She hadn’t asked where he and Chris went during the day, seeming to prefer the solitude of his home to the unease she obviously felt in his company. By the fourth night of this, he was nearly insane with wanting her and yet staying away from his own bed.
Each night, either before or shortly after dinner, she had watched what her son had learned that day, always expressing encouragement and reassurance to her son. But never, by look or deed, had she acknowledged that the teacher might deserve reward, might need recognition for his efforts. But, staying away from her was undiluted torture.
Except the fifth night, unable to sleep, unable to stop thinking about her lying so close yet as distant in thought as any citadel, he had paced the living room, sending bolt after bolt of lightning to the sky, reveling in its shattering release.
Finally, fueled by his own fury, angered by her neglect, her refusal to open her mind, her rejection of his gaze, he hadn’t been able to stay away. If not able to break through the barriers in her mind, he could at least open the bedroom doors. And he’d done that with the flourish of a man pushed beyond his endurance.
As if it had happened only seconds before, he could still visualize every nanosecond of his approach to his own room. She had sat up with a small gasp of fear, gazed at him with wide, emerald eyes, her face warm with sleep. Her lips parted, and her chest rose and fell. She had looked languorous and he had felt like molten steel.
He hadn’t said a word as he’d crossed the room to her side, and he didn’t remember her speaking, either. Without reaching for them, he’d torn the covers from the bed, not in question but in command.
She had given a strange, soft sigh and shifted slightly, not to deny him, but to accommodate his bulk on the feather-light mattress. And if their loving had been fueled by frustration, even a tinge of angry need, and if she had kept him from understanding her mind, he had nonetheless lost himself in her touch, in her loving. And, hopefully, she had done the same. She had cried out, his name upon her lips, her fingers bands of iron on his shoulders. But she hadn’t said a word beyond his name.
And he’d left her, as he had that first night with her, wondering what on earth he was to think about her…what he was supposed to feel. Especially when he was left totally replete yet completely in the dark as to knowing what she was thinking.
There were times in this past week, this second week of her company, he’d positively hated her for not letting him know. And never more so than when she opened to him so thoroughly during the night, but kept her mind tauntingly, teasingly remote. He couldn’t breach her, couldn’t knock down the walls of her mind. No matter how hard he might try, no matter what tactics he sought to use.
But the sheer physical unity alone held him, never failing to draw him like a magnet. He could no more resist returning to her, night after night, than he could have cut off his own limbs. In her arms, he found whatever solace he had spent a lifetime aching for, and if it didn’t quench all thirsts, it made him try to believe that thirst was only relative, always subjective.
But as always, he would leave her to sleep alone, a part of him hoping she felt his loss as keenly as he did hers. He felt afraid of her somehow, afraid of sleeping next to her, fearful of curling her to him, watching her drift from him in sleep as she would eventually do in reality. And he left because he felt flayed raw by the time spent in intimacy so deep—and so piercing—that he felt stripped to his very core.
But always, overriding everything, blanketing the realization that he couldn’t—try as he might—reach into her mind, couldn’t bring her to her knees, couldn’t force her to beg for his love…to beg him to give her his, was the notion that he wasn’t alone anymore.
Whenever the notion popped into his head, as it all too often did, he tried squelching it as quickly as it entered. The understanding that he wasn’t alone came too close to dreams he couldn’t achieve, futures that could never be. And it drove home the knowledge that six months didn’t make a future, they only carved a moment in the present. And even those six months were already slipping away. He couldn’t stop time any more than he could hold Chris back from stretching his gifts, or keep Melanie from leaving eventually.
But with this boy’s touch in his mind, Melanie’s scent still upon his skin, it was hard not to dream, not to wish for a future. Here in his home, a woman nightly accepted his touch, and openly, if silently, enchanted him by sharing in the delights of human contact. And with Melanie, with Chris—another in the whole universe who could speak as he could, could tap minds, could stretch mental fingers across odd synaptic connections and join in thought—he’d found a family. A hope for the future. A reason for living.
His heart pounded with the promise even as the dream crumbled when he mentally reviewed the short time left to him. God, he’d been insane to even dare dream, however briefly.
Teo. Man. Big Man. Big House Man. Chris’s imagery made Teo smile. He opened his eyes and met the honey-brown eyes of the boy who looked nothing like him, but could have been his child he was so much like him in all other respects.
Play with me, Teo? The thought entered his head. All other people he’d heard, had listened in on their thoughts, had only carried thoughts and vague pictures in their minds, loosely strung together images. Chris’s touch in his head, however, was filled with flavor, with nuance. Like a voice, it carried timbre, pitch, vibration.
Teo felt he’d spent his entire lifetime hearing only humming, and now, in a few special days, had been introduced to a symphony.
He studied the boy, sending a variety of reassuring images himself. He loved the sensation of the moment when their thoughts snagged, wove together as though knitted by unseen hands. And that weave, those patterns unique to him, to the boy, seemed to exchange emotions, thoughts that felt totally alien in their comfort, their ease. Overriding all his own imagery was one emotion that, until this mentally woven pattern with Chris, had remained utterly foreign to Teo. The feeling was something akin to protection, safety, concern, enjoyment. Teo almost dared believe its name was love, though never having felt it before, couldn’t make the full connection to faith in it.
He hardened his heart and sharpened his thoughts. He couldn’t afford to allow himself to drift into that kind of wishful thinking. The boy—and his beautiful, perplexing mother—would be gone in less than six months.
Play now? Chris asked him again silently, musically. Now the inner voice was more wistful.
Teo reached out his hand as he sent a soft mental encouragement to the child. The boy’s face lightened and his hands clasped together in anticipation.
Play. Chris said, “No dance.” His own self-admonition was a result of the many times Teo had said the same thing, had offered a new trick in exchange for the enticement of slipping into that solitary world of total concentration.
What he couldn’t tell the boy—much less, Melanie—was that he’d begun to wonder how much of his own world wasn’t exactly like the boy’s innocent dancing of toys. How much of his own solitary, fiercely guarded universe wasn’t just an extension of the need to withdraw from the world, to shut it out? And in this realization came the obvious rejoinder—Melanie and Chris had broken through, were daily challenging his ability to live alone just as he was daily challenging Chris.
“No dance now,” Teo concurred, smiling. But he wanted to tell the boy to go ahead, to dance his toys all he could ever want to, that he’d keep him safe, that he’d never let anyone harm him ever again.
However, he didn’t want this unusual channel of communication closed to him as it would be if the child concentrated on making things levitate. This morning, today, and damning the impossible future, he wanted this new pattern to remain open, fluid.
Chris’s little face was all but obscured by his own large hand, but the baby skin felt so soft, so morning warm. Almost as soft as his mother’s. Teo’s smile faltered as Chris’s grin widened. Just three, an engaging smile on full lips so like his mother’s that the sight of them made Teo’s
heart skip a notch, Chris had no awareness—besides a dead plant and some bad men in white coats—of the dangers and betrayals that lurked in the world.
They won’t have you, he vowed. And for the first time in these two weeks of miracles, he knew this pledge came from a good part of him, a true part. A part he’d too long ignored, feared.
Who?
Teo shook his head and ruffled the boy’s hair. While not at all the same color, it felt as soft and silky as his mother’s.
Man. Teo, the boy’s thoughts came through contentedly.
He didn’t have to ask how the boy had come to be at his side instead of in his cradle. Only half a month had passed, but the boy had shown remarkable strides.
He hadn’t teleported from the cradle to Teo’s sofa, but had spilled himself from the raised bed, gently tipping the cradle until he was free. It was just another indication of how strong the boy’s talents really were. Teo felt a wave of pride suffusing his stiff muscles, his tired body.
When had he first exhibited signs of controlling his universe? So early he couldn’t remember, but surely it couldn’t have been accomplished as easily nor as early as Chris was doing. He tried telling himself he was only feeling the natural pride of a mentor watch his pupil grasping difficult tasks. But he had the distinct sensation of being the proud daddy watching his child take his first toddling steps.
He remembered the first morning Chris had freed himself, had pattered into the living room, standing beside the sofa, prodding Teo’s mind until he woke. And he remembered the look of shock on Melanie’s face when she came out of the bedroom the morning after that and found Chris dancing his toys while Teo slept, oblivious to the miracle.
Each day had brought Chris’s different talents to the surface. And for the first time in his life, Teo had to wonder what it had been like for his superstitious parents, watching their only offspring making things float around the room, fly from the dressers, pitching toys at them if he was angered or thwarted.
Had Chris been like that? If so, it was no small wonder that Melanie had appeared so weary that first night. What she must have been through in Chris’s young life. He knew from vague images in Chris’s mind that his father—Melanie’s ex-husband, Teo reminded himself—had been afraid of his own son and had left Melanie to cope with Chris on her own.
Teo remembered the shadows he’d seen beneath her eyes that first evening, the total exhaustion that had kept her from even waking while he removed her wet clothing the night she’d appeared at his home. A visceral pain shot through him as he recalled she had appeared anything but sleepy last night. As always, she had been liquid fire in his hands.
But he wanted more of her. Needed more. He needed to get beyond that barrier in her mind, the barrier around her heart. He couldn’t give her anything in return, except his protection, his need for her. But, by God, wasn’t that enough? Why didn’t it feel like it was?
He rolled to a sitting position on the short Taos sofa in his living room. He grimaced at the sudden crick in his neck. Why did he always leave her bedroom? He knew about the fears, but did it have a more subtle message, such as you’ll have no more of me? Pride, he told himself. Foolishness, he answered back.
But the truth was what he already knew; he always left her because he was truly afraid, fearful of how she made him feel, terrified that he would begin to need her, not simply want her.
Are you hungry? he asked the boy, as he did now every morning.
“Yes!” Chris all but shouted, his usual exuberant response.
What a kid!
“Gina hungry, too!”
Teo stretched both body and mind. He felt every nuance of the too many nights spent on the too short sofa. And every tight, protesting muscle remembered the time spent with Melanie. His mind, meanwhile, told him that the fox, Gina, was indeed hungry and waiting for her feeders on the deck. He again pushed into his own bedroom, and could sense Melanie sleeping there, but couldn’t probe her mind.
Does your mother keep her mind closed all the time? Teo asked Chris suddenly. He was careful to limit his mental imagery to concepts a small child would recognize, a gate, a wall, Melanie’s smile, his own thoughts, Chris’s ability to hear them, a question.
The little boy stared at him for a moment, then cocked his head to the side. “Don’t know,” he said simply. But his mind snapped various conflicting pictures at Teo. Melanie loving Chris; Melanie playing patty-cake, heart talking; Melanie frightened; a huge, brick wall from Rapunzel’s castle; Chris battering at the wall in frustration; Melanie holding Chris and running from bad men in white coats; a dead plant; a living rose; a red ball lying on the ground.
With each picture, Chris’s agitation increased. If the voice in his mind had volume measurable to outside terms, the boy would have been shouting at him. Was shouting.
Even as he probed for understanding, Teo felt a ripple in the air between himself and Chris, was certain he saw a shimmer of refracted light, then before he could stop the boy, a dozen small objects—a vase, a candle holder, a pen, a book of matches that should have been in the kitchen but wasn’t and a button that had fallen off one of Teo’s shirts weeks before—rose from the tables and floor and began to spin slowly, lazily around the boy’s suddenly slack face.
“Chris?” Teo asked, then repeated it in his mind, stronger, Chris?
But he received no answer, no indication that he was being heard. What was it about his question that bothered Chris so? Was it Melanie’s “heart talking” that triggered the need for reclusion? Or was it the lack of it? Whatever bothered him, it was obviously associated with the dead plant in the PRI laboratory and with Melanie’s fear. And yet, hadn’t he also sent the picture of her playing with her son?
And what on earth was that bit about the fairy-tale castle tower? And the rose?
As it was so very early, and because Gina could wait for her morning meal, Teo lifted Chris into his arms and made his way to the subcave he’d converted into a washroom. The makeshift toys danced in their wake.
He set Chris upon one of the rock benches, almost effortlessly deflecting the swirling toys, and turned on a few of the shower jets. As he stood beneath the nearly scalding water, trying not to think of Melanie standing there during the days while he was absent, he sent several questions to young Chris, but the boy remained oblivious to his prodding thoughts. The objects he’d made to dance still rotated around him, and his concentration blocked Teo thoroughly.
There would be time enough to shift the boy’s concentration. He had succeeded a bit more each day, knew it would require even less effort today. The boy was penny bright and eager for learning. Today, Teo would begin the slow, careful task of introducing dual strengths, stretching possibilities, and setting limitations.
If only he’d had someone do that with him, he thought again. Perhaps his confusion during the past two weeks would never have happened. He wouldn’t have lost himself so thoroughly in Melanie’s embrace, wouldn’t have felt so confused, so deserted when it was over, despite the fact she’d never once tried to leave his side.
When he was clean, and after he’d dried and dressed with rather more care than he usually expended on his clothing, he hefted Chris to his side and carted him to the kitchen. There he still didn’t break Chris’s concentration as he gathered the basket filled with wrapped meat left on his door-stop the night before. He fried the meat, tipped it into an earthenware bowl, and prepared to step outside.
Before sliding the door open, he mentally reached out and grabbed the dozen or so floating items Chris had lifted from the living room. Chris resisted the seizure of his toys.
They will scare Gina, Teo projected firmly. He sent a few pictures of Gina happy, Gina scared, Gina running away after seeing the knickknacks floating around her.
Chris opposed him, tugging at the toys-that-weren’t-toys just as Teo suspected any small child would do if handling them manually. Teo strengthened his Gina-scared images. He felt the indecision in Chris’s hold on the
objects. Finally the boy released his mental grip on the toys and the slack expression on his face disappeared. Only the day before, while resisting Teo’s intrusive interruption, Chris had slammed a pinecone directly at Teo’s nose. His laughter and firm mental reprimand had snapped Chris from his reverie. Today, only mild reinforcement was necessary.
“Gina not go away?”
“She’s still here,” Teo said. He sent the objects back to the living room. He pointed through the glass doors. “See? She’s waiting for us.”
He felt a shiver run down his back. How simply he said those words, used pronouns he’d never used before two weeks ago. She’s waiting for us. Just a word, but one that linked them together, that bound them as a stronger unit somehow.
And the notion stretched beyond Chris, to his mother, as well. It seemed so natural to transfer the words related to a hungry, and frightened wild creature waiting outside the door to the sleeping woman in his bedroom. She’s waiting.
For him? Not likely. Not after his hard, nightly dismissal of her. But they had been together those nights in total harmony, complete union. He couldn’t be wrong about that.
And he had her for six months, less two weeks. The loss of half a month seemed enormous. A few days ago the notion of sharing a half year with her had seemed nearly a lifetime. This morning it felt less than the blink of an eye, the whisper of his name on her lips. Already the pain of her inevitable departure wrenched at him, hurt him. Infuriated him.
He slammed a mental door on such thoughts and took a deep breath to settle his suddenly gathering energy. How could he teach a young student control when he himself felt none?
He lifted the bowl in one hand while still holding Chris in the other. “My hands are full,” he said. “Can you open the door?” He reinforced his question with a mental image of what he wanted Chris to do. In the woods, during their days alone together, he’d had Chris try several lifting and shifting techniques. But he’d never tried anything so close to home.
Sharing the Darkness Page 14