by Nhys Glover
Stepping away from my frustration with the Goddess, I explained our plan. ‘There seems to be some kind of thread or cord that acts as a conduit along which a person’s mind can journey. No, more than just their mind, their essence. We have been exploring it a little. We think that if you can focus on trying to make a connection with the Goddess, I’ll be able to see that silver cord and follow it to Her. Because She’s spoken through you so often, that connection should be strong.’
“That’s interesting. I have never considered how our connection worked. I just felt like She inhabited me and used my voice to speak Her Wisdom. That there is something like a cord linking us interests me.”
“Do you wish for me to leave you to your communication?” Rama asked, frowning.
“No,” Airsha said quickly. “What Flame wants to try might be risky. I would rather have you here grounding me in case... in case something goes wrong.”
Relief showed on Rama’s face. Of course this was what he’d wanted all along, but he hadn’t wanted to hover if he wasn’t wanted.
‘Are you able to do this now?’ I asked.
“Of course. Let me just close the door and settle in. Rama, can you sit on the bed behind me and just hold me. I am not sure what I will experience, but I...”
“Of course.” He strode over to the huge bed he and Airsha shared with his other brothers and climbed onto it, resting his back against the beautifully carved headboard. After shutting the door, Airsha climbed up after him and sat with her back to his chest, her head resting on his shoulder. Looking out from her eyes I could see the luxury of their private sleeping quarters, all soft colours and rich fabrics. The view from the wide windows was breathtaking. The lake, which formed the centre of Central Airshan, had the old palace nestled against its shores. It was this lake that the sleeping quarters overlooked.
This room was twice the size of mine here in the royal apartments and the view was better. But then, I wasn’t the Goddess Incarnate and I hadn’t shared my bed with four men back then. It felt like a hundred suns ago. How could so much have happened so quickly? I felt like I was no longer the same girl I’d been back then. Now I was a woman with the weight of the world on my shoulders and more experience of life than I might necessarily want.
“Ready when you are,” Airsha said, and I knew she was talking to me.
‘Open the channel. Or do whatever you normally do when you hope to get information from the Goddess.’
“I... I don’t do anything... But I will try.”
I felt her memory shift back to those moments after the Goddess had told us about The Jayger. She’d sought to glean more information and had sent her mind out as if following the retreating form of the Goddess. As she pictured it, I saw what I was looking for. Sure enough, there was a pulsing cord leading from Airsha’s mind. It reminded me of the cord that linked a babe to its mother. This one, though, was not red. I grabbed onto the silver cord with my mind and began following it.
I expected to have to journey a long way. Maybe my thoughts of the Goddess existing on some mountaintop or cloud far above us had been truly how I’d thought it to be. But in what felt like less time than it took for me to mentally journey from our island to the approaching Devourers’ ship, I found myself in a library of sorts.
It was unlike any library I’d ever seen before. Huge and seemingly endless, it headed off in every direction from the spot where I now stood. At the centre? Was I at its centre?
I turned to examine the shelves. They were narrow, no more than a hand’s width, impossibly thin, and stretched up and up, until they seemed to meet those on the other side of the aisle. But that was an optical illusion I knew. Those shelves remained straight all the way to their very end, wherever that was.
Instead of books on those narrow, infinite shelves there seemed to be tiny doors.
I reached out for one.
In the next instant, I found myself flying. At first I thought I was in the mind of an airling. I knew the images they sent each other well enough. But no... this was not the same. I was seeing the ground so far below in an odd way. It was hard to interpret what I saw. The light was different, more vibrant somehow, and there were threads running like a fine net over everything. I had no idea what it was. Then there was how I seemed to be able to see in all directions at once, up close and in the distance. It felt like I was looking at the ground from one side while from the other side I saw the sky.
Then I realised what was happening.
An airling’s eyes were at the front of its head, much as a human’s were. A featherling’s eyes were on the sides of its head. How often had I seen them tip their heads from side to side looking at me from first one eye and then the other. This was what I was doing now. I was seeing the world from a featherling’s perspective. Its simple thoughts were there for me to experience too, as were its simple emotions. It looked for food and had thoughts of its nestlings in need of sustenance. It was totally focused on that end. Neither afraid nor happy in that moment, it was just intent on filling its stomach so it could then meet its babes’ insatiable needs.
I pulled back, delighted by my discovery.
Excitedly, I reached for another door on a higher shelf.
This time I found myself staring up at the wooden eaves of a dwelling. My vision was slightly blurry, but it felt more familiar, as if I was looking through a human’s eyes. Around me were high walls made of what seemed to be smooth, woven branches. Beneath me was softness. Somewhere, a female voice was singing a lullaby, soft and sweet. I felt happy and content. Safe. There was nothing but the softness of my bed and the loving presence of my mother nearby rocking my world gently. Was she rocking my cradle? Was I a babe?
How often had I stared down at one of Airsha’s babes and wondered what the world was like to them. Now I was experiencing it, first hand, and it was amazing. If I could have cried in that moment, I would have.
The next door was far less awe-inspiring and I wanted to cry for a different reason.
I found myself in a dark cave. Fear assailed me like a blow, and I sought to catch my breath from its sudden onslaught. Torches wavered in the cold, dank breeze, making the shadows dance a macabre jig against the rocky wall.
“Get another one. We need to know if our men have succeeded in safeguarding our master,” a harsh voice demanded.
I fought down a whimper. I didn’t want to be the one they chose. I didn’t like to open myself to that monstrous creature’s power. Every time I did a small part of me died. There was so little of me left. But I couldn’t run away. I was a prisoner. All I could do was pray that this time they wouldn’t choose me.
Hurriedly I dragged myself away and found myself laying, panting for breath, on the floor of the library. It had been one of the Devourer’s seers. A young one like the girl on the ship. Though the Devourers used her, she was still one of the Goddess’ creations. Beloved of the Goddess, I sensed. And the Goddess feared for her, and grieved for that one small speck of humanity; felt every fear and pain that child experienced as if it were Her own, just as I had briefly done.
Was this what it was like for the Goddess? Was this how She observed the world, experienced the world? Did every little doorway lead to another of Her creations and that was how She experienced all She had created, through a myriad of perceptions? It was like a huge web of experience that stretched across the whole world. My mind could not take in more than one door, one mind, in at a time, but somehow I knew that the Goddess was this library and She took it all in. She didn’t walk the passages, scanning first one and then another of the lives in Her care, she experienced all of them at once, as infinite cells in one body. At any one time she could feel pain in one extremity or another.
Or pleasure. She could feel the pleasure of listening to a mother’s lullaby. And She could focus on that infinitely tiny experience, all the while being aware of a trillion other beings, every minute of every day.
What kind of entity was capable of containing and experiencing
all this? Loving all that She had created. And what happened to that entity when all those creations ceased to be in one fell swoop? Would it be like dying? Not completely, because she had to have existed before Her first creation, so She would exist after Her creations ceased to be... but the enormity of it. The pain of it. No wonder She wanted us to stop The Jayger. Once before she almost lost everything that She was because of him. And now it was happening again.
I understood. And, as a gentle, loving Presence pressed in around me while I lay sprawled on that floor, I knew the Goddess had let us inside Her very essence so we could understand and feel the intense and all-consuming love She felt for all her creations, large and small. Only by understanding Her essence could we be prepared for the coming battle.
In my mind I drew up the silver thread that had brought me here. I followed it back to where Airsha lay quietly in her husband’s arms. For a long moment I stayed quietly there, in the background, just enjoying the love that existed between these two. It was like looking through another one of those doors in the library.
Rama was like Zem. And in this moment I knew without any doubt that Airsha adored this damaged man as much as any of her other husbands. He held an equal piece of her heart, just as Zem held an equal piece of mine.
Once I had envied Airsha her harem, doubting I would ever be deserving of what she had. Now I knew what it was to have such a loving bond, and all of my hurt feelings fell away. I loved Zem with everything I was, just as I loved Laric, Prior and Landor. I would not let his cruel insecurities wound me and drive me away any longer. I loved him. I would always love him. Just as Airsha would always love Rama.
“You found your answers?” Airsha asked me, as gently loving as the Goddess herself.
I nodded. ‘I think so. I hope so. Thank you.’
“You are very welcome, my dear sister. I wish you well. All of you.”
With that I let myself drift back to my own body, which was resting against the backs of my husbands. The love I had experienced from the Goddess and Airsha was still thrumming through me gently, and I felt tears, I thought I hadn’t been able to shed, rolling down my hot cheeks.
Love. If I had to use one word to describe what that entity my meagre mind had pictured as a library was, I would call it Love.
I didn’t say anything. My heart was too full for mere words. Instead, I stood up and began walking along the shore to the far end of the beach. The sun was setting and the heat of the day was cooling. I breathed in the smell of salt and wind, of the lush forests and the slightly smoking volcano not far away. It felt as if I was everything I saw and felt. It was as if I was the Goddess experiencing everything in Her world through a million trillion senses. And I loved it all.
My men followed along in my wake, and when I threw off my tunic and breeches and dived into the cool crystal waters, they did so too. Prior was the first one to come to me, wrapping me in tender arms and clinging to me, kissing my wet shoulder over and over in open-mouthed, hot kisses. I held him tightly, needing the feel of him, the warmth of him against me. Laric pressed in behind me, kissing my nape, my shoulder, my hair, his hands running over my pebbled flesh as if exploring it for the first time.
Sighing deeply, feeling overflowing with love, I breathed them both in and then turned to where Zem and Landor stood, chest deep in water, looking on. I held out a hand to each of them, and they took them, raining kisses on my palms, wrists and inner elbows, not seeming able to stop.
I gently extricated myself from Prior and Laric and drew Zem close to me, framing his beloved face with my cupped hands.
“You felt Airsha’s love for Rama, didn’t you?” I asked him, even though I knew the answer.
He nodded wordlessly, his brown eyes red with unshed tears.
“That is how I feel about you,” I told him, raining kisses on his cheeks and eyes and finally his mouth. “The way I will always feel about you, no matter how many other men have a place in my heart. Love is not limited. Every time the Goddess creates another living being her capacity for love grows. We experienced that first-hand. That is what happens with me... with us. You have no less of my love now than you had a moon ago. It is just that I have more of it to give. My capacity for love has increased. Do you understand that now?”
I met his gaze, willing him to finally understand. Needing to feel whole again.
Zem nodded and kissed my cold lips with his warm ones. I opened to him, letting him in on every level of my being. Landor pressed in and rested his head on my shoulder, stroking my arm. Prior pressed in behind me and Laric took up my one remaining shoulder. I was sandwiched in on all sides by the four men who loved me. My heart swelled with the sweetness of the love I felt for them in return.
Zem and I broke from our kiss, panting and grinning like idiots. And in the very next moment the mood shifted to one of joy and laughter. Suddenly, I was kissing first one man and then the next, my hands stroking muscles and sinew, soft wet hair, hard cocks.
Who entered me first, I wasn’t sure. It wasn’t the man who claimed my mouth, or the one I held between my hands. But it didn’t matter who it was, because we were no longer individuals. I kissed and stroked and was stroked, inside and out by loving parts of one being. I was part of one being. And as the passion replaced the joy, pushing us all closer to release, I gloried in it. Gloried in us, in all we were... all we were yet to be. I loved them. My spirit soared with it, flew with it, and dived deep into the depths of it.
This was not sex. This wasn’t even love-making. It was communion. It was connection of the deepest, most profound kind. Zem had said my men had worshipped me the last time we did this, and maybe they did. But this time we worshipped each other, not as one woman and four men but as parts of one whole. Parts of something incredible.
How many times I came while the sun sank behind the smoking mountain I don’t know. It didn’t matter. Neither did it matter whose mouth was on me or someone else, whose hands stroked whose skin or drove who over the edge. All I was aware of was the sense that there was never a moment, a fraction of a moment, when any of us was not in contact with the others, with the whole. And with every exquisite climax the intensity shifted up another notch until it felt like we were part of one continual world-encompassing orgasm.
When it ended... I have no idea how long it took—only that the sun had set and the warm night air chilled the water on my skin—I was satiated and more alive in every way than I had ever been before. Someone carried me ashore and laid me in the middle of the bedding beside our cold fire. As wet, naked bodies closed around me on all sides, we slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.
As one. Always and forever, as one.
Chapter Thirteen
“What we now know about the Goddess gives us some insight into The Jayger,” Zem said aloud what we all knew.
He sipped at his Karva as he stared into the firelight. The dancing shadows on his softened features highlighted his youth, which the release of tension from our love-making had only accentuated. He was eighteen suns old, which some days was hard to believe, given all he’d been through in his short life. But this evening, sharing a meal with our harem, he looked no more than a playful lad. Only the subject matter marked this as a serious moment.
“That he perceives the world as She does, through the senses of his creations,” Laric went on as if he had spoken the previous words. Since our coming together in the sea at sunset we had been doing this—speaking as one being. I doubted it would last, but while we remembered the experiences we’d shared while journeying together, and while ever the effects of love still thrummed through our bodies, we would continue to do it.
“Which means sea creatures. What about the Devourers? Do they count as Its creations?” I asked.
“What was your sense of it from the Devourers’ seer child?” Prior asked in return.
I didn’t answer right away, letting my memories resurfaces as I nibbled on a piece of fresh-roasted meat. There had proven to be an abundance of food
sources on the island, but I preferred meat, and maybe the vine leaves Sky had brought back from one of his hunting expeditions. They were lush, fleshy and sweet, and they crunched when you bit into them. I was alternating between a bite of meat and a bite of these leaves as we talked.
My mind cast up the child the Goddess called her own, yet I had a strong sense that once she was drawn into the smoke the Devourers used to help induce her trance she became something else... An empty vessel for The Jayger’s use? Did It see what she saw? That felt right.
I wondered about the priests. Could their master access their perceptions? It felt like whatever dark conjuring those priests did to open portals and split people into parts allowed The Jayger in. Their mindless perceptions became his.
“I think The Jayger can take over any of Its followers and use them to observe the air breathing creatures of the Goddess.”
“Air breathing? Is that the distinction? Do you think that the Goddess’ reach extends to the creatures of the sea that breath air?” Laric mused.
“What air breathing creatures?” Prior asked with interest, gnawing on a bone that was already picked clean of meat.
“There are many creatures that swim in the sea that need to come to the surface to breathe air. I think these creations somehow belong to both the Goddess and The Jayger in much the same way the seer child does,” I answered thinking about the monstrous creatures I’d sometimes seen on fishing voyages with my father. Some of those giants would blow streams of water out of a hole in their tops before sinking beneath the sea again. Then there were the shelled reptiles that swam and hunted at sea, but came ashore to sleep and lay their eggs. Those creatures had been a tasty treat at my father’s table.
Zem wrapped an arm around my shoulder and nuzzled into my neck. Since we awoke after our love-making he hadn’t strayed far from my side and touched me at every opportunity. He did it with an awe that embarrassed me, yet I couldn’t regret it or deny him. Just as the way we currently finished each other’s sentences, this too would pass when the novelty of it wore off. Until then I would appreciate having my Zem close once again.
