by Ako Emanuel
Then came the smells. She smelled glamorous male and female, almost overpowering, but they quickly faded and the scent of wild kati’yori and rain assailed her. Then they, too, withdrew from dominance, and she smelled a faint breath of sickness, medicines, soap, food, peppermint tea. They came faster and faster, all alien yet familiar...
Then the sensations. Pleasant warmth. Cool air. The cotton sheets, the springiness of the odd pallet. The hard stone floor under weary feet. A warm soft body...
Faint flavors flickered into existence and were gone...
Then the blackness began to lighten in weird, amorphous splotches. Too caught up in the orgiastic sensory rush to be alarmed by the bizarre experience, Jeliya watched with blind-folded eyes as something began to take form before her in shades of silver, black, white, and a thousand shades of gray. It was - it was her. She was seeing herself. As might be seen from above.
Sweet mother Goddesses...! Jeliya began to tremble. Closed her mental ‘eyes,’ and opened them again. The mental image never wavered. She looked up and the face in the image turned like a flower to rain. Frantically, with all the waning strength she had, she pushed away from him, the being through whom she was seeing - herself. Panicked, panicked beyond reason, she crawled as far away from him as she could get, dragging the desi with her. She ignored the yearning of her body toward him as contact with him broke. She huddled in on herself at the far edge of the pallet, whimpering. The images paled and fled, along with all the other sensory feedback, and the pains in her body slowly reasserted themselves.
What had happened was impossible - should have been impossible! It was a foreshadow of the Jur’Av’chi, the Joining, the deepest that two lovers could merge their souls without breaking the taboo of Solu’san, which was the complete subsuming of one by another. It began with a sharing of senses...
“Are you all right?” His voice was filled with concern. She did not, could not answer him. What was he? What was he to touch her so deeply, to touch her soul as if they had been lifelong mates? Was he a joumbi, some sort of spirit? A la’jabless, eater of souls? No, he felt too real. But what? Had he entered her mind illicitly, touching her ritu’chi, taking of that which he had not earned?
His cool hands touched her and she flinched away, moaning in distress. She wanted to scream at him not to touch her, not to do anything at all to her. She wanted to yell at him that such intimacy between absolute strangers was on the border of obscene, for it implied that one had entered the other’s mind by force. But her tongue was thick and frozen, and her throat raw, with fear. He tried several times to touch her, but she cringed away each time, finally crying out wordlessly when he took a firm hold of her. Her head responded like a gong, and her cries became those of pain. His hands jerked away as if scorched.
“Oh, sweet mother Earth, this might be a symptom I hadn’t found out before. Ky’pen’dati, can you hear me?”
How calm he seemed! As if he had not violated her. She felt sick to her stomach, the broth turning to lead. Tears of fear and revulsion seeped from her eyes.
“Jeliya?” When she made no reply but continued her quiet weeping, his weight slithered forward on the pallet toward her. She wriggled away. “Oh, no you don’t. Let’s not add concussion to your list of ailments, shall we?” His hands caught her and pulled her back. She struggled, fear lending her strength, and he was hard pressed to keep a hold of her. “Jeliya, calm down! Don’t make me have to press you into sleep again - it’s not good for you!”
At his words she struggled all the harder. Press into sleep? Not if I can help it!
And then her consciousness was yanked away from her so fast that she dropped as if she had been pole-axed.
He sighed heavily. Gently he arranged her on the bed and went to review what he had catalogued of the effects of thrista once more.
turning light, draining to dark...
The gila cat sang and she sang with it, its voice her own. She looked at the gila cat and the feline looked at her, and then she was seeing herself through its eyes and it regarded itself through hers. It laughed with her voice...
Consciousness flooded back to Jeliya. The cool hands were on her forehead, and she fought not to pull away, instilling her discipline, not willing to show weakness again. Not after the way she had disgraced herself with mindless fear before. His touch was actually quite pleasant, desirable even, implying that he had not defiled her mind - but after the way he had connected to her senses, then taken her cognizance away...
“Little one? Are you with me?”
She nodded, grunted. Her pains were familiar things now, and she could ignore them all except the headache. But she could not ignore the urgent need to avoid contact with him. She had to find out what had happened to cause this connection.
“How do you feel?”
“My head hurts,” she replied in a hoarse voice. It did not shake with the effort she exerted in control.
“Would you like something for the pain? Or can you tolerate it? Do you also want something to help you go back to sleep?” His solicitousness put her at ease a bit.
“Something for the pain, yes, please,” she said. She certainly did not want to sleep anymore, not after having her awareness torn away from her so abruptly. Besides, she had some serious thinking to do. Her mind churned with questions.
The weight on the bed shifted. She heard rummaging noises, then the weight shifted again and he took her hand, placed something in it.
“Here. Let this dissolve on your tongue. Try not to chew it.”
With the slightest of hesitations she put the thing in her mouth and sucked on it. To her surprise it was sweet, like crystallized honey, with just the barest touch of bitterness. As it dissolved on her tongue the ache behind her eyes began to melt away.
“What is this?” she asked, her voice still whispery. “It works like bitter r’wen, and yet it tasted like sweets; the pain remedies I’ve been forced to take before always tasted horrible.”
“It’s just a little something I came up with,” he said, his voice smiling. “I, too, had some trouble getting you to take the medicine by itself, so I mixed it with honey and crystallized it.” She felt his weight shift, then leave the bed surface. “I’ll be back to check on you in a few -”
“Wait! Please don’t leave. I would like to talk to you.” Her throat hurt from the strain of raising it, but there were questions that she needed immediate answers to.
There was a pause, then, “As you wish.” The weight resettled beside her, moved farther onto the bed. “What do you desire?”
“Please - how long have I been here?” she asked anxiously.
“You have been in and out of fever delirium for a ten’turn and one,” he answered.
Jeliya gasped and bit her lip. Eleven turns! Her family would be sick with worry! And she had missed the Bolorn’toyo!
“Oh, no,” she whispered. She had to get in touch with them as soon as possible, but she knew she was too weak at the moment to send any kind of message to anyone.
“How much longer will it take for me to fully recover?” she asked with dread.
He shifted and sighed. “I don’t know. I almost lost you a couple of times to the fever and the poison. You’ve only now just come out of it. To completely recover - maybe two, three more ten’turns.”
Jeliya shook her head. She could not stay missing for another three ten’turns. That was simply out of the question.
“How long before I can safely travel?”
She heard the long hair swish, guessed he was shaking his head. “I don’t know, little ky’pen’dati. Travel is dangerous to one in your condition. This room that I have you in is protected from air-borne diseases and other things that might exacerbate your condition. To travel would expose you to all manner of things that might make you even more ill than you are. We will see.”
She fretted, then pushed the concern away. She would concentrate on getting better, building up her strength, and then, when she was able, she would av�
��tun a message home. There were probably warru out looking for her. Definitely they would trace her with a rite of finding.
“Is there anything more that you wish of me, little ky’pen’dati?” the deep voice said, sounding faintly concerned.
Jeliya turned to the sound of his voice. There were other things she wished to know.
“Who, good one, are you? Are you a Katari ol’bey’one?”
A dark silver chuckle rang out above her.
“No, little climber. I am that which you tried to ensnare in the forest with a - most ingenious trap.”
A small “oh” escaped her. It was him! The being she had pursued for almost three ten’turns! She shuddered - to think that the one she had tried to capture was the one who was nursing her back to health...
“The trap was not meant to harm you,” she said in a small voice.
“Yes, I know. I went back for you, and I found it. I studied it. It seems that it was meant to hold me for a while and then release me. When I saw that I decided that you merely wanted to keep me in one place for an unspecified time, for some reason. Would you enlighten me as to why you sought to trap me in the first place?”
Jeliya shrugged and then regretted the motion. “Because I wanted to talk to you; but every time I got near, you would bolt,” she said.
“Ah, then it was you who pursued me through the wilds,” he said, as if satisfied to confirm some suspicion. “Of course I ran. I’ve had good reason to flee pursuit,” he replied, his voice strangely free of accusation. “How was I to know your intentions? You might have wanted my hide as a trophy.”
“Trophy?!” she said incredulously, outraged, her voice coming out in a croak. “Who hunts you as a trophy?! It is against the law of the Realm to hunt an Av’Touched for any such reason! I was merely trying to get near enough to talk! What happened to you that makes you think I would harm you?” She was so worked up that her head began to hurt again.
“I’ve had spears thrown after me before,” he said calmly, “and I’ve heard the whispered plans to acquire my skin for shields of glory. Perhaps they did not think me - Av’Touched.” The color of his voice turned slightly. “So you wanted to talk, did you? And that’s why you felt the need to set a trap for me?” His voice was filled with some amused thing, as if he knew she spoke truth, but still challenged her to prove it.
“Yes! Since I couldn’t get near you I reasoned the only way to accomplish my goal would be to trap you. I would have let you go as soon as you’d heard me out. So I set the trap, hoping it would hold you long enough to make you listen.” Jeliya knew he was testing her buttons, and took control of herself. She also took note of the way he said ‘Av’Touched,’ as if he were not quite comfortable or quite familiar with the word.
“And how - exactly - did you find me?”
“With difficulty,” she said with a slight smile. One did not give away one’s hunting secrets to a stranger. And especially not to one’s intended prey.
Again the chuckle. Then, “How did you know the trap would work?”
She felt her face tingle with embarrassment. She shifted slightly, her back making itself felt. “I didn’t, really. It was a long shot. I figured that you were related to the Katari in some way, and I am versed in their lore and customs. It worked better than I expected.” She took note that he had not yet asked her what she wanted so very much to speak about. She wondered why.
“Yes, it did. I was thoroughly entranced by the scent on the gului fruit. That was your scent, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” she admitted reluctantly, her face burning, the tingling of discomfiture spreading to her roots. She fought not to fidget, a habit she had never quite been able to master. He laughed again.
“I figured as much. Your scent is delightful, by the way. So then, why didn’t the trap spring? I was quite defenseless at the time. It would have caught me, without a doubt.”
She could not help it. She squirmed at his baiting. The enforced show of visible discomfort and embarrassment galled her. Being galled, galled her.
“I was trying to get a better view of you,” she said dryly. “I leaned out too far, and the branch broke.”
All he said was, “hhrrrmmpphh,” to that. The noncommittal sound did not fool her.
“It’s not funny,” she rasped.
“No, of course not. Absolutely, not.” His voice trembled with suppressed laughter.
“Hmph.” She snorted and turned away, fighting her irritation.
“Do not take offense, little one,” he whispered, his voice soft and husky, and utterly compelling. “I apologize for laughing.”
Jeliya was unappeased, but in no position to take much exeption. Not after all he had apparently done for her. “Well, it was rather funny, I guess.” She smiled, thrusting the negative emotions away. His fingers brushed her cheek, startling her, but the caress was sweet and she touched his hand. “I owe you thanks, kind Gavaron.”
“Little ky’pen’dati, it has been my pleasure.” His fingers caught hers, and his lips brushed the back of her hand. She suppressed a little shiver at the touch of his lips on her skin. “I shall ever endeavor to keep the bad things away.”
“Bad things?” She went cold all over. That was a term that she had given to things that scared her as a child…
“During your delirium, you must have had nightmares that were associated with some of the symptoms of the fever. Do you remember? At one point your fever was so high that I had to take you to the stream and lower the water’s temperature to keep the fever from killing you. You spoke of a red, burning sea. You clung to me, asking me not to let it overcome you. You didn’t let go, even when you went to sleep. You asked me to keep the bad things away.” He cleared his throat as if he were embarrassed, uncomfortable with the memory. “I thought perhaps you’d remembered that. Another time the poison attacked your eyes and I had to hold you down to keep you from tearing your eyes out.”
The burning sea. Jeliya nodded, remembered, relaxed. The trushi. The gila cat.
“And there was a time when it attacked your lungs.”
That silver voice - the ice hands - that had been him.
“Thank you for everything,” she said again.
“Make no mention of it, dear one. And now, I think you should get some more rest. You are still very sick.”
“I don’t think I can get to sleep,” she said, moving her shoulders, where the muscles were aching dully. Her head throbbed and her body felt generally abused. Her mind overflowed with information and spiraling questions.
She felt his hands touch her and she stiffened, pulled away involuntarily, the memory of the strange illicit/alluring interaction between them still fresh in her mind. Right beside it was the memory of her consciousness being whisked away so fast that she only remembered it afterward.
“It is okay, ky’pen’dati. I won’t hurt you.” She took a deep breath and nodded, made a conscious effort not to fight him when he took her into his arms. He settled her against his chest. Then he began to sing.
Soft silver wisps reached through the darkness induced by the silk blind, wrapping around her, entering her mind with soothing, calming fingers. The strong arms around her made her feel safe and secure, and all her troubles and aches slipped away, leaving behind only contentment and fatigue. The gray fatigue grew, overwhelming her gently; the state of wakeness slid from her so quietly that the singing followed her to her dreams.
...darkness turned, became wavering light...
The forest was noisily quiet all around.
He looked through his garden, noticing which plants and herbs needed to be replenished and mentally matching them against a list of stores in his head. Some of the plants were wild, and difficult, if not impossible to obtain seeds from, even with his exceptional skill at horticulture. Thus he had to make regular forays into the forest to get clippings of the plants he needed.
His list complete, he got his work harness and the pouches that went with it, a contrivance that he had cons
tructed for himself to go gathering. The harness fitted around his waist where the wuman and equine halves met. Bags could be clipped to either side. Two suspender-like straps ran up over his shoulders, to which a backpack or a quiver of arrows or any number of useful things could be clipped. To this he attached his quiver and bow, and from the side clips he hung two pouches filled with smaller, empty sacks, each labeled for a different herb or plant. He also took a hunting knife and pruning shears that he had made himself, and a pair of thick leather gloves. Thus equipped, he set out on the little game trail that ran Este from his home. He glanced back once, to make sure that all was well and that the guard-rite was functioning properly, then made his way through the forest.
The land rolled gently as he cantered along to the first of his usual gathering sites, the rainforest rich and lush and wet and green around him. Late morn light struggled to get through the heavy growth and hovering condensation, having a harder time of it than he. The trees were enormous, wizen old giants hung with thick curtains of vines that filtered the light as it strove to reach the lyrifern-covered forest floor. The draped walls of vines and flowering limbs seemed to form solid, impregnable masses, but they gave way before him.
He reached his first gathering site, set up wards and began sorting through his sacks. The task was second nature, however, and his mind turned to a more serious matter as he went about gathering.
Jeliya. There was something about her that kept bothering him, had been bothering him since he had first taken her into his home. Something about the way she talked and held herself, even in sickness. Something to do with that other that he was uncomfortably close to remembering. But more than that, the fact that she had located him with such apparent ease was disquieting to his comfortable illusion of being elusive. Her coming was like an omen, the portents about her brimming with ill tidings to the tranquility he had known for so long.
