Colette shook her head with a sudden violence and pushed the blankets from her legs. Her body moved stiffly from disuse, but she gave no indication of noticing. “No. I need to know about Bren. Tell me.”
Happiness vanished into an uneven frown, and the mysterious hollowness of his features returned in full force.
Colette’s insides ran cold. “Tell me, Arman.”
He hung his head like a weary and overworked horse, dark hair falling across his swarthy features. Arman heard Brenol’s bitter voice sound through his memory, “You’re never wrong, Arman.”
The juile curled his fists at his sides. I was wrong when it mattered most. And now I shall regret it to my death…
“He is dead,” she said. The thought had graced her mind before, but even still, she found it repulsive and unbelievable. It cannot be…
“No, no,” he replied in a whisper. When his black eyes raised to meet hers, they were brimming with tears.
“Then what? What could be worse?”
The words came out slowly, poisoning the air. “He returned to his world.”
Colette’s mind reeled. She could not comprehend it.
“We thought you dead. Every seal I received told me as much, for no one knew of you. It had been so long… And a woman with child had died of the fever sometime after we left you… We thought… I thought… Bren could not heal past your absence…and he ran.”
The lunitata exhaled and her shoulders fell forward in a slump. Her face seemed drained of all emotion.
His speech slowed. “Colette, I am sorry. We both guessed it, but I told him there was no way you could be alive. It is my fault. Mine. I’d thought…”
She nodded vacantly. Somewhere within she wondered if she could hate the Tindel for their lie, but she felt only an odd emptiness.
“We were destroying the portals. I believed it was the next step to take before we could beg for help from the Tindel. And he slipped out before… I never would have thought he would… Oh Colette! I failed you. I should have come sooner, or at least guessed at Pearl’s actions. I should have destroyed the portals long ago… So many things I failed you in.” His onyx eyes groped desperately, seeking some kind of meaning or understanding in her face. “Oh, Colette. Why did it take you so long? What happened here? Why did you not send seal?”
She gazed back with a blank expression. The truth lay before her, yet she seemed to not be able to breathe it in yet. It settled coolly into her gut, but still she felt nothing.
It will come. The thought was scarier than the hollow emptiness of the present, for who could endure that grief? Who?
Colette inhaled deeply and spoke. The trip with Pearl, her time with the Tindel, their hardness, the gardens, her flight, Mari’s hand upon the spherisol, being held captive by her own injuries, the Tindel’s deception about her presence. She did not share about Gere, but it did not matter, for it seemed as though the juile deduced as much anyway. It shamed her and flushed her cheeks rouge.
Arman squeezed her hand. The comfort it brought nearly drew up the dormant emotions that lay like a dark and mysterious pool within, but she forced them back down. Colette did not want to be awash with feeling right now. She just wanted to be with Arman and to forget the last orbit and a half.
“I am proud of you,” he said. “You have done well here. The clans respect you, as much as they can an outsider.” His eyes steadied as the facts aligned and fell into place. “Mari—do you know what about her caused the change in the sphere?”
Colette shrugged. “Lunitata?”
Arman nodded his agreement. “Or Bren’s blood? Or a pairing of the two?” He paused, contemplating the numerous possibilities. “Regardless, it will save us all.” He peered at her kindly, but her own gaze fell on her legs.
“What’s left to be saved,” she mumbled to herself.
“Colette?”
“Yes?” She glanced up and met his eyes. They were full of compassion.
“What do you need? How can I help you?”
A strange laugh chirped from her throat. She looked back down at the purple-green webs splotching her legs.
Arman followed her gaze and cocked his head sideways in study. After silent moments of consideration, he spoke. “The peri has been harsh to you.”
She did not answer. There was no need.
“Is this just on the legs?”
“They run across my chest too,” Colette replied softly and hugged her arms around the concealed area.
He bobbed his head gently in thought, and his sharp eyes flickered. He released her hand, stood, stepping back several paces to where he had laid his cloak, and began to pilfer through a cornflower blue bag. The cloak and bag were both well-crafted and warm, in familiar materials, familiar stitching. They were Tindellan. A faint surprise tickled at her, but it faded away in the stream of surrealism that eddied around her. She did not fight to hold it.
He rose with hands wrapped around several items. “I’m glad you have healed from most of your injuries. The Tindel know how to manage desert trauma well. Even had I been here, I would have been useless. But now, we shall see. I have things from the land of sun that they do not.” He smiled. “May I call for hot water?”
Colette nodded and indicated the bell in the hallway. He sounded the instrument with a quick peal, and the note carried softly back to where she lay. It kindled alive a tiny hope in her, like the hope she had found with the sunset on the perideta.
The water arrived shortly after, and the juile began to steep several pungent leaves in the steaming pot. An awful scent saturated the room and nearly drew her breakfast from her stomach. Arman did not even grimace.
While the tea brewed, he opened an elongated, clear glass vial full of a pearly cream. He raised it to his nostrils, sniffed, and poured a liberal handful into a palm.
“May I?” he asked.
Colette nodded, still fighting the roiling in her gut.
Arman lit down upon his heels before the pallet and began to massage the white substance upon heel, ankle, shin, calf, knee, and thigh. The sensation was initially cool, but soon the cream turned warm and left a tingling all across her limbs. It felt wonderful, like the tickling of a hot spring.
Arman drew her hand into his and opened her palm gently, placing a dollop into it. “Your chest, please.” He strode to the tea and respectfully kept his back to her while she massaged. As the sensation spread across her chest, her lungs filled with ease. Her head turned light, and she fought to repress a giggle.
“There’re narcotics in this?” she asked.
“Of course.”
Colette sighed, not really caring, and lay back down upon the pallet. Her thoughts floated airily around her head like butterflies flittering from flower to flower, and the sharp ache she had been wrestling down did not seem so acutely painful anymore.
“You will love Mari,” she said after a few minutes. Her heart had slowed, and her mind seemed to nuzzle contentedly inside a gauzy cloud.
“Drink this, Colette.” Arman strode to her with a teacup brimming with the foul gray liquid.
“I don’t think I really want to.” Her thick tongue slurred the words.
“I don’t think I really care,” he responded easily, raising the cup to her mouth and tipping the contents down her throat.
It was spicy, warm, and putrid. She sputtered a bit, but the narcotics had calmed her and turned her compliant. She smacked her lips in an exaggerated movement after he had drawn the cup away. That was the last Colette remembered for two days.
~
Brenol’s appearance gradually turned wild. His clothing was soiled by his rugged living, and he took on the scent of one who does not bathe but every few moons. His beard—just as coppery as the hair atop his head—turned thick and rough. His solid figure slimmed into lean muscle, and his features—at least what could be seen of them beneath the red fur—now appeared gaunt.
The eyes were what they always had been, but more. Somehow, after moons under open
skies with bones rattling from the penetrating cold, they had absorbed a softness. His anger seeped out as if unable to remain, and the hardness melted into compassion. He remained a mysterious figure, and for this he was avoided, but his gaze, if ever met, was both gentle and seeing.
He had long since finished the wallet Torgot had given him. He occasionally meandered into a town to purchase supplies, but he found the suspicious eyes exhausting and unfailingly would cower back afterwards to find a cave or create a shelter. His days were cold and his nights colder, but the fiery sting of Colette’s death would not abate, and so he refused to leave the woods.
He purposefully remained in the lugazzi territory. He had no desire to stand by and watch the passing of the terrisdans, so he avoided them as one does an electrical current after a shock; it was enough for him to grieve Colette, his child, and Darse without adding more.
I could return to my old house, he would think sporadically, but it was a statement without roots. He knew he would not tap a foot toward any terrisdan until he had grappled with the darkness inside. So he waited and learned to live with the sensation of freezing limbs and the sound of chattering teeth.
The towns and people of the area eventually seemed to accept his reeking and wandering presence. It was as if he had always been there, and if asked, they likely would have said as much.
~
Colette dreamed.
In the dream, little children played. They had the same rich green eyes and coppery hair as Mari, and they laughed and ran through the gardens and halls of the bethaida. Their skin was ruddy, and their eyes were alive with joy. They had Brenol’s freckles and smile, but her own grace marked their lithe movements as they flew by in play. As the curtains began to steal up around her, drawing her slowly from the dream world, a heavy ache filled her.
It was the ache of what could never be.
She opened her eyes and breathed deeply. While she did not feel entirely normal, the clarity of her mind surprised her. She recalled everything about her time with Arman perfectly, and her thoughts flowed with the natural ease of a hand dipping and slicing through clear water.
The room around her was her own. She no longer resided in the healing ward. Mari’s pallet had been restored along with her own belongings, and the familiarity of the space filled her with a soft comfort. The lights were dimmed—more than the usual daytime shadows—but the gloom did not deter her from elbowing up to a seat and peering down her shirt. The spidery marks were a faint pink-white. They looked more like scars now. She ran her fingers across the slightly raised lines. Her legs showed even greater recovery. The marks were barely evident, and the skin was a lovely pale pink, glowing softly.
Her exhalation very nearly turned into weeping.
“They cannot keep me as their pet now,” she said.
“Were they threatening as much?” A low voice rolled from across the room.
She smiled. “Not in words, but a person wants to know that freedom is possible.”
Arman lifted his transparent figure from the corner chair and strode to her pallet. His robes made the comforting swish that she knew well. He crouched down to examine her legs as she just had, although he did it with an air of familiarity, as though he had done as much hundreds of times within the last few days. Colette blushed despite herself.
“A female nurse applied the additional ointment to your chest,” he said casually.
Colette blushed again. It was uncanny to have another read her thoughts so precisely.
“Tell me how you feel.”
“Weak.”
Arman nodded and strode to the hallway. He rang the bell resting in the low sconce and spoke in a hushed bass to a child. He returned after a few minutes with warm bread and hot tea. He pulled his own chair over to accompany her.
“I’m glad to see we’ve moved beyond the gray sludge,” Colette said after a small sip.
“It is rather unpleasant,” he replied amiably. His dark eyes watched her with their familiar unflinching intensity. His expression was stoic, but his frame revealed a calm. There was however something about his face, something that tickled at her mind.
Colette scrunched up her eyes until she finally grasped hold of it. She set her cup and fare down beside her. “Your face. Arman, you crossed the peri. How is it that your face is still smooth?”
His smile opened up, and his features sprang into evenness. “That is what you ask me? After all this time?” His laughter filled the room with its full vibrato. “The juile are less prone to degeneration. My feet can often take me where I should not go.”
Colette did not smile, but her face loosened. “I do want to ask more,” she said sincerely. “Pearl told me only fragments. I barely know anything… How did you destroy it? The malitas?”
His laughter subdued to a grieved quiet. “It was not me. It was Bren.”
Colette’s chest constricted at the mention of her soumme’s name. He left. Sour emotion bubbled up as if wanting to surface. She inhaled slowly, willing herself steady. She did not want to weep yet. If she started, she feared she would never stop. Her insides quivered but obeyed, and she again felt a strange hollowness inside.
Arman’s voice continued on, “We chased Chaul until it was clumsy with fear. We had Heart Render—just as you had suspected we would need from the beginning. Chaul thought it could win by entering a terrisdan. That we would not dare to destroy our land in order to rid ourselves of its evil.”
“And Selet?” Please let Pearl be wrong, she hoped.
“Selet,” he repeated softly.
“I’m so sorry, Arman.” She knew the pain of losing a terrisdan.
He nodded in acknowledgement but continued somberly. “Bren drove it into the heart of the land. It ended Chaul, and very nearly Bren. His connection with the terrisdans almost severed his own life. He recovered eventually, at least physically, but our time in Selet nearly drove him mad. We were imprisoned for almost an entire moon…” His voice trailed off, the words barely audible. “Ground his teeth by day, muttered of his guilt by night…”
“You were taken by the polina?” Colette asked incredulously.
Arman flicked out his fingers. “Every juile, in the span of an eye blink, had turned transparent. They were mad to find answers. Bren’s palms were as black as the dead land, and he was incoherent. They had no way of knowing our innocence.” He sighed. “It took some time before the frenzy could ease. A healer, Sara, really saved us.”
“You say her name with fondness,” Colette said, smiling.
“I say her name with fondness,” he repeated with a gentle expression, but he steered the conversation back to the events. “But yes, it was Bren’s hand that saved us in the end.”
“Pearl hinted that she expected him to die,” Colette said quietly. “She barely gave me an explanation… She sent me out here. And didn’t stay long.”
I forced myself to believe Bren had lived, Colette thought. But to what end?
“The frawnite…” he said. His voice was veined with bitterness. “I wish she had told me her plans. Much pain could have been prevented had she seen fit to speak.”
“Yes,” Colette replied. She had lived with that sentiment for a long time. And now, it carried a new bite.
She lifted her gaze to Arman’s steady eyes. “Did it—Chaul—ever give a reason for why it did those awful things?”
“No. And I doubt we will ever understand that madness.”
Colette jerked her head towards Mari’s pallet. “Where is she? Mari?”
“Playing. She’s with the bethaida children. Harta is watching her with three eyes,” he replied.
Colette blew air from her mouth audibly—a gesture strangely tinged with affliction, fury, and resignation.
Arman pursed his lips as he observed her. He nodded finally in comprehension: the rawness in her, the torment, it all held clarity now. There was much more depth and grief to the lunitata than even he had first perceived. “So, you saw Darse.”
“Yo
u did not know?” Her eyes clouded in confusion.
“Know?”
“I sent seal after the dream. To you. It was not returned. I assumed you received it.”
Arman shook his head in wonder. The sealtors took great care in their deliveries. They did not simply leave letters idly. “Bren didn’t receive it either,” he said to answer her querying look. “It was a surprise when we encountered Chaul.”
Silence gripped the room as the dark images of Darse’s end clouded their hearts. Each felt that their own side of the visions was enough. Colette did not want to know the horror Arman’s eyes had seen, nor Arman, Colette’s. So they sat with bated breath and their own grief gnawing.
Colette’s gaze finally settled down to her cold tea and bread. She lifted the dense, grainy black loaf and nibbled. “Am I healthy now?” Colette asked. “Am I free to cross the peri?”
Arman did not smile but was comforted by the stubborn spark that lived in her eyes despite everything. Would that Bren had not lost it…
“You appear better to my untrained medical mind, but I have to defer to the healers here. They know more about the sefent markings than I.”
“Not enough to heal them,” she said bitterly, seeing more sinister manipulations at work.
“To be fair, I do not know how well my treatments would work upon the Tindel. They are human, but their line has certainly adapted to this harsh world…” His smile returned. “Or maybe I just like to keep a few slips of awe hidden in my robes for the right moment.”
“If you could slip something out to smooth my face again, that would certainly awe me.”
He laughed heartily. “I reserve those somethings just for myself. I like to stay more beautiful than all.”
Colette laughed. “My man o’ fair.”
“Juile,” he corrected.
“Juile o’ fair,” she repeated softly to herself and turned her gaze back to her meal. Colette surveyed the black bread with a frown. It appeared more like a lump of charcoal in her white hands than it did sustenance. And still so foreign. She repressed a sigh. Without looking up—lest he see the pain and disappointment hidden behind the question—she asked, “When do you leave?”
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