by Jane Kindred
“You’re leaving now?”
“I was. But I think I’ll wait until the winds die down.”
Hraethe glanced at the closed bedroom door where Shiva had disappeared and nodded. “I think I’ll do the same.”
Thirty-two: Symmetry
Ahr stretched and pretended to wake as Ra slipped back into bed, pretended not to be aware he’d been gone. He’d forgotten that Ahr had Meeric sensibilities now, and Meeric hearing. He’d meant to leave her after all.
Afraid of what her body had betrayed to him, she turned toward Jak—rough and warm and comforting, the one to whom she’d returned from the mystery of death. Jak woke, mussed and fuzzyheaded as the Meer never were, and Ahr wrapped herself around the hard but ordinary body, trying to become a part of it.
“Good morning.” Jak gave her a sleepy smile.
“Do you know how much I love you?”
“If it’s half as much as you love Ra, I’m scared to death.”
Ahr kissed Jak. “It doesn’t hurt you that I love him?”
“Honestly, it hurt me when you didn’t. You’re like my right hand and my left. What would I be with only half of that?”
“Left-handed,” said Ra, coming up on his elbow beside Ahr. He stroked Ahr’s bare neck, giving it a kiss.
Jak drew both their hands close, kissing them in turn. “Honestly. It’s all right. I’m content to be with you both in whatever way you want me.”
Ra drew Jak into his arms, and Ahr moved in closer to contain Jak between them. Contentment. It meant more than mere consolation, but it was a word that didn’t satisfy her. She wanted Jak to be more than content.
With little to do while the whiteout still raged outside, Ahr and Jak retreated to Jak’s room to nap after breakfast, while Ra remained in his room—he’d skipped breakfast, claiming not to be hungry, though Ahr suspected he was reluctant to face the questions from the others that he would otherwise have avoided by slipping away before they woke.
Ahr lay mulling their earlier discussion. Her surrender to Ra had changed something in Jak toward her. She was certain Jak would never have used the word “content” to describe their intimacy before. It was as though Jak had become one step removed, less participant than observer in the dance between Ahr and Ra.
It came to her then: Jak was a subject to them. They were Meer, and Jak was their Merit. She nuzzled against Jak, the realization unbearable. She wanted it to be as it had between them, as it undoubtedly had been between Jak and Ra. She sensed the inequity, the intimidation Jak felt at not being able to please either of them as each Meer could please the other. But this was an illusion; all Meericry was an illusion. If only Jak could understand that as Ahr now did. If only Ahr were himself once more, the ordinary man with whom Jak had fallen in love. Shiva’s blood had ruined her.
She sat up, while Jak rose on an elbow with a questioning look. “There’s something I need to do.”
Jak watched her as she got out of bed and headed for the door. “You’re going to Ra.”
“No. I need to talk to Shiva,” she admitted and came back to kiss Jak with reassurance. “There are things I don’t understand. I’m born of her blood. I have to know.”
Ahr went out and found Shiva beside the fire—burning low and strangely colored a deep jade green. Not a hair was out of place in the severe rope behind Shiva’s head, not a wrinkle to her garments, though she’d worn them for two days. She was more of a carven idol than Ra had ever been.
“I keep them all from the fire.” Shiva spoke without looking at her. “I suppose I ought to be more considerate. But where would I go?”
Ahr stood still before her, trying to formulate what she wanted to ask.
“Don’t you think you ought to kneel before me if you’ve come for a vetma?” Startled, Ahr began to lower herself to the ground, and Shiva laughed. “It was a joke, you little tart. MeerHraethe told me you had no sense of humor. I couldn’t resist.”
Ahr straightened. “I didn’t come here to be made a fool.”
“What did you come here to be made?” Ahr opened her mouth, but Shiva didn’t wait for her answer. “Meershivá, but you’re transparent. ‘Return me as I was.’ The vetma of the day. What do you selfish Meer brats think I am, a wind-up toy that dispenses treats for coin? No. I will not restore you to your former self. The blood is yours. Live with it.”
“I don’t want to be one of your puppets.” Ahr itched at having been so easily read. “I’m not your child.”
“Then why do you insist on asking me for things?” Shiva gave her a look of denuding scrutiny, her eyes moving slowly upward from Ahr’s feet to the top of her head, and missing nothing in between. “No, you aren’t my child, but what a beauty nonetheless. You could be sisters. It’s too bad I don’t care much for you. You’d be delicious in bed.”
Ahr’s cheeks burned, and her mouth dropped open in astonishment.
Shiva sighed. “Don’t waste those looks of effrontery on me. It’s like being offended at the sun. I’ll go on doing what I do, and you’ll go on being burned if you insist on parading about before me without protection.” She gave Ahr another of her unpleasant smiles. “It’s not as if I haven’t ridden you before.”
Ahr fumed. “That was hardly my choice.”
“Wasn’t it? You forget I’ve had considerably longer to practice my art than you have. Even if you weren’t transparent, I could read you.” Shiva smirked. “I preferred you with a cock. But you’re mistaken if you think Jak does.”
“You keep changing the subject.”
“The subject, girl? What subject? You haven’t even broached the subject. Do you think vetmas are won without any effort at all?”
“That I want to be ordinary.” Ahr shook with emotion she could no longer distinguish from the chaos in her head. This wasn’t like parading before the sun; it was like trying to eat the sun. Shiva left one molten, if at all.
“Ordinary,” Shiva scoffed. “Dull.”
“Jak isn’t dull.”
Shiva inclined her head. “True enough. Jak ought to have been born Meer. But you’ve been given the gift of my blood, and you would throw it back in my face. You haven’t even thanked me for restoring you to life. You may think I’m a cold creature with no heart, but I assure you the blood comes from somewhere. I gave you to them because they were sick without you, and in it all, in the flow, your spirit was bereaved. Such conjuring cannot be done in the absence of feeling. I swallow it all, chit, and if I were ice as you all think me, the fire of your passions would have destroyed me long ago. If you can give me neither affection nor gratitude from your superior half-ordinary heart, at least have the decency to show me some respect.”
Ahr was speechless, humbled before her.
Shiva flicked her wrist. “Go away now.” She sat back, serenely marble, enthroned beside a fire now turning from jade into amber. Ahr did as she was told.
The afternoon was short, with the dim gray of the mound’s interior softening to black in the absence of the snow-muted light. Jak had welcomed Ahr back with a miserable kiss. She’d been with Ra after all. The murmured sound of their voices had carried from the corridor before she entered. It wasn’t unexpected. Ahr had been Ra’s since the moment they’d first seen each other on the street during that long ago procession, and both had crossed the very reaches of death to be together. Jak was an intermediary comfort.
Ahr tried to placate Jak with an offering of passion, undressing and pulling Jak on top of her with her arms stretched out across the bed as though she was Jak’s to do with as Jak pleased. Jak kissed her neck and throat and thought how it must feel for Ra to kiss them, and instead pulled Ahr in close to simply hold her, savoring the Meeric warmth she seemed to radiate now, and the velvet smoothness of her skin.
They fell asleep, and Jak woke again after dark to find Ahr missing. To Ra. Jak rolled over and slept once more, comf
orted by dreams of them both, only to be startled awake by the presence of someone in the room. Ahr and Ra were silhouetted in the dark.
“It’s only us.” Ra raised a dark band of cloth in his hands. “Do you trust us?”
“Of course I trust you.” Despite the assertion, Jak tried to pull the cloth away as Ra brought it against Jak’s eyes. “What are you doing?”
Ra moved Jak’s hand and tied the cloth behind Jak’s head. “Hush. Lie still.”
“Don’t fuss,” Ahr whispered at the bedside. “Our touch erases any that has come before. You’re safe.” Firm hands were loosening Jak’s collar, and then a mouth took their place and removed the buttons from their holes one by one, sliding down Jak’s skin as each inch of it was bared. This had to be Ra. It was the sort of thing Ra would do.
At Jak’s feet, the ever-present woolen socks were removed, and the Meer descending through Jak’s buttons moved to the riveted fasteners of Jak’s pants and continued down. Jak let out a whimpering moan as a pair of lips descended to the last of the buttons and a tongue pressed between the fly while the pants were pulled down and away.
“May I touch you here, Jak, if I promise not to put my tongue inside?” This whisper was harder to distinguish. Jak decided it was immaterial and wiggled upward in assent.
Unexpectedly, another pair of lips descended instead on Jak’s right breast while the hot breath of the other whispered below. Jak reached out, breath catching sharply, but was shown in no uncertain terms that touching would not be allowed, pinned gently at the wrists against the bed. As Jak was distracted by these hands—Ra’s, it seemed—the mouth between Jak’s legs plunged, and the tongue consumed the entire perimeter of Jak’s sex with a hot and wonderful jolt.
“Fucking sooth,” Jak moaned, knees rising involuntarily. As with the arms, Jak’s legs were swiftly corrected, held by the ankles and spread in the shape of a generous “A” while the tongue was temporarily withheld.
“Don’t make me hold you down,” one of them whispered, “or I won’t be able to reach you. “Do what your Meer says.” That had to be Ra. Jak obeyed and gave over to the delicious sensation.
Ahr, at Jak’s breasts, nipped lightly at their delicate peaks. Jak made a sound of surprise and jerked beneath the restraining hands, and they were instantly removed.
“Am I hurting you, Jak?” came the whisper at Jak’s ear.
Jak let out an involuntary gasp at a stroke of the dexterous tongue below. “Sooth, no.”
“Do you want me to continue?”
“Yes, I—please.” Jak could barely speak.
Ahr’s mouth lowered once more to Jak’s breasts, this time only touching with a flick of the tongue, while Ra instead nipped at Jak’s most sensitive part. Jak jerked forward, coming up on both elbows with a loud moan.
Ra offered up his hands for Jak to hold as his tongue parted and pressed against the sensitive flesh until Jak was moaning and rocking, almost lost to where they were in the small cloister of snowbound Mound RemPeta. While Jak clung to Ra’s fingers, Ahr continued her own devotion, devouring all of Jak that was available to her, a wild mouth against breast and mouth and throat, until Jak arched beneath them both with a crooning moan of release. The climax crashed over Jak in waves, leaving Jak shuddering and whimpering and utterly spent.
“What is left of reason loves you desperately,” Ra whispered when Jak had calmed, and Jak’s fingers tightened against his. Ra had said these words to Jak before.
“My dream,” Jak breathed.
Ahr laid Jak back against the bed and loosened the silk scarf that had kept Jak in the dark. As the scarf came away, Jak looked into her eyes, only it wasn’t Ahr, but Ra—Jak’s Ra, as she’d been a day ago.
“Ra?” Jak gazed at her with wonder as she came forward and wrapped Jak in her arms, pressing her head to the soft slope of Jak’s breasts. Jak embraced her. “Am I dreaming, still?”
“You weren’t dreaming the first time, lif. I came to you in the night when I could, when I could escape the tyranny of madness. I left my body there at AhlZel and brought my soul to you.”
Jak was overcome with tears. “But how are you changed again?”
“Don’t ask so many questions,” Ahr scolded, and Jak looked up with equal astonishment, for Ahr was male.
Jak reached up to touch him, making sure he was real, and Ahr took Jak’s hand and knelt beside the bed, laying his head, still capped in close-shorn hair, beside Ra’s. “This is what I get for screwing with the Meer,” said Jak warily, and Ahr laughed against Jak’s breast. “This is very disconcerting.”
“But do you love us?” he asked.
“Sooth, yes. Of course I love you. How can you ask that?”
“Male or female?” asked Ra.
“Meer or un-Meer?” asked Ahr.
“I love you, I love you,” Jak laughed. “However many of you there are.”
Ra lifted her head and rested on one elbow. “Do you believe we love you? That you aren’t some intermediary comfort with which we consoled ourselves while separated from the other?”
“This is what I get for screwing with the Meer,” said Jak with chagrin. “Never a thought to myself again.” Jak pulled Ra close and kissed her. “I will believe whatever you tell me.”
“Would you say you’re content to be touched as you have been tonight?” Ahr rested on his elbow as Ra had done. “Is that a word that describes our intimacy?”
Jak looked up at the ceiling. “I knew something was bothering you. I’ll have to choose my words more carefully.” Jak met the disapproving indigo eyes. “No, I’m not content. I’m not content at all. I want you again and again and again. Sooth knows it will kill me eventually, but meerrá, I intend to enjoy it while I’m of sound mind and body.”
Ahr was giving Jak a familiar look, the one he’d perfected in his years of masculinity, a nearly convincing demonstration of humorlessness.
“Stop brooding and kiss me,” Jak insisted. Ahr complied, smothering Jak with the earnestness that was characteristic of him in any guise. “Why are you both dressed?” Jak asked when he’d let up at last. “Is this some peculiar Meeric tradition? Are we always going to do this?”
Ra obliged by peeling out of her black tights and sweater while stretched on top of Jak’s body, and Ahr slipped off the bed and stood, methodically removing the shirt and long underwear of Jak’s that he still wore over his male body, revealing the unabashed erection beneath. Ra was squirming against Jak, the touch of skin enough to rile her to frenzy, and she lifted her thighs over Jak with a dark, commanding look. “You begged me for this once. What will you do with it now?”
Jak rose to meet her body obediently, tasting at last of the sweetness that had been denied Jak until now. Ra rested on her knees and arched back, and Ahr moved behind her on the bed to brace her. Cupping her breasts, he bent over her, taking one into his mouth while she danced against Jak’s touch.
“I want you,” Ahr said to Ra, holding her firmly.
“If anyone’s to have you, it will be Jak.” Ra gasped the last word out, climaxing already, as Jak held on to her, hands pressed firmly into her behind and face buried in her, muffled moans of pleasure equaling Ra’s.
When Ra relaxed, Jak released her reluctantly and drew her down, taking one of the breasts Jak had missed into a sticky mouth while Ahr leaned over her and took the other.
Jak watched him straddling both pairs of legs where he knelt to cradle Ra, his pennant desire more plain than the need in his eyes. Holding Ra tight, Jak exposed the dark blush between Ra’s long limbs to him, eyes locked on his.
Ahr enveloped the indistinguishable unit of their bodies with his own, and Ra raised her head as he moved between her legs. “Wait, lif,” she protested. “Jak must have you.”
“I am having him.” Jak gave her a wicked grin. “I’m having you both.”
Jak’s tongue penet
rated her mouth while Ahr penetrated her from behind, and Ra moaned roughly, curving her arms behind her back to hold on to him. He wasn’t gentle with her, driving hungrily against her body, but Ra didn’t protest, her head thrown back beside his as he threw himself into the act without reserve. Jak nipped at the arch of her throat, and Ra, whimpering, began to quiver uncontrollably, thrusting her own hips against Jak’s in time with Ahr’s intensified motions. Jak, instead of either of them, cried out in the delirium of climax first, arching beneath their hot and slippery bodies. Ahr pressed forward and kissed Jak with a groan as he followed suit, his arms taut against the mattress while he jerked into the softly moaning Ra and shuddered down against them.
The three of them lay together, a single body spent, panting softly against one another until they slowly separated into a unit of cuddling arms and legs as the opiate of orgasm faded.
“You were rough with Ra,” Jak scolded Ahr, caressing one of Ra’s breasts.
“I was, a bit. I suppose I meant to be.” He kissed Ra’s shoulder apologetically.
“Mene midtlif.” Ra shook her head solemnly. “You were gentler with me than I was with you.” She kissed him, and kissed Jak. “Shiva granted us this vetma for one night. Let’s not waste any time on regret.”
“Granted you?” Jak searched the coal eyes that were no different than they’d been this morning in a more sculpted face. “She changed you?”
“She gave us the illusion of change. She held us up before the mirror of our symmetry.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You place too much importance on gender and parts,” said Ra with a wink before gathering Jak in her arms. “Poor ordinary Jak. Tormented by the Meer.”
Ahr spooned against Jak from behind as Jak glanced over a shoulder at him. “Don’t ask me. I woke up while you were still asleep, and found a cock between my legs.”
“As if that were a first,” said Jak, and he bit Jak’s ear. “I suppose,” said Jak slyly, reaching down, “you have the infamous stamina of the Meer?”