sagging tummy and sore muscles and the bruises all along my inner thighs. The gash on my arm also serves as a sharp clue every time I roll over on it.
Annie did that, after I fell back into Geoffrey’s arms. I wanted to just die I was so tired. In fact, I was sure I would die after so much pain. I actually let myself fall almost out of consciousness, but he didn’t do anything. He wasn’t moving to pick up the baby or to clean it off or to make it cry. He was shaking. He rocked me but he didn’t do anything for the baby.
So I hauled myself back into the living universe and opened my eyes. There, lying on the hot sand, was my baby. I could barely tell that it was human because it was wrapped so thickly in amniotic tissue. Inside a thick shell of mucus and veins and blood I could see my baby throwing a fit, struggling to get out. I’d been born like that. The doctors had to tear me out of the protective sac that should have broken when my mother began labor.
I pulled myself up to my knees and with a burst of energy I didn’t know I’d had in reserve, I tossed myself forward over the egg. I pushed back with my arms so that it was in front of me as I lay over my knees, too tired to hold myself up. Then I began trying to find some way through to my baby. That’s when Annie scratched me. She pulled me away from the egg. As she was dragging me off, I saw Geoffrey lean forward to attack the egg. He never even got his hands on it before Annie was screaming and growling and driving him away. Geoffrey suffered more scratches than I did, but his were not so deep.
Neither of us could get to the egg because as soon as Annie had room, she sat on it. Geoffrey ran at her. He pushed her and pounded on her and tried as best he could to get her off my baby. I was starting to suspect that Yay’s stories had been more than idle conversation, that somehow I had given birth to a dTelfur.
Annie made no further effort to injure Geoffrey. She had no need to; he had as much chance of pushing her over as I have of getting home. She ignored him or pretended to while he exhausted himself. By the time he’d worn himself down, I’d gathered enough strength to crawl over to him and explain my suspicions. I told him that if I were right, than we hadn’t lost my baby. But that it would be seasons before she came out of her shell.
Annie had followed her instincts from the moment she’d met me. She’d built the hatching ground and taken me there where she could care for the egg in the traditional dTelfur manner. When I was done telling Geoffrey the ridiculousness that my heart told me was the truth, I broke into tears and collapsed into his arms.
He carried me off of the mound and over to my bed, lying in the dug-out ditch under Deg’s long chin. He murmured at me until I fell asleep, then he went and soaked in our pool to cool the burns all over his body. My high fever had protected me from the temperature of the sand on the hatching mound, but he had leaped onto the burning sands with no protection. He came back,
in soaking wet clothing, dragging most of the camp with him. The sun was just rising over the dragonbacks when he got back and woke me to eat a little. He had some food as well and raised the tent around me before he curled up on the dirt with his head on a pack and fell asleep.
My fever went down rapidly once the egg was out. We both believe now that the fever wasn’t an illness, but rather my body’s way of softening the egg so that it would be able to come out through my tiny little vagina. Who’s to say what is abnormal in this situation? When Yay returns, we’ll beat some answers out of him.
I was still too weak for five sunrises to get out of bed. Now I’m trying to give Geoffrey a break. I thought I would help him out in the food department. He had a unicorn tied up a ways from the garden that he was fattening up, so I led it closer to the cook fire and slit its throat. Apparently I wasn’t quite as well as I thought because the smell that rose from the poor dead creature overwhelmed me. Geoffrey found me trying to skin it while barfing into a water jug. After a short discussion about my feelings towards unicorns, he sent me back here. I guess, as in Denver, I’ll leave the cooking to him.
Twenty-four
Edling Geoffrey of Kaveg’s journal
November 7
Rocky Moutains, CO America
I’m making breakfast. That’s my excuse. When she wakes up and I’m gone that’s my excuse.
The sun is up. It’s unusual that she isn’t. She’s the one who gets up early and starts running through the day. Today I woke first. I’m not sure I ever slept.
I’m sitting at the edge of the fire letting my hair dry in the wind blowing around the mountains. I half want her to crawl silently from our tent and sneak up to read over my shoulder. I want to tell her what I know and I want her to believe me. Or at least to still love me despite my apparent psychosis, until the proof comes and she understands. But when the proof comes, she won’t be here. In order to appear in my world, she has to disappear from this one. Like I did.
I lose. I’ve finally won her and still I lose. When she’s gone, I’ll have nothing. Kelly is gone. My substitute life. I’ve given up hope of returning to Kaveg and accepted a simple man’s life here in America with the joy of Kelly’s love and the hope of Nanda’s. But with both gone, and now knowing—
We made love last night. We dragged our sleeping bags out of the tent and spread them open by the fire while we roasted marshmallows. Nanda has no patience but I like the black ones so she set fire to her marshmallows and fed me while I slowly browned mine and fed them to her.
∞
“OW! That’s not my mouth.” She reached for a napkin.
I leaned forward to help her, “If you didn’t close your eyes, you could help.”
“I’m afraid of getting poked.”
“Why?”
“When I was little, Eva was trying to make Mama eat her carbonized mallow and she accidentally poked her in the eye with the stick.”
“I didn’t know it was such an event. I’m honored by your trust.”
“But you missed!”
“I am sorry, my lady. Let me see.”
The napkin was shredding as she wiped at the stickiness. I picked a few shreds of napkin out of the goo and then licked the rest off her skin.
I hadn’t intended anything, but she shivered at the touch of my lips and a blast of heat rushed through me. I was going to say something witty, something harmless to mask my desire but as I looked up she was staring into my face, completely disarmed. So I let my thumb rest on her cheek and I kissed her.
She didn’t pull away, but she didn’t lean into me. She didn’t move until one hand crept up to her chest and she curled her fingers around her heart. I backed off.
I tested a small smile, “You didn’t close your eyes.”
“Eva never kissed Mama like that.”
I laughed. She didn’t. “I’m sorry.” I took my hand away from her face. “I know you’re tender. I—”
She reached a hand out, her fingers barely touching my chest. “I’ve had this knot in the pit of my stomach since the instant we met. I didn’t want it, I didn’t like it. This past month, it moved up into my heart and then when you touched my face it slid up into my throat and now it’s melting and every bone in my body, every tensed muscle, every inch of my skin is begging for you to touch me again.”
I willed my hands to stay where they were, “I don’t want to hurt you.”
She stared at me, her eyes jumping between each of mine. Her lips lay parted as if ready to speak, but she didn’t. Her breathing was labored and her chest rose and fell with effort. The moon was full and the sky clear with stars twinkling all around us. Sparks from the fire leapt up to join the light. And Nanda’s eyes glistened. A tear formed in the corner of an eye and fell to her cheek, tracing down through the wet spot I hadn’t wiped from her cheek.
She looked down at my twitching hand. Then she took her hand from her heart, picked up my hand, and placed it back on her cheek. Lightning ran through me, I could hear thunder in my ears.
“You won’t,” she whispered in a husky voice, “You love me.” She laid a hand on my cheek, her thumb brushing my lips. “And...”
“And,” I pulled close to her, held her body against me, “you love me.”
She almost nodded, but instead she closed her eyes and she kissed me. And for the first time she made love to me.
Hours later, we lay still under the moon and the stars, entwined and encoupled, covered in sweat with clothes strewn around us, one of my socks even brightening the dying glow of the fire. I brushed the hair from her face and stared into her eyes. She gripped my legs with hers and holding me to her, she rolled us over. She entwined my fingers with hers and raised my arm to the sky. She stared at our caressing hands against the background of stars and I watched her face as tears rolled sideways from the corner of her eyes to pool in her ear. I was exhausted and I understood.
Absentmindedly, as I burned every curve of her face into my memory, I laid my head on my bicep and reached up to scratch my ear. I ran my fingertips over its outline and felt two irregular bumps near the elven peak of the ear’s edge. They were curiously familiar to me, but I had never noticed them on myself before. I had seen them somewhere else. Taking in the wide curve of Nanda’s nose, I remembered.
I must have spoken out loud because Nanda turned to look at me and said, “I am smiling, Geoffrey. These are tears of joy.”
Mine too, Nanda, Mine too.
Twenty-five
∞ Nanda Junior’s journal ∞
Dormounts, Kaveg
Geoffrey is off taking care of packing up. I found him by the fire yesterday, nearly crying with frustration. We’ve been hearing drums. Not clearly, but from a great distance. When they begin Geoffrey runs off to the highest dragon back, but he never gets there before they’re gone. I don’t run. I don’t know much drum code. And now, someone needs to stay at camp. But we know something’s going on. Annie, though her vocabulary and mine remain minimal, has been able to communicate to me that there are lots of people moving about which I take it is unusual for this season.
Geoffrey was ready to lose his mind. I told him to go. I, of course, couldn’t go with him but he’d know where to find me.
“You could send word to dTella. Maybe she would be willing to come and help me, or send Yay back.”
“I’m not leaving you, Nanda.” He fished through his pouch for some unnecessary herbs to add to the stew.
“You have bigger responsibilities and you know I can take care of myself. Annie will just have to get over this posh lifestyle of edible food and make do with my cooking.”
“I’m afraid to leave you, Nanda.” He stopped his pointless fussing and looked me in the eyes.
“You’ll come back.” I took his pouch and the spoon out of his hands and set them aside. “I know you can’t have me or whatever because of this queen, but you love me. You can’t forget me.” I leaned in awkwardly and suddenly, before this spurt of courag
e left me, I kissed him. I may have chipped a tooth.
I was prepared for him to pull away or even gently discourage me. I was tensed and leaning forward from a crouch in such a way to make it easy for him to deny me. I didn’t expect him to drop my hands and grab me violently to him, one hand slipping up behind my head. I fell forward into his lap and melted. My resolve to love him platonically and to support him in searching for this other woman disappeared in that kiss.
When he let me up for air he kissed my neck and my ears and my eyelids. I grabbed his hair in my fists and pulled his head back so I could see his face. He was crying. I adjusted my legs so that I was sitting on his lap, my feet hooked behind him. He bent his knees up to support my back and slide me closer. I kissed the tears from his cheeks and whispered in his ear, “You have to go. We’ll be together again.”
He leaned away and caught my eyes, “You love me.”
I nodded shyly, apologetically, suddenly fearing that I had broken some boundary.
“I’ll go. And send you help.” He knocked me over on my back, holding me tight. “Nanda, you should know; the woman I have to find is to be my queen. Not my mate.”
Blessed be the darkness that he couldn’t see my body. Cursed be it I couldn’t see his. And thank all that is holy I didn’t remember how intimate he had become with my functions during my fever until well after. I stripped his clothes off and kissed every inch of his body. He giggled when I suckled the backside of his knee – just like he did in Denver. When he brushed my sides, caressing, I held my breath and bit his lips but I couldn’t help myself and burst into laughing screams at the torture. I was suddenly ticklish on every part of my body. I laughed in his ear and moaned when he threw his hands up in defeat and used his tongue to caress me.
Geoffrey's Queen: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 25
