The black right was followed closely by a very large blue whale, although this smaller female was not blue at all but a slate-gray except for the white edges of her flippers and flukes. The smaller fish on the hillside moved out of the path of the oncoming duo, more in concession for their size than fear.
“The Tanta in front is not well.” From the moment his mother had mentioned the Nari-Tanta, he knew he would never again refer to the most revered of ocean mammals by anything other than their ancient title. “He is not that old. It must be something else.” From the slow rolling motion of the leading whale and the way he would drop all the way to the floor of the hill and take small mouthfuls of the sand and spit them out again, Mark knew what was about to happen. “Have you witnessed the transference?”
When she shook her head, Mark gently pulled her behind the stones. “If we are quiet and act with respect, they will not mind. We will watch.”
The black came to rest just to the side of the water channel closest to Mark and Tei-La. His large under belly sat heavily in the sand, while his fluke beat a slow steady rhythm, raising gentle clouds of dust that caught the light of the setting sun. For awhile, nothing changed. The blue female hovered motionless about ten feet directly in front of him.
“His time has come.” Mark was behind Tei-La with his hands on her shoulders. He knew the importance of this moment. That they were here at this precise time to see something that so rarely happened was another sign to Mark. The entire sea itself was rewarding their love. “When he is ready, she will move to his side.”
Everyone since the first settlement knew the history of Tanta. After the first placement of the Trilogy, a great many tours were undertaken while they waited on the development of the Landed Ones. Almost immediately, the immense capacity of the giant mammals of the sea was discovered. With their ability to contain limitless living information, it was natural to give them the name Tanta. Tanta, in the language of the city, was the word used for most containers or vessels. Most specifically, it was the name of the vessel used to carry the Trilogy to the original placement. From the very beginning, the Tanta was the final repository for all life-thoughts and information—logged into the recording gels since the placement and before. When a citizen died, the life-thought was taken to the sea and given to a Tanta for keeping. If on a tour, one were to find a life that had ended in the water, they would take and hold that person’s life-thought to deliver it, when possible, to the Tanta. His father had often told of times when he and others of the city would hold hundreds who died from the wars on the surface and how, throughout the world’s oceans, these surface-ones now resided side by side with the ancestors of the city.
The black’s tail slowed and eventually lay flat on the sand. The golden beads in the water drifted to cover the broad, pointed fluke in the dust.
“Now.” Was all he whispered to Tei-La.
It was almost impossible to detect any muscle movement in the big Tanta’s body, but it began to glide smoothly to the black until he was eye to eye on his left side. Then all was quiet once again.
Mark and Tei-La remained still. The vibration came from inside them and from without. Through his hands, Mark felt her entire body begin to move in a smooth, almost imperceptible rhythm, and he knew his was doing the same. A sound was simultaneously coming from both places as well. Originating from deep within their bodies and mirrored from its source on the outside. Tei-La wanted to turn her head to him but found she could not look away. Waves of sound emerged from the very water and sand all around them. Mark had seen it before and knew it was originating from around the two bodies in front of them.
The sound was not the normal conversation between whales, even of those two different species. There was no clicking or songs. Nor was there the communication that he had, over the years on the surface, tried to describe to Elizabeth and the others. These were the words and songs of something else. Of someone else. It was the lives, thousands of lives of nameless men and women who’d perished in the sea. The life-thoughts lived once again, if only for an instant, as they came into being through the water while passing from one Tanta to the other.
The symphony of lives reached a crescendo and held for a moment before shrinking into a beautiful echo. Silence drifted back to the ocean floor like the gold flecks of sand. Mark whispered to her, “Now you really have them. All those men, women, and children.”
The big blue began to roll her right flipper and drew herself away from the ailing black. When she had left a gap of several yards between them, she halted and let herself sink to the sandy bottom. The black, after seeing this act of respect, rose from the bottom and, behaving exactly as Mark told Tei-La he would, made three complete circles around the body of the larger blue whale and continued on to the surface to breathe before swimming away. When he was long out of sight, the blue Tanta also left the hillside but in a different direction.
“He will now find a place to end on the shore.”
“But why do they always go to the land? Why not find their end in the water as we do?” Tei-La had always wondered this when hearing tales of transference and the death of a Tanta.
“They are returning just as we do. They came from the land, and when their work is done they try to return.”
It was a silent swim back to the Dome, and they both remained deeply affected by what they had witnessed. They did not see, when passing back through the ruins, the faint flutter of a swimming tunic as the man pulled behind the columns and watched them fade into the distance.
CHAPTER NINE
Their silence continued when they left the changing room.
Everything needed between them was being accomplished—not with words but by simply holding hands as they walked through the city streets. When they came to the set of small avenues that branched from the main street, Mark halted at the one that led to Tei-La’s home. He turned to say goodbye, but she put her finger to his lips and said, “I will go home with you.”
They stepped into Mark’s chambers as the light in the Dome was lessening. Mark placed his hand on the nodule by the door and the room brightened. She walked in and stopped at his bed as he brushed his hand on the edge of the door. The wall closed completely and the seam grew together. It was so clear to him. This was what he had always wanted. The times on the surface when he remembered nothing of this city or these people, he wanted to return. Return to her. He walked to her as she waited for him.
As she turned at the bed, her head leaned slightly to one side and she looked at a spot on the floor in front of her feet. He took the last step in and their bodies touched. At first, they barely brushed against each. She felt like a breeze that lightly danced over parts of his skin. Her breasts and then her hips. He did not reach out for her, or she for him. Their arms remained waiting at their sides. The breeze pushed forward and he responded. As he pressed against her, she placed her hands on his hips. As her head tilted up, her eyes found his and everything he wanted to be true, was. They kissed. Their lips parted, and her hand came up to the clasp at the shoulder of her gown.
“Tei-La, wait.” He did not know why he spoke or what he was going to say next. He looked down at her lovely face and could find nothing that was not perfect. In all of her, there was nothing that he did not want and want forever. But he had spoken. There was nothing left in his mind to say. It pained him to see the look that came into her eyes. A question that he could not answer and the beginning of a pain that he could not heal.
“Why?” she asked.
Yes. Why? His brain could not find a response. There was no answer to that question. Why?
“You are so beautiful. I love you so.” He knew all this to be true, and he knew she believed him when he said it. So why?
“You are beautiful, too, my love.” The question and pain started to fade as she spoke, and she reached again for her clasp.
“Tei-La.” When he saw his hand on hers…wh
en he stopped her once again from opening her clasp, he noticed it. It was difference! His hand. Her hand. The difference!
“Tei-La, you are beautiful. So beautiful and young. And I am different then when last you knew me.” That was it. He had said it. There was no more in him to say. Since his return, he had been seeing her. From his eyes. Looking out at her. Seeing her hair, her face, her body, her youth! And he saw it all with young eyes. The eyes he had left with so many years ago. Eyes like hers. But he was no longer young.
She was seeing him as he stood before her—not as the young man who had left the city long ago.
“I am different, too, Ja-Lil. The same amount of time has passed for me as for you.”
“Tei-La, you can see the difference.”
“No, Ja-Lil, I see the future. And right now, you can see only the present. If you stay trapped by what you see, you will be denying us the future”
“So much changed when I was gone. I am back a different age.”
“You were never away, my love. You took me with you—not in your memory but in your heart. I have aged every second with you. Look at me with your heart as I am looking at you. The only important things are those that cannot change. Not your strength, your body, your family, or even this city. Eventually, all this will be gone. Oh, Ja-Lil, have you not felt that we have always been in love, always together!”
Of course, he had felt that. Before he had left the city, he knew they were continuing on together from ages past. He was not discovering what he saw in her but rather remembering it. Like something lost being found. He loved her so much that he had to give her this chance to go. “Are you sure you love me as you once did?”
“My love does not have quantity only value. Do the tall love more than the not as tall or the fair deeper than the more plain? Your father and mother are great rulers of the city, but their love is no greater than that of the common citizen.” Tei-La held him in her gaze quietly for a minute then walked to the foot of the bed. When she turned to face him, her look was steady and her voice strong. “I will tell you what my love is then I will say no more. I will tell you what it is, but I cannot describe it. It is the mere shadow of the greater thing you can never see or touch. But never doubt it is there. Please tell me the love I felt from you is also the shadow of something true and not some ghost invented by a foolish girl.”
She did not go to him nor ask him to come to her. She didn’t have to. Mark stepped to her and softly said, “My wife.”
This time she was not stopped. As her hand found the clasp and it opened, the gown slid from her body and floated to the floor. Before him stood the most beauty he had ever seen. Her skin reflected the glow from the room like a marble statue, and her hair seemed to shine from within. She reached to his side and found the chord that held the tunic together. As she pulled it, his garment opened and lay draped from his shoulders. She reached inside, and he felt her hands around his back and down to his hips then up to his chest. Slowly, she kissed him and he felt the warmth of her embrace touch more and more of him.
She slid her hands up to his shoulders. As their kiss deepened, his garment fell from his back. She floated into his arms, and he carried her to the bed. Time stopped and what was the past came rushing forward and they controlled eternity. Nothing mattered but their two bodies becoming one and their love continuing.
His hand left her shoulder and she did not wake. He had been watching her for a long time as she slept. He had held unanswered dialogue with her. He told her how he would love her as he had seen his parents love. He would respect her life as his own and hold it sacred. But most of all he thanked her. For loving him, for waiting for him, for being. “My love will cast a warm shadow over your entire world.”
He slid out from beneath the covers so as not to wake her and stepped into his garment. Today was the day he would take responsibility for the city and all the people. He would assume his place in the line of his family. The entire day would be taken with the ceremony before the six Elders, the Time of Deep thoughts in the king’s chamber, him entering the king’s Kiv in the Dome, and finally presenting himself for confirmation before the citizens. Before leaving the room, he quietly walked around the bed and bent over her. He kept his face close to hers and breathed the wonderful scent of her. Soon he kissed her forehead and walked to the wall, touched it, and stepped out before it was entirely open.
He walked around the king’s chamber for a long time before approaching and kneeling before his dais. He closed his eyes and brought before him all the images of his father he could remember. He felt the fabric of the sleeping garment under his hands and could detect the slight odor that was a combination of both his father and mother. He would wear this robe to be anointed king and it would signify not breaking the line. It would be different from when his father had worn the ceremonial garb of his own father. Mark’s grandfather had lived a long full life. His wife had been dead sixteen years when he at last felt his time approach. He dressed in the royal coronation robe he had worn at his wedding. The Dome had constructed a small balcony over where the conch emblem is now, and on his final day, he had welcomed the end in front of the entire city. His full life had drawn to a close in a citywide celebration, and Mark’s father wore the garment the next day in a continuation of the ritual.
How different this was to be. The king dying so young with no one to see and laud his life. His last act of a loving kiss in the night for his queen. Now his mother would carry that kiss and its memory for the rest of her life. Everything seemed to reflect his love for Tei-La, and he made a quiet promise to have her in his mind and heart at this last moment.
Mark rose and undressed and put on the garment, the ring, and the pendant. He whispered, “Ishnan abatta yddap ama ama…” He continued on through the full six lines of their poem. He did not know why, it just made him feel close to his father and correct in his attitude. When fully dressed, he opened the wall and walked to the greeting room where he knew Man-Den would be waiting to escort him to the hall of the Elders.
“Ja-Lil, son of the king.” Man-Den greeted him officially, as he would not be the king until he emerged from the Kiv. “I see your father even in the way you move. I have asked your mother to stand for you before the Elders. I hope you approve.”
“Yes, of course.” Mark was glad she would be there and was going to ask her himself as was the custom of the one who was about to become the One Who Knows.
Myo-O stepped into the room behind the minister. She looked lovely in her queens’ robes and the woven gold-wire breastlet. When she caught sight of Mark in the robe, she stopped and quickly grabbed Man-Den’s arm. “Oh.”
For a moment, Mark thought his mother was going to slip to the floor, and he started forward.
“No, it is all right. You look so like your father when I last saw him in that robe. I almost felt his kiss again”
Man-Den held her hand in his and supported her until she regained herself. “This line will continue, my queen, and you will always be the heart of the city.” He smiled down at her. “Now to the hall.”
With Man-Den leading and the queen on his right, they walked across the large room to the front door. Three on one side and two on the other, the Elders waited outside. Every citizen was out on the street, but not a word was spoken. Many had never witnessed the exchange of kings, but the older people had a sadness that they were to see it twice in their lifetime. Man-Den stepped forward to make it three Elders on each side, and his mother took Mark’s arm and they began the long walk to the hall.
It was strange to see the entire population of the city there, but to only hear the sound of the water as it flowed through the channels and ran from the fountains as they passed by. Everyone was completely still. Some held hands and some simply stared, but all heads followed the group as they made their way onward. Mark kept the poem repeating over and over in his head. The voice in his mind sounded more to him like his fa
ther’s than his own, but it felt appropriate for the moment. With the voice and that warm steady hand of his mother’s around his arm, he felt his family was somehow complete. The faces of the crowd continued to drift past him, between the bodies of the Elders, as they walked to the hall. Most he remembered or had seen since his return, but some were complete strangers and it was on these that he seemed to linger a little longer. Not really expecting to see him, Mark still wondered where the killer could be and how he could avoid detection for so long.
The entourage left the main avenue and continued by a shallow canal on a street he knew well. From the time they turned, he began to look ahead to the large building. The front door could be reached by the little bridge that arched over the water. As they drew closer, he saw Tei-La. She had left his home sometime after he had entered the king’s chamber that morning.
He tried in vain to will the group of Elders into slowing their pace a little. She was there standing on the steps just above the bridge with her father and mother and the other two families who shared the building. He knew it was not so, but it appeared to him that the Dome had increased the light just over or around her head. From the moment she was visible through the crowd, he could not take his eyes off her. She stood a little in front of her father. Her hair was pulled up from the nape of her neck and bound with pearls strung on a golden wire. The green- blue gown hung from her left shoulder and was swaged under her right arm. The skin of her neck and chest and arms radiated the light in white golden rays back to him. On a cord that was almost invisible to the eye, she had strung the clasp she had worn on her gown the night before. She touched it gently with her fingers as he drew directly in front of the bridge. Her eyes sparkled and her lips parted a little as if she were going to speak. He wanted to break off the parade and go to her and take her in his arms, but he would not. She obviously was aware of how he felt, and she smiled at him and his heart rate jumped.
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