The Chosen - Stone Dance of the Chameleon 01

by Ricardo Pinto

  Carnelian dragged himself up onto a pad and helped Osidian onto the neighbouring one. They lay back over the ribs, still laughing, coughing.

  'Who is ... a mud ... worm?' Carnelian managed to say and the pads trembled with their laughter.

  Back on shore they hung Carnelian's trousers up to dry. Carnelian was aware that he was noticing Osidian's smooth body too much and hid his blushes in the twilight.

  Osidian pointed. 'You still carry vestiges of your paint.'

  Carnelian looked down at his chest and could see a patch dulling the gleam of his skin. He looked up and saw that Osidian too looked like the moon passing behind tatters of cloud. He watched him walk away. His eyes slipped down his tensing and untensing back. Osidian had taint scars only on the father's side. He watched him crouch over one of their packs. Could he be marumaga? No, he had a blood-ring. He watched Osidian rummaging. Perhaps his sybling brother carried their mother's taint on his back. Carnelian decided it was time to ask Osidian who he was. He was coming back, a jar in one hand, a red lacquered box in the other.

  'What are those?' Carnelian asked, his question ready, his heart quickening.

  Osidian did not answer or look up until he was standing near enough for Carnelian to smell his body. This time he could not hide his blush even though he looked away. Osidian's hand took his face and turned it back. Carnelian watched him kneel down, open the jar, open the box and bring out a pad. He dipped it in the jar and stood up with it. Carnelian looked at the pad held at the ends of his fingers. He looked into Osidian's eyes. They swallowed him. He felt the pad moving towards his face. The sight of it freed him. He snatched Osidian's wrist and held it firmly.

  'What're you doing?' he asked in Vulgate, his heart beating hard enough to make him shake.

  'Your skin - it's still streaked with paint,' Osidian replied in the same language, smiling tentatively through a frown.

  Carnelian shook his head. 'But. .. you can't. Not you.'

  'I want to.' Osidian brought up his other hand to release his wrist softly from Carnelian's grip.

  Carnelian let his arm drop. He closed his eyes and flinched as the cool pad touched his forehead. It slid first to one side and then to the other, each time moving further down. Carnelian opened his eyes. He watched Osidian's careful concentration. He closed his eyes as the pad moved into the hollows of his eyes. He opened them again when it moved out over his swelling cheeks and the ridge of his nose. Sometimes, at the end of a stroke, their eyes would meet. Osidian's would gently disengage and he would continue with the cleaning. The pad slipped up and over Carnelian's lip. It came back up and along the hollow between his chin and lower lip. It slid back finding the valley between his lips. Its pressure made them open so that he felt it brushing his teeth and could taste its bitterness. The pad moved away. Osidian came closer till his eyes were all that Carnelian could see: his warm breath all he could feel. He closed his eyes as their lips met and then Osidian's tongue opened them further.

  They swam again in the night-black water, slipping like ripples until they found a little stream by its bright gushing. They clambered up over rocks and found a pool. The moon rose to show them the fish darting their silver. At first their attempts to catch them were all splashing, curses and laughter, but eventually they settled down to hunt them slowly, with guile, slipping their hands round them like spoons and scooping them out onto the shore where they beat their shapes into the mud. They took them back, gutted them and ate their flesh raw with more pomegranates and some of the sweet little hri cakes that Osidian had thought to bring.

  That night was a wonder of stars. They had made a bed from rushes. Carnelian lay with Osidian in his arms. Osidian's skin touched his all along his side. He moved his head so that he could feel Osidian's breath on his cheek. He gloried in his smell and would have kissed him except that he did not want to disturb his sleep. He propped himself up on an elbow to feast his eyes on moonlight made flesh. Then he lay back, not wishing to drink too much joy. The next day it would be there for him, and the next, and a few days more, and then what? He tried not to think of it. The worry about his father was a dull ache. He clutched Osidian, who moaned and rolled away.

  The morning woke them with glorious birdsong. The sun gleamed on the faraway curve of the Sacred Wall. Osidian's kiss on Carnelian's shoulder turned into a bite. Carnelian growled, Osidian ran away laughing to plunge into the lagoon. Carnelian gave chase, dived, came up shrieking from the water's chill, but soon he was pursuing Osidian's flash through the weedy shallows. They played like eels until they saw the fire of the day had reached the edge of the Yden.

  They returned, rubbing the water from their skins.

  Carnelian stood quietly while Osidian painted him, kissing his hands whenever they came close enough. Afterwards he painted Osidian, caressing him with the brush, their eyes igniting passion.

  When the sun grew tyrannous in the arch of the sky, they hid from it, leaning their smooth skin against the rugose bark of trees. Panting, eyes closed, half dreaming under canopying branches, limbs intertwining, they waited for the cooler afternoon.

  As the shadows began to spear eastwards they stirred, busting to their shielding paint. They took their bundles and ran, exploring the wilder thickets of the Yden. Pale creatures dressed only in the dappling shadows of leaves, they slipped through the steaming afternoon. Their eyes flashed like dragonflies as they searched out each new wonder. They cast covetous glances on pools and fingers of the flamingo lagoons in which they did not dare to swim lest it should strip away their paint. As the crater darkened they dared to swoop across the water meadows, using lily pads as stepping stones. Then, when the Sacred Wall had washed its shadow over them, they slipped sighing into a pool, burying their flesh in its heavy folds, scrubbing each other free of paint, undulating through the waters that were so filled with fish they could feel their silver against their skin.

  At night they ate the food that they had found as they had found it. Fire seemed a sacrilege. They cleaned each other as if it was something they had always done. They made love. They slept together with only the moonlight for a blanket.

  The next day they made a raft, and hidden beneath an awning they improvised from their purple cloaks, they paddled among the stilted flamingos to explore the islands lying in the lagoons. On one of these they sheltered from the greatest heat of the day. All day long they heard the waft of birdcalls and the delicate sculling of water as the flocks fed. Stick legs crossed and recrossed like a passing of spears before the scintillating textures of the water.

  In the early evening they ran across the mud waving their arms and sending a pink drift up to hide the sky so that they stopped, gaping at the colour and the rushing surge of it.

  This must be what it's like to receive Apotheosis,' muttered Osidian.

  Seeing the serious, fixed wonder of his face, Carnelian crept away and kicked water over him so that Osidian grew angry and chased him. They wrestled their patterns across the mud and, thrashing, rolled into the shallows. They rose panting, their laughter gashing white their muddy faces. The deepest pool they could find only came up to their waists. They washed each other. Osidian stopped Carnelian when he would have had more play. He seemed remote.

  'What're you thinking?' Carnelian said, as lightly as he could.

  Osidian turned to him, as beautiful as a marble god. This morning we used up the last of the paint. I didn't expect that we'd stay down here so long.'

  Carnelian gazed at him, aching with a longing to engulf him so intense it almost made him cry. Instead, he grinned outrageously and slapped the ridging of Osidian's belly. 'What of it? We'll have to hide out the day in the shade. The night'll still be ours.'

  'But how shall we return?' Osidian turned to look back at the Pillar of Heaven, a thunderous mass against the mauve sky.

  Carnelian looked at it, tried to see where the Halls of Thunder were, remembered his father with a pang. He had forgotten him and that his people would be expecting him back.
/>   Osidian's sombre looks stopped him passing it all off with a jest. It would have been hollow, anyway. They went back together, gouging the mud with their toes, so close that often their shoulders and elbows touched.

  'One more day?' Carnelian asked at last.

  Osidian looked sidelong at him, and gave the slightest of nods.

  Carnelian sat up. Something had woken him. He stood up, cursed under his breath as he tottered waiting to see if he had woken Osidian. When there was no stirring at his feet, he ducked out from under the sheltering branches. A miraculous ceiling of stars dizzied him. The moon had set. The Pillar of Heaven was a hole cut out from half the sky. He was sure he could see some tiny flecks of light floating there near its top. He shook his head. It must be illusion. The Halls of Thunder were too far away. A sound. A faint, creaking sound. He turned to look across the Yden. Stars snared in its mirrors. Beyond, the pale, mountain wall stirred its reflection into the thick black Skymere. There it was again. A creaking and, perhaps, floating above it the tickle of faraway bells. He saw the lights. A necklace of tiny diamonds stretching across the crater's black throat. He watched its creep make tiny sounds. People were moving along the Ydenrim.

  Something brushed his arm. He cried out. 'Hush,' hissed the shadow, grabbing hold of him. 'I'm sorry I woke you,' said Carnelian, fitting his head into the space between Osidian's neck and shoulder. He could feel Osidian's heart beating through his stiff body. By the shape of his profile, Carnelian knew he was watching the lights. Another set had appeared, off to the south. 'What are they?' Carnelian whispered.

  He waited and was going to repeat the question when Osidian said, 'Processions of the Chosen.' He had returned to Quya for the first time in days.

  'What does it mean?'

  "That we must return to the sky.'

  Carnelian tried to get more out of him, unsuccessfully. He let him move away.

  'Let us grab what sleep we can before daybreak,' said Osidian.

  Carnelian felt a twinge of irritation. With his resumption of the Quya, Osidian was turning himself back into a stranger. Carnelian's stomach knotted. Was he regretting their lovemaking? Carnelian followed him back. Crouching under the branches, he lay down, denying himself the desire to touch him. He lay for an age, miserable, bound on the rack of the worries he had put aside, until sleep released him into a fitful dream.

  The SILENT HEART

  Better a sword thrust

  Than a wounding silence

  (proverb - origin unknown)

  Reaching out for Osidian and not finding him, Carnelian awoke. He sat up and saw through twigs and leaves the morning bright on the faraway Sacred Wall. The Skymere smiled its alluring blue. The waders stirred the glimmering lagoons.

  He crept out from under the branches, stretching, delighting in the air's warm caress. He looked for Osidian. The Pillar of Heaven was a slab of night auraed by the sun. From it came shadow that washed over him and out to narrow a dark road across the lagoons and the lake and up the Sacred Wall.

  Osidian was nowhere to be seen. Carnelian followed a trail of footprints to the water's edge. A few ripples creased the water's silk. He waited for a head to surface. He dipped his foot. He walked in, enjoying the coolness as it came up his legs. He allowed his knees to fold and sank. He swam as languidly as the fish, enjoying the weight of water on his limbs. He came out when he saw Osidian coming down to the shore. He seemed unnatural clothed.

  'Have you bathed?' Carnelian said, rubbing the water off his skin.

  Osidian gave him a nod.

  'Why didn't you wake me?' Carnelian used Vulgate in an attempt to coax Osidian back into intimacy.

  The day ahead will be best met with you fully rested,' Osidian replied, in Quya.

  'Kiss me,' said Carnelian with a grin.

  Osidian looked at him without emotion. He came closer, leaned towards him as if over a wall, touched a kiss to Carnelian's cheek. Carnelian watched him stand back, feeling how closed Osidian was to him, how dry his kiss. 'Is anything the matter?'

  Osidian looked over his shoulder at the Pillar. 'Without paint we must return always in its shadow. Though it will ebb slowly we must still allow time to gather fruit.'

  Keeping in the Pillar's shadow, they paddled across the lagoons, sometimes having to heave the raft over spits of mud. Eventually, the water began to crowd with water lilies. When they became dense enough to snare the raft, they abandoned it and wound off across the pads. The pools narrowed and clogged with reeds till they were mostly walking on land.

  When they reached the wild orchards, Carnelian looked back. The Pillar's shadow had retreated from the Sacred Wall across the Skymere and was now defending the Ydenrim against the morning.

  They wandered up through the terraces, plucking apples and pomegranates from the trees and slipping them into their packs. Hearing water, they found a stream that they followed until it brought them to the wall of the Forbidden Garden. They walked along this until they found a gate that Osidian opened with his key.

  The jewelled colours of the garden were dulled by the Pillar's shadow. The terraces staircased up to its dark sky-seeking cliff. Barefoot, they wandered paths in the oppressive perfume exhaled by trumpet-throated lilies. Staircases of jasper and mirrored granite were ice under their feet. Carp hung their gold motionless in pools. Trees stood like mourners. Carnelian felt he was trespassing.

  At last they found a pavilion through which water percolated in a thousand twisting rivulets that made the air humid and filled it with melancholy music.

  'We must wait until the sun passes overhead,' said Osidian and laid himself out on a ledge so that Carnelian could hardly believe him not carved from its lifeless stone. He tried to wash away his loneliness with the sacrament of the feeling from the sound of rain. As the shivers coursed up and down his back he tried to focus on how with this ecstasy the Twins had brought into being all living things.

  Osidian woke him wearing a solemn face. 'It is time.'

  Carnelian watched him tearing strips from the hem of his purple cloak and winding them round his feet and hands. Osidian looked up. 'Do as I do. The sun will be at its highest. Exposed skin will taint instantly.'

  Carnelian copied Osidian. When they were ready, they stood in the pavilion's door with the rain sounds behind them. Outside, the garden burned fiercely with hardly a shadow. They ran out into the sun-ray downpour. Soon they began to feel the heat through their hoods and through the silk shoulders of their cloaks. They moved quickly, stopping wherever they could find shade. The kitchen garden gave welcome relief along its narrow half-shaded paths. The garden's wall had to be climbed with some care. Several times, Carnelian winced as a sleeve fell away to reveal the blinding whiteness of his arm. The sun's scorch on it seemed to threaten a blistering burn.

  At first they were glad when they dropped down on the other side into the thorn forest. But the canopy was thin and brown. The thorns snagged their cloaks, trying to pluck them off and expose them to the sun's shrivelling glare. Each time a cloak snagged, it had to be worked free with tedious care. Imprisoned in their cloaks they broiled. At last they reached the shadow that the Pillar was casting towards the east. It was as deliciously cool as the sky-reflecting waters of a mountain lake.

  Osidian drove Carnelian up the Ladder as if they were being hunted. Up and further up they climbed. Carnelian hardly dared to look out across Osrakum. When he did, he had to cling hard to the rock, feeling the wind trying to pluck him off, to send him soaring down into the turquoise world below. Each time, the Pillar's shadow had stretched further out over the Yden angling slowly towards the south. It was exhaustion that made him stop looking. When his hands had walked their way up to the next handhold, he pressed his cheek against the rock, one eye left free to make sure he was not falling. When they reached each rest cave, he would flop into it, his breath rasping, resentfully mute, waiting with increasing anger for Osidian's next demand that they press on.

  They were sitting in such a cave when Carnelia
n refused to go any further.

  'But we can make the next stop if we push on,' Osidian pleaded.

  Looking out, Carnelian could see the tide of shadow was already close to flooding Osrakum's floor. He was weary. His limbs were trembling. He let his head hang forward. He would not go any further.

  'What is wrong with you?' cried Osidian.

  Carnelian looked up and saw disturbing flickerings in his eyes. 'Nightfall is near.'

  Osidian snorted, saying haughtily, 'My Lord has quickly gained expertise in judging time.'

  'If you wish to go on, my Lord, go. I am remaining here.'

  They ate the fruit they had brought in sullen silence. The sharp, sweet pomegranate juice awoke in Carnelian memories of joy. He glanced at Osidian and felt his anger melting away. The stubble on his head made him seem less a Master. He tried to find a way to his side. 'Osidian?'

  'What?' said Osidian, his voice, his face, his eyes, all granite.

  Carnelian turned away thinking that perhaps the Yden had been nothing but a dream.

  The morning sun found Carnelian's face with a single ray. He smiled in his dreams then woke with a start and edged away into a shadow. He could see an arch of sky bright enough to stab pain behind his eyes. Looking away, he found Osidian sleeping in the gloom. He crept close to him and looked into his face. Even in sleep he was frowning his birthmark. Carnelian leaned close, thinking to kiss him, but pulled back when he stirred.

  'When do we continue the climb?' he asked, as he watched Osidian wake.

  'When do you think?'

  It was like a slap. Carnelian hid his hurt in silence. Sometimes he would catch Osidian looking at him, his lips parted, and he could see that the boy had something he needed to say. But the words would not come out and

  Carnelian would lean his head back against the rock, close his eyes and try to make his mind as blank as a drizzling sky.