Lāākē had watched the spectacle many times. But tomorrow would be different. Tomorrow his heart would not be burning with curiosity, anger, or envy. Tomorrow, as tonight, it would be breaking.
He stretched out on the floor outside the door to his bedroom. There were more comfortable places to sleep in the lodge, but none close enough to her.
It was more of a dreamy murmur than a cry that brought him to his feet, knife drawn. He entered the bedroom on stealthy feet.
Aleesha’s pink gown hung on a wall peg. The half-cover had been placed on the bluestone lamp beside the bed, but the dim light was enough to prove the room was free of danger, Aleesha safe.
She lay on her side atop the tumble of furs and silks on his bed, one hand beneath her cheek. Despite being engulfed from chin to knee in one of his sleepshirts, his eyes could trace every feminine curve of her: breast, waist, hip, thigh. She looked tempting, and a little cold. He spread a fur over her. Then he simply stood gazing at her, knowing he should go back to the floor in the hall, but not able to leave.
“Do you plan to stare at me all night?” she asked softly as she opened her eyes.
He snatched back the hand that had somehow been poised to trace the fading pink swirls on her forearm.
“Lie down,” she said
He turned to leave and she caught his wrist. “Here, with me.”
He must have looked surprised and perhaps a little overeager because she shook her head. “I am offering you nothing but a place on your own soft mattress. We must be clear on that. Nothing.”
“Nothing,” he agreed. But as he settled beside her, her sweet scent enveloping him, her warm body touching his, he knew this was so much more than nothing. For him, Lāākē, the shunned, a man who had not known the caring touch or true presence of another human being in years, to lie beside her in the quiet darkness of his own lodge was so much more than nothing.
There was no future for them. She did not belong in his world and he could not live in hers. Any child of hers born in the Hell Hollows would be shunned. And any child of his born in the Cerrelean sunshine would burn to ash before it took a second breath.
They lay quiet for a long time, her back nestled perfectly against his bare chest, before she spoke. “Why are you not companioned?”
“No Wasobi woman would accept me,” he said simply.
She turned her profile toward him, disbelief threading her voice. “Surely there must be dozens begging to wear your blue stone.”
“The exchange of stones isn’t how it’s done in the Hell Hollows. And if it were, no Wasobi woman would accept mine. The blue in my skin offends them.”
“Tell me about it,” she said softly, and as they lay together in the darkness, he did. All of it; every humbling, humiliating detail. She didn’t interrupt and she didn’t argue.
When he finally fell silent, she cuddled her back more firmly against his chest, pulled his arm over her waist, and hooked her foot over his ankle, drawing him in in a way that was more comforting, more affirming than any words could have been.
Tomorrow he would return her to her own kind, and he feared the silence of this place without her. But tomorrow could wait for tomorrow. Tonight he would lie beside her, listening to her even breathing as she slept, and for a short time he would no longer be alone.
***
He slept little and woke in the black hour before the shadowy Hell Hollow dawn. She was curled against him, her breath warming his chest. If he had his way, he would never move, but the Cerreleans would begin their parade between the mountains at first light and if Aleesha was to join them, it would be best to get her safely to the Cleaving before the Wasobi gathered to watch the violation of their lands by blue skins.
He left her sleeping to prepare: gathering bow and arrows, sharpening his knife, packing his satchel with enough rodents to buy their way safely through the trees. She was awake and dressed when he returned carrying a pair of his mother’s boots, a slim dagger, and a calf sheath. His fingers were clumsy as he fitted the boots for her. She lifted her skirts just enough for him to attach the calf sheath. Her breath caught on a muted sigh as his fingers traced a slow path of longing from the back of her knee to her ankle. He settled her skirts back in their proper place and left the room.
They shared a somber breakfast in the garden as dawn arrived. Then, with an ache a hundred years in a lightning lake could not have soothed, Lāākē gathered his weapons. Aleesha followed him to the sentinel bushes, waiting silently as the branches parted to allow them to pass out of the compound. But when he passed through, she remained behind looking at him through the entry.
The sight of her framed by greenery, his home behind her, set fire to Laaake’s already burning heart, turning it to ashes. As he’d been all his life, he was on the outside looking in at what he could never have. And as painful as that had always been, his perpetual shunning, this—being forever separated from Aleesha—would be a wound from which he would never recover.
“Come,” he said. “If we are to return you to your people in time for the Choosing, we must go now.”
He held his hand out to her. She took it, but when he started again toward the forest, she gently resisted, pulling him back into the archway, pulling him slowly to her until his body pressed the length of hers.
She tilted her head up and her sweet breath puffed against his lips as she spoke. “I think your parents’ room has been empty long enough.”
Her kiss was feather light and for long moments his matched that tenderness, that intense innocent exploration. But soon his kisses turned greedy, and hot, and worshipping. Her arms encircled his neck. She pressed herself closer.
“This is your Choosing?” he asked.
“This is my Choosing.” She lifted the pink stone from her neck and placed it around his. With sacred deliberation he placed the blue stone she’d made for him around hers. It nestled above the blue-white mounds of her breasts.
With a joyous growl, Lāākē lifted her in his arms and carried her out of the archway. The bushes perfumed the air sweetly as they sealed the entrance behind them.
About The Author
Regina Richards spent much of her childhood with her nose in a book. At night, when darkness and responsible parents forced her to set her books aside, she’d lie in bed and create stories in her mind’s eye of daring adventures, cunning escapes, and improbable feats of heroism on alien planets. Today Regina lives in Texas with her husband and three children. She still tells herself a story each night before she sleeps, but now she also tells one to the computer during the day. Not the same one of course. Her bedtime stories are her own private world.
For more information, visit http://reginarichards.net.
The Rakam
Karpov Kinrade
Editor’s Note: Some stories are small, encompassing only the characters involved and the events depicted, while others seem a gateway into an entire world filled with mythic adventure. This is one of those gateway stories.
The evening sun sets low in the sky as the maiden moon begins her slow crawl into the impending twilight. Her sisters, the matron moon and crone moon, won’t join her for some hours yet. I breathe in the scent of the sea as brackish waves crash against the underbelly of the great kiasheen who glides effortlessly through it all, as if the giant shells packed with humans on its back matter little. I stand at the rostrum, peering over the great whale’s head as it moves us toward our next port two days north, where jewels will trade hands for spices and cloths, and the rich will get richer.
But I am not here for riches. For wealth. For the temporary haze of half-felt happiness those earthly pleasures offer.
“Sev!” A stern voice calls to me with a name that is not my given, and I turn to see Captain Kanen eyeing me with distrust. “Do ye not sleep, lad?”
“The moons keep me awake,” I tell him truthfully. It might be the only true thing I’ve said in my entire time with his crew.
“The moons, the sun, the waves. Ye be dr
owning in ye own haze if ye don’t lay yer head soon,” he says, crossing heavily-muscled arms over his broad chest. He is a man of the sea, hailing from one of the lesser families of the Shattered Islands. Hints of blue and turquoise in his hair, eyes and nails show his meager abilities to wield the island water stones, but he doesn’t need them to captain. He was a man born to make love to the sea; you can see it in the way they peer at each other at night, when he thinks no one is looking. His face is weathered, lined with the sun and salt of a life on water, his body hardened from years of labor on the kiasheen whale-ships. His crew trusts him, that I’ve seen clearly. It is not just the scars that occupy half his face and neck… the scars he earned at the sharp end of a rakam. His survival is a thing of legends in itself, and makes a man such as him a god in the eyes of his crew. And they do not follow him out of greed or fear, though that would certainly be enough motivation for some. They follow him because they see in him the sea-song that anyone drawn to this life craves.
It is why I chose him, chose his whale-ship, for this journey. “Whether I drown in my haze or not, you’ve gotten your pay.”
He nods gruffly. “Aye, that I have. Not many men willingly part with that many stones for a trip like this. Makes my men nervous, it does. Yer secrets. Yer skulking.”
He peers at me with dark eyes streaked with light blue.
My own eyes have none of their original darkness left. It is the one trait I cannot change, the startling blue of my eyes. I am a dark-haired man with too-blue eyes and too many secrets for his liking, but wealth often trumps suspicion, I’ve found, at least for a time.
“We will part ways at the next dock,” I assure him. Barring any delays, I think, but I don’t put that thought to words. No need to make him more restless.
His head jerks forward once, like a spasm at his neck. “See that we do, and all is well.”
Sea folk are a superstitious lot, more so than most of the Shattered Islands. They spend their lives out here on the waters and they forget how to live within normal society. They are too much surrounded by monsters and waves and a world beyond their control.
The captain whistles and shouts commands at someone above me. I look up to the shell that rides atop ropes of kelp, its small passenger staring intently at the waters. She looks down from her perch as a young man climbs up the kelp to relieve her of her duty for the night. She shimmies down, giving the shelled seat to him, landing on bare feet slapping against the great shell, loose-fitting bamboo-knit pants flapping against her skinny legs. Her hair is black, her eyes slashed with sapphire, so she must have touched the stone once, and I wonder how she came upon such a rare gem. Her arms are thick and muscled, the arms of one who leads a kiasheen, pulling upon the heavy reins that guide the beast by its nostrils.
“I’m free till sunrise if ye be looking for something… or someone, to do.” She winks at me and saunters off, not waiting for my response, making her way within the great shell to her quarters.
The first night I arrived on board, Calla cozied up to me during dinner and didn’t take it personally when I wasn’t interested. Since then she flirts lightly, as a young woman who has had many lovers and isn’t concerned with where the next one comes from.
I don’t mind, but I don’t reciprocate. I’m not here to find a new lover.
Captain Kanen glares at me when he sees Calla’s wink. I maintain eye contact with him, not aggressively, but not passively either. He averts his eyes first, and I turn and make my way inside the shell to my own cabin.
I’ve seen enough of this night, and the captain was right about one thing. I will fall into the haze if I don’t try to sleep.
I climb down the alabaster stairs to the small shell, that odd space between the great shell and the kiasheen where the whoosh of the ocean and the simmering sounds of the great beast’s belly collide into a strange kind of music that is both beautiful and terrifying. My generous offerings bought me a private cabin toward the fluke, so I walk through the narrow shell halls until I reach the end of the tunnel. I’m about to open the door to my cabin when I pause and still my breath.
My gloved hand is soundless as it turns the shell knob and pushes the door in.
The man standing over my trunk does not see or hear me as I approach him from behind.
I can smell his stink as I reach for his arm and twist it behind his back, pulling his bulk against my chest as I hiss into his ear. “You’ll kindly keep your grimy fingers off my belongings, or you won’t be leaving with your hands.”
***
The man stiffens in my arms, fear and panic warring with indignant anger over his face. But he is more coward than fighter and he slumps against me, sniveling. “I just be looking is all. No harm meant.”
I glance over his shoulder and see my trunk open, my few belongings stinking of his sweaty palms. “What were you looking for?” I ask, twisting him around and pinning him against the shell wall, my forearm crossing over his windpipe to keep him in place.
“Yer so much to yerself, me mates and I had a wager on what treasures ye keep hidden.”
I nearly gag at the liquor on his breath. The sea swill they drink in these parts has a particularly fishy odor. “You’re the one they call Clam, yes?”
He nods.
“And did you find hidden treasure?” I ask, knowing the answer.
He shakes his head, shells and bits of bone clanking together in his long, weedy beard and locks of hair.
“And will you be intruding on my space again, Clam?”
He shakes his head again and I bore into him with my eyes, with my purpose, until I smell the piss running down his legs. I let him go and push him toward the door of my cabin. “Tell your mates I like my privacy, and if any of you are found in here again, you’ll soon find yourself rakam bait.”
His eyes widen and he taps three fingers on his chest three times, a superstitious sign to ward off evil, and then trips over himself to escape my room. I hope my warning keeps him and his friends away. I hope it doesn’t push them to more violent action.
I close the door behind him after he leaves, latching a small shell to a strip of kelp to keep it locked from inside, then I move with one long stride back to my trunk. I shove aside the clothing and feel for the small lever that pops open the floorboard compartment. I take out a long bundle wrapped in kelp and cloth to reveal a black obsidian box. I breathe a sigh of relief as I feel the heat emanating from it, sending sparks through my fingers even while still closed.
Securing it and the kelp bundle back in place, I seal the compartment and fold my clothes neatly, returning them to their rightful place, before spreading myself over the hanging stretch of stitched kelp covered in swatches of bamboo cloth. Kelp is deceptively strong and holds my tall body and heavy muscle, suspending me in comfort as I attempt to sleep.
My eyes flutter closed, but sleep eludes me, as it always does. Instead I see her face. Hear her voice. Smell the sun and sand on her skin as her turquoise eyes crinkle with laughter.
Her hand reaches for me and my eyes flash open, my breathing coming too fast. I slip out of the sleeping net and leave my cabin in search of distraction.
I find it within the great shell, in the large mainroom where the crew eats and drinks together. Most are away, either on shift or resting between shifts, but a few men and one woman occupy a shelled table in the corner, their drinks clinking together as they toast the sea goddess and drink one—or more—for their fickle deity.
I find the bar and pour myself the sea swill I normally can’t stand, clutching the shelled cup as I find a seat alone and away from the others. It’s a bitter brew, with a fishy aftertaste that’s acquired more than enjoyed, but it’s strong and it bites my insides and burns me to the core, filling my blood with the song of the sea, a sweet, far away floating that none other can match. This is why people drink the brew. Not for the taste—for the forgetting.
Garen, a large man two heads taller than me, finger bones clanking in his black beard, raises
his voice to tell a story to those around him. He fills their ears with tales of legends, of those who rode rakam and lived to tell of it. But when he moves on to the legend of Dak’Ra, I look up, curious.
It is a version of the tale I have heard many times—of the legendary warrior of the famed Ra family from Ra’Kia’Ruu Island who fell in love with the beautiful daughter of the Kia clan. They defied custom to be together, to make a new family separate from their first, and so they were banished to the sea. And there, under the three moons, they were taken by the depths into the warm embrace of the Deep Mother.
His big voice fills the room. “They say Dak’Ra and Sa’Kia still haunt the seas, searching for one another, two halves of one soul,” Garen finishes.
I down the last of the swill until I can no longer feel my lips and my head is numb. “Her name was La’Kia,” I say softly.
Garen looks over at me. “Ye deaf? It was Sa’Kia.”
I meet his eyes. He’s in a haze over his drink and looking for a fight. I’m not. Not with him, at any rate. “You’re right,” I say, raising my cup. “I might be misremembering. Maybe it was Sa’Kia.”
He narrows his eyes. There’s a stillness in the room, as if everyone is holding their breath, then the big man raises his cup and laughs heartily. “Aye, maybe it was.”
I smile at the man whose face shifted with his smile, from menacing to jovial. “Thank you for the tale,” I say, grinning.
I’m walking back to the bar for a refill when an awful sound fills all the empty space around us. It’s a loud whine followed by a shriek of pain. I have only a fraction of a moment to react before the entire great shell is tipped to its side like a cup being knocked over, its contents spilled across the floor, the sound of teeth scraping against shell creating a discordant and frightening harmony with the cries of the great whale.
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