by Jane Kindred
Now, after midnight, Ahr removed the lifeline that was her hand from Jak’s, and the blue-jet eyes focused at last on the one who’d found her.
“Ahr.” Jak spoke softly, almost afraid to utter the word.
Ahr tilted her head. “Kuthísch?” Who is. Jak didn’t know if this meant “who is Ahr?” or “who are you?” Either was troubling. In any case, it wasn’t Mole.
“It’s Jak. You know me.”
Ahr blinked at Jak as though this meant nothing to her. She pulled the blanket closer and tucked her arms into one another beneath it over a cotton undershirt of Jak’s, surveying the room as though taking its inventory. Minimalist that Jak was, there was little to survey.
“Do you know who you are?” Jak struggled to find the Deltan equivalent. “Sehta—sehta kuthíschta?”
Ahr studied Jak, showing interest at the sound of recognizable words. She pondered the question as though uncertain of the answer. “Maísch mene Ahr.”
Jak was unfamiliar with this construction, but it at least contained her name. “Do you know me? Ma sehta?”
Ahr peered at Jak in an apparent earnest attempt to answer this question. “Maóvetseh.” She gave Jak an apologetic shrug. Jak would have to be content with this. Ahr wished to know Jak. It was better than nothing.
“Jak. Maísch Jak.”
Ahr nodded. “Ischvetsehta, Jak.” An honor to know you. Jak stifled a pang at this impersonal greeting.
“You don’t remember me. Yet you remember Ra.”
Ahr’s eyes were riveted on Jak’s the instant the sacred word had been uttered. “Ra?” She swung her legs out of the bed. “Katísch Ra?”
“Not here.” Jak bit out the words tersely, rising, acutely injured by Ahr’s devotion to the one who’d killed her, and unable to contain it. “Remember me and maybe I’ll tell you.”
Ahr pursued Jak to the door, anxious and grasping. “Ra!” Her voice was plaintive. This was apparently the one thing she knew, and it was above all else. She must have Ra.
“Nai Ra!” Jak snapped at her, pain manifesting as anger, and shook her off. “I will not give you Ra. Search your renaissanced head and find her yourself.” Jak opened the door and went out, shaken, knowing this was pure spiteful cruelty that Ahr didn’t deserve, but unable to stop.
Ahr followed and stood in the corridor before the doorway, striking a picture straight out of Temple Ra: the maiden under the arch. “Naiahlmánzelman?”
“Never,” Jak confirmed. “Jak or Ra.” There was a painful lump in Jak’s throat at the certainty of whom Ahr would choose once she understood. Even restored, Ahr would choose Ra. Jak was deliberately courting pain. Jak turned away and left her standing in her substitute Rhymanic arch, half-naked, grief-stricken, lost. It was exactly how Jak felt.
“Jak or Ra,” Ahr repeated carefully, arresting Jak’s stride. Jak looked over one shoulder at her, pained by the pristine renaissanced beauty. “Isch Jak mene midt?”
Jak swallowed over a painful lump. “Yes. Jak isch midtlif.” Was it fair to use this term when they’d never spoken of it? It felt true—“friend of my heart”, “lover”—and Merit, who’d known Ahr best, had believed it.
“Ai,” said Ahr. Jak turned away, unable to bear the look in Ahr’s eyes.
The stranger was walking away from her once more, into the dimly lit center of the little stone warren, and after a brief hesitation, Ahr followed, her bare feet silent on the weave of the carpet runner. The hallway was lit by a few tallow candles in simple sconces on the wall, and at the end of it, a low fire glowed, left on the central hearth some time ago. Jak was standing before it, prodding it with a poker, the dying glow turning the tips of the dusty fawn hair into corn silk. She stared at Jak intently, trying to place this person who seemed urgently important and yet was not Ra. Ra, who must be had at all costs. This Jak wanted her to choose between the two. She was becoming certain she couldn’t bear the loss of either.
All at once, Ahr knew she’d made some terrible mistake at the moment of her death. She’d chosen wrongly—the same choice—and wounded Jak. She wounded Jak again, here, with her invocation of Ra. There could be no compromise. Ahr watched Jak brushing a stray summer-dust strand of hair behind one ear and knew she loved this person, though she could remember nothing of the time in which they’d been together.
Jak had been waiting here at her bedside, unsleeping—how long? Jak had found her on the moor where she’d come to herself in the bitter cold. She was alive because of Jak. Jak had carried her.
“Midtlif.” She spoke softly from the edge of the fire-lit room. Jak turned, eyes overflowing with an intense relief. It was clear Jak believed Ahr had remembered. To Ahr, it didn’t matter. Jak was midtlif. It was without doubt.
Jak dropped the poker by the rack of irons as Ahr approached. “You know me.”
Ahr nodded, though she didn’t know what this meant. She put out her hand and touched the fire-warmed face as she stood before Jak. “Nai Ra,” she promised, though the words drove nails into her heart.
Jak grabbed her and kissed her hair, and Ahr moved the hair aside and offered her mouth. The feel of Jak’s lips against hers was unfamiliar but absolute. This was right. The sensation of touch against her untouched skin drove shivers of unexpected need through her. She wanted to feel this on every part of her. She’d been denied Jak, she was certain, and it was suddenly urgent that not another moment pass without knowing and being known.
“Lie with me,” she whispered in Deltan, pulling Jak down to the stones before the hearth. “Quickly, before another life is over.” She felt she must be nothing but a mayfly, as if the span of life might be only an instant.
Jak pulled back, but Ahr stretched against the stones and urgently directed Jak’s hand to the uncovered brush of sable beneath the hem of the borrowed cotton shirt.
“Quickly! Now!” Ahr tugged at the buttons at Jak’s waist.
Her palm was flattened by one of Jak’s in an adamant gesture. Ahr wriggled instead out of her own shirt and pulled Jak down against her naked flesh.
Jak curled a hand around Ahr’s breast and nestled into the arch of her throat beneath her temple, mouth traveling down the slope of Ahr’s throat and collarbone to her breast and closing around it with a moan. Ahr answered with its echo, rising and twisting beneath Jak’s mouth, her hips dancing upward to try to reach Jak’s body, still elusive.
“Enter me!” Ahr begged, but Jak’s mouth closed over hers to hush the Deltan words. Ahr pressed upward even more madly, her stomach for a moment touching Jak’s, and drew Jak’s hand once more to the place where she desired it. “Enter me,” she moaned again, and Jak complied.
It hadn’t taken a Deltan scholar to understand what Ahr wanted. She’d been like a hot spark from the fire, writhing and pleading beneath Jak on the tiled hearth. Jak had ignored every sane thought that said they shouldn’t do this, and had given in at last.
Ahr slipped back against the warm stone when she was satisfied, breathing heavily, her own sweat and Jak’s dancing on her. Jak fell beside her, holding the familiar-yet-unfamiliar body close.
“So you missed me,” said Jak with an irrepressible grin. The unconsummated night with Ahr a year ago during the snowstorm, after the revelation of Ra’s identity and Ahr’s connection to her, had been an event of tension and discomfort, Jak feeling an unreasonable anxiety over Ahr’s touch, and on some level desiring to humble him. This, tonight, with the renaissanced Ahr, had been mutual desire. Jak didn’t know whether it was Ahr’s sex or the death of the “rabbit” at Shiva’s touch that had changed this between them. It hardly mattered now. Ahr was here again. Ahr was a woman. And Ahr had renounced Ra.
Her chest still heaving, Ahr sat up with a conspicuous rumble in her stomach, and Jak laughed. “Hungry?”
She smiled, kissing Jak as though it was Jak she still hungered for. “Hungry,” she agreed, copying the sound
of the word.
Jak helped her to her feet and reached for the discarded shirt, but Ahr was dragging Jak away already in search of the room where food could be found. Jak, pulled along, steered her eventually toward the kitchen, where Ahr discovered the leftovers of the night’s feast—another Heart of Winter Ahr had managed to miss.
The sideboard was soon spread with sweet cakes, qirhu cheese, black bread and nut paste, and Ahr devoured it with the relish of one who had never eaten before. Putting some wine and spices on the stove to simmer, Jak watched her experience the food, recalling both the exuberance of Ra’s first meals and the feast Jak and Ahr had eaten together, conjured by Ra, during the fateful storm.
Chin in hands, at the table opposite Ahr, Jak pondered her and mused aloud. “How did it happen? It has to have been Ra’s doing, but why this way?”
Ahr paused at the sound of the name, and Jak regretted its mention, but Ahr lowered her head once more to the presently more important food in her hands.
The fragrant smell of winter wine was rising and Jak turned back to the stove to fill the kettles. “Ta aovet nutmeg?” Jak asked, tapping the spice against the grater, but Ahr was absorbed in the bread she was scooping into the nut paste. “Ahr,” said Jak, but still she didn’t raise her head. “Ahr.”
Ahr looked up, curious. “Kesuth portemasta Ahr?”
Jak came away from the stove, the nutmeg forgotten in one hand. Ahr didn’t know her name. But she’d remembered. She’d come to Jak and spoken with recognition. They’d been intimate. She must know herself.
“Taísch Ahr,” Jak insisted. “You know. Taseh.”
Ahr set down her bread. “Maísch mene ahr.” She emphasized the Deltan word “mine” before the un-emphasized word “ahr”. This wasn’t a proper name after all.
“Mene ahr?” Jak repeated, feeling as hopeless as in the early days of trying to communicate with Merit.
Ahr put her hand to her bare chest. “Ma,” she said. “Meneahr.” She let her hand hover over Jak, respectfully careful not to touch, already attuned to Jak’s unspoken reticence in that direction. “Ta. Teneahr.”
“Yourself,” said Jak, understanding at last that ahr was a word with separate meaning. “Jak, Ahr.” Jak touched each of them respectively, fingers lingering on Ahr’s pristine skin. “Taísch Ahr. Taísch Jak’s Ahr.” It was painfully clear now that this woman, who was Ahr, whom Jak loved, was entirely without memories, except for the language of her original birthplace. It was as if Jak had been intimate with a stranger—and what intimacy it had been. “Nai masehta.” Jak frowned. “You don’t know me at all, do you?”
“Midtlif,” said Ahr comfortingly, taking Jak’s hand. And she believed this, because Jak had said so.
Running footsteps sounded in the hall, and Jak looked up to see Sevine, in a shirt of Geffn’s, her mouth stopped in the middle of a muffled laugh. She glanced at Ahr and swiftly away with a blush at the sight of Ahr’s unclothed body. Geffn rounded the corner behind her and caught her around the shoulders, nipping at her ear as he embraced her before realizing they weren’t alone. Sevine looked awkwardly at Jak, holding the collar of the oversized shirt at her throat.
“Well,” said Jak. “If this isn’t just shit on toast.”
Gamely ignoring Jak’s vulgar expression, Geffn smiled at Ahr. “It’s good to see you, Ahr.”
“She can’t understand you. She only knows Deltan.” Jak gave him a significant look. “And that’s all she knows.”
Geffn gaped at Jak. “Godsdamn sooth. Do you know what you’re doing?”
“No. I didn’t. Not until now. I thought she knew me.”
“Thought she knew you?” Geffn lowered his voice. “So you just decided to bed her as soon as she was warm?” The noise they’d made on the hearth had obviously carried, despite Jak’s attempts to quiet Ahr.
Jak went red but stared Geffn down with righteous indignation. “Don’t be disgusting, Geff. What do you take me for?” Jak looked at Ahr observing the trio with curiosity, her eyes still bright with the pleasure Jak had given her. “It wasn’t exactly my idea. She was difficult to refuse.”
“Really,” said Geffn drily. “You’ve had no trouble refusing before.”
Sevine extricated herself from Geffn’s arms and moved back in the doorway as though she’d stepped in something she wished she hadn’t. “I’m going back to bed.”
“Oh please, Sevine.” Jak snapped at her in exasperation. “Don’t read everything into everything. I wasn’t even a good fuck. Just ask him.”
Sevine opened her mouth, too offended to speak, but Geffn was laughing. He took Sevine’s hand and kissed it against her resistance. “It’s true.”
Jak glared. “You didn’t have to agree so easily.”
Ahr stood, obviously aware this drama was about her. She kissed Jak and tugged at a hand to persuade Jak to leave the kitchen to them.
Sevine shrugged, mollified, watching as Ahr pushed Jak’s hair behind one ear in an intimate gesture. “From the sound of things, I’d say you’ve solved that problem.”
Jak grinned sheepishly. One could learn to like Sevine.
Geffn remained unconvinced. “What do you intend to do?”
“Do?”
“Well, you can’t—you can’t keep her like a pet, for soothsake.” He lowered his voice once more. “We don’t even know how she’s come back. You said their dead daughter had been conjured from the grave on Mount Winter. This could be more of the same madness. How do we know she isn’t some kind of revenant, conjured by—”
“It’s not the same.” Jak cut him off fiercely. “She’s not some reanimated corpse, for gods’ sakes. She’s a flesh-and-blood woman. And she’s not deaf. She’s Deltan. She doesn’t understand a word of Mole, no matter how loudly you say it. As for ‘keeping’ her, I can hardly throw her out in the snow. She isn’t Meer. She’d die.”
Geffn studied Ahr with a peculiar expression. “You know, it is Ahr, but she looks like—”
“Don’t. Don’t say it. It’s the only thing she knows, and I can’t stand to see the look on her face when she hears that name.”
Ahr tried to resume the physical contact with Jak when they returned to bed, but Jak put her firmly aside after nearly giving in at the pleasure of a kiss. Knowing she didn’t truly remember Jak after all put their intimacy in an entirely different light.
But in the morning, Ahr wasn’t so easy to dissuade. Waking to kisses against the nape of the neck, Jak rolled over and found Ahr perched on her hands and knees.
“Ta maseh, Jak.” Ahr continued her kisses on Jak’s throat. “Ahr sehta.” She was earnest and persuasive in her assurances: despite her lack of memory, which she understood, Jak was a certainty. Nevertheless, having mistaken Ahr’s urgency for certainty the night before, it seemed best to proceed with caution. With a quick kiss of reassurance, Jak reluctantly held her at arms’ length. Regardless of Ahr’s obvious desire, they didn’t truly know each other.
Though Jak couldn’t help seeing in her the quiet Ahr who had understood Jak when no one else did; the Ahr who’d allowed Jak to undress him, exposing himself, while Jak remained hidden—the Ahr whose blood had run through Jak’s fingers, unstoppable, on the road from Mount Winter.
All eyes were focused on them when they arrived at breakfast. It wasn’t the first time Jak had come to the table with a renaissanced Deltan. As with the first, this Deltan’s clothes became a point of contention. Ahr had found the long-sleeved dress, crocheted with fawn lace, in the back of Jak’s wardrobe, and it had been impossible to persuade her to wear anything else.
Eyeing Jak with a frown as they sat at the table, Geffn spoke in the low murmur he continued to use in front of Ahr. “Do you really think that’s appropriate?”
“It’s a dress,” said Jak. “She wanted to wear it. I’m certainly not going to.”
“You might show Geffn some co
nsideration.” Mell, usually on Jak’s side in these matters, crossed her arms disapprovingly on the bench opposite them.
Jak sighed, dishing food onto Ahr’s plate. “It’s just as peculiar for me to see her wearing it. But she wanted it. It didn’t seem fair to insist she wear some old flannel shirt and oversized pants when the dress was just hanging there going unused. And I’m not trying to spite you, Geff. You ought to know that by now.” Jak didn’t include that it had been a relief not to see Ahr clothed as Ra had been last, in a soft shirt of Jak’s that would have been draped with a similar length of hair just a few shades shy of black.
Geffn gave Jak a shrug of concession. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I guess it just caught me by surprise.”
Sevine looked from one to the other. “I don’t understand. What’s wrong with the dress?”
For a moment, no one spoke, and then Jak took responsibility. “It was my handfasting gown.”
Sevine’s face reflected the discomfort of yet another reminder of Jak’s union with Geffn, and the awkwardness of being a stranger among this intimate group.
After taking a serving of porridge, Jak passed the pot to Sevine. “Can you imagine how absurd I must have looked in it?” Jak laughed. “I mean, really. Picture me in a dress, Sev.”
Sevine was visibly relieved, smiling at the nickname. “Honestly, no. I can’t imagine it.” She took the pot. “It isn’t you.”
“No. But Peta wouldn’t make me a plaid flannel dress with a button-front collar.”
Sevine laughed. The moment had passed.
Beside Jak, Ahr had closed her eyes, quietly breathing in the scent of the kerum Peta had set before her.
Keiren nodded toward Ahr. “What do you think she recalls? If she doesn’t remember Mole, how much has she lost?”
Jak glowered at him in annoyance. “If you’re asking if I’ve been bedding an emotional child, I can assure you she speaks Deltan with a masterful vocabulary.”
Keiren choked on his kerum. Jak realized belatedly that not everyone had been aware of the night’s activities.