It was hard, so hard to step foot again in the hospital. Indeed, he sensed Vasiht’h’s uncertainty the morning of their scheduled visitation. But he prepared for it as usual, and presented himself to the Glaseah at the door so that they might go, and he did not miss Vasiht’h’s little sigh—resignation? Relief? Both, perhaps. So they went, and they passed into the lobby with its cheery sea creature murals, and the tension that leapt up his shoulders gave him a headache. The stairwell was even worse. But he put one foot behind the other and followed the sight of Vasiht’h’s tail all the way to their landing, and passed through the door to the section where a very tired Berquist was sitting at her station, filling out paperwork. At the sight of them, she said, “You came.”
“We came,” Vasiht’h agreed. “Are they…?
“They’re inside,” she said. “And feeling about how you expect.” She managed a smile for them. “Thank you for coming.”
“We could do nothing else,” Jahir said, because that was true, and then Vasiht’h opened the door for them both.
The moment the girls saw them, they hurried over for embraces and reassurance that Jahir could not deny them, even knowing now too well, far too well, the cost of those things. He rested his face against Amaranth’s limp hair and smelled antiseptic and young skin and sickness, and closed his eyes against the grief, lest it spill over and alarm them.
They retreated to the corner nest, closer than usual: Vasiht’h sat at Jahir’s side, close enough to touch, and spread his body in a curve in front of him, and the girls piled into the middle and leaned on them both. He felt their pain like wounds, and bent his head to keep them from seeing how hard he took it.
Vasiht’h, he thought, knew. He didn’t know how he understood this, but he did. He didn’t know why it comforted him, either, but it helped.
“Well,” Vasiht’h said finally. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe some of you can help me?”
“Miss Jill says we should talk about what happened as much as we want, and that includes not at all,” Kayla said, subdued.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Vasiht’h asked her.
“Noooooo,” Kayla said, slowly. “What is there to talk about?”
“We miss her,” Meekie said. “And it was horrible, what happened, and not fair. But everyone seems convinced we’ll be scared.”
“We’re not scared.” Kuriel was picking at her toes again. “None of us had Nieve’s problem. It’s not going to happen to us that way. Though if it did, I’d go the way she did.”
“How’s that?” Vasiht’h asked, ears flattened.
“Suddenly, and like that. In someone’s lap.” Kuriel looked up at Jahir, and startled he met her eyes. “She was happy. I saw it. She died really suddenly, but the last thing she felt before she died was… happy.”
“She was good at that,” Persy observed, quiet. “Good at being happy. Even when she was hurt, even when she wanted to be outside or doing normal things, she was always better at being here than we are.”
“I’m sick of being here,” Kayla said, ears flattening.
Amaranth sighed. “Me too. All of us are.”
“Are you okay?” Persy asked Jahir. “You looked awful. You still do.”
“Of course he’s not okay,” Amaranth said. “Nieve died in his arms!”
Vasiht’h winced and opened his mouth to speak, but Jahir shook his head, just enough for his roommate to see him. He said to Persy, “It hurt me, to feel her die. She deserved better.”
“My mother says we don’t always get what we deserve, but that we should make the best of what we have anyway,” Meekie said.
“Nieve did that,” Persy said, nodding.
“She did,” Jahir said. “I think she truly did.”
“We should listen to some poetry,” Amaranth said. “She would have liked that. Can you read? Is that okay?”
“It is,” Jahir said. “Though I did not think to bring my tablet.”
“I did,” Vasiht’h said, low, and brought it forth from his saddlebag. Startled, Jahir took it, and felt across its surface the transmission of something fine and soft as the foam on a wave: concern, affection… pride. He brushed a thumb against the tablet’s edge, wondering if he was touching his roommate and not aware of it, but no… their hands were separated by the length of the device.
“Thank you,” he said, and did not know what he was thanking Vasiht’h for: remembering the tablet, taking care of him, coming here with him, being who he was. All of it, perhaps. He didn’t know, but he thought the Glaseah did, because Vasiht’h lowered his head as shy as a maiden blushing.
“Now then,” he said, with a deep breath. “What shall we read today?”
“Something about sunlight, and spring, and flowers,” Persy said. “She would have liked that.”
When they had returned to the apartment, Jahir sat in the chair in the great room and slowly began removing his boots as his roommate made tea. He was holding a flavor in his mouth: herbal and astringent, a taste like anxiety and tension held in check. Rolling it over his tongue made him feel the physical lack, and savoring it made him realize just how many such strange sensations he’d had in the previous months.
“Vasiht’h? Why does your concern have a flavor?”
He heard a long pause, and then the saucers and cups being set on the tray. “You’ve noticed, then.”
“It is not always a taste,” Jahir said. “Sometimes it is sensory. An impression of velvet, or sunlight, or the sound of something. But those things one might mistake for memories. The tastes are strange.”
His roommate sighed and brought the tray, setting it on the table between them. “It’s called the ahv’shev. Mindtouch.”
“Mindtouch,” Jahir said. “And there is a word for this.”
“It’s one of the few things we kept from the language the Seersa made for us,” Vasiht’h said, pouring himself a cup of the tea. “For the most part, we abandoned it for Universal, or mindspeech. But the vocabulary relating to psychic phenomena, we kept.”
“And this is what makes your feelings have sensory weight.” The idea was improbable. That it didn’t distress him was surely a sign of just how emotionally depleted he was. He’d had a hard time feeling anything, and to rouse himself to actual dismay was beyond him.
“Yes,” Vasiht’h said. “It’s… involuntary. At this stage, anyway.”
“At this stage?”
His roommate was flushing under his fur, if Jahir was any judge. It was hard to tell, but the pelt thinned near his eyes, enough to see. “Yes. Being capable of receiving mindtouches is an indication that there is… the potential to sustain a mindline.”
“This being…”
“A permanent psychic channel between two or more people,” Vasiht’h said. “It’s rare. It has to form between two compatible minds, and to be sustained it has to be… well, nurtured. Built up. If you do it right, it starts supporting itself, and then it never turns off.” He cleared his throat. “Et’ahv. The mindline. I’ve never met anyone with one, it’s that infrequent.”
“And these mindtouches indicate a compatibility… between us?” Jahir asked.
Vasiht’h was looking very fixedly at his tea. “Yes.”
The idea should have offended him. Instead, he found it vaguely relieving, explaining as it did the uncanny impressions he’d been receiving. That those impressions had implications was a matter for some other time, when he had more energy to devote to assessing his own feelings. Perhaps he would be distressed to know that he could be yoked to a short-lived alien. Perhaps he would be glad, because he was fond of Vasiht’h, and that too was a realization he was not ready to examine at any length.
Instead, he said, “I am guessing Glaseahn literature does not cover the topic of rare and precious mindlines forming with aliens.”
Vasiht’h laughed shakily. “No. Not at all.”
Jahir nodded and poured his own tea. He could feel his roommate’s anxious concern like sandpaper on his skin an
d closed his eyes. To make it stop, he said, earnest, “I am not upset at you, arii. It is scarcely under your control, that we are able. Rest your fears aside. Please.”
“All right,” Vasiht’h said.
“Oh, ariihir. What happened?”
“Do I look that bad?” Vasiht’h asked.
“Like someone rolled you flat for pie,” Sehvi said, worried. “What’s wrong?”
Vasiht’h slumped and let his head rest on his arms on the table. He opened one eye just enough to make sure the door was closed before saying, “One of the girls at the hospital died. In Jahir’s arms.”
His sister’s ears slicked back. She looked about as stunned as Vasiht’h felt, getting through these past two weeks. “Did he… is he okay?”
“No,” Vasiht’h said, dragging his hand over his forelock to his nose. “No, he really isn’t. He’s gone numb. It’s some kind of shock, it has to be. I can feel it between us like wadded cotton.”
“Like wadded—wait, you’re still getting data off him?” she asked, leaning toward the screen.
“I am. So is he.” Vasiht’h grimaced. “He asked me about it yesterday.”
“And you told him?”
“And I told him.”
“Well, don’t just leave it there!” Sehvi said, worry making her exasperation sharper. “What did he say? Did he rush off in disgust? Swear off ever talking to you again? Tell you we Glaseah are dirty mind-readers without any proper psychic manners?”
“He just… accepted it,” Vasiht’h said, helplessly. At her ferocious scowl, he said, “I mean that. I explained it, he listened, and he accepted it, and told me he wasn’t upset with me. That’s it.”
“I guess that’s more than you could have expected, what with him traumatized,” Sehvi said with a wince. “Probably not the best time for you to have broken it to him.”
“He asked,” Vasiht’h said. “What was I supposed to do?”
“Exactly what you did.” She studied him. “And you? How are you holding up? You like these little girls yourself.”
“I… I’m sad,” Vasiht’h said. “Oh, Goddess, Sehvi. I’m sad. But I can bear it. Does that make me callous?”
“It makes you useful, I’d think,” was her reply. “If everyone fell apart at the least bit of sadness, who’d be left to pick up the pieces? You’re sad, right? Should you really have to become completely nonfunctional to prove it?”
“I hope not, because I am functional,” Vasiht’h said. “Honestly, I’m too busy being worried about Jahir to be too hard on myself about it. He feels everything so much.”
“Not always a good thing,” Sehvi said.
“But not always a bad thing, either.” Vasiht’h frowned a little. “You need both.”
“Sounds like he’s got all the feeling and you’ve got all the not enough?”
“Maybe,” Vasiht’h said, thinking that it might be true. “Or maybe I haven’t gotten to the things that would make me feel too much, yet.” He sighed. “I’ve got this research study to finish, and it’s limping along because I keep contaminating the data. I’ll probably end up invited to some sort of wake. And I’ve got a roommate to keep from self-destructing. I’m ready for this semester to be done, ariishir.”
“My poor, big brother,” Sehvi said, shaking her head. “If I could come bake cookies for you, I would.”
“I know,” he said with a smile.
They talked then, of other things: of her research (going much better than his), of her fellow students, of the irritations of grant-writing. It was a calming conversation, and he was glad to have it, to listen to something normal. But when his sister terminated the call and left him alone in his room, he found his head back in his arms, and his thoughts again on his roommate.
His roommate… who’d called him ‘arii’, finally. When had he gone from alet, a formal form of address, to arii, the intimate?
Did it matter? Jahir had not rejected the mindtouches, and had called him friend.
After a moment, he pushed himself up and went to make dinner, and to make sure his friend ate. He almost made it out the door, too, before the chime went off, and he stopped to check the message header. Then he frowned, spreading the message. It had been sent to him, Jahir and to several other people, and… it was no invitation to a wake. It was in fact a privilege he hadn’t expected, not at all.
He padded out into the great room, trembling, and forced himself to start on dinner. By the time Jahir came out of his room, the meditation of chopping vegetables and starting the pots warming had calmed him down.
“Did you receive…”
“Yes,” Vasiht’h said, setting down his knife. “Do you know how much of an honor it is?”
“I… no.” Jahir sat on the chair facing the kitchen, so he could look that way. “There is some custom here that I haven’t apprehended, I am guessing.”
“We should have been invited to the wake,” Vasiht’h said, going back to the vegetables, but more slowly, watching his fingers. “For Tam-illee, that’s where most people end up. That’s when people talk together about the deceased. The funeral… the funeral’s for people who meant something to the person who died. We get ashes.”
“Ashes,” Jahir repeated.
“Some of her remains. We get anointed on the forehead with them. Usually it’s for family and close friends only.”
Jahir was silent for long enough that Vasiht’h feared he’d set off some terrible reflection in him. But all his roommate said was, “I pray you will educate me in the formalities, so that I do no dishonor.”
“As much as I can,” Vasiht’h said. “I haven’t been to one myself, but I know about it from friends. We can look up the information together.”
“Thank you,” Jahir said.
“I’m making soup,” Vasiht’h added. “It’s light, it should go down easily. And you will eat it. Won’t you?”
“Soup sounds very good,” the Eldritch said, but he sounded distracted. Vasiht’h frowned but held his peace.
CHAPTER 22
The funeral was being held in a park off campus. He and Vasiht’h left the university via Pad and took a tram the rest of the way. He was aware of the transport, distantly. Of how clean it was, how functional to be so elegant: the vast windows, and the green of spring smearing in them from the speed. No experience in his life had prepared him to gauge distances between places without the steady gait of a horse to beat them out, or the cadence of his own feet. He could have been a thousand miles from the apartment or one, and he couldn’t tell, and he wondered how much of that was his own lingering alienation.
It would not last, he knew. The ritual hung before him like the point of a sword, caught in that endless now between the initiation of a lunge and the wound it opened. But he was ready to be done with existing in stasis, with being unwilling to truly face the path before him.
They arrived at the park, into a day that presaged summer, hot and dry and so bright the grass shimmered like mirrors beneath the breeze, leaving afterimages when he blinked. The congregants were waiting at the top of a hill, and the Tam-illee custom of wearing white to funerals made them blaze, so that his eyes watered.
Vasiht’h stopped beside him, looking up the hill, then over at him. Quietly, he said, “We’re here. You ready?”
“Who is ever ready?” Jahir asked. “And yet we must do our duty, in despite.”
Vasiht’h shifted his shoulders beneath the white vest, mantled his wings. “So we must.” He set off up the hill, and Jahir followed.
Nieve’s grandmother, as the oldest surviving member of the family, was waiting with a small wooden box. The sun gilded her pale gray fur, gave her a mandorla; her patience seemed otherworldly. Age, then, did not confer equanimity, he thought. He was probably her elder by a good sixty years, but he could not accept this death with the calm she exhibited.
“We’re all here,” she said at last. “So let’s begin.” With no fanfare, she turned to Nieve’s father. “With you, Deron.”
The Tam-illee dipped his head, and Nieve’s grandmother opened the box, touching her thumb to a strip on the inside and smearing it on his brow, then putting her fingers in the ashes and wiping them on the mark. “She once told me that one of the things she loved about you was that you never stopped grieving for her mother. Because it made clear how much you loved Elise, and kept her a part of the family.”
The Tam-illee closed his eyes, teeth bared from the effort of not crying, and managed to say, “Now I will keep them both alive.”
And so it went: everyone came to be marked, was told something Nieve had said about them, and shared something in return. The family and friends of the family first, of which there were only seven—so few, Jahir thought, to cling to, with so much grief to share—and then came the rest of them. A schoolteacher, the last one Nieve had had before she’d been forced to live full-time in the hospital. The principal surgeon who’d worked on Nieve’s case, a middle-aged Seersa whose sorrow seemed as much shock as anything else. The most junior doctor in Nieve’s surgical team, who wept unashamedly. Berquist, who held her mask firm until Nieve’s grandmother said, “You… she said so many things of, it was hard to choose one.” And then she choked on a sob and covered her face, and trembled through the anointment.
Vasiht’h was second to last and stepped to it with grace, one Jahir found admirable and beautiful, torn between envy and pride and understanding the reasons for none of it.
“Nieve told me that it was a wonderful world, when you could meet a stranger over a jump-rope and have him turn into a friend,” she said, brushing the ashes on. “She said it was proof that there was magic everywhere, just waiting.”
Vasiht’h closed his eyes. When he opened them, his shoulders had relaxed. “Then I’ve done the Goddess’s work, and I am grateful to have been Her instrument.”
The Tam-illee nodded, and her smile was gentle, but pleased.
And then it was his turn, and he went to her. She looked up at him and beckoned him with her fingers. “You are a bit taller than the others, arii.”
He dipped low then, realized belatedly that he would have to feel her touch on his bare skin, but she was already brushing him with her thumb: a chrism, and beyond the oil he felt her powerfully: her sorrow, her resignation, the length and breadth of her perspective, supported by years of living, of loss and laughter and watching life.
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