With a sweep of its arm it invited him to sit. Distrusting it, he remained standing. It assured him he had nothing to fear, and cordially asked what he wanted.
“My meli,” said Payne. “Give it back.”
The creature smiled with a smile that reminded him of Meera. Was he sure of this? it asked. His meli, that was what he truly wanted?
Payne eyed it warily and nodded.
The smile deepened, and for an instant the human face blurred, as if the creature had trouble holding its shape. When the face became distinct again, the smile looked different, less like Meera's and more like his brother's. The shape of the face was different too; less human and more Grotesque.
“Very well. Come here then. I'll give it to you.”
Cautiously, Payne inched forward. The creature made no move until he was an arm's length away, and then it attacked.
It knocked him over, onto his back, and they grappled in the sand, throwing punches, clawing and kicking. Payne got in some blows, but he was no match for it, and before long the creature had him pinned.
It sat astride his chest, gloating. Enraged, Payne gathered every ounce of strength he had left, closed his eyes and with a surge of will, heaved the creature off. Then he rolled over and sprang to his feet, and before the creature could react, leapt forward. He pummeled it, first the body and then the face, furiously, relentlessly, sending it staggering backward. It held up its hands for him to stop, but he wouldn't stop, not until he had it pinned on its back.
The creature cried out to him. He was hurting it, wouldn't he please get off? Triumphant, Payne refused, but the creature whined and whimpered so that eventually he took pity on it and sat back a little, easing up the pressure of his knees. It was all the creature needed, and with a shove it threw him off and rolled away.
And now, abandoning its adopted form, it began to elongate, like glass being heated and stretched. Its arms and legs melted into its sides. Its tongue lengthened and narrowed into a featherlike whip. Its eyes lost their lids. Its skin turned thick and blue and scaly.
Payne was on his knees, staring at it, panting. Longer and longer it grew, until it loomed above him, blotting out the sun. It began to sway back and forth, languidly, almost listlessly, then coiled itself and prepared to strike.
Payne threw up his hands to protect himself.
Hissing, the creature reared its head and struck.
It was over in an instant. By the time Payne came to his senses, the creature had him wrapped up tight. Its skin was cool, which made it feel wet. Beneath the skin its body quivered with power and strength. Every time Payne exhaled, it tightened its grip on him. His breaths grew more and more shallow. Soon he would be out of air.
Its fat head floated above him, lolling side to side as if in time to a slow, sad song. Its tongue flicked out and kissed his cheek. Its blue eyes mocked him.
“Give up?” it hissed. “Give up?”
Crushed and starved for air, Payne could hardly think. He could barely speak. He drew what he knew to be his final breath.
“One wish,” he choked. “One last wish. Then yes, I give up. Do what you want with me.”
The creature's head stopped moving. Its tongue grew still. “What wish?”
“Dance,” said Payne. “Let me dance.”
He had no way to make music. The ortine was gone, and he didn't know how to sing. But his heart was beating and his blood was flowing, and once the creature released him, he could breathe again. He was alive, and that would have to do.
The first few steps were stiff and painful. He stumbled and tripped once over his own feet. His legs were weak, and it was hard to keep his balance in the sand.
He started over, widening his stance and bending his knees and paying attention to the ground's uneven contour with his toes. This steadied him, and he raised his arms. His shirt and pants had been torn off in the fighting. His naked skin was pale in the early light.
He lifted one foot, holding his balance, then slowly and carefully shifted his weight to the other. He repeated this motion, rocking back and forth, keeping his arms light, gaining confidence. He stomped his feet a few times, added a little hop to his landing, gradually picking up speed.
It was a clownish dance, but no one was there to call it that or ridicule him. It was silly, but what was that to him? Death was staring him in the face, coiled within striking distance, and here he was dancing. He glanced at the creature, and laughter bubbled out of him.
He had the rhythm now. He didn't need a drum to beat for him—he was his own drum, his own instrument. The music was in his body and his head. He flicked his tongue in and out and closed his eyes. The sun was bright behind his lids. Floaters shaped like worms swam across his field of vision. Tossing back his head, and stirring up these worms into a kind of spastic dance of their own, he started turning.
Sometime later he opened his eyes to discover that the creature was turning too. Tail planted in the sand, head ten or fifteen feet aloft, its lazy revolutions were timed to his. It remained coiled, and with every turn its coils tightened and its height diminished.
Payne kept dancing. The next time he opened his eyes, the sun was overhead, and the next time after that, it sat aflame atop the horizon. The sea glittered in its long horizontal light, and the beach blushed pink. The creature had contracted into a dense coil no taller than he was. Its head had flattened and its mouth had widened to the point that it seemed to be grinning. Its eyes were sleepy and glazed. The light in them was dying.
Payne felt a stab of pity and he slowed, prompting the creature to raise its head and speak.
“Don't stop. Finish it.”
He hesitated, and the creature gave a hiss that made his blood run cold. With a sense of foreboding he resumed his turning. Not like before but fast this time, round and round until he dug a hole for himself in the sand, round and round until his head was spinning. He whirled and danced without a thought for the creature or himself, without a thought at all, until every bone and sinew in his body ached. He whirled with a sense of dread and then of ecstasy, until he was gasping for air. He whirled and danced until his heart was bursting and he had to stop. Staggering then, he clutched his chest and then his side, and it came to him that he was going to die, as surely as the creature was. It was the end of his life, and his eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the ground. He had danced the dance of death for both of them.
When he came to, he was lying facedown in a shallow bowl. His mouth was full of sand. Nearby was another bowl, slightly deeper, filled with a dark blue liquid. He had only the faintest idea of what had happened and how he'd arrived at where he was, or for that matter, where he'd come from. His mind felt emptied, like the pages of a book torn loose and blown away.
He did feel tired, that he knew, and his eyelids drifted shut. When he opened them again, the material in the bowl beside him had changed. It was thicker now, and a darker blue, nearly opaque.
He brushed the sand from his face and got to his feet. In his bag was a clutch of eggs, as well as a partly eaten cactus fruit, which he finished. He filled his bottle with water from the sea, then returned to the pool of liquid. It had a sweet, nutritious, bloodlike smell. He crouched at its edge, arms around his knees, studying it.
At length he rose and went to his bag and removed the eggs, which he piled beside the pool. One by one, very carefully, he dipped them in. The liquid, he noted, was sticky and adherent. It coated the eggs in an elastic blue skin. When all of them were bathed, he carried them to the nestlike cavity in the sand where he had woken and gently placed them in it, close but not touching. Then he sat back and waited for them to ripen and mature.
The days passed, and from time to time he turned them, brushing off the sand that stuck to them before nestling them back in place. Occasionally, he wandered down to the water's edge, but mostly he stayed beside the eggs.
In time they hardened. The sun did its work, and the skinlike coating, which had been translucent, t
urned opaque. Not long after that, the eggs began to jiggle and shiver. Hairline cracks appeared in the shells. The cracks widened, pieces of the shell broke off, and one by one the eggs opened.
From each emerged a hatchling, boy or girl, hair wet and plastered to their heads, bodies glistening. The heads and faces of these boys and girls were neither tesque nor human but stranger than both, stranger than strange. Payne carried each of them down to the water, where he washed them off. Then he carried them back to the nest. The pool beside it had shrunk, but not completely. In the center a portion of it remained. Payne collected the now-viscous liquid in his bottle, which he brought to the children, dabbing the dark fluid on their tiny tongues. Later, when they could, he had them drink it. When there was no more left, he scraped the sand and broke off pieces of crust where the pool had dried and caked, and had them suck on these, and when they grew teeth, chew and eat them.
Before long, the children were walking, then running. They ran away from him, crying out that he should run after them, that he should give chase. But he had no desire to give chase, to them or to anything. He had chased enough. And when he didn't, they laughed and chased each other and sooner or later ran back to him.
With time their limbs lengthened. Their bodies filled out. They grew taller, smarter, older. To Payne it all seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. When they reached adolescence, he gathered them around him and said that it was time to leave. They had a journey to make, they were a tribe, and he would guide them.
And he did, over many years, out of the desert, over the mountains and beyond the sea. And in the fullness of time they came into a valley, fed by rivers and surrounded by deep forests. It was a rich and fertile land, untouched by tesque or human.
Here they settled. And they flourished and they thrived. They grew strong arms and legs, strong wills, strong minds, strong bodies. Strong faces too, strange faces, strangely featured, hideous but also beautiful, faces unlike any that the world had ever seen.
And like their father they were healers, every one of them, though none possessed a meli, nor did any of them need one. The skin where it might have been was no different from the skin around it. There was no os, no hidden organ, no internal gland. Yet they had the healing power to an advanced degree. A degree, in fact, that far surpassed any healer save their father who had ever come before. They healed through touch alone, touch and spirit, and they had no need to reify their healings, no need, that is, to make things concrete. They suffered no such earthbound limitation. Moreover, they had the power to heal tesques as well as humans, and animals if they chose. They had power to do a great many things, power, some said, commensurate with their monstrous beauty. Power that, despite the long and treacherous and often fruitless search to find their hidden valley, prompted many to seek them out. Tesques came, humans came, and as time went by, tesques and humans came together. For these healers born of Payne seemed to smile most on pilgrimages composed of both races. They seemed to love best the mix.
And Payne was proud of his children, and he was happy in his heart. But in time he grew restless and could no longer stay with them. And on the morning of the first day of the season they called Promise he left the valley and climbed the ridge to the east. When the forest was far below him and he could see in all directions, he stopped, and when night arrived, he built a fire and sat down. The sky above him was a sea of light, and there were shooting stars in great numbers. Each was swallowed quickly by the dark interstice between the points of light, all save one that arose from a long, serpiginous constellation in the north. This star seemed to fall forever. And in the hour before dawn a stranger appeared at the fire. Payne invited him to sit, and he accepted the invitation. The two of them shared the fire until daybreak, when the stranger stood, then rose. And Payne followed him.
MICHAEL BLUMLEIN is the author of The Movement of Mountains (St. Martin's Press, 1987) and X,Y (Dell, 1993), as well as the award-winning story collection The Brains of Rats (Scream Press, 1990, rereleased by Dell in 1997). A frequent contributor to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Interzone, his short stories have been anthologized many times, including several appearances in the prestigious The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Annual Collection and The Year's Best Science Fiction. He has been nominated twice for the World Fantasy Award and twice for the Bram Stoker Award. He has written for the stage and for film. His novel X,Y was recently made into a movie. In addition to writing, Dr. Blumlein practices and teaches medicine at the University of California at San Francisco.
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