The Voyages of Trueblood Cay

by Suanne Laqueur

  “You like this?”

  “Gods, I’ll follow you anywhere for that.”

  “Promise you’ll always look for me,” Fen said, cresting the wave of the mariner’s body.

  “I promise. I’ll take the world apart to find you.”

  “Say my name.”

  “Fen.”

  “Say my khenom.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Try. I want to hear it in your voice.”

  “You say it first.”

  “I said it to you once. Just say what you remember. Please.”

  Trueblood turned his face on the pillow and spoke Fen’s soul name. Slowly. Tongue to the roof of his mouth, then bottom lip curling under his top teeth and exhaling Tehvani… His lips and tongue and teeth around the string of sounds. Carefully. As if every syllable were fire or ice.

  “Say it again,” Fen said, head tilted and listening.

  “Tehvani…”

  He came close. He almost got it. Not quite. As if he’d said Fan instead of Fen. Troubled instead of Trueblood.

  But it was close. Oh, so close.

  Closer than any other human came to recognizing the kheiron’s soul and calling it by name.

  It sounded beautiful and flawed, floating over the plain of a bed built for giants.

  You found me. You looked for me and you found me and you called me by name. Brought me back home, brought me to your bed and called me by name. Because I am yours and there is no place on this ship or in this world I can hide that you won’t find me.

  “Pé, I love you.” Fen was unstoppable now. “I love you.”

  My friend, my kepten, my mate.

  He rose up on his knees with the broad plain of Trueblood’s scarred back heaving beneath his cheek.

  My love, my life, my man.

  His hands spread like another pair of wings, alabaster in the moonlight, outlined stark against Trueblood’s black skin.

  My one.

  “Fen, I can’t even do but…” The mariner’s fists crawled up the wall above the bed’s headboard, flattening and then curling, scratching, looking for purchase. Looking for the wheel of this ship they sailed over the night. “I can’t even do but want you so good like this.”

  Fen’s ego howled with power and prowess as the rambling words kept falling out of Trueblood’s throat, babbling and sing-song.

  “It’s so good, so much good when you’re all up in me, I can’t do but even want you like this.”

  “Let go,” Fen whispered, running his palms along Trueblood’s arms, taking them down. “Come here now.”

  “Can’t do but want you like this.”

  “Do what I tell you. Come down on me now. Give all of it to me.”

  Give me the helm. I sail this ship tonight. I’m at hand and you can trust me.

  “Want you like this.” Trueblood sank into his lap, fingers laced behind Fen’s neck as they rocked over the waves on their knees. “Don’t stop. Don’t ever fucking stop being like this.”

  “I can’t. I belong to you like this.”

  Trueblood slid the ringos off his finger and pushed it onto Fen’s. “Fly, gelangos.”

  A warm shudder flew down Fen’s back. Nape to waist. His wings lifted from his skin, unfolded and unfurled to stretch from one side of the mattress to the other, light spilling from between each feather.

  “It was put in stone,” he said. “When the Truviad said starsilver would be bound to giantsblood, it meant this. The rings have nothing to do with it. They never did. It’s us, Pé. I and you.”

  The bond was love. Not servitude but soul mates. Not ownership but…

  One-ship, Fen thought. One ship.

  One love.

  One story.

  Fen covered Trueblood’s mouth with his. The wings folded forward and wrapped around the kepten, drawing him tight against Fen’s body. Fen kissed him and kissed him again. He used his wings like another pair of limbs, extending and retracting them as they fell off their knees and onto their faces. Rolling to one side, then the other. Twisting and turning and giving and taking through the long night. Then resting deep, the finch curled around the mariner, one wing folded over their bodies.

  “Like this,” Trueblood said. “Everything ever again, only like this.”

  “I’m so happy,” Fen murmured. He’d never in his life said such a thing. It filled his mouth and heart and veins with a fragile sweetness. Filled his hands like an unexpected gift.

  For me? Can this be mine?

  “I love your happiness,” Trueblood said, each drowsy word threaded onto a string.

  They slept, nine fingers twined between ten. Together and at hand.

  “Fen. Fen, wake up.”

  “Mm?”

  “Oh my Gods.”

  “What?”

  “Holy shit.” Trueblood lay on one elbow, face wide with panic as a hand ran up and down Fen’s back. “Fen, what the fuck is…”

  Still half-asleep, Fen pushed up, trying to look down his own back. “What are you talking about?”

  “Get up. Come here.”

  Yanked by the wrist, Fen stumbled toward the cheval mirror.

  “Stand here,” Trueblood said. “Can you see?”

  Fen turned this way and that. “No.”

  “Wait.” He grabbed the smaller mirror he used to shave and held it front of Fen, tilting it to catch the reflection of the kheiron’s back. “Now look.”

  Fen felt his eyes bulge. His wings were retracted, but the silver markings had changed overnight. Before they lay parallel to his spine, tips crossed. Now they spread horizontal, out across his shoulder blades. Parting like a pair of curtains to reveal a new set of markings etched in his skin.

  “Holy shit,” Fen said, craning as he stepped back, closer to the big mirror. “What is that?”

  Trueblood leaned to look, his breath warm on Fen’s skin. “I think it’s a map.”

  The kheiron unto the mariner as a map unto a lost land.

  Trueblood stood at the wheel of the Kaleuche and Fen stood close by. From now on, Fen would always be near him.

  “Terribly sorry to torture you again, Kepten,” Raj said. “But may I see the map?”

  Dopey grins and rolled eyes as Fen slid his shirt up his back for the fifth time. He knew Raj didn’t need to see the map. He was just being Raj.

  And he noticed Trueblood wasn’t complaining.

  The flight of pegasos surrounded the ship, Zoria at the bow and the copper Darea on her starboard. Eighteen wings synchronized in an elegant escort.

  “Your mother is so beautiful,” Trueblood said.

  Fen felt odd saying thank you. Zoria’s beauty was none of his doing. He really meant he was grateful Trueblood could see her at all. Grateful the braided rope of Zoria’s hair was coiled on the dresser in the kepten’s bedroom, along with all of Fen’s little possessions. Because it was their room now and they were gelang.

  Fen remembered one of the earnest entries in Trueblood’s childhood notebooks: They are gelang. That means they are together and love each other and sleep in the same cabin.

  Not much sleeping was going on in the kepten’s cabin. They were making love every night like the world was ending. Sometimes soundless and soft, other times like they were trying to fuck each other out of existence. They went at it until the wee hours, finally collapsing in a pile of spent, boneless limbs. Barely enough time to dream before it was daybreak and the steward was knocking at the door, bearing a tray with two coffee cups and two plates of breakfast.

  “Good morning, Kepten,” he said, unphased and cheerful as he opened the curtains. “Good morning, Fen.”

  Remarking on the weather, he took Trueblood’s strewn clothes from the floor, folded them and laid them in a drawer, then folded Fen’s clothes and laid them in another. He took
both pairs of boots to be shined and came back with two jugs of hot water for shaving.

  Two of everything now.

  Because they were gelang.

  From the helm, Trueblood smiled at Fen. “Come here, you moron.”

  Humming with happiness, the kheiron slid arms around Trueblood’s shoulders from behind. Bit his silver-hooped ear and slid a hand into the V of his shirt. They stood together, the sun on their faces, hair rippling in the wind.

  “I love my life,” Trueblood said.

  Fen exhaled slowly and closed his eyes. “I love mine, too.”

  Rise up, O brave son of Khe.

  Stay the course charted within your wings and sails.

  A new smudge appeared on the horizon. As it grew in size and shape, a hush filled the sails of the Kaleuche and laid fingers on the mouth of every crew member. Later, those who were there would describe the silence as awed, holy and humbling. Nobody spoke a syllable. Many claimed they barely thought as the ship approached Nydirsil. No word, no expression, no simile or metaphor or idiom, no rationalization or theory could capture the spiritual massiveness of the Tree of Life.

  “It filled up the sky,” young Melki would tell his grandchildren one day. “It took nine days from first sighting to reach her.”

  Nine days of gelang.

  Nine nights of lovemaking.

  The earth that clung to Nydirsil’s roots after she was uprooted made an island. The Kaleuche approached the shoreline and when the sounding line said she could go no further, her anchor was dropped.

  Still cloaked in a solemn quiet, the large, masted longboat was lowered with Trueblood, the Ĝemelos and Fen. If any of the crew wept as they watched the four sail toward the inlet, they kept it in the silence of their hearts.

  When the wind dropped and the sails sighed against the mast, the four friends rowed. Together as equals. Beached at the base of the tree, between bumpy roots, they walked toward her. Fen’s fourhand in Trueblood’s and on his other side, his fivehand fingers twined between Lejo’s.

  Walk among giants, your fourhand in his five, your fivehand between six.

  They stopped as one and gazed up at the incomprehensible height of the tree. The mast of the world.

  “We’ve been training our whole lives for this,” Trueblood said. “We outgrew the Cay and got the Kaleuche to practice on. Getting us ready for this.”

  “So we hang for nine days,” Fen said. “Starsilver and giantsblood.”

  He took a deep, easy breath, ready to play his part in the story.

  I am the Finch, he thought. I’m not afraid of anything.

  Except living without Pé.

  “All right,” he said. “All right, let’s do this.”

  “Not you, Fen,” Lejo said.

  “What?”

  “I and Lejo take him,” Raj said. “Not you.”

  “Horseshit,” Fen said. “Starsilver and giantsblood. I’ve got the starsilver. I’m the…”

  His voice died away as Raj and Lejo took their shirts off and turned from him to look up at the tree. Etched on each of their backs were distinctive and familiar markings.

  “What the…” His fingertips reached to touch. “You’re kheirons?”

  Lejo smiled and nodded. “The marks showed up on our backs the same morning yours changed.”

  “But where are your rings?”

  “The stars,” Trueblood said. His eyes had gone far away.

  Raj had the same distant expression, rubbing a little circle on his chest. “I guess that’s how she held them inside us.”

  “She who?” Fen said. “Held what inside you?”

  “I thought it was a dream,” Trueblood said. “But I remember now. She showed me everything.”

  Fen was feeling far too left out of this conversation. “Pé, what are you talking about?”

  Not taking his eyes off the tree, Trueblood took his hand. “Truvos gave Khe’s rings to Ele-Kheir to keep safe. She split them up. Raj has four. Lejo has four. My father had the ninth until he died. Now I have it.”

  “Funny she didn’t divide them three, three and three,” Raj said.

  “Of course not,” Lejo said, with one of his rare, disgusted expressions. “Four gods, four goddesses and Os, who is One.”

  “I’m the ringos,” Trueblood said. “The ninth that binds the eight. A sail on the yard of the world’s mast. I remember.”

  “That’s what you’ve been drawing all this time,” Lejo said.

  “Now it makes sense,” Raj said. “Come on, Lé.”

  Bewildered, Fen watched the twins walk back toward the boat. “What the fuck is going on? Where are they going?”

  Trueblood let go Fen’s hand and pulled his shirt off, his eyes narrowed on the tree. Beautiful enough to stop Fen’s thoughts cold and let joy in his lover’s presence wind around his head like smoke.

  Mine.

  You’re mine and we are gelang. Where you go I follow.

  A clatter of wood on wood from the boat. Raj was breaking down the mast.

  A wall broke down in Fen’s heart and all at once, he understood.

  The mast would be set crosswise against Nydirsil’s trunk. Exactly like the pictures Trueblood doodled in his notebook.

  Masts that turn into trees. Trees that turn into masts. Pages and pages of them. All with a tenth, sideways branch. Straight across.

  Lejo was coiling rope to tie Trueblood like a sail to that improvised yard. They’d leave him to hang in the tree.

  Threefold love times three to make nine days.

  “And what do I do,” Fen said. “Just stand here and watch?”

  Kneel with broken heart in the roots and feast your eyes on Os.

  Look up beneath starsilver and giantsblood as ripening fruit unto the limbs of Nydirsil.

  Look up beneath love to hang three days for nine stars.

  Rise up beneath the blood truth, brave son of Khe.

  Kneel. Look. Rise.

  This was Fen’s job.

  This is what I was trained for in Arcodolori. To do nothing. Just stay on my knees, look up and see what the world has for me.

  This was his epic tale, chiseled in stone. Be born in sadness, oblivious to death. Step in his mother’s blood while his head stayed turned toward the past. Be willing at twelve years old to give up his power for love, only to be enslaved for it. Endure being bought and sold and abused in the root-pits before being flung broken-legged into a tree. Survive all that and the loss of his father’s love so he could be willing, again, at age thirty-five, to give up his gifts for love. Real love. Love he sold his secrets for. Love that freed his own body. Love that broke down his barriers of shame and made him feel worthy. Love both at hand and together with. A love that belonged to him, finally in his hands and he believed it was real and believed it was for him.

  Without a price. Finally a this which hadn’t cost him that.

  And now I give it up. I kneel down and watch it all be taken away again. Then rise. Because I’m the whore in the story and my job is to take shit the gods dole out.

  Anger surged in his chest as he formally withdrew his consent.

  “Fuck. This.”

  Trueblood looked at him then. It was a look Fen knew well. He’d seen the same penetrative expression on his father far too many times. The stare that pierced, until its owner looked straight through you, only seeing what they wished was there.

  “You’re not doing this,” Fen said. “I’m not letting you do this.”

  “I’m sorry,” Trueblood said. “I didn’t know until now what it all meant. How both of us fit into…” His hand gestured toward the tree. “This part.”

  “What do you mean, this part?”

  “I have to do this. And you have to survive it. You have to rise up when—”

  “How fucking much do
the gods think I can take?” Fen cried, taking Trueblood’s arms and shaking him a little. “Pé, look at me. You do this and I’m dead. You understand? There’s no rising after this. No happy, brave ending. If you go, I’m going with you. That’s how it is. There is no me without you.”

  “If you don’t live, the story doesn’t get told.”

  “I don’t care about any story but ours. We lay in your bed and wrote it, remember? We don’t go where the other can’t follow. We don’t hide where the other can’t find. That’s the story.”

  Lips pressed tight, Trueblood shook his head. “I didn’t know about this one.”

  “Pé, don’t you…”

  The old question bubbled up like foam in Fen’s throat. Twenty years he’d been swallowing it down, but now it tumbled out, spitting and snarling. “Don’t you love me anymore?”

  “Fen, I’m sorry.”

  Fen shook him harder and the mariner allowed it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, over and over as he rattled in Fen’s desperate grip. “I’m sorry” while stumbling back as Fen pummeled him. “I’m sorry” when they were crushed up against the wall of Nydirsil’s trunk and Fen crumpled, cursing through tears in Trueblood’s arms.

  “I love you,” Trueblood said into Fen’s hair. “You’re the love of my life and you’re the only one who can survive what—”

  “Stop saying that. My heart can’t take this shit anymore.”

  “I have a godsdamned star in my heart, Fen. It’s going back where it belongs, whether you’re willing or not.”

  “So everything that happened with us means nothing?”

  “Don’t fucking say that. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Then how can you—”

  “Because it’s written.”

  They stared at each other, breathing hard through clenched teeth, fingers white-knuckled in each other’s clothes and hair.

  No, Fen thought. Not again. Not one more time. I cannot.

  “I have to do this,” Trueblood said in a voice thinner than air. “And the only way I can is if you’re watching the whole time. I need you to be with me until the end. Your job isn’t to just kneel there and take it. Your job is to watch and remember and then give it to the rest of the world. You’re the rakontistos, Fen. You have to survive so people will know.”