Aetherium (Omnibus Edition)

by Joseph Robert Lewis

  She shuffled her feet and hips, trying to get comfortable. After a few minutes, a second dark fish drifted past. It might have been the same fish.

  Asha closed her eyes and put her left hand over her left ear. In her right ear, the life of every fish in the lake, every bird in the rushes, and every blade of grass on the shore resonated through her head. She heard whispers and sighs, gurgles and bubbles, and the occasional high-pitched warble. Nothing she hadn’t heard before. Just grebes and carps and green things growing in the earth.

  With her right hand idly sweeping through the water, she drifted wherever the wind and waves carried her. Listening.

  That evening she paddled back to the dock with a mild sunburn and a growling stomach. Priya and Rama were steaming rice in a clay pot and cooking fish in grass bundles on a pile of coals in the sand. They were talking about their favorite shades of black and laughing.

  Asha cleared her throat and plopped down on the warm grass beside them.

  “Catch anything?” Rama asked as he handed her a cup of tea.

  “No,” Asha said. “Nothing unusual out there at all. Just a beautiful lake.”

  “Oh, never underestimate a lake,” he said. “Certainly not one like this.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Priya.

  “Well, I’ve only lived here a short time, but I know something about living on the water, and no matter how much you think you know about a place, there is always more to find. Everything is always moving, always changing. The fish find new places to hunt or hide. A shift in the seasons will wake up some poor creature that’s been sleeping in the mud for years and years. Things fall in and get lost. Things wash up and are found.” Rama smiled his beautiful smile. “A lake is a living thing.”

  After supper, Priya took Jagdish to one of the neighboring houses to play with the children as the first pale stars began to appear in the blue-black sky. Asha and Rama went to sit on the little walkway around the edge of his dark house with their feet dangling in the cool water. A warm breeze spiced with pepper and sweetened with mangos blew across the water, and from the other houses the soft sounds of laughter and off-key singing mingled with the rustling of the fiery palash blossoms above them.

  “So this is your life?” he said. “You travel the world listening to peoples’ stories and floating around in their boats?”

  “Sometimes I climb mountains to find rare flowers, or cross deserts for strange fruits, or stalk through forests for strange beasts.” She smiled. “But mostly, yes, I float around in strangers’ boats to enjoy the sun. Speaking of which.” Asha reached back into the house to fumble through her shoulder bag in the dark. A moment later she leaned forward again with a small jar in her hand. “You’ve been alone here for a long time, haven’t you? I’ve been alone for a long time, too. It comes with the job, I suppose. I don’t mind it, usually. But sometimes, well…” She began gently spreading the lotion on her arms and face.

  “That smells good.”

  “It’s just aloe, but I mixed in some rose petals.”

  He shifted closer. “Can I help you with that?”

  “To rub the lotion on my skin?” Asha smiled. “We’re not that young anymore, Rama.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I don’t want to waste time going through the motions.” She reached over and pressed her lips to his. He tensed for a moment, and then kissed her back, slipping his hand through her hair to cradle her head and hold her close. Asha pulled her legs under her to kneel beside him, holding his face with both her hands. She led him through the kisses, pressing hard and pulling back, opening and closing her mouth to taste the traces of pepper and mango still clinging to his lips.

  When his hands began to roam down her neck and chest, she wrapped her fingers around his and pulled him up to his feet and led him into the dark house. They stood together on the tangled blankets, slowly undressing each other. She untied his trousers. He unwound her sari. Their clothes fell silently to the floor and she pushed him gently down onto his back. Kneeling over him, she eased down against his warm flesh, and felt his hands exploring her hips and belly and breasts.

  His hands continued to rove across her shoulders and neck and face, but only when his fingers grazed her right ear did she move his hand back down to her chest. They rocked gently together in the darkness, in the silence. Asha closed her eyes and listened to the crickets chirping and frogs croaking and the children singing just down the shore. Rama’s breathing was long and deep, his hands hot and strong holding her tightly against him as he quickened and moaned in the dark.

  She held him tightly, still rocking and gliding her hips until she shuddered, and exhaled.

  For a moment she sat very still, letting the night breeze caress her body and carry away the heat in her skin. Then she lay down beside him, wrapped herself up in his long arms, and closed her eyes.

  “Asha?”

  “Mm?”

  “Would you stay here with me, if I asked you to?”

  She listened to the rhythm of her heart beating and his heart beating, and to the world outside laughing and sighing and gathering in to rest for the night. “You barely know me.”

  “I know. But life is so short, and joy can be so rare.”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about staying anywhere in a long time.” She sighed in the dark. “I take what little joy I can find, but I’m not looking for more than that. Not now, anyway.”

  “Oh. I see.” There was a hint of disappointment in his voice, but his warm arm didn’t move from her belly, and she put her hand on his to keep it there.

  Asha had almost fallen asleep when she heard a soft trilling in the distance like tiny bells ringing in a faraway shrine. But she could only hear it in her right ear.

  * * *

  Asha opened her eyes and saw the soft dawn’s light on the wall. Rama was gone and his boat was gone with its line stretched out far across the lake. She sat up and saw Priya sitting just outside the door.

  The nun stroked her mongoose’s head and smiled. “That was fast.”

  Asha shrugged and stretched. “Life is short, or so I’m told.”

  “For some more than others.” Priya offered her a cool cup of tea. “Will we be staying a while longer to study the local wildlife, or will we be moving on to a certain nearby temple?”

  “Not yet,” Asha said. “There’s something I need to do, something I need to check. I’m going out on the lake again.”

  “I thought you already looked. Or listened, as it were.”

  “Maybe not enough.” Asha untied the second boat and paddled out across the sparkling waters of the lake. She leaned down to place her right ear near the water and closed her eyes, but this time she went on paddling, driving the boat back and forth across the lake again and again all day long. But the lake was massive. It took nearly an hour to cross once and return, and she knew that anything swimming in the deep might easily slip past her on her long trips here and there and back again.

  Still she paddled and listened. She heard the fish and the grass and the birds and the trees, and as the hours passed she began to wonder if she had really heard the soft bells the night before. It was early in the afternoon when Asha put the paddle down and she lay back in the narrow boat to rest her arms. Cradled in the rocking boat and warmed by the sun, she was slipping into a welcome nap when she heard the bells again. And again, she only heard them in her right ear.

  Asha leaned over the side of the boat, staring down into the water at the rocks and sand, at the grass and weeds.

  A thin black shape darted past and the bells tinkled louder. Asha grabbed her paddle and propelled the boat forward with a few rough strokes and then leaned down with her nose just touching the water, watching and waiting. The muddy bottom of the lake was very close here with the reeds and trees standing at the water’s edge only a stone’s throw away.

  The black shape darted past again and Asha struck. Her hand stabbed down into the lake, her fingers close
d, and she drew the snake up out of the water. She held it gently, pressing only as much as she needed to keep it from escaping. With one hand around its throat behind the jaw and the other hand around the end of its tail, she drew it out straight in the glaring sunlight.

  It was a scaled snake and not an eel, only a half dozen hand spans long with a narrow head. And it was black. Jet black all over. It glistened as the water ran off its body and every few moments it would give a sharp jerk, trying to whip its tail free.

  Asha studied the snake’s head and eyes for a moment, and then shut her own eyes to listen to the bells, the delicate tinkling bells that seemed to be ringing from each and every one of the snake’s scales. With a lump in her throat, she turned her head so she couldn’t see the snake at all and then gave it a sharp squeeze. From the corner of her eye, she saw the bright flash of golden light on the side of the boat and the surface of the water.

  She slumped in the bottom of the boat, still holding the snake tightly in both hands. Taking a deep breath, Asha snapped the snake’s neck and tossed the limp body into the front of the boat. For the next hour she sat there, letting the wind and waves carry her back out to the center of the lake while she stared at her hands and feet and did nothing.

  Eventually she picked up her paddle and went back to the shore.

  * * *

  “It’s a sunsnake,” she said.

  Priya and Rama nodded, neither one facing the black shape coiled on the floor in front of them. Asha picked it up again and ran her fingers over its cold scales. “It looks like an ordinary grass snake, but it lives in fresh water. And it’s black, except when it’s scared.”

  “It changes color?” Priya asked.

  “No. It blinds its enemies with a flash of light, like a lightning bug. Or ten thousand lightning bugs. Or really, like a bolt of lightning.”

  Rama nodded. “And the blindness is permanent.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Asha watched the tin kettle bubbling on the fire. “It’s just a flash, just like regular lightning. It blinds the predator for a moment, but only a moment, so the sunsnake can escape. But the light does more than blind the eyes. It triggers a reaction in the brain that causes euphoria, even hallucinations.”

  Rama covered his sightless eyes with his hand, his lips pressed tightly together.

  Priya touched his knee. “You said you saw your wife when you lost your sight that day.”

  He nodded quickly.

  “But Asha, why hasn’t his sight returned?”

  “It did return, didn’t it, Rama?” Asha asked. “But after that first time, you went out looking for the sunsnake again, didn’t you?”

  He nodded again. “I just wanted to see my Vina again. I just wanted that moment again. That happiness. That lightness.”

  Asha looked down at the little black snake. “How many times?”

  “I don’t know. Every day for months. Dozens of times, I suppose. And each time it took longer for my eyes to recover. And then one day, they didn’t.” He took his hand from his face to reveal a serene smile. “But it was all right. I didn’t mind.”

  “Because you can still see her, can’t you?” asked Asha. “You have the visions all the time now, don’t you?” She hesitated, and then whispered, “You’re always looking at her.”

  Rama nodded. “I’m sorry. I know I was weak. And selfish. And lonely. But that light, that golden light, it gave me everything I wanted. It gave me back my Vina.”

  “No, it just gave you a dream to dull the pain.” Asha poured a cup of hot water and then scraped some of the scales and skin from the snake into the cup. “But I can bring you back to the real world, Rama. If that’s what you want. All you have to do is drink this.” She pressed the warm cup into his hand. “Drink this and your eyes will heal and the visions will end and you can come back to live in the real world again.”

  He held the cup in his lap, turning it slowly between his hands. “I do want that. I want a real life. I want more nights like last night.” He reached out to her, but Asha did not take his hand. “And I want children. I want to wake up. I do. That’s what I want.” He drank from the cup slowly, sipping the steaming water until it was all gone.

  “It will take a little time,” Asha said. “You should probably go to sleep and let the drink work. I think by morning you’ll feel very differently.”

  Rama nodded. “Will you stay with me?”

  Asha paused. “Yes.”

  * * *

  Asha woke before dawn in a gray twilight world. Everything was cold. The air, the blankets, the floor. Slowly, she recalled the rest of the prior evening.

  Supper. Talking by the water. Talking about the future.

  Priya had excused herself again to visit the children with Jagdish, and Asha had gone to bed early, and alone.

  But when Rama lay down beside her and gently wrapped his arm around her waist, she did not push him away. She rested her hand on his and prayed for sleep to come quickly.

  Asha sat up and saw Priya still asleep across the room. The mongoose lay balled up in the nun’s hair, his nose resting in one of the pale lotus blossoms on her head. Asha stood and padded across the room to the door. In the shadows, she stumbled over her bag on the floor and heard some of her tools and jars and vials clink and clack in the dark. She stepped over them and out onto the cool grass soaked with the morning dew.

  Rama was sitting by the water, hunched forward with his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms folded across his knees.

  Asha sat down beside him. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning,” he whispered. His eyes were open.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Different,” he said. “I’m waiting for the sun.”

  “Tell me what you see now.”

  He shook his head a little. “Not much. Light gray, dark gray. Sky, water, trees. Maybe.”

  “That’s good. Just take it slowly.” She leaned closer to him, but he did not look at her.

  The eastern sky grew lighter, gray transforming into soft golds and pinks as the ragged lines of the clouds emerged from the gloom.

  “Do you see it?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I see it.”

  The edge of the sun crept above the edge of the world and the lake flashed with the first bright glares of pink and gold as the clouds blazed softly like frozen fire across the sky.

  “I can see the sun,” Rama said softly. “I can see the trees and the water.” He turned his head toward her and a faint smile curled the corner of his mouth. “I can see you, too. You have beautiful eyes.”

  Asha smiled at him, but he turned away again to stare at the lake.

  “But I can’t see Vina anymore. She’s gone. She’s gone forever now, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she is. But she’s been gone for a long time now, Rama. You’ve been holding on to a memory, to a dream. But this is a new day. A whole new life for you.” She held out her hand to him.

  His lip trembled. “But she… I can’t… I can’t live this life anymore, not without her. I’m sorry.” He unfolded his arms to free his hand and she saw the glint of sunlight on the tiny blade as he thrust it into his neck.

  “No!”

  Asha watched him fall back into the grass. Rama shivered and sputtered as the blood flowed from his throat and mouth, his wide eyes searching the dawn-streaked skies while his hands pawed at the ground. She leapt up and clasped her hands over the wound, squeezing and pressing with all her weight, shouting over and over, “No! Rama, no!”

  * * *

  The sun was high in the late morning sky when Priya finally said good-bye to the families who lived by the lake. It had only taken Rama a few seconds to die, and it had only taken a few moments longer for everyone to come running out to see what was happening. Asha tried to remember exactly what had happened, and how, and why, but the thoughts refused to come together in her mind. The only image that materialized was the shape of the little blade. The shape of a steel scalpel.

  My scalpel
in his hand.

  And then there had been the long, cold hours of standing beside the palash tree and watching the women tend to the body, watching the men burn the body, listening to Priya chanting softly, her voice echoing across the cold waters. Asha leaned against the tree and stared up at the fiery orange flowers.

  Priya stood beside Asha with Jagdish on her shoulder and her bamboo rod in her hand. “We don’t have to leave right this minute if you’re not ready.”

  Asha looked out across the lake at the grebes gliding across the water. “I’m ready now.”

  The nun touched Asha’s arm. “It’s all right to grieve.”

  “Why would I grieve? He wasn’t mine, not even when we slept together. He was always hers. I didn’t have him before, and I don’t have him now. So his death doesn’t change anything.” Asha began walking away. “It doesn’t change anything at all.”

  Chapter 4

  Asha strode along the mountain path, only rarely pointing out the odd tree root or rock underfoot. Priya followed a few paces behind with her bamboo rod in hand and the little mongoose Jagdish perched on her shoulder. The blind woman never stumbled and never once complained about the pace or the path.

  “How much daylight is left?” the nun asked.

  “Too little.” Asha poked a sliver of ginger into the corner of her mouth and began chewing. “We may not reach the next village before nightfall. I’ll try to find someplace sheltered from the wind for us to sleep.”

  They walked on. Asha minded the setting sun as she followed the path down the rocky hillside into the forest. Brittle brown leaves crunched softly underfoot as the fading daylight filtered through the yellow and crimson leaves overhead. Few scents remained to tell of the summer bounty and now the forest smelled only faintly of earth and decay, laced with the light fragrance of the white lotuses blooming in Priya’s hair.

  “Asha?” The nun petted the mongoose on her shoulder as she swept the path ahead with her bamboo rod. “If you had a glass of water, and the level of the water was half the height of the glass, how would you describe the glass?”